By Mel Luymes

It was a small group, buzzing with big ideas. The County of Wellington partnered with the Boundless Accelerator to bring in rural entrepreneurs and keen funders to Elora’s Grandway Events Centre for Crops & Capital: Ethnocultural Foods & Agricultural Finance.

The day kicked off with a panel, moderated by Justine Dainard, Smart Cities Manager within the County’s Economic Development department. She set the stage by noting that as the cultural demographics of our cities and even rural towns are changing, so are there shifting demands for different types of foods. Even Canadians of European ancestry are getting more adventurous with their tastebuds and experiencing other cultures through their food, therefore increasing demand and creating new opportunities for producers. 

“Ethnic foods were once a niche, but are now a growing, viable market,” says Justine. 

Much of these foods are imported to serve the growing market, but could these foods be grown or processed here in Ontario? The panelists answered a definite yes!

Laura, Aramide and Shiying - panelist farmers at the County of Wellington event 

Ponmo & African vegetables
Aramide Taiwo was originally from Nigeria and was a communications specialist, she now lives in Kitchener and is farmer and local food entrepreneur, starting Tileyi Brands Inc. in 2018. She comes from a culture that uses nearly every part of a beef cow for food, and she believes that she can create a win-win solution in Ontario to reduce the amount of wasted carcass and serve a growing market of consumers. Specifically, she has been working with Canadian regulators and local processing facilities to try to make ponmo here. 

Ponmo is cleaned, dehaired & tenderized cow hide. Similar to jerky and  pork rinds, this comfort food staple is a well-loved treat across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. It is a keto-friendly snack that is high-fat and low-carb. Currently, it is being imported or made in small batches, in potentially dangerous conditions, but Aramide believes that there would be a huge market for local, well-made ponmo.

Aramide found support through an incubator program called LiftOff by Caribbean Canadian Association of Waterloo Region. The first issue she had was with provincial food regulations that claimed hide was leather, and not a food product. The CFIA however recognises its use as food across the world, next she needs access to food grade beef hide and a commercially approved processing facility where her products will be made.

Ponmo - (photo courtesy of Tileyi Brands Inc)

But perhaps the real hurdle is the cultural divide. “I have to start every business interaction by saying, This is not a joke,” says Aramide, “and I have to remind people that only a few decades ago, tripe wasn’t even available here. Markets change as the demand changes, but people have to pay attention to the changes going on around them and where there might be opportunities, even if they look strange at first.” 

Aramide also started growing African vegetables for her community on a quarter-acre of land in the city under the name True North Tropical, and she simply couldn’t keep up with the demand from customers of largely Afro, Caribbean and Middle Eastern heritage. She grew dent corn, callaloo (amaranth), tete (spinach) and ewedu (jute leaves), among many others found online at the website, truenorthtropical.square.site. Her major barrier with the vegetables is long-term access to good land, as there were issues with flooding and compaction at the previous site. Aramide hopes to find land in the Waterloo-Wellington area and if anyone has any leads, please reach out to her through the website.

Asian vegetables near Mono 
Shiying Lu farms near Mono, running Brilliant Meadows and selling both meats and Asian vegetables. Raised in the city by her Chinese immigrant parents, she did a farm internship in 2016 and fell in love with farming, working on farms and renting land to run her own farm business, but not finding a farm she could buy. As she went back to work in Toronto, she thought she would have to give up on her dream of having a farm but, by chance, she and her partner, Jason, saw a For Sale sign out front of their dream property on a weekend trip. 

They bought the farm, and she balanced their full-time jobs and livestock farming by sharing the land with farm tenants that did the barn chores in exchange for access to land for vegetable production. 

For the next few years, she developed a market for her pastured duck, chicken and pork, selling cuts that were not readily available, like pig trotters or chicken feet. The biggest issues she had was accessing an abattoir and finding a butcher that would even do those cuts of meat. “They don’t value the cuts as much as my customers do,” said Shiying, yet she didn’t want to complain about a poor job cleaning or cutting, because she was just grateful to find someone willing to do it.

She found some support along the way with the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario (EFAO)’s BIPOC network (refers to Black, Indigenous, and people of color) and farmer meet-ups, as well as the County’s Experiment Acres program that helped her try some innovative farming techniques. 

In 2024, Shiying made the big move to farming full time, and she grew Asian vegetables for her existing customer base with an online ordering system in both English or Chinese, and delivery to weekly pick-up points. She also sold to a few local restaurants. 
“Basically, I offered a fresh version of something you can find a sad version of in the grocery store,” she jokes. But, it worked. She couldn’t keep up to demand, selling out of bitter melon, waxy corn, dou miao (pea sprouts) qing cai (greens), daikon radish, sweet potato leaves, and so much more when they were in season.  As well, faba beans were a “sleeper hit” for 2024, making her wish she had planted more. 

Her biggest issues were sourcing seeds and finding information about growing the vegetables, especially in Ontario’s shorter growing season. As more luck would have it, she connected with backyard gardeners in her Asian community that have many years of growing these vegetables here. As well, she has saved seeds to begin regionally adapting them to Ontario.  See more at brilliantmeadows.com

Lentils in Ontario
Lentils are small, lens-shaped legumes that are rich in protein and fibre; they are a staple in vegetarian diets and are also popular in South Asian, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines. Canada is a global leader in lentil production, but not from Ontario. 

Laura Ferrier and her husband grew 30 acres of lentils in 2016, which was the International Year of the Lentil. Located near Elora, they were the only farm in Ontario to grow lentils that year, and the plan was to deliver the crop to Saskatchewan and do a back haul of fertilizer. 

But when the market fell drastically that year due to India raising a tariff, the Ferriers were left with a perfectly good crop of lentils but nowhere to sell it. They pivoted and started reaching out to grocery stores to sell directly, building their brand as Lau-tea-da Lentils, packaging in small cone bags, or selling to restaurants in 50-pound bags.

Laura is an agronomist and knows that there are plenty of good reasons to grow lentils here, to fix nitrogen in the soil, break up pest and disease cycles, and just to increase income diversity. Still, it is hard for Ontario to compete with the Prairie climate when it comes to lentils because the crop likes relatively cool and dry growing conditions. As well, Ontario isn’t equipped with many options to clean the lentils. Laura struggled to get their crop clean enough for direct sales. 

Laura had to hustle to get the lentils sold, delivering across the area with small children in tow, which was difficult especially with last minute orders that she couldn’t plan into her busy schedule. But she did sell the crop eventually and even went on to grow another crop. 

Another hurdle Laura had to face is that many people in this area don’t know what to do with lentils, so she created a recipe card to help people learn more about them and how to cook them. She shared more recipes on the farm’s Facebook page and promoted the restaurants that were serving their lentils. 

She still believes that farms should be diversified but has no plans to keep growing lentils. Instead, she grows pumpkins and sells them at a roadside stand, Ferrier’s Farm Stand.

Next steps for ethnocultural foods
A few key barriers to Ontario’s ethnocultural food market emerged from the panel discussion. The barriers were not in the local demand but in the value chain, both up- and down-stream: finding regionally adapted seeds and the know-how, having regulations that support new products, finding secure access to land and capital, as well as having skilled butchers and processing facilities adapted for new products. 

The event concluded with presentations from Ag Credit Corp, Fair Finance Fund and Farm Credit Canada, as well as introductions from exhibitors that funded grants for farmers, including Saugeen Economic Development Corporation with their Agri-Business and Business Startup Loans, Harvest Impact, Wellington County’s Community Improve Funding Programme and OMAFA’s Business Investment and Development Unit. 

When we think about what Ontario’s agricultural landscape will look like in the future, we remember that wheat and soybeans aren’t any more native to Ontario than ewedu, bitter melon, or lentils are. We are in an ever-evolving relationship between people and the land, ever-responding to the changes that are going on around us. And who knows what cropportunity will be next!◊