Right now, food insecurity is on everyone’s mind. 

But we know spending more on band aid solutions won’t transform anything.

Investing in Community Food Solutions will.

We need 500 people to make real change today.

With 500 people donating $25/monthly for 3 years, 

Just Food, in partnership with Trellis, can:

Support Local Farmers

• Increase Buy Local Food impact – connecting people to rural farms across the Region 

• Expand Start-Up Farmer Program into Arabic, Mandarin, and French languages

• Support both Canadian-born and New Canadian new farmers – we need more farmers!

  • Check out this just released video on Just Food Community Farm by Regeneration Canada! 

Grow Food

• Connect the 1000s of people who want to grow food with 1000s of acres across lands stewarded by the City, NCC, universities, colleges, businesses, hospitals, etc.

• Work so that people living in houses have the right to grow good quality food in their adjacent Right-of-Way if they want to 

• Build an enabling system with municipal government for access to City-stewarded land for community-led greening initiatives, food forests, and community gardens 

• Create an enabling environment for people to plant an edible landscape – fruit trees, nut trees, berry bushes, mushrooms, and herbs throughout the city

• Establish a vibrant Seed Library Network and exchange across Ottawa.

Build Neighbourhood Food Solutions

• Facilitate updated “Where’s the Food” Toolkit in neighbourhoods for residents to work on food solutions at their neighbourhood level, including identifying a commercial kitchen in every neighbourhood to serve community-led social meals, tied to a backup generator to be available for emergency food needs

• Support Food Connectors – Ottawa residents feeding ideas into community food solutions 

• Prioritize new school food programs to be community-based, so that non-profits and local businesses in Ottawa make the meals for Ottawa kids

• Set up a neighbourhood compost solution to ensure food scraps are not wasted, but getting back to our farm fields to build soil.

Keep us connected

• Develop new sections on GoodFoodLink.ca – a portal for food information in Ottawa

• Support creation of an emergency food plan in Ottawa with solutions that double up infrastructure for both one-time urgent situations as well as community-building 

• Strengthen Ottawa School Food Network, Ottawa Food Policy Council, and  Sustain Ontario,  all which Just Food facilitates.  

You can make it possible to create a food system that works better for everyone in our city.

Why are we asking for 3 years? 

Ongoing smaller amounts from lots of people means long-term work can be sustained over the 3-year period, allowing goals above to be achieved.

After the 3 years, Just Food seeks the City of Ottawa to invest seriously into food systems change in the next term of Council.  

Right now, Just Food, partner organizations, and community members like you need to lead the charge.  

Together, we can show Ottawa the importance of investing to transform our city, tackle food insecurity (beyond a food banking solution), build food resilience, and invest in a food system that connects community, business, land and food.