Reforming Toronto's Food (In)Security: an Overview

In developed urban centres such as Toronto, food commons are treated as a commodity through enclosures and privatizations at every part of food production, ranging from mass agricultural corporations down to local grocery stores. As a result, food becomes largely inaccessible to many communities that already face marginalization in Toronto societies. Inadequate access to nutritious food is known as food insecurity and it has affected almost 20% of Toronto households in 2021 (City of Toronto, 2023).

The city of Toronto notes that "Food insecurity is a serious issue – it is a strong social determinant of health and is closely linked to many negative health outcomes, including chronic physical and mental health problems" (2023).

Part of Toronto's issue with food insecurity is the dependence upon food banks in times of hunger crises as the "main solution" (City of Toronto, 2023). Food banks are intended to provide short-term responses to hunger and are not enough to reduce food insecurity on their own (City of Toronto, 2023). Thus, further action is needed to enable food sovereignty and cause reforms in food governance in Toronto.

• The  City of Toronto ,  Statistics Canada , and  independent studies  all agree that food insecurity affects the most marginalized people in a city
• This includes:
  • racialized people, especially Black and Indigenous Canadians.
  • People under the poverty line, especially those working low-income or wage jobs
  • those who receive government/social assistance as their main source of income
  • those who rent, as opposed to owning homes
  • families with 1 or more children, and
  • single parents, especially single mothers
• Studies also suggest factors such as race and poverty directly correlate to food insecurity, independent from other factors.

It is important to note that different researchers attribute various factors as the main cause of food insecurity. This page is intended to draw these threads together and show how addressing intersectionality plays a major role in the activism of urban food insecurity.

Socio-economic status, income level, housing conditions, geographic location, and environmental/natural factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic are leading determinants of food insecurity in Toronto.

Below are sources which provide more detail on the impacts of poverty, climate change, and the recent global pandemic as independent and co-dependent factors to the rise of Toronto's food insecurity. These articles are dedicated to documenting and solving the issue at municipal and national scales, however, they are extremely relevant to discussions about Toronto.

As evident in Statistics Canada findings, Black and Indigenous Torontonians are at a disproportionately higher risk of food insecurity.  FoodShare , a Toronto-based, community-led, non-profit organization, has prepared concise and accessible infographics detailing the disproportionate impact of food insecurity on Black and Indigenous Toronto residents as a result of racism and systemic oppression. These studies also note the financial and spatial conditions of these marginalized groups as important factors in differential food access.

An important thing to note about these studies thus far is the interconnectedness of the focused demographics in each study. Toronto's  Daily Bread Food Bank' s 2021  Who's Hungry?  survey report suggests that food insecure people are affected by Covid-19 the most, who tend to also be  racialized minorities , who also tend to represent the most  impoverished  or  spatially segregated  and so forth. This understanding of the intersectional nature of the issue of food insecurity suggests that these social factors are interconnected determinants of food security and thus overall health.

Food Commons refers to the idea of food resources and production as a local, community-managed effort where everyone has a stake and therefore equal right to food. Food Commons Scholar-Activist Jose Luis Vivero Pol (2013) promotes the notion that food was and is (in its natural state) a common good, available as a public resource. He bases this on the fact that nutritious food is one of three essential physiological needs that the Earth naturally provides alongside fresh air and drinkable water (pp. 5). These renewable and abundant resources were freely available to all until widespread agriculture and domestication of crops and livestock led to the establishment of privatizations and property rights. In terms of food specifically, that which is produced in nature is still considered a common good, however, cultivated foods are treated as private goods by their producers as they have the incentive to prevent non-payers from accessing it. Thus, the privatization of production brought about the privatization of food products themselves. As evident above, these privatizations of food commons have dire implications for food access in marginalized communities and can be linked to the earliest roots of food insecurity (Vivero Pol, 2013).

Linked here is Virero Pol's 2013 article on  Food as a Commons: Reframing the Narrative of the Food System 

The City of Toronto has recently placed a lot of focus on the issue of food insecurity as part of the City's Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) post-pandemic. The City of Toronto is focused on the reform of food commons by proposing community/neighbourhood-level activism and structural reforms in the economic, spatial, and environmental sectors of marginalized neighbourhoods/communities. These efforts are documented in their  Toronto Food Charter ,  Toronto Black Food Sovereignty Plan , and chapter 18 of the city's first  Reconciliation Action Plan  (pictured to the right).

•  FoodShare : A Toronto-based, community-led, non-profit "Food Justice" organization which seeks to challenge the systemic barriers that prevent people from accessing nutritious food. Their methods include urban farming initiatives, collaborations with subsidized local markets, community-led kitchens and food banks and many more.
•  BlackFoodToronto/Afri-Can Food Basket : another Toronto-Based, community-led, non-profit organization that has been specifically looking after the food needs of African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) Torontonians. The BlackFoodToronto program was launched as a response to the rising food insecurity among Black Torontonians due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Part of this program involves free weekly deliveries of fresh and culturally-sensitive produce and groceries to ACB Torontonians in need of support.
•  PROOF : This is a Canada-wide research program dedicated to tackling food insecurity at the national level by identifying and publicizing policy interventions that can reduce household-level food insecurity in Canada. The Principal Investigator of PROOF is also the University of Toronto's Dr. Valerie Tarasuk. Part of PROOF's methods is to publish and make accessible the studies and statistics found on food insecurity to bring light to this issue in a way that would drive policy action.
•  Ojibiikaan : Another Toronto-Based, Indigenous-led non-profit organization which seeks to offer land, food, and culture-based programs to promote Indigenous food sovereignty, sustainable food production, and traditional ecological knowledge. Part of Ojibiikaan's strategies includes community garden initiatives which seek to provide the resources needed to grow and harvest traditional and sustainable Indigenous foods in urban cities like Toronto.

Dozens of studies have reported the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on food access in Toronto alone. Following  recent studies  by the Daily Bread Food Bank's 2022 Who's Hungry report, it is noted that food insecurity in Toronto is currently at its all-time high with 1 in 5 Torontonians living in food insecure households and record numbers of food bank visits reaching 1.7 million visits across the city for the year of 2022.

As established, food has evolved from a local and common resource to a private, transnational commodity. The mechanized systems of global industrial food production have taken away much of the nuanced meaning and relationship humans have had with their food by depriving it of all its non-economic social attributes and meanings. As a result, food has become objectified and its value is limited to just a one-dimensional commodity.

The industrial food system and its enclosures of food manifest right from the field as privatizations of seeds and land, patents, and legislation limit the access to food as a public good. This system privatizes food as a commodity and treats the physiological need to eat as mere consumption. It is thus important to "re-commonify" food;  Vivero Pol (2013)  suggests that self-governing food systems at the local neighbourhood and community levels are the right way to begin enacting such change.

In its actual scale, food insecurity is a global phenomenon, however, this is an issue that is best tackled on a municipal and even neighbourhood level as food insecurity commonly affects the most marginalized within a city or other form of locality. It is thus important to address and reform systems that lead to differential food access at these small, local scales in a collective manner for significant change to happen as quickly as possible as food is an essential physiological need.

Steps can be taken to support community-led programs and initiatives. These efforts are proven to aid in accessing, producing, and consuming nutritious foods through acts of self-governance and community building:

• Support local and ethical food businesses, groceries, markets, restaurants etc
• volunteer at community-led initiatives and non-profit organizations
• participate in community kitchens/urban gardens, and other neighbourhood events/initiatives

• learn and spread awareness about the issue of food insecurity to friends and family as many people are in positions of need as well as positions that can help. By sharing infographics such as this, help can be easier to seek/give by learning about the available resources
• Speak to your local government officials through emails, letters, petitions etc to ask what steps are being taken regarding food insecurity and its causes such as poverty, systemic racism, marginalization etc.
• vote for solutions that will ensure adequate food access for all in your community
• Show support to your local food justice organizations and community events from home by donating materials, supplies, and finances through online means
• sign and share online petitions, surveys, studies, and articles related to food access

 Exposition