FarmON Alliance

Just Food became a member of this exciting initiative in January, 2009. Bringing together 5 organizations from across Ontario to encourage and promote farmer training programs, we hope to coordinate and develop existing efforts to encourage small-scale, ecological, and viable farms in Ontario. The FarmOn Alliance is funded through a three-year Trillium foundation Future Fund grant.

More info about the FarmON Alliance, including all the member organizations and their coordinators, can be found here.

Through the FarmON Alliance, Just Food is promoting several programs in Eastern Ontario, including CRAFT Ottawa, FarmLINK, and the New Farmer Survey.

The CRAFT Ottawa program links interns with ecological farmers, and develops networks of ecological farmers to provide ample education and exposure to different farming systems for their interns. CRAFT programs are ideally run autonomously by the group of farmers who are in the CRAFT network, without outside organizational support. Just Food's role is to help the CRAFT Ottawa network get off the ground, by providing administrative support for the network, website support, and helping to organize appropriate training initiatives for farmers and interns.

FarmLINK Ontario is an online tool which can be used to find farm land for sale, rent, lease, or through other innovative structures. There are many opportunities for farming to be found through FarmLINK. As well, land owners who would like to share their land with a new farmer can post their opportunity on FarmLINK. Finally, established farmers can find a new farmer to take over their operation through sale, lease or other arrangement on the FarmLINK website.

The New Farmer Survey is a valuable tool for developing a province-wide picture of what resources are being used by new farmers, and what resources need to be improved. If you are a new or aspiring farmer in the process of developing your vision and training, up to the first ten years of business, please take a moment to fill out the survey.