Canadian Black Farmers Association: Growing What Canada Eats Next

When fresh vegetables grown by Black farmers in Canada go on sale, they rarely stay on the table for long.
“If I put out that I have vegetables today,” says Toyin Kayo Ajayi, founder of the Canadian Black Farmers Association, “it will be finished in less than two minutes.”

For Ajayi, that speed is not novelty or hype. It is evidence of a market.

“There’s more than ten million dollars in the market already readily available in the Black community,” he says. “Because we eat a lot of vegetables.”

That demand exists regardless of location, season, or economic pressures. What has been missing, however, is consistent domestic production. Ajayi’s work focuses on closing that gap by treating culturally significant everyday foods not as specialty items, but as a core part of the food system that supports health, economic participation, and a more reliable food supply.

Food, in Ajayi’s view, is not simply for survival. “Food is the most essential thing,” he says. “If you want to change a culture, you just change the food.” His argument is practical. Food access affects health outcomes, household spending, and long-term stability. In economic terms, it also determines whether demand can be met locally or remains dependent on imports.

“Our food is our culture,” he adds. “There is no identity, there is no culture without food.” That identity translates into predictable purchasing patterns and durable markets. These are foods people buy regularly. For a food system concerned with reliability and resilience, that distinction matters.

Ajayi has spent more than two decades testing what can be grown in Canada when soil, climate, and long-term planning are treated as tools rather than problems to work around. “Today I can boldly say I’ve grown cassava. I’ve grown yam. I’ve grown all kinds of ‘impossible’ things,” he says.

The response, he notes, is often disbelief. “Scientists here say, ‘You grow what?’ Yes, I did.”

Ajayi’s experience is based on years of hands-on work growing food in Canada. “Five months is enough to grow many tropical vegetables in Canada if you have good soil.” What determines success is not climate alone, but preparation. Soil composition, greenhouse systems, and production planning decide whether crops scale beyond experimentation.

This is where ‘farm status’ starts to matter. It determines whether a farm is recognized as a real business, with access to tax breaks, insurance, and farm programs. Without it, a farm might be is seen as more of a hobby or garden.

Ajayi has focused much of his work on helping Black farmers qualify for farm status because it changes how the numbers work. Once recognized, farmers can count everyday costs as business expenses, invest in basic infrastructure, and take part in farm programs that are otherwise out of reach. It also makes it easier to be taken seriously in an industry where money, land, and connections often depend on formal recognition.

“For farming to work as a business, it has to be recognized as farming,” Ajayi says. That recognition allows producers to move from seasonal sales to consistent output, from informal markets to structured supply chains.

The case for doing so is straightforward. “Most of the food we eat here is coming from far away,” Ajayi says. “And by the time it gets here, it’s not even fresh anymore.” Import dependence raises prices, limits freshness, and exposes supply chains to disruption. It also exports economic value that could be retained domestically.

“Why are we importing food we can grow here?” he asks.

By growing culturally significant foods locally, Black farmers reduce the need for imports while meeting demand that already exists. Food travels shorter distances, transport costs are lower, and production can adjust more quickly to what people actually buy. Ajayi also sees potential beyond Canada. “We can grow food here and ship it to other countries,” he says, “food that people actually like to eat.”

The Canadian Black Farmers Association is built around this approach. Nearly 90 percent of its members are farming for the first time. Many are women. Most are entering agriculture from outside traditional farming pathways. The focus is not fast growth, but building skills, systems, and operations that last.

“We don’t want people to just survive,” Ajayi says. “We want them to succeed and thrive.”

That means putting basics in place before taking on debt, building partnerships instead of relying on one-time funding, and securing land before chasing short-term returns. “We are not just growing food,” he says. “We are creating an economy.”

The impact of this work reaches beyond any single community. Food costs are rising, weather patterns are less predictable, and supply chains are under strain. At the same time, millions of people in Canada rely on foods that are still mostly imported.

Ajayi’s model brings those realities together. By growing more food locally and widening who takes part in agriculture, Black farmers are helping strengthen the food supply, broaden the economy, and support the next generation of farming.

“You will not grow my food for me,” Ajayi says. “We will grow it ourselves and create a sustainable economy that will benefit all Canadians.”