TUG history
In 2008, a series of meetings between Toronto city staff, urban growers and organizations working on urban agriculture led to the identification of some common issues in the field. These included: training, land access, enabling policies and opportunities to share knowledge and resources through networking. In order to address these issues, participants agreed to establish a network under the name of Toronto Urban Growers (TUG) in January 2009.
Since then, TUG has promoted knowledge exchanges between urban growers via gatherings, webinars, tours, a website and an online forum. TUG has contributed to many initiatives in Toronto, such as the CEED Gardens in hydro corridors, the Metcalf Solutions paper, GrowTO action plan, the Guide for Soil Testing in Urban Gardens, the Guide to Growing and Selling Fresh Fruits and Vegetables in Toronto and Indicators for Urban Agriculture. You can find these documents on our Key Documents page.
In 2017, TUG organized the first official Urban Agriculture Day, proclaimed by the City of Toronto. One day wasn't enough to celebrate the range of UA, so UA Week has become an annual event See the UA Week page for highlights of past events and planning for the upcoming year.