“We won a Premier’s Award for Agri-Food Innovation Excellence for this course and we’re pretty proud of that,” says MacTavish. “We were able to offer this to Ontario producers looking to expand their production to fill market demand because of the funding we received through Growing Forward 2.”
For OSMA, the make-up of the AAC board is a real advantage. Its mix of representatives from the entire value chain from farmers right through to retailers means they have an understanding of the industry, its needs and the challenges that face agricultural producers and businesses.
“The AAC board is quite diverse in who they represent from the Ontario value chain so they have the foresight of knowing where agricultural production needs to go and understand the changing dynamics of the Ontario market and in which we’re farming today,” believes MacTavish.
Also beneficial to OSMA is AAC’s easily accessible staff team that is available to answer questions and provide support right through to project completion, which is particularly valuable for small organizations with limited staff resources, she adds.
AAC helps facilitate knowledge sharing and networking, whether through its newsletter or annual meeting, that can help spread knowledge one organization has gleaned through a project to others who might be interested.
MacTavish says OSMA’s price predictability model is one such project where results could also potentially be of use to the goat or veal industries, and adds that networking and presentations at the AAC annual meeting can help kick start those conversations.
“It’s incredibly important for OSMA to be able to access funding like GF2 and OFIP,” she says. “It enables us to take on large projects to benefit the entire sector like our ethnic project which involved processors, producers, retail, and farmers markets; results were shared provincially as well as nationally with the Sheep Value Chain Round Table.”
Source: Meatbusiness