Food Corps


What Is the Food Corps Program?

Helping farmers by getting our hands in the dirt. Connecting communities with the healthy food they need.

We spend a lot of time obtaining our food, but we rarely get a chance to perceive the food system as a whole. All too often, food is an insular experience for us: something we relate to privately as individuals rather than holistically as a community.

The Food Corps is a way to change this relationship with our food. Teams of community farm and food workers strive to participate in all aspects of our food system. Some days we help small-scale farmers grow healthy produce while regenerating the land. Other days we help deliver and distribute that same produce to food insecure communities in our cities. 

We are connecting the dots of our food system; uniting rural and urban communities, farmers and food buyers, and hungry people with healthy food. By working holistically within the food system, we are changing this system from the inside: shifting it from a mere engine of food consumption and commodification into a pathway for communal and ecological transformation!

Join us in transforming our relationship with food, each other, and our planet!

The Food Corps is the program at the heart of the Eco-Just Food Network. The food network is piloting this program with the St. James Town Community Coop.

Similar to the concept of a peace corps, the Food Corps are teams of people recruited from participating community organizations to assist farmers and food providers in the production and distribution of food.

Designed to address food and economic insecurity in marginalized communities as well as farm labour shortages and lack of market access, at its core, the Food Corps program connects communities with food providers in such a way that each meets the needs of the other.

Central to the Food Corps program is the concept of time banking.

Time banking is an economic vehicle through which the time and labour of Food Corps members gets turned into real value (time dollars) that can be spent on goods and services offered within a local time bank system. It is a way for ordinary people and communities to generate and distribute wealth without having to rely on government or private funding.

How Does the Food Corps Program Work?

Click on the arrows to see how the Food Corps program works.

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More about the Food Corps

The Eco-Just Food Network groups registered individuals from participating community organizations into Food Corps teams which act as mobile farm and food work units that travel to different farms and food providers to help in the production and distribution of food.

Food Corps teams are limited to 5-10 members; each team will work together for the duration of a growing season. This is to ensure safety during this COVID-19 pandemic by creating a closed work circle. 

Each team will have one or two team leaders who will coordinate the logistics of the team’s activities, including liaising with different food providers regarding work needed, transportation, scheduling and time accreditation.

Food Corps members receive training in different farm and food processing skills — as well as leadership and life skills — and work as a team with different food providers to ensure that crops are planted, harvested and processed.


I am a community member – I want to join the Food Corps!

Work Requests

Participating farms and food providers in the network submit work requests to the Eco-Just Food Network. For example, a farm may submit a request for help with garlic planting.

The food network then communicates with Food Corps members information about submitted work requests. Together, each team will decide on the requests they wish to fulfill. Team leaders will then contact and make arrangements with the farm/food provider for the work to done.

After the work is completed, team leaders are responsible, along with the farm/food provider, for ensuring that each team member is properly accredited for the work they have performed. The farm/food provider then submits a request fulfillment form to the food network confirming the names and hours worked of the Food Corps team.


I am a farm/food provider – I want to join the Eco-Just Food Network!

How the Time Bank Works

What is time banking? Click here.

The Eco-Just Food Network administers and coordinates the activities of the Food Corps as well as its own time bank.

Community organizations administer their own independent time bank.

The EJFN  credits each participating community organization one time dollar in the network’s time bank for each hour that a community member puts into the Food Corps program. The food network also submits information on hours worked per individual to the participating community organization so that the organization can credit those individuals with time dollars in its own community time bank.

For every hour a Food Corps member has worked, that person receives a time dollar on their account in their community time bank and their community organization earns a time dollar in the food network time bank. 

A person may spend their time dollar just like money within their community time bank system. This means they can spend it on products and services offered by other members of the time bank.

Participating community organizations can use their time dollars held in the food network’s time bank to purchase food from participating farms and food providers. This food can then be distributed back to the community as the organization sees fit.

Time dollars cannot be converted to Canadian currency.

Can I Volunteer with the Eco-Just Food Network?

There are many ways to be involved in the the Eco-Just Food Network, aside from being a Food Corps member or farm/food provider. We’ve listed all of them here.


I want to volunteer with the Eco-Just Food Network