Our mission is to facilitate transitions towards food sovereign communities by practicing regenerative agriculture to nourish local populations, cultivate urban green spaces and to support sustainable food production. We offer urban agriculture workshops and community service learning opportunities to empower people with the knowledge to grow their own food and participate in a movement to cultivate a more resilient, just and food secure future. We see our work as a political act and look to create networks of reciprocity and connection with other groups who share a deep commitment to social justice and food sovereignty.
Made by Meghan Kerr, Julia Lehmann & Kitty Lin, Students at Concordia University.
is a biologist, specializing in plant ecology and phytochemistry, with more than 17 years of experience in sustainability agroforestry and nature conservation. He has managed and been involved in many projects and programs with agroforestry and food security components directly benefiting less privileged communities and smallholder farmers and their ecosystem, in Canada and the middle east respectively. Mohammed is a member of the food literacy committee, under Montreal West Island Community Resource Centre, he is also the CEO of Permaculture Sainte Anne de Bellevue (PSADB), which is a nonprofit organization established by the "Moving Towards Sustainability" Fund of Sainte Anne de Bellevue municipality. Under PSADB he managed many agroecology urban projects including Duff-Court Neighborhood Life Committee urban farm and two other urban gardens in Montreal.
As a part-time professor at Concordia University, Erik has taught Food and Culture and Food and Sustainability, and provided his students with opportunities for hands-on learning and critical-participatory-action-research. He enables his students to learn by doing and empowers them to become community leaders, urban farmers, and sustainability activists. With a strong interest in the political economy of ethical food systems, Erik has meticulously chronicled Concordia’s student-run food cooperatives through his PhD in Humanities. His community involvement in sustainability at Concordia includes the Concordia Food Coalition, Divest Concordia, the Hive Café Co-op, and more. He has also founded a number of organizations, research projects and educational programs, including the non-profit solidarity urban farming cooperative CultivAction.
Kim Gagnon is passionate about growing food and has transformed three urban backyards into lush biodiverse urban food gardens. She is a co-founder, farmer and communications person at Coop CultivAction.
Kim is also a freelance Graphic Designer, photographer and a digital arts educator at Coop Collective Vision, the co-founder of Creative Video Day Camp and is studying Art Education at Concordia University.
has lived and played in the Notre-Dame-de-Grace neighbourhood of Tiohtià:ke (“Montreal”) his whole life, just a few minutes away from the Loyola farm. Whether it be in collective gardens, on farms or in his yard, John Nathaniel has been interested in growing food and the socio-environmental implications of doing so for as long as he can remember. Today John Nathaniel studies Community, Public Affairs and Policy Studies as well as Human Environment (Geography) at Concordia University. When not growing food you can find John Nathaniel at the local basketball court and community organizing for climate justice and Indigenous solidarity.
Nico is a sociology undergrad student at Concordia, residing in Tiohtià:ke, and is Native to the Cherokee Nation. The cultivaction co-op materializes Nico’s commitment to mitigating the effects of factory farming, climate change, and environmental racism such as food deserts. They believe that weeding a small flower bed is a radical political act! Nico also cultivates gourmet mushrooms for co-op cultivaction as one way to lessen the socio-enviro effects of centralized, colonial food and medicine systems. When they are not farming, Nico runs a small business @nicosnovelties. In addition to creating clay goods, they utilize their foraging knowledge of plants to make tinctures/elixirs, body butters, tea/smoke blends, and other herbal remedies all sourced within a 10km radius. Throughout summer 2022 they are hosting a donation-based PWYC “Foraging Fridays” the last Friday of each month, and they post the details to the @nicosnovelties instagram page.
Caleb Woolcott lives and farms in Tiohtià:ke, traditional and unceeded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation. He coordinates Co-op CultivAction’s Microgreens Program in the Concordia Greenhouse and works with the Co-op at the Duff Ct. Urban Farm. Caleb has spent the last three seasons working on an organic vegetable farm in the Outaouais and is now studying Community Affairs and Policy Studies at Concordia. He believes that building a strong food solidarity economy is crucial to overcoming extreme economic injustice and the climate crisis. There is nothing Caleb loves more than working in a hot greenhouse in the middle of the winter.
Coop CultivAction envisions a biodiverse, and abundant campus-community foodscape (beneficial plants, animals, insects, nutritious food, healthy soil etc.) that facilitates hands on community education and engagement and builds social and economic justice.
We are grateful for the support of the Co-operators Cooperative Development Program, which has provided important funding support to CultivAction’s programs.
English (Canada) 
Français du Canada