By Kenzie Love
When he settled in BC’s Lower Mainland as an immigrant from Nigeria, John Atoyebi knew he wanted to get back into farming. A farmer in his country of origin, as well as a lawyer, Atoyebi had the experience and the desire to resume his trade, but he needed farmland, a relatively scarce commodity in the region. Ultimately concluding his efforts to procure it would be more successful as part of a group, he put a call out in 2023 to other members of the area’s African diaspora, generating considerable interest. With 40 people responding to his invitation to join an online group for the project, Atoyebi realized he would need a formal structure, and so the next year, the African Canadian Agricultural Producers Cooperative (ACAPC) was born.
Atoyebi had other motivations for creating the Cooperative besides his personal interest in farming. He wanted to help grow culturally appropriate foods, which had been hard to access. And he and other members also wanted to contribute to job creation.
“We all come from backgrounds where we believe we must be positive additions to the society where we have found ourselves,” he says. “Places where they’ve been magnanimous, they’ve graciously welcomed us, they’ve been of tremendous help to us.”
ACAPC received particular assistance from two organizations: Solid State Industries, a Surrey-based nonprofit that helps members of racialized and immigrant communities develop worker co-ops; and The Young Agrarian Society, a national farmer-to-farmer educational resource network for new and young, ecological, organic and regenerative farmers. Acquiring land in Surrey through the BC Land Matching Program, the Cooperative did an initial successful harvest of strawberries and garlic, and has since grown to include a diverse array of traditional African crops, grains, herbs, livestock, and poultry, which it shares as a supplier to local restaurants and through a community-supported agriculture program.
In addition to making connections with the local community, however, belonging to a worker co-op has strengthened the bonds within the Cooperative itself, fostering a sense of community among its members, who’ve grown to become more than business partners. This has confirmed Atoyebi’s belief that the worker co-op model was the right framework to adopt.
“We felt we would achieve more if we came together as a cooperative,” he says. “And it has proven to be very true, because we’ve been able to do more than what a few of us were trying to do as individuals.”
The ability to provide fresh food and help combat food insecurity has been particularly rewarding for Atoyebi, and he’s also happy to help others seeking to replicate the model elsewhere in Canada, recalling a recent call he got from a like-minded group in New Brunswick. He believes the Cooperative has a bright future ahead.
“I’m very elated that we’ve gotten to this stage, and I think there is no going back,” he says. “We can only do better.”