Food and Farming Canada » marketing

Local food made easy

Lilian — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:00:42 +0000

New food service marketing program expands markets for Ontario foods

If you build it, they will come.

That’s the thinking behind a new marketing program being used by Gordon Food Service (GFS), Ontario’s largest family-owned food service distributor – expanding and promoting their offering of Ontario food products by making it easy for their customers to identify and [...]

Monforte’s local cheese renaissance

Lilian — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:10:17 +0000

Montforte cheese sampler

The story of Ruth Klahsen and her dairy are well-known in Ontario’s local food world.

Montforte Dairy has a loyal – and growing – following of fans devoted to the agricultural values it espouses and the cheeses it produces.

So devoted, in fact, that they have raised about half a million dollars as members of [...]

Getting local food into our public institutions

Lilian — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:54:33 +0000

The Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation and the Greenbelt Fund are spearheading the grants and two other initiatives in an effort to connect Ontario’s farmers with public institutions like daycares, schools, hospitals, universities and long term care facilities.

Ontariofresh.ca, a new business to business website is being launched this fall to link buyers and sellers of Ontario [...]

A difference in 10 minutes a day

Lilian — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:50:33 +0000

Farmers – are you frustrated by people who don’t understand what you do on your farm? Do you wish more consumers knew how food was produced or more politicians had a sense of the realities of farming? Many of us in agriculture have had these sentiments at some time and often feel helpless to do anything [...]

The whys and hows of building trust in our food

Lilian — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:59:20 +0000

Few relationships are more personal than the one we have with our food. We trust that what we eat will sustain us, nourish us and help keep us healthy.

In Canada, public trust in our food supply is high, a fact that’s been proven repeatedly in studies carried out by Ipsos Reid for AGCare and the Ontario [...]

An Ontario farmer’s direct marketing success story

Lilian — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:47:55 +0000

Consumers, local food advocates and others ask me why more farmers don’t market their products – grains, meats, fruits and vegetables – directly to the end user.

Building that one-on-one relationship would help boost the availability of local food products, they argue, as well as protect farmers from fluctuating global commodity prices.

It’s not quite that simple and [...]

Measuring agriculture’s economic footprint in Ontario

Lilian — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 12:34:47 +0000

Farming affects the daily lives of all Ontarians – what we eat, where we live and what we do to earn a living.

Now, a newly released report spells out in stark detail the economic impact of the agricultural sector as well as the punishing effects of long term farm income losses on the Ontario economy.

The results [...]

Dispelling dispair about the future of food and farming

Lilian — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:54:51 +0000

In Western Canada, student enrolment at various agricultural colleges is on the rise. And an increasing percentage of students flocking to programs in animal, food, life and environmental sciences are coming from urban areas, which spokespeople at these institutions attribute at least partly to the growing public interest in agriculture and food.

Guelph’s Ontario Agricultural College hasn’t [...]

Solving the peanut-free school lunch problem

Lilian — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:34:19 +0000

Over the last week or so of everyone’s back to school preparations, I’ve been noticing a lot of coverage about school lunches and the dilemna of what to send with your kids. I didn’t realize this was such a problem – I’ve been out of school myself for quite some time and don’t have any kids [...]

Checking out the local cafe

Lilian — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:57:39 +0000

We took advantage of the recent long weekend to spend a few days in the Kawartha region of Ontario. The village of Lakefield was our principle destination – and the highlight of our weekend a visit with our friend Jennifer MacKenzie. Jen and her husband, Chef Jay Nutt, own Nuttshell Next Door, a cafe in downtown [...]