Beyond the backyard: Urban agriculture is growing in Toronto

As we shake off the last vestiges of winter, our thoughts turn to milder days and becoming reacquainted with our gardens.

While many people grow vegetables in their backyard, Shah Mohiuddin has spent the last couple of decades expanding the possibilities of cultivation in Toronto.

A retired engineer, Shah is the founder of the Prairie Drive Park Group in Scarborough and has been coordinating growing events in parks, community centres and other public spaces — all part of a larger concept known as urban agriculture.

“Toronto has all sorts of land for gardening. It has lots of sunlight in the summertime. There is plenty of water,” he said. “The soil is very productive. Even without any compost or fertilizer, you can grow.”

Shah, who moved to Toronto in 2001, earned the nickname “Squash Man” for growing Sicilian squash that can eclipse him in height. He says the city has the conditions to cultivate everything from tomatoes to eggplant to potatoes to beans to amaranth.

Rethinking growing spaces

While the City of Toronto and Toronto Community Housing Corp. offer a number of community allotments for gardening, those spaces are quite limited. But Rhonda Teitel-Payne, co-coordinator of Toronto Urban Growers, says our metropolis offers vast potential for growing. You just need to use your imagination.

“People automatically think about growing in the ground, but in cities there are lots of other opportunities to grow, like on rooftops, balconies and lots of odd spaces — spaces that aren’t big enough to put anything else on.”

She cited some people she knows “who are growing food alongside a staircase.”

It’s all part of a concept Rhonda calls “distributed agriculture,” or the idea “that one farmer will have multiple [growing] sites.”

She said the city has come a long way since the founding of Toronto Urban Growers in 2009. But in terms of ambition and infrastructure, it still lags behind places like Paris or Nerima, Japan. For example, the Japanese government gives money to urban farms in Nerima, a suburb of Tokyo, to act as emergency preparedness centres.

‘Our food system is very vulnerable’

Shah agrees. He says the municipal government here could take greater advantage of available space.

“I am from Bangladesh. My country is very overcrowded, but the idea is that land should not be unused,” he said. “In this country, a lot of land is empty, unused.”

Shah says the city could convert more areas of parks and hydro corridors into community gardens and perhaps even build some greenhouses for the winter months. “If the city can take initiative, there are lots of interested gardeners.”

Rhonda says that in recent years, more people have begun to see the wisdom of exploiting urban growing spaces.

“Our food system is very vulnerable — we found that out through COVID, and we’re finding that out through trade wars,” she said.

“I don’t think anybody is saying that growing food in the cities is going to feed our entire population, but … it’s a really good way to grow food that’s culturally relevant, like food that really matters to people, whether that’s organic or food that they can’t get fresh from the store.

“And people just want to be more connected to their food. They want to have more trust in the source of their food. Getting it themselves or getting it from a hyperlocal grower is one of the ways that they do that.”