Funding shortfall closes Erie Innovation's doors

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

The organization that became synonymous with creating new opportunities for agriculture in southcentral Ontario, Erie Innovation and Commercialization, is closing its doors at the end of this month.

John Kelly, vice president of Erie Innovation, says they’re closing because they failed to get core, sustainable funding from the federal government through its Growing Forward 2 agricultural policy framework. Kelly says they needed about $1.4 million to operate for another five years. Several municipal governments and organizations, such as the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association (OFVGA), had committed funding for the next five years of operation.

Erie Innovation had lined up 12 partners – the same number as it had for the previous four years of its existence, although some were different organizations, he says.

Still, most of the core funding for the next five years, about 75 per cent, was to come from the federal government. Previously, Erie Innovation had obtained a similar proportion of its funding from the federal government through the Agricultural Adaption Council as part of the Canadian Agricultural Adaptation program (CAAP). The national CAAP program ends in 2014.

There is an opportunity to get federal government money for collaborations between industry and associations as part of Growing Forward 2, the new national agricultural policy framework that started April 1, but the new program doesn’t provide core funding, he explains. “We could do projects” and submit applications for funding for the projects “but you can’t run an organization on project funding,” he notes.

Kelly says he’s not criticizing the federal government. “We were very grateful to get that funding” for the initial four years. Erie Innovation was formed in 2009. The Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association was instrumental in setting it up.

Erie Innovation was a partnership of industry, academia, government and non-government groups. Its mandate was to diversify agriculture and food opportunities in Ontario’s southcentral region.

The closure will leave a big hole in agriculture, Kelly says.

Ray Duc, chair of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, says when Erie Innovation was first set up it wasn’t designed to have a long-term mandate. “It was set up to look for opportunities.”

But OFVGA was “hoping it would continue because there was some good work coming out of Erie Innovation,” he says, adding it’s “something that we’re going to miss.”

Kelly says “we’ve done many different events to support growers and various industries. Some of the projects we have are ongoing and they will survive post Erie Innovation and Commercialization.”

Several new farm groups have emerged from the work done by Erie Innovation, including the Ontario Lavender Association and the Ontario South Coast Wineries and Growers Association. Both of those groups are doing well and will continue, he says. The Ontario Hazelnut Association is just starting but it will also “do well.”

Erie Innovation also provided background help and support for the establishment of the Ontario Hops Growers Association.

Kelly says he doesn’t know what will happen to Erie Innovation’s work dealing with individual growers and entrepreneurs. “There are some resources across the province that can pick up some of the things that we do but it’s really not the core mandate of any of the organizations. We were fairly unique in what we did.”

Erie Innovation also did marketing, public awareness and networking along with project management work for groups such as the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association. Erie Innovation had been involved in a biomass project with those two groups. Erie Innovation also did other work, such as studying opportunities for southcentral Ontario fruit and vegetable growers to access markets, conducting a study on new uses and users for the federal Delhi Research Station that was closed by the government in March, and performing an analysis for the development of an individual quick freeze facility for the southcentral region. Erie Innovation also helped the facility open for business.

“We were successful in bringing more than $4 million in research and development and infrastructure investment into the (southcentral) region,” he says. BF