“Every day in south­ern Ontario, thou­sands of peo­ple go hun­gry, while local farm­ers strug­gle to make ends meet.”

So says The Stop Community Food Centre’s lat­est poster. It goes on to say that we can help solve both these prob­lems at the same time thanks to an inno­v­a­tive new pro­gram devel­oped by The Stop and The New Farm

Called ‘Grow for The Stop’ , this pro­gram takes dona­tions and gives them to the New Farm in exchange for fresh pro­duce to use in the feed­ing of over 16,000 peo­ple a year.

not just any old root veg­gies; these beets are going to make the world a bet­ter place

Farmers, Gillian Files and Brent Preston, have made the New Farm a suc­cess through their old-fashioned approach to farm­ing, with a trac­tor as the only mechan­i­cal help they get. Growing over 150 vari­eties of heir­loom veg­eta­bles, from ripe green toma­toes and pur­ple car­rots to black radishes soon caught them the atten­tion of Toronto restaurants.

With top chefs order­ing their organic, heir­loom pro­duce for menus at Canoe and JK at the Gardiner, Gillian felt “we wanted to make our food as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble and bring it to peo­ple who would not oth­er­wise be able to afford it.”

Most of us can pick and choose when we want to be bad and eat a bucket of chicken or a bag of pork rinds because we know that when we feel like get­ting healthy again it’s not a big issue. We can just go out and buy leaner cuts of meat, green things, whole grains. The poor can’t buy any­thing, they are out of the deci­sion mak­ing process. They have to take what’s given to them and eat it. This pro­gram gives them the oppor­tu­nity to make a healthy choice.

Now you can get some of this pro­duce too, start­ing tomor­row Fiesta Farms will be car­ry­ing veg­eta­bles from the New Farm. A por­tion of the sales will be donated to Grow for The Stop. Says Brent, “The pro­gram not only pro­vides top-quality local, organic food to those in need in our com­mu­nity, it also sup­ports local farm­ers and helps build a sus­tain­able local food system.”

So we all win and every­one gets to eat real food. Ideas and pro­grams like this are going to save us all, one organic beet at a time.