The Fight For My Farming Future

I'm suing the country's largest pension manager to protect my retirement fund

- By Rav Singh

FEW CANADIANS SEE the impact of climate change on their livelihoods as directly as farmers. In 2020, after years of community farming in downtown Toronto, I rented some land from a retired farmer in Caledon, Ontario. Since then, I've run my own operation, Shade of Miti, which harvests and sells ecologically grown South Asian crops like okra, bitter melon, callaloo and ginger—mostly by word of mouth. I love what I do, but right now the future of my business feels uncertain.

I'm typically able to get my equipment out into my fields and start planting sometime between mid-April and the beginning of May, after the frost and snowmelt are gone. This year, I had to wait until the end of May—a painful example of the weather variability that comes with climate change. To a small-business owner, one lost month is devastating; that delay cost me thousands of dollars in potential revenue. Summers have been so hot that I've had to gradually walk back my start time from 7 a.m. to 5 a.m over the last five years. (I also have to wear a mask in the field due to wildfire smoke.) Unlike me, pests thrive in that kind of heat, so I've been dealing with infestations of flea beetles and tomato hornworms. And I can no longer rely on the changing leaves to tell me it's time to plant my garlic. All of that inconsistency has made business planning extremely challenging. It's forced me to pay extra-close attention to where my money is going.