Summer 2020
Food & Farming across the Golden Horseshoe
100km Foods has been connecting local farmers with restaurants and foodservice operations across the GTA for 12 years now, so co-owner Paul Sawtell said the overnight closure of restaurants in mid-March had them facing an existential crisis with no end in sight.

But by April, the team's quick thinking and hard work led to the launch of an online retail market for the public, giving customers the opportunity to shop from over 100 local farms, with home delivery now offered throughout the GTA! Learn more about their journey over the last few months on our blog here.
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture has released a new resource, Always in Season: A Toolkit for Local Food Practitioners, with support from numerous project partners (including the Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Alliance).

The toolkit can be used nationwide, offering tips and resources for communities and municipalities to support their agri-food and beverage sector.

We encourage you to check it out and share with those who may be interested.
In June, we hosted a webinar to explore key actions to support the continued growth of the Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Cluster, as we work to refresh our Action Plan.

The webinar included an insightful panel of speakers who discussed the future of food and farming in the Golden Horseshoe through various lenses.

If you missed the webinar, you can now view a recording of it online. Thanks again to all who joined us!
Last month, York Region hosted a webinar on COVID-19 health and safety measures for farm operations, as part of the region's larger agri-food webinar series offering support for local businesses.

You can now view a recording of the webinar online here.
The Yves Landry Foundation has launched a new program, AIME@Home (Achieving Innovation and Manufacturing Excellence), which is now open for applications.

The program was established to respond to impacts on manufacturing SME’s resulting from the pandemic by increasing the short-term workforce and longer-term competitiveness of established southern Ontario manufacturers and by supporting remote/distance training activities for SME’s who are shut down, or partially shut down. Learn more here.
Niagara College’s Research & Innovation division will be deploying more than $1 million to expand essential applied research in the growing beverage sector over the next three years, thanks to funding from the federal government. Learn more from FoodinCanada.com.
The Greenbelt Foundation has released a new report, Growing Close to Home: Creating Complete Rural Communities, identifying and discussing the key challenges and opportunities rural municipalities face when attempting to make their communities more complete.
In 2019, the Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Alliance took its first steps as a fully incorporated body.

We have just released our 2019 Annual Report on our website, and encourage you to check it out to see what we've been up to over the last busy year -- including moving our offices, welcoming several new members to the Alliance Board, growing our Serving Up Local project, and beginning to draft up a new roadmap for the next 5 years with an updated Action Plan.

Our next plan will have a greater emphasis on measuring our successes, climate change, innovation in food processing, the future agri-food workforce and on-farm diversification.
Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe to our monthly newsletters here!
Watch for a confirmation email after you subscribe.