The marketplace is open to Ontario farmers first with plans to expand across Canada
A new online resource is available for farmers looking to capitalize on climate-conscious farming practices.
“The Canadian Alliance for Net-Zero Agri-food’s (CANZA) Marketplace is a long-term national effort to recognize and reward farmers for their stewardship efforts on their farms,” Ashley Honsberger, the interim executive director of the organization, told Farms.com. “It was developed with the thinking that if Canadian agriculture works together then we can organize the landscape of supports farmers have access to.”
The marketplace serves as a central hub for farmers to identify government and industry programs that align with their farming practices.
Each program comes with its own description, the eligible area, which activities will help a farmer qualify for the support, and if that individual program can be stacked with others.
CANZA Marketplace screenshot.
Users can also save their preferred programs for easier access at the next login.
Clarity related to program information is a hurdle farmers face.
A 2024 report from the auditor general about AAFC’s progress on climate change action in 2021 found that growers missed out on funding approvals for three programs because of repeated delays.
“In addition, 2 of the 3 programs had not yet set or finalized all of their performance targets for climate change mitigation,” the report says. “The department’s contributions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under its programs are integral to the fight against climate change, which is why setting targets and tracking results are so important.”
CANZA’s platform is only available to Ontario farmers for now. A rollout for Quebec is expected in the summer with the Prairies following in the longer term.
Opening the marketplace for Ontario’s ag community is the first step of a larger project.
The bigger goal is to connect farmers engaged in climate-smart agriculture with investors looking to do business with these growers.
Ashley Honsberger.
“We want to start connecting the demand side, so the corporations interested in achieving ESG (environmental, social, and governance) goals, and need that better connectivity back to the farm, which is the supplier,” Honsberger said.
Some farmers and advisors are already doing this as part of CANZA’s Million Acre Challenge, a cost-shared program to help reduce costs associated with trying a new practice.
About 30 farms are participating in the first cohort.
The appetite from end users is there but up until now farmers haven’t had a way to prove their practices are working.
“The purpose of harvesting the data is that it can be quantified and measured by the buyer’s side,” Honsberger said. “Farmers are changing practices and reducing emissions. In the long run the marketplace will be able to quantify that to make it a product they can sell to their end users in a trusted and science-based way.”
General Mills is among the companies already doing ESG business with Canadian growers.
The Ecosystem Services Market Consortium reported in June 2023 that General Mills paid out more than $310,000 to farmers participating in an Eco-Harvest project.