In The News

The Globe & Mail recently featured Young Urban Farmers -- a new Toronto start-up that's bringing urban agriculture to backyards across the city. Co-founded last year by Queen's University commerce graduates, Nancy Huynh, Jing Loh and Chris Wong, the company installs and manages food-producing pre-fabricated garden boxes in clients' backyards.

"Some businesses are born of sheer entrepreneurial grit, determination and competitive drive. Others are driven by innovation, sometimes of the accidental kind. In the case of the Young Urban Farmers, sowing the seeds of success has involved all of those elements � not to mention a healthy collection of actual vegetable seeds as founder Christopher Wong and his two partners seek to change the way urbanites eat, one backyard garden at a time."

"The Toronto-based start-up was founded last year with a mission to not only turn a healthy profit, but to also encourage sustainable practices in households across the city."

"The three of us all had an entrepreneurial passion, we knew we wanted to run our own business and we were brainstorming different ideas," Mr. Wong, 24, recalls."

"We saw there was a real trend towards growing food locally and reducing the local environmental footprint. We thought there was an underserved market in terms of people looking to set up vegetable gardens but not knowing where to start."

"Mr. Wong and his fellow Queen's University commerce graduates, Nancy Huynh and Jing Loh, invested about $5,000 of their own money and launched Young Urban Farmers in early 2009."

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original source the Globe & Mail