Lakehead Farm Club Grows Again
Nourishing student minds and bodies at Lakehead Orillia
Jacob Kearey-moreland, Contributor
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My family and I have driven by this campus for the past three decades, two more than it’s been here. As recently as a few weeks ago, we stopped in at the historic Horne farm next door to grab a fresh selection of beautiful heirloom squashes, pumpkins, gourds and more at an honour-based self-serve station. Good food is a key ingredient to a good life. Nowadays I wonder what kind of life we will have in the future, as this and other farms are paved for progress.
During my undergrad at the University of Toronto, in a mega-city built over rich and fertile soil, I realized the power and potential of community gardening - people growing food and community. For me, community gardening is a form of direct action to meaningfully address a myriad of social, ecological, economic and other issues. Earning a work-study position to network and support dozens of food security and urban agriculture initiatives on and around campus, gave me a glimpse of all the ways food and agriculture was and could be integrated within education, our cities and our world to make life better.
Amazed by the impacts of good food and gardens on campus, and in my life, I found meaning, purpose and an application to my education. Engineering students at the Sky Garden were researching and developing lightweight rooftop container gardens. The Native Students Association were making space for language, teaching, and healing relationships through the Medicine Garden. Teacher candidates were utilizing small concrete planter boxes to experience school gardens and make clear their connection to critical themes of Indigeneity, equity, inclusivity, sustainability, and towards holistic and creative education. Unforgettable, were the countless friends I made enjoying student grown and prepared local, healthy, ethical, delicious, convenient and affordable lunches through Harvest Noon, our student food co-operative.
Fast forward and I am now a Masters of Education student at Lakehead Orillia, focusing on social justice education. As a community member, I have spent the last ten years volunteering in Orillia and elsewhere supporting community and school gardens, seed libraries, and good food policies including here at Lakehead Orillia. I am a young farmer, in a farming community where the average age of the farmer is about 60 years old, twice my age. Every year the number of farmers declines along with crop diversity, topsoil, and pollinators. We need new and diverse farmers now to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow: the climate crisis, poverty, inequality, and the future of work and life. In response we have created a student club on campus: Lakehead FC (Farm Club). Lakehead FC aims to grow food and farmers of the future - exercising and nourishing student minds and bodies through the creation of a Recreation, Research, and Education Farm (RREF).
Lakehead Orillia could be a real leader in sustainability education by integrating food and farming to realize the values, vision and goals set out in our official strategic, academic, research, and sustainability plans. Currently the farmland, representing most of our 85-acre suburban campus surrounding Lakehead Orillia is leased for annual rotations of corn and soy monocultures. This land-use lacks respect for our institution’s official plans to become a sustainable, socially just, and innovative global leader in research and education. Thankfully, a chorus of voices fed up with the lack of fresh, healthy and affordable foods on campus and in our community grows louder and the seeds of change are in our hands and libraries.
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As of 2017, there were over 41 university and college garden projects across Canada, documented by Meal Exchange, a national student food security initiative that has led the way in documenting the post-secondary student food experience. There is no shortage of inspiration for us to dig into. It was Meal Exchange who uncovered through a groundbreaking survey of student food insecurity that students at the Lakehead Thunder Bay campus experience the highest rates of student food insecurity across the country. While we lack data detailing the food experience of students in Orillia, hundreds of students and faculty I’ve spoken with express serious concerns accessing fresh, healthy and culturally appropriate food on campus. For this reason, LUSU offers emergency food access through the Student Food Pantry program for students experiencing food insecurity.
We are even less aware of the food experiences of elementary and high school students in our communities. There exist many barriers for youth in accessing healthy food their bodies and minds require to fully form and function. Not only can university and school gardens grow good food on campus, they re-center food within academic and research environments building momentum for wider food systems transformation. Eco-pedagogy and food have the potential to make education practical, relevant and important to students, giving them life skills, confidence and more to be successful, ecologically and socially minded human beings.
Whether it is the mental and physical health impact on students who are experiencing food insecurity, the lack of healthy and local food choices offered by food services providers, residences with no kitchens, threats to Lakehead’s prime farmland from private developers, or meaningful opportunities to integrate sustainable food and farming into existing and future academic and research plans and more – the time is now to make a change!
A community of food focused folks are working on re-imagining the place of food in education, starting here on campus. With that, Lakehead Farm Club and partners invites you to a Good Food Challenge Campaign launch event this November 27th from 3-530pm at Lakehead Orillia! Location (TBD). Join the club – bee the change!
