Q&A with Cheyenne Sundance of Sundance Harvest Farm

by Winnie Wang

This Q&A was first published in print in December 2020, in issue two

Cheyenne at her farm near Downsview Park in December 2019. Photo credit: Winnie Wang

Although Toronto is home to a diverse food culture with various cuisines, farmers’ markets and festivals, the city has long lacked an accessible food space with an anti-oppression framework that teaches skills for farming and participating in food movements—until now. Cheyenne Sundance runs Sundance Harvest, an urban greenhouse farm by Downsview Park, that grows organic produce and hosts workshops with a focus on food justice and sovereignty. The farm centres marginalized groups, making it a unique and necessary addition to the existing landscape of food activism, advocacy and urban agriculture.

Sundance learned to farm in Viñales, Cuba when she was 18, on a tobacco farm. The 22-year-old participated in political activism throughout her teens in Cuba, and realized food was the way to liberate as many people as possible. Interested in freeing people through food and the connection Afro-Cubans have with farming sugar cane, because of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, she realized farming could be an act of revolution.

We stopped by her farm in December 2019 to talk to Sundance about how she started and what drives her work.

Winnie Wang: How did you start Sundance Harvest?

Cheyenne Sundance: I wanted to have a farm that’s for the people, the working class, the most marginalized. Other farms in Toronto aren’t the most welcoming to LGBTQ2S folks. Sometimes there’s a lot of sexism. Someone once told me, “We want to farm as Black women, but we don’t feel safe in those spaces because when we’re picking eggplants we’re being watched in certain ways. They’re making comments about our bodies.” There are no other places for me and my friends to feel safe to farm.

In early 2019, I got my first plot of land for $25 from St. Matthias Anglican Church. They’re progressive and social justice-minded, and liked the work I was doing. I grew food with a collective of Black and Indigenous youth. After that it just snowballed and I started getting more land. I didn’t anticipate it. I didn’t think it would be anything beyond that little garden behind the church.

WW: Were the skills you learned on the tobacco farm transferrable here?

CS: Farming isn’t that difficult, in my eyes. I am mainly self-taught. I think people are scared because we’re taught to go to school to learn these skills, but our ancestors were farmers. A thousand years ago, we were either growing or foraging food. It’s a universal thing, but it’s not radical unless people are doing it right. Farming can be co-opted like anything.

WW: When you started Sundance Harvest, did you have the idea of food sovereignty in your mind?

CS: The reason I started Sundance is that I couldn’t afford produce. I thought, “I need to grow the food because I don’t have the money to buy the food.” People started getting interested on social media and then it blew up, mainly because the community keeps asking for it. A lot of youth tell me they want to be farmers, but don’t want to work at non-profits and they want to make enough money to survive.

Social enterprise, in a way that isn’t exploiting people by paying them a living wage, is the only way forward with food justice and urban agriculture. The piece that’s missing from community gardens is you can’t sell your produce. You can grow all the tomatoes you want four months of the year, but what’s going to happen in November when you don’t make any money from those tomatoes? How is someone going to pay their hydro bills with tomatoes? That’s something I think about as someone who grew up low-income.

The future is giving people parcels of land, having co-operatives and having people gain employment from it. We don’t need wealthy people starting urban agriculture for fun. That doesn’t make any sense to me.

WW: What’s your favourite part about Sundance Harvest?

CS: The ability to decolonize. Whether that be Black people decolonizing from a history of forced labour on farms or Indigenous people who are reconnecting with medicines and foraging. I’m really happy that I’m leading it. I try hard to create a safe space on this farm.

WW: What were some challenges you faced?

CS: Our major challenges are support and funding. We don’t get many grants. We got one $5000 grant that bought the wood and the soil from The Big Carrot. Recently, we got a second grant which was only enough to pay for two pieces of equipment.

WW: Since you’ve started, is there anything that has changed about your motivations?
CS: I realized I can’t do this by myself anymore and I started to dislike farming. People on panels and non-profits treat me like a kid. I’ve had so many men just come here and ask me, “Who owns this?” When I tell them it’s me, they ask if I’m a worker here. Almost every week that happens and I’m getting tired of it. I want to take over urban agriculture with friends and people who want to do the work. There needs to be a framework that allows people to start farming as a career and that’s what I’m shifting towards.

WW: Everything I’ve heard about you is through social media. How do you think social media allows you to engage with people differently than other organizations and farms?

CS: With Instagram stories, people don’t have to farm with me to experience what it looks like. Having the visible representation of me, farming, is radical. In my bio, I state that I’m 22. If I can be a part of someone’s life and they get an idea they can do it too, that really matters to me.

I want to be a farmer for the rest of my life. I have independence, I have freedom. I can go to the greenhouse and work whenever I want. I have community and all these friends now. I feel supported.

More information about the Sundance Harvest farm and its programs can be found on their website.