Urban Crops
We want to show you how to build community farms, have healthy food, and live consciously by helping you connect to nature. Urban Crops has been learning how to grow the food of the future since 2011, and we want you to follow our roadmap of permaculture, green business, and popular education. We are going to share what we learn about local food, because we love it.
Appropriate Technology
We already have all the technology we need to deal with climate change, and make us and our communities healthy. We’re trying to go to Mars and we already have the best spaceship! Urban Crops is using the latest science to build soil, working with nature creating living water, mobile technology to connect you to your food.
Nature
Working with nature can help lower your operational costs, build resiliency to intense weather events, and ultimately grow a lot more food. The starting place is always the same: ask what would nature do?
Entrepreneurship
Local food is the greatest long-term investment you can make for your community. We used to all be local food 100 years ago, but lost that for a global food system here in the West. Now a new local food system is growing, taking the best of the past and the latest in innovation. Local food takes an entrepreneurial spirit and is certainly challenging, but we think it’s the best long-term play.
Popular Education
Food is interwoven with society, our culture, and our landscapes. It’s the primary activity we do every day. As local food grows, so do changes in society and the environment. Again, they are all connected. If one changes, they all change alongside it. Popular education is a pedagogy for learning that we can use to build better and faster local food systems.
Have a farm? Have dreams of being on a farm?
We offer a structured approach to growing a community farm — what you need to take your best shot.
Farming is more than just farming. It takes a much wider range of skills than you would imagine!
Food for Thought. Read the Urban Crops Pitch
What agriculture is today, it can't even keep up with ecological farming the Urban Crops way
Why We Are Different
01.
Food is more than a commodity
We’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like food. In fact, most people identify closely with certain foods. The food is more than just a market commodity. What else is food?
02.
Diverse economic exchange
Learn how we’ve used this one perspective to get the most out of our money as we built Cavaleiro Farm. There are examples from across the world that apply a diverse economic model to their farm. Become aware. Learn from others. Our tools will help you use this principle to grow your local food project.
03.
Change that everyone can do
Everyone eats. Everyone can make changes to what they eat, which can change everything else.
04.
Empowering
Local food is fun. It’s not sitting in a nice box on the shelf waiting for you. You have to get out into the environment to interact with food that’s exciting.
Our headquarters is a 65-acre organic farm
Toronto was a nice start, but we jumped on the chance to grow more food and work with other local food businesses.
Learn more at cavaleirofarm.ca