New funding for Farm & Food Care Ontario

Apr 14, 2022

OMAFRA to provide $547,200 infunding to Farm & Food Care Ontario.

By Andrew Joseph, Farms.com; Image courtesy of Farm & Food Care Ontario

At the Farm & Food Care Ontario (FFCO) annual conference on April 13, 2022, Ontario Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) Lisa Thompson announced a funding agreement to contribute up to $547,200 to FFCO’s outreach initiatives over the next three years.

Farm & Food Care Ontario is a coalition of farmers, agriculture and food partners proactively working together to ensure public trust and confidence in food and farming.

This funding will be put towards supporting five of the organization’s activities to raise awareness and appreciation of Ontario farmers and food producers:

FFCO’s Breakfast on/from the Farm events which provide a unique and personal experience for non farming Ontarians to visit and explore agriculture with working farmers each year;
Farm tours for culinary students which allow them to learn about raising livestock and horticultural products they prepare in the kitchen;
Interviews, photography and videography work showcasing the critical work that seasonal agricultural workers and temporary foreign workers do in Ontario for the More than a Migrant Worker initiative;
The Garden in a Box program that connects home gardeners with Ontario farmers;
Numerous digital consumer outreach activities including virtual field trips highlighting the diversity of farms and food processing facilities to consumers.

“Ensuring Ontarians have the facts on where their food comes from, how it grows, and how it is made is key to growing the next generation of leaders for Ontario’s agri-food sector,” said Thompson. “This important investment will empower Farm and Food Care Ontario to deliver these critical programs.”

As a registered charity, funding for Farm & Food Care Ontario largely comes from farmers, farm organizations, agribusinesses and others through memberships and program partnerships. This funding is the first Farm & Food Care has received from the provincial government for public trust work and will support these initiatives until 2025.

Bonnie den Haan, FFCO’s Chair, stated: “FFCO is delighted by this support from the province. FFCO has always had a reputation for doing great work on incredibly limited budgets. This funding is a huge show of support from the provincial government for the work we do and will really enable us to expand the reach of our initiatives.”

For more information on Farm & Food Care Ontario, visit https://www.farmfoodcareon.org/.

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators