How Cheyenne Sundance is creating a more inclusive food system for low-income racialized youth.
Danielle Groen
Updated
(Illustration: Vivian Rosas)
Cheyenne Sundance knows there are places that take urban farming seriously. She mentions Brooklyn Grange, the rooftop farms in New York City that harvest 100,000 pounds of produce a year; the backyard chickens in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon; and the community-supported farms in Cuba that’s she’s worked on herself. But in Toronto, “the city sees urban agriculture as a hobby,” she says. “They just don’t see it as a viable career.”
Sundance sees things differently. She understands it’s possible to run a for-profit farm in the city that pays a fair wage. But it takes a new kind of leadership: one that’s urgently needed. “There is so much systemic oppression in the food system,” Sundance says, “from who has the privilege to take on unpaid internships to who can sell their produce at farmers’ markets.” She wanted to see people who looked like her running their own urban farms. So in early 2019, out of a small plot behind a downtown church, Sundance launched Growing in the Margins, a free, 12-week mentorship program that gives low-income racialized youth a crash course in farming.