Canada and Ontario investing $13 million to support upgrades in the meat processing sector

Feb 09, 2024

TORONTO — The governments of Canada and Ontario are investing more than $13 million through the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (Sustainable CAP) to help free-standing meat processors and abattoirs in the province make upgrades to increase their productivity and efficiency and maintain Ontario’s high food safety standards.

This cost-shared funding, provided through the Sustainable CAP, is supporting 151 projects that focus on upgrading meat handling and processing equipment, technologies and practices that improve production capacity and enhance the competitiveness of Ontario’s meat processing plants and abattoirs.

Examples of investments made through the Meat Processors Capacity Improvement Initiative include:

Up to $140,112 to Penokean Hills Farms in Bruce Mines to purchase and install a chop cutter and thermoforming packaging machine to increase production.
Up to $150,000 to Sikorski Sausages in London to purchase and install a floor standing clipper, air compressor and refrigerated air dryer, a split chiller system, racking systems, high-capacity coils for variable speed fans, and evaporator fan coils to increase capacity and labour productivity.
Up to $19,461.60 to Townsend Butchers in Simcoe to purchase and install a new vacuum sealing machine to increase productivity and meet market demand.

The Meat Processors Capacity Improvement Initiative also covers training and engineering costs associated with completing the projects. Applications opened on August 31, 2023, and closed on September 25, 2023. All projects are expected to be completed with equipment delivered by March 1, 2024.

This funding builds on previous investments of over $14 million in the Meat Processors Capacity Improvement Initiative funded through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership (CAP) since 2020.

Sustainable CAP is a 5-year (2023-2028), $3.5-billion investment by federal, provincial and territorial governments to strengthen competitiveness, innovation, and resiliency of the agriculture, agri‐food and agri‐based products sector. This includes $1 billion in federal programs and activities and a $2.5 billion commitment that is cost-shared 60% federally and 40% provincially/territorially for programs designed and delivered by the provinces and territories.

Source : Farmersforum

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.