Interview with Lauren Baker, Coordinator of the Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC) July 2013.

I recently met-up with Lauren at the ICLEI Resilient Cities Urban Food Forum in Bonn (June 1, 2013) and was so inspired by her presentation about the TFPC and how their work has evolved over the past 20 years. I asked her a few questions about what’s going on in Toronto.

Transcribed & Edited by Jackie Burton

LP: Why are you involved in food systems work?
LB: I came to this work when I was a student… studying international development and was questioning the world, especially in light of so many issues and inequities at home in our own society and food just became a way for me to link all of these broader social issues. The “aha” moment was actually volunteering at a (particular) food bank where I just thought, ‘this is sort of disturbing and problematic in the way that we have a charitable food model that is complicit with some of the other inequities that we face in our society…’ and then it happened to be World Food Day so the FAO was organizing events and giving out small grants (for local) events and we applied for one and that began a whole focus on food systems work. When I finished my Master’s, I began farming on a rooftop up in Toronto and (from up there you) could see acres and acres of empty rooftop space and I just thought, ‘all of this could be green.’ So I started this urban farming project with two other people called Annex Organics and we did that for five years. It was a certified organic farm- the first one in the city.

LP: You are the coordinator for the Toronto Food Policy Council. How long have you been involved there?
LB: I’ve been in this position for about 2.5 years…I was actually on the council in probably the late ‘90’s through the early 2000’s.

LP: So tell me about Toronto. What are the most pressing issues now in your region that either you see or you’re working on already?
LB: Our food strategy team is really focused on access to healthy food. In Toronto we have communities that have layers of disadvantage related to walkability, access to retail, food, healthy and food retail. In those communities we see that folks (that) have higher instances of diet-related illnesses, they have less access to recreation space, park space, green space and so we’re working with partners through the food strategy implementation to think really carefully about food access. We’re doing work on the retail environment and trying to engage small retail owners – this is the healthy corner store work that we are borrowing from the US and we’re trying to figure out that world in Toronto. We also have a mobile food market (which is) still in its pilot phase.

I’m also really involved in regional food systems work and I think that this is really exciting- it’s relatively new. You can see the first phase of that work through the Greater Golden Horseshoe Food & Farm Action Plan. The City of Toronto has recognized the importance of agricultural land and our reliance on farmers outside of the municipal boundaries. So we have that language in our official plan and all seven municipal and regional councils endorsed this plan and provide staff support for implementation. So now we have a working group and we’ve engaged planners, economic development staff and public health staff across the regions. We meet about once every month or six weeks.

LP: That’s ambitious!
LB: Yeah, it is. We’re doing an inventory of all the local food infrastructure that we have. We’re trying to start with the food producers, manufacturers, the facilities (and) just trying to get it on paper so we can monitor the health of this sector more closely. And then we want to layer in some of the social service, like the food banks, the community gardens, all of that later.

LP: Can you talk about Toronto and the systems’ synergy?
LB: I mean, the left hand doesn’t speak to the right and so this is the goal is to get folks talking in the same room. And that’s why this regional working group is so exciting. Another example is the work that we are doing around urban agriculture. It’s interesting because there’s the whole set of issues within the city government around finding synergies. The city government is really large we often don’t know what our colleagues in different divisions are doing- sometimes we work at cross-purposes so other departments’ work contradicts our goals and objectives in Public Health (for example). So we have all this great work happening in the community but of course- almost nobody in the city even knows about it or understands. So what that did for the city is to (formally) trigger the convening of an interdivisional working group. So we’ve just done a review of everything that the city does around urban agriculture and now we’re identifying specific projects that we can all bring our expertise to.

LP: Fascinating. I heard you mention a double imperative in your work. As in, ‘what can the city do for food?’ but also ‘what can the food do for the city?’ and I wanted to hear you describe it a little bit more. Is this your philosophy? A lesson learned? A vision? How do you classify this?
LB: When we conducted the food systems municipal food policy scan across Canada we were in conversation with colleagues across the country doing this work and were thinking about how to frame it because the purpose of that paper was really to say ‘this work is happening,’ it’s really been pushed by civil society and grassroots. It’s only now being taken on formally by municipalities so we wanted to support and provide a rationale for why municipalities should do that So, the (first) imperative is that cities are really where we see the human face of global challenges like climate change and weather pattern disruption, climate variation, issues around poverty and equity, rural-urban migration, etc. We have an imperative to act because of that, because of (the city’s) impact on agricultural lands and production and the economy around food and the fact that people need to eat, and need to continue eating through all of this. And because cities have to deal with the growth that results from rural migration into urban areas, all of these things. So, there’s the whole set of broad issues that has impact on local areas.

The second imperative is- what are cities already responsible for? What are their ‘normal duties’ as cities? We have formal jurisdictional responsibilities over things like waste, land use planning and growth planning, economic development, tourism- parks and recreation. So I think that that’s the imperative that drives broadly this (food systems) work for this kind of agenda for cities because food is one way to think systemically about both of those imperatives. Through food you can achieve a whole range of other social, economic, and environmental objectives that help that help address some of these broader issues and also help find synergies in the city that can make the business of the city more formal more streamlined in terms of linking across our divisional silos.

The main lesson here is that we need to be pushed to link our work to the broader agenda- the broader urban, regional, and global agenda and because our work really supports and enhances and contributes to that agenda. We need to explore what is our broader social, environmental, economic agenda- and this is the ‘what food can do for your city piece’- and we need to write ourselves into that broader work more deliberately.