A deep dive into how regenerative organic agricultural practices can benefit soil health with Brent Preston and Gillian Flies from The New Farm. Gillian Flies and Brent Preston own and operate The New Farm, a vegetable farm that provides high-quality, organic produce to fine restaurants and specialty retail stores in the Toronto and Collingwood areas.
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Confronting problems with packaging organic products through innovation in the packaging industry with Wellington Produce Packaging. A major value of organics is the production of food in a sustainable, environmentally friendly manner. For an organic farmer to go through the process of obtaining certification and following organic regulations only to end up packaging their product
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Author: Sharmeena Lalloo The Organic Council of Ontario has released a new report to shed light on Ontario farmers’ perspectives surrounding environmentally-friendly practices employed within organic and regenerative farming systems. This report identifies trends and potential opportunities to encourage the adoption of environmentally-friendly farming techniques throughout the agricultural sector in Ontario. The key findings are
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Save the dates! University of Manitoba professor Dr. Martin Entz is running an organic agronomy training course in January 2023. Dr. Entz’s training is intended for private and public sector agronomists who want to respond to the growing demand from producers for more information about organic grain production. While the course was designed with the
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The CFIA has recently proposed a new regulatory guidance which would allow companies to employ gene editing techniques from organic regulations. The following is the Organic Council of Ontario’s official response.

We’re looking to learn more about the barriers, capacity, and overall needs of Canada’s organic workforce.  Do you work on or operate a certified organic farm? You can help make recommendations for decision makers and organic stakeholders to address the sector’s needs by filling out our Workforce Needs Assessment Surveys! Operators can fill out the Farm
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The FAO’s recent webcast on Sound Fertilization for Food Security in the Context of the Current Crisis comes at a critical time for the agricultural sector. In recent years, farmers have faced a number of setbacks. Along with extreme weather conditions, the agricultural sector’s attempt to recover from supply chain disruptions during the pandemic has
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Canada’s Agricultural Policy Framework (APF) is a 5-year investment made by federal, provincial and territorial governments to develop Canada’s agricultural sector. The government consults with Canadians during the framework’s developments, from stakeholders to youth, to assess the desired outcomes of the policies and programs to be implemented. The next APF will be launched in 2023,
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Though it may seem laborious to grow plants that will never be harvested, cover crops can bring many benefits to Canadian farmers. At the EFAO conference’s webinar: Greenlander! Expanding the use of cover crops in organic vegetable farming, cover crop farmers and experts Jeff Boesch from Cedar Down Farm and Reid Allaway from Tourne-Sol Co-operative Farm shared insights drawn from years of experience with cover cropping.

How can organic farmers reduce tillage on their farms? In this webinar, Brett Israel from 3Gen Organic, Aaron Bowman from Bowmanview Farms, Jake Munroe from OMAFRA and Mel Luymes discussed this struggle.

Climate change and agriculture are closely connected. Agriculture makes up 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, excluding on-farm fossil fuel usage and fertilizer production processes. Canada has pledged to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the economy by 40 percent and reduce agricultural emissions by 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030. In order to meet these targets, changes across the agricultural industry are necessary.

With so many external stressors threatening our natural ecosystems, some farmers have turned to rebuilding or preserving natural spaces on their farmland. If done correctly, this practice can prove enormously beneficial to the farm and its surrounding environment. So what kinds of natural landscapes can farmers rebuild, and what kind of care will these new spaces require?