Reading Time: 4 minutes This five-part series features farm families leading change through bold decisions on family planning, new ventures, revenue diversification, innovation and business operations. Read parts one and two here. Cebulak Family Farms is a fruit, vegetable and cash crop farm owned and operated by brothers Blaine and Leonard Cebulak alongside their next generation: Nathan, Andrew, Derek and […] Read more
Bold strides through diversification
The Cebulak family searches for new revenue streams that will grow the farm for the next generation
Horticultural industry bowed, not broken by COVID-19
Industry needs to examine where it sources labour, both domestically and internationally, says chair of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association
Reading Time: 4 minutes Despite extraordinarily difficult issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bill George is optimistic about the future of the Canadian horticultural sector. “I’m very proud of how producers have risen to the challenges,” he says. “They always will find a way to get things done.” George is the chair of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association […] Read more
Toronto’s golden Greenbelt
Now that the world’s largest greenbelt has outlasted the political controversies, could you farm there?
Reading Time: 8 minutes When Ontario’s Greenbelt turned 15 this past February, all four of Ontario’s political parties gathered at Queen’s Park to celebrate. According to Michael Young, communications advisor for the Greenbelt Foundation, the event was “a positive and convivial occasion, with a sense that we were all coming together with the shared belief that the Greenbelt must […] Read more
Troubling gaps within PMRA
An interview with crop protection expert Craig Hunter on the avalanche of change that may be heading toward Canadian farmers
Reading Time: 5 minutes Last year, calls rang out for growers and their organizations to voice their concerns about an ongoing review of hundreds of crop protection formulations. The lobbying effort carried added urgency over and above similar efforts from the previous two years. The Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) began conducting these reviews similar to those required in […] Read more
The job ahead
Canada faces its own farm labour gap, and it’s going to get much worse
Reading Time: 15 minutes A black binder sits on the table next to the job board at Aylmer Community Services. Glued to its cover is a stock photo of two hands holding a tiny seedling. Red letters proclaim its title: Agricultural and Farming Jobs. In the steady stream of job seekers, however, few visitors to the jailhouse-turned-community service centre […] Read more
Pesticide review a huge issue for horticulture sector
Time of worker re-entry after application and use of protective equipment are stumbling blocks
Reading Time: 5 minutes Canada’s horticultural growers say they’re concerned about a review of many of the broad-spectrum crop protection chemistries they’ve relied on for years. The Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) is conducting the review, with a final outcome due in 2018. That gives growers and other industry stakeholders the rest of 2017 to strengthen their arguments and […] Read more
Another big hurdle for Canadian producers
With MRLs, the problems begin when a test used for regulating trade gets treated as a verdict on food safety
Reading Time: 6 minutes In the past 25 years, agriculture has seen a full gamut of new programs from environmental farm plans to neonicotinoid-use restrictions in Ontario. Some are relatively farm friendly, some less so. Like them or hate them, they’re all meant to be in the name of sustainability, traceability and food safety and security, which are under […] Read more
Save Ontario farmers, save farmland in the process
10 years later, was setting up the Ontario’s Greenbelt worth the pain? More farmers are saying yes
Reading Time: 7 minutes Rapidly rising populations, sprawling cities, shrinking farmland, and the feared effects of climate change prompted the Ontario government to create its Greenbelt around Toronto 10 years ago, with the goal of protecting some of the nation’s top agricultural land from development and fragmentation. After a decade, it seems it may be working. The greenbelt approach […] Read more
Making the case in the neonic debate
Can agriculture afford to lose to the non-science of neonic opponents? The costs would be even higher than you probably think
Reading Time: 13 minutes Here in early 2015, it’s becoming a recognized pattern in agriculture: another day, another article, another proclamation and another call for action, all revolving around farmers’ use of neonicotinoid seed treatments and the alleged damage this does to bees and bee colonies. To say there is an abundance of information on this topic is one […] Read more
FoodShare provides fresh vegetables, food security
Farm groups are getting on the inside with Toronto’s world-class food outreach program
Reading Time: 6 minutes When I fire off a last-minute email to confirm the details of my scheduled visit, I mention that I have never before seen a food bank. Debbie Field, executive director of FoodShare, politely responds, “We are not a food bank,” she tells me. “We’re a community food hub.” Food bank, food hub. But the next day, […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
