Several student groups from Queen’s, McGill and the University of Ottawa heard about sustainability, innovation and politics in agriculture at the February event.

Why it matters: Youth engagement suggests interest in the future of Canadian agriculture.

Neleah Lavoie and Kayla Emmerton both sit on the 4-H Youth Advisory Committee that has 10 youth representatives, one from each province.

“I think in its simplest forms, ag is the future,” Emmerton said. “With our growing population, we have to find new ways to feed people and to make sure that we can still continue to live on earth.

“That’s just so exciting, there’s so much new technology in the world that can help us be more efficient and effective with what we’re growing and producing. That’s exciting, and I want to be a part of that.”
Lavoie spoke about challenges in the sector.

“I don’t think ag is limited to what we think sometimes (is) agriculture,” she said. “The issues we’re facing as a world right now, ag is in every single sector, and I think it’s important that we recognize that, and that we attack it as a problem.”

The two women both grew up around agriculture.

“My aunt and uncle ran a dairy farm that I lived right across the field from, so I learned so much from them growing up,” Emmerton said.

Lavoie grew up in rural Prince Edward Island surrounded by potato farms.

McGill University farm management student Aidan Velthuis, who grew up on a dairy farm south of Ottawa, also attended the conference.

“I’m hoping to hear some different perspectives on sustainable agriculture, more regenerative agriculture as we move forward and try to keep our soils healthy.”

Queens University student Jonas Marshall said the conference was an opportunity to unite people from across the agriculture industry.

“We’re not just getting the people who are working in the farms and the people who are working in kind of that financial side,” he said. “It’s everybody together, working towards this one common goal of sustainability.”

Marshall was part of a startup that competed in the NASA Deep Space Food Challenge, in which competitors developed new technologies to produce food in future space missions. After moving past the first round, they received $30,000 in funding.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t make it past the next round so we were kind of left with a product without a real audience or market. So, we looked to tailor our over-engineered plant box that was designed for space to kind of move it up north to deal with some issues with growing food in non-arable land.”

Marshall said the experience made him eager to learn more, particularly about food waste.

“This is something that we need to improve on, and it is really nice to see these big industries as well, you know, making that commitment for the regenerative farming, realizing that it is not sustainable for the land.”

He was also interested in panellists’ discussions about product innovation.

“Learning how we can combine different food groups, or create a product that benefits Canadians … getting those extra proteins in there as well as feeding you at a lower cost, I think is going to be is something that younger people should really be aware of and hopefully be interested in moving forward.”

The post Food conference sees high student engagement appeared first on Farmtario.

She was inspired, in part, by a podcast created for the Canadian Gap Year Association.

Taylor most recently returned to Ontario after leaving a position as a “shared labourer” hired by a co-operatively governed organization in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia called the Pender Island Farmers’ Institute. In that role, she was assigned to help out whichever member of the group needed an extra hand that day.

Why it matters: Agriculture needs young people to find inspiration and experience if the sector is to have successful food producers into the next generation.

Taylor’s previous month’s experience had left her prepared for just about any farming job.

Since being hired on as a “grazing assistant” in the spring of 2020 on a mixed livestock farm in western Quebec, Taylor experienced a breadth of Canadian farm roles, ranging from long-hours combine operator, to bison ranch control gate handler, to on-farm abattoir labourer.

Holder of a DZ licence needed to drive trucks and always eager on her family’s crop farm to run a grain truck, combine or sprayer, Taylor set her sights in 2020 on helping with spring planting and then finding away-from-home work for the rest of the summer.

She had begun the 2019-20 school term embarking on an agricultural economics program on the main campus of the University of Guelph, but decided by the end of first term that it wasn’t the right time to be back in a formal classroom.

In particular, she wanted to explore options in what she describes as her farm-related “passion” — small-scale livestock production. “I’ve always been into direct sales,” she said. When she was nine, she started raising laying hens, a venture she continues.

In the intervening years, Taylor has dabbled in various types of livestock, including free-range and/or grass-fed beef, turkeys and meat chickens. She even built her own portable chicken tractors to rotationally graze broilers.

The onset of COVID-19 in March made finding summer work more complicated. But Taylor also described the pandemic as “a good time for me to re-evaluate.”

She began looking further afield for employment and educational opportunities, and the one she settled on ended up being nowhere near Belmont.

“One of my dreams was to work on a smaller, ecological farm, doing livestock.” She found exactly that near Wakefield, Que. Rock’s End Farm raises organic livestock — Icelandic sheep, Angus beef, pastured pork and pastured poultry. Taylor was hired as a “grazing assistant” — managing the movement of livestock in a rotational manner into paddocks nestled in the Gatineau Hills.

“It was a lot of hiking (but) I loved learning about grass,” especially the soil health aspects, including rotationally grazed livestock in a farm system.

Along with the Gap Year podcast, she also was reading the 2018 book “Dirt to Soil” by North Dakota soil health guru Gabe Brown. There, she found information about Axten Farms in Saskatchewan.

“I decided then that the idea of having a really purposeful gap year was what I really needed. It seemed like the signs all pointed to taking a year and doing more things like (Rock’s End Farm) across Canada.”

She contacted Axten Farms and learned that some of their regular workers were unavailable for harvest due to COVID-19. So she sent a resume, and was hired on to service and operate a combine. She said goodbye to the Gatineau Hills, steered her car west, and worked a month of long days in the combine.

“Fulfilling” and “educational” are words she used to describe that month. The Axtens grow about 13 different crops, with soil health best management practices including intercropping and cover crops. The farm has its own seed-cleaning mill to enable access to specialized seed.

“They’re all about soil biology and soil health, and I learned a lot from them.”

Not the least of what she learned is that regenerative and ecologically sensitive approaches can be implemented on larger-scale farms, as well as on smaller-scale operations.

From there, Taylor followed a two-week, meandering route to stay with extended family on Pender Island, B.C. Stops along the way included agricultural colleges, and helping out at farms or touring farms that she was able to contact as she went.

This included a cranberry farm, a sheep farm and a dairy farm, as well as a ranch near Vermilion, Alta., where they rounded up bison and cattle on horseback for pregnancy checks. She handled one of the gates for the day — an experience she said was one of the highlights of her year.

It also became clear to her that day that the world has opened up for women seeking careers in agriculture. At both the bison ranch and Rock’s End Farm, the main farm operators are female, and Taylor counts that as one of the main lessons of her experience.

Settled in at Pender Island, she again sought out farm tours. It was on one of those that she was put in touch with the Pender Island Farmers’ Institute.

Before that, however, she enjoyed her other “most unique” experience of the trip: “WWOOF”-ing (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) on a sheep farm on Saturna Island with its own on-farm abattoir in which custom-killing and wrapping was done for other area livestock producers.

She spent a week working in the abattoir. During that time, they processed seven steers, which had been transported to Saturna on a ferry.

“It really meant a lot for me to see how animals are killed and cut. Until then, I’ve just had the privilege of sending the animals away and having someone else do that work,” Taylor said.

“It’s a rare opportunity…I really liked seeing the whole process.”

About the entire trip, she said, “I learned so much. There was lots of agriculture, but there was other stuff too. There was history.”

She picked up a book entitled “The Pioneer Years” by Barry Broadfoot, which was written in the 1970s and features interviews with rural Canadian prairie dwellers, who were in their 90s at the time. As she crossed the country, she imagined how the landscape looked when those interviewees were her age. “It’s crazy how recent that was” — as well as how it looked when Indigenous people lived by hunting vast herds of bison.

Asked about advice she would give young people thinking about careers in agriculture, Taylor said, “never turn down a farm tour.”

And, she said, young people shouldn’t be shy to ask. Many times people are eager to provide answers. “And it doesn’t have to be across the country; it could be right in your own community.”

The post Ridgetown grad’s gap year takes winding farm road appeared first on Farmtario.

Sundance, who is mixed-race Black-identifying, saw a void in access to two things in her local farmer’s market – year-round fresh greens and diversity.

So she decided to fill them both.

Why it matters: Agriculture has not been a diverse sector, and there is interest in bringing more diversity into food production.

“I always say my farm is rooted in food justice because I do grow really great produce year-round but I also grow new farmers,” Sundance told attendees of the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario (EFAO) virtual annual conference in December.

In 2019 the 23-year-old launched Sundance Harvest, a small-scale garden business on one-third of an acre in North Toronto’s Downsview Park.

Using her two greenhouses and 10,000 square feet of outdoor plots, Sundance produces a steady flow of herbs, salad mix, kale, collards and chard year-round with more seasonal offerings throughout of tomatoes, mushrooms, sorrel, spinach, microgreens, zucchini, peppers cucumbers and cut flowers.

“These are very easy crops to grow in an intensive way,” she said, adding she grows year-round in the greenhouses, but starts production in the field in April and grows to the end of December.

“I find the most profitable thing for my urban farm is salad mix,” she said. “I sell easily 100 bags a week, 200 if I actually have the capacity to produce 200 bags.”

Sundance acknowledges if she farmed rurally it would cost less, likely involve greater land availability and easier infrastructure and crop expansion into items that require more space, such as squash and watermelon.

As an urban farmer, she said land is limited, costly and, because it’s rented, requires significant discussions before infrastructure expansion can take place if it’s even approved.

However, the greatest positive of urban farming is community engagement and being accessible to consumers by transit, which allows them to visit the farm, ask questions and engage with the process, said Sundance.

“For me, the upsides make it worth it,” she said, especially when it comes to establishing food justice and creating agriculture-based education opportunities for marginalized communities who often face higher rates of food insecurity, food injustice, social isolation and mental health crises.

A 2018 study from the University of Toronto’s PROOF Food Insecurity Policy Research indicated the highest rates of food insecurity in Canada occur in Indigenous or Black households at 28.2 per cent and 28.9 per cent respectively.

Sundance, who grew up with food insecurities, wanted to provide a space where Black, Indigenous, Persons of Colour (BIPOC), LGBTQ2S, gender non-conforming and youth with disabilities could learn everything about agriculture from seed saving to harvesting, distribution to retail and gain control over their food systems.

Leading by example, Sundance assessed a void in her local farmers’ market, developed a business plan, applied for and received a $5,000 grant to launch Sundance Harvest and within a year has created enough steady income through her  Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscription box and Dufferin Grove Farmers’ Market customers to provide herself with a salary and pay her staff a living wage.

“A lot of people in Toronto are very interested in urban agriculture and they want to support it in anyway possible,” she said. “I’ve only had one person drop out (of the CSA) and that was in the last few months because they moved.”

Her online farm store was part of the pandemic pivot many businesses made to stay afloat during the pandemic. Sundance’s online store includes unique maple products, wild-caught fish from Nunavut, herb salt, botanical tea and holistic snacks by BIPOC producers.

“Because there is such a lack of diversity in agriculture and a lack of opportunity for us I really wanted to centre our products in my store,” she said.

She tries to add a new producer to her site weekly.

Sundance Harvest has evolved so quickly she was able to launch Growing in the Margins, a free 12-week education program for low-income youth facing barriers within the food system.

It offered two streams, one in mentorship and the other a drop-in program, some of which has been suspended temporarily due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Sundance said the program is open to youth 18 to 25 who self-identify as low-income, BIPOC, LGBTQ2S, gender non-conforming or disabled who are interested in a career in agriculture or leading community food sovereignty movements, but lack hands-on farming education.

“I wanted to learn from someone who had a similar lived experience so they could mentor me, teach me and ensure that I wouldn’t have as much of a hard time getting started,” she said. “Growing in the Margins is the only place they (marginalized youth) feel safe to learn.”

Sundance said there is no labour exchange for their education. She provides a curriculum covering everything from seed saving to planting, irrigation to organic pest control and harvest to marketing to help smooth the path for others who have an interest in agriculture but no idea of how to start.

“The majority of the youth that finish the program actually start careers in agriculture,” she said.

Eventually, Sundance hopes Growing in the Margins will evolve into a closed-loop system where the community provides land resources for an urban farm. That farm feeds people and sells its produce at a farmers market creating financial support and jobs. The circle then begins again with potential urban farmers again being mentored and educated to the point they can start their own farms.

“I didn’t see myself represented in agriculture and I wanted to be a farmer,” she said. “It was really important to me… to have a farm that reflected something I didn’t see in agriculture.”

Each step she takes growing her business and Growing in the Margins brings her closer to her goal of eradicating systematic racism in the food system, shining a light on the profitability of urban farming and providing marginalized youth with an opportunity to see themselves reflected in the agricultural sector.

The post Urban farm fills niche while mentoring marginalized youth appeared first on Farmtario.

The Youth Employment and Skills Program will provide funding to employers in agriculture to hire Canadian youth, ages 15 to 30.

It aims to create opportunities for Canadian youth, particularly youth facing barriers to entering or staying in the workforce, to explore employment in the agriculture and agri-food sector and to better prepare themselves for the labour market.

The new program will provide 50 per cent of funds, up to $14,000, towards costs associated with hiring youth. For not-for-profit organizations, and applicants who hire Indigenous youth or youth facing barriers, the program will provide 80 per cent of total eligible costs, up to $14,000.

The post Ottawa announces funds to attract youth in agriculture appeared first on Farmtario.

Casey Riddle, of Elmira, Ont., was the second runner-up in the senior category.

The senior champion was Emmett Sawyer of Acme, Alta.

The 34th edition of CYSA welcomed 29 competitors, aged 11 to 24, from across Canada who offered their insights and solutions regarding the following topics:

• My view on diversity in Canadian agriculture.
• Canadian agriculture needs more people – and this is how we’re going to get them.
• What is sustainability and why does it matter to Canadian agriculture?
• The next big thing in Canadian agriculture is: _______.
• How can we educate urban populations about where our food comes from and the industry standards involved?
• Food Processing: Trends and Market Opportunities
• Local Opportunities for Micro Food Processing

The post Ontario boy wins Young Speaker for Ag junior title appeared first on Farmtario.

The problem is many young people just don’t know what they have.

When Katelyn Moore left for agriculture college, she didn’t expect to be returning home to farm, but now she’s farming full time with her father and brother near Benmiller, in Huron County. She also operates a Pioneer seed dealership.

The sense of community is an important binder of rural people she said during a panel of young entrepreneurs during the Rural Talks to Rural conference recently in Blyth.

“My neighbours where I live would go to bat for me if they had to. I know I can count on my neighbours and community to help me out,” she said.

The five rural entrepreneurs involved in the panel were challenged to envision what a rural community would look like if they had to build one from scratch.

The discussion ended up around the benefits they see, as they age, from staying in or returning to their rural communities.

Grace Vanden Heuvel was raised on a hog farm near Goderich and recently returned to the town after a career in Toronto. She said the stereotypes she saw as a young person — such as that everyone knows your business and is involved in other people’s lives — were a negative at one time, but can also be a positive.

She’s part of a young person’s group — Engage Goderich — that works to connect young people in town and create opportunities for them to socialize and to engage in professional development.

“It’s the feeling of being welcomed somewhere that drew me back to Goderich. I have a business coach who helps me every day.”

Nick Vinnicombe lives in the country outside Walton. He started Lake Effect Media when he was 17. He went away to Loyalist College and has now moved home to continue to run his video and photography business. He has found lots of people willing to help him, but he’s stuck with poor quality internet service — and in a business that moves large data files — that means he’s had to drive to Goderich at midnight to find better internet.

He said he and his friends — the few that returned to or stayed in the rural area — struggle with finding social events. Getting a cab from Goderich to Walton after a night at a bar is prohibitively expensive he said. However, he said there are social events that people his age just haven’t tried out and likely should.

“You need to see a benefit to come back here and many people my age just aren’t seeing that right now.”

Jeremiah Sommer, a building contractor, who lives in the country, and who grew up in the country, said that young people should love where they live for what it is.

“People say there is nothing to do, but I’ve never found that. People should realize that less is more and that is an okay thing to have in a community. It can be nothing sometimes and be great.”

Luke Elliott said he has had several jobs in his young career, something he said is common for young people, although the rest of the panel had generally stuck to one career and a couple of jobs. He’s now working for a cannabis producer in Tiverton, so has a commute from his home in Goderich, where he served as a young town councillor. He learned from his time on town council that people have different ways of communicating and not all liked to just communicate through a phone, as people of his generation often do.

When asked what he’d like to see in a new rural community, he suggested a place where citizens were unplugged from constant tethering to their phones and communication would be valuable.

There was little consensus from the panel, each of whom had their own reason to find their way back to rural Huron County, on what they’d like to see in a rural community.

However, Sommer said that scale is important. When services and businesses and networks are smaller, people can be more connected to their rural communities.

“Things can be smaller and more scaled properly to the community and that means people can be more connected to it.”

The post Millennials talk about the draw of country living appeared first on Farmtario.