“Our agriculture is very industrial, it’s very colonial, you know, it’s very exploitative, extractive, and destructive.”

“Think of soil as a city, right, it has its own structures, it has its own pathways. It has its own citizens.” Throughout all aspects of farming, you can see structures of community and relationality, practices that are seldom practiced in commercial agriculture today. Whether it be the characteristics of a soil ecosystem (“You’ve got the earthworm peoples, you’ve got the nematode people, you’ve got the fungi peoples and the bacterial peoples, all living in the soil”) or the community of St James Town and its relationship with Fish Tree Farm and Eco Just Youth Co-Op, Lily Phan knows that in order to chart a sustainable and just future, we need to approach farming as a regenerative and communal activity, “as something that not only belongs to, but that is the responsibility of the community.”

Lily’s journey began as a political activist at York University organizing campaigns on racism, police brutality, women’s rights, housing rights, among others. “I just kind of felt that I was constantly screaming at a wall.” Those with the power to address these issues did not want to hear about them, and as Lily learned more about Canada’s colonial past and Indigenous histories, she felt that “destruction was inescapable.” Framing it around the basics, it became clear that there needed to be a way of meeting community needs, such as clothing, shelter, and food, without relying on modern infrastructures and institutions. Farming’s impact on the environment came up as Lily clarified her “own orientation to the Earth. And so that kind of relationship building obviously extends to community. It extends to the Earth. It extends to just about everything.” Now, Lily adopts the principles of regenerative farming, a practice that involves knowing and understanding the ecosystems at play and working within them in ecological, sustainable, harmonious ways, rather than destroying them in order to grow something new.

It doesn’t come easy, however: “It’s really hard, as a farmer, to maintain a mental equilibrium. I kind of have to straddle two worlds. You know, on the one hand, the farm needs to be able to survive on a fiscal basis. But then, on the other hand, I’m doing this for the future, so I can’t sacrifice the future for the needs of the present.” It requires “blood, sweat, and tears” but in doing so Lily now has crops to sell at markets and a community plot that is maintained on Fish Tree Farm with the Eco Just Youth Co-Op. With hopes of growing these connections, and in cooperation with a few other farms in Toronto and the Co-Op, Lily hopes “to see [the] farming collective be a vibrant, vital living thing.”

In the coming months however, it will just be a normal growing season for Lily – or, as she put it, “as normal as it can be under the changing climate.” Foraging plants like dandelion, garlic mustard, and burdock to sell at local markets – plants which are considered weeds by many, but are “crops in and of their own, with a long history of being crop plants or food plants, and it’s just here in North America, you know, we’ve forgotten that.” An easy miss for those of us that haven’t explored these ideas, but if you’re looking for a starting point, Lily encourages expanding “the horizons of [your] attention. So start paying attention to things that you normally haven’t […] explore the Indigenous history of Canada, explore the Black history of Canada. […] If something makes you uncomfortable, then pay attention to that.” Getting to know the manner in which current systems were formed can open your eyes to their legacies across industries.

“You know, in conventional agriculture, you tell the Earth how you want it to be, and it will be that way because you will destroy everything else that is in your way. Whereas in regenerative farming, you have to make so many compromises with nature. Right. Like, you can’t eliminate the weeds.”