Building food sovereignty in Montreal

Our food systems are broken. With food prices at astronomical rates and the growing disconnect by people from our food production, there is a deep fracture in our relationship to food. Erik Chevrier, a professor of urban agriculture, food security and food sovereignty talks about how we can rebuild better, healthier food systems in cities in Montreal. 

"The goal really is to localize food, to give people access to fresh local and organic food and basically to make an impact on our communities," says Chevrier. "A lot of the issues that I'm going to be talking about today have to do with a lot of like geopolitics and big picture macro involvement of our broken food system and I think by localizing you know that's not the complete solution but is one step in the right direction."

Chevrier is also the founder of a cooperative called CultivAction Solidarity Co-op, an urban agriculture initiative that started in Montreal just a few years ago. It hosts pay-what-you-can farmers markets in the summer, and also aim to teach people about how they can convert urban spaces for urban agricultural use. Cities can be seen as spaces for abundant food growth. Whether that's small plots of farms sprinkled in neighbourhoods or food forests in local parks. 

"We could actually develop food sovereign communities and actually have people that are part and parcel of their food system either by taking part in growing it, being part of distribution like getting to know farmers through farmers markets, or really being part of food processing and food waste management," says Chevrier.