Canada: Rooted in justice, Nicole Austin’s Black Food Sovereignty work earns Viola Desmond recognition
As a first-generation Canadian of Jamaican heritage, Austin carries the grounding influence of strong family values, lessons shaped around kitchen tables
RonFanFair
February 27, 2026
Excerpt:
Five years ago, Austin launched the Urban Farm’s first Black Food Sovereignty Initiative, introducing five culturally significant crops — callaloo, okra, African eggplant, Jamaican pumpkin and Scotch bonnet — along with cerasee, a medicinal plant deeply rooted in Caribbean tradition, into the Ecological Market Garden.
“When Arlene Thorness, the Urban Farm manager, approached me at the end of 2020 and asked if I would come to the farm to develop a program, I told her, ‘I am not a farmer’,” she recalled. “She said that wasn’t the point and that we are all learning every day about how to grow food, and that learning is a lifelong journey. What mattered, she said, was the work I was doing for my community. She told me she wanted to make space for that here.”
That invitation became the foundation for a vision that soon took shape at the farm.
“Nicole developed four pillars for the program — food literacy, food and social justice, environmental stewardship and community healing — and rooted the work in a 3B approach to ensure the initiatives were Black-led, Black-mandated and Black-serving,” said Thorness, who nominated Austin for the Viola Desmond Award.
Operating two rooftop farms on campus using green roof technology, the Urban Farm harvests more than 3,000 kilograms of ecologically grown produce each season, distributed through a model of thirds. No less than one-third of the harvest is donated to the community, no more than one-third is sold at market value and one-third is made available to TMU students at equitable rates.
Read the complete article here.
Source: https://cityfarmer.info/canada-rooted-in-justice-nicole-austins-black-food-sovereignty-work-earns-viola-desmond-recognition/
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