Keep Growing

What You've Sown

Welcome to SOW & GROW

Sow and Grow is a podcast by young farmers exploring the forces that shape Canadian agriculture and the solutions needed to build a more just and ecologically sustainable food system.

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series

Series 1: Who Will Feed Us

Series 1: Who Will Feed Us

Explore the forces that shape Canadian agriculture and the solutions needed to build a more just and ecologically sustainable food system. Throughout a nine-episode arc, a variety of guests, including activists, policy advocates, and of course other farmers, farmworkers, seed keepers and food providers, will share individual experiences as they help hosts, and listeners, understand some of the underpinnings of what we believe is a food system that serves no one a healthy meal.
Series 2: A Climate of Crisis

Series 2: A Climate of Crisis

Discover how the climate crisis and farm crisis interact, inform, and influence one another. The team centres their shared, lived experience of farming during a crisis on many of the conversations with guests, including activists, policy advocates, and, of course, other farmers, farmworkers, seed keepers, and food providers, as they suss out how to respond to crises with care, responsibility, and informed food sovereignty action.
Series 3: Conversations on Land Access

Series 3: Conversations on Land Access

Listen and learn how access to affordable, secure and arable land is far more complicated than we know. This series is a starting point when considering how land access is inherently about equity. We recognize that land sits firmly at the intersection of many of the oppressive dynamics facing all of us and we hope these conversations will add to the continued fight for structural, systematic and nation(s) wide change needed to bring our communities back into right-relation with the land we call home."

podcast Team

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Madeline (Maddie) Marmor

Maddie is a landless farmer born in downtown Toronto. She has been farming for the past 8 years on farms throughout Ontario and has grown food on the current and traditional lands of the Houdensaunee, Anishinabewaki, Attiwonderonk, Mississauga, Odawa, Wendake-Nionwentsïo, Petun, Saugeene – Ojibiway nations. Over the years she has come to recognize the privilege and political significance of farming on stolen land, knowledge which has informed her dedication to food sovereignty and agroecology. She is an active member of the National Farmers Union, sits on the North American Nyéléni Coordination and accompanies systems change in food spaces as an adult education facilitator. 

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Aliyah Fraser

Aliyah is a Kitchener-based farmer who owns and operates a quarter acre market garden called Lucky Bug Farm on rented land in Waterloo Region where she grows a variety of produce for a small CSA program. The farm operates within the Haldimand Tract in Kitchener, Ontario and is on the traditional territory of the Mississauga, Anishnabeg, Attiwonderonk (neutral) and Haudenoshaunee peoples. She imagines a food system where more people have access to ecologically grown food, where there is less waste and where there’s a better understanding of the labour it takes to get food from the farm to the table. Aliyah also has an undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies in Urban planning from the University of Waterloo. She believes that food and housing are human rights. She lives in Kitchener, Ontario with her partner Thomas and cat Frankie.

luckybugfarm.com | @luckybugfarm

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Stuart Oke

Stuart is a young farmer from Eastern Ontario who, alongside his partner Nikki, owns and operates Rooted Oak Farm, a 12 acre organic vegetable and cut flower farm. After years of renting land Rooted Oak in 2020 relocated to Eastern Ontario, and the traditional territory of the Anishinabek, Huron-Wendat, Haudensaunee and Oneida Peoples. In addition to loving food and taking pride in growing food that sustains people, the farm was founded on the idea that farming is a political act, one capable of creating great change.

www.rootedoak.ca | @rootedoakfarm

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Kate Garvie

Kate founded Heartbeet Farm in 2018 after spending four years working on organic vegetable farms across Ontario. She first learned about ecological agriculture at Trent University during her undergraduate degree. After completing a Master’s of Environmental Studies, Kate returned to farming with a better understanding of the connections between food sovereignty, indigenous solidarity and climate justice. She is passionate about building a local food system that is environmentally sound and socially just.

Heartbeet Farm | IG: @heartbeet_farm

Equity statement

Canada is only one of the nations that call this land home. We are a core team here of 4 farmers who grow and live on the current and traditional lands of many different Indigenous nations to this land, who have their own food systems and value system when it comes to food and growing. 

The nation of Canada, and the Canadian food system, exist on lands stolen from these Indigenous nations and peoples. The process of colonization on this land, sometimes referred to as the ‘colonial project’ is ongoing. The development of the Canadian agricultural system throughout history has been a key component of genocidal policies intended to eradicate Indigenous peoples, including the destruction and outlawing of traditional Indigenous food systems and the removal of Indigenous peoples from what we now call “Canadian farmland”.

As farmers, we have benefited from the theft of this land. As farmers, we also have a unique relationship with the land and a responsibility to care for it. Because of this, we believe we are uniquely and powerfully positioned to educate ourselves and our communities on our history and to support and build solidarity for a more just and equitable future food system.