Projects receive Greenbelt funding

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

The Greenbelt Fund has recently provided grants to several projects designed to boost sales of Ontario-grown foods.

In total the Fund has awarded $569,000 for five projects from Greater Toronto-Area organizations. They are:

• Bamford Produce, $120,000, for marketing local fruits and vegetables to large food service companies and retailers. This project will increase markets access for 10 to 20 small and medium-sized growers and increase sales of Ontario-grown produce by $1.5 million.
• Ryerson University, $75,000, for creating a market for local foods on its Toronto campus and engaging the Ryerson community in a new food strategy.
• The Toby Brand Corporation, $105,000 for developing and marketing a range of individually quick frozen Ontario vegetables, focusing on dark leafy greens. Projected sales of the new frozen products are more than $300,000 a year.
• University Health Network, $124,000, to investigate barriers preventing the network from providing local food to their patients, staff and visitors throughout their seven sites. The network will also create a strategy to increase their local food procurement by five per cent by 2015 and by 25 per cent by 2018.
• Zast Foods Corporation, $145,000, for creating and marketing a line of individually, quick frozen Ontario fruit and vegetables, including salsas, peach slices and asparagus, to ensure year-round supply. Local food sales will increase by $1 million by 2015 due to the availability of these new frozen foods.

Kathy Macpherson, vice president of the Greenbelt Fund, says there are two streams of funding in their grant program. One is for projects designed to get more Ontario food into broader public sector institutions, such as universities, hospitals, colleges along with municipally run long term care facilities and child care centres. The other is for projects that try to get small and medium-sized farmers greater market access to the “wholesale, mainstream market.”

Criteria the Fund uses to assess applications include sustainability, knowledge transfer and economic impact. Macpherson says they’re looking for projects that will continue on after the grant money is finished. A lot of grant recipients “just carry on and do other work themselves without a grant. They carry on and do more.”

The real driver for both funding streams is “to help Ontario farmers. We want to know that at the end of the day there is an actual increase in local food that’s being bought,” she says. “People have to report on that at the end of their projects.”

The Greenbelt Fund is a non-profit organization supporting and enhancing the viability, integrity and sustainability of agriculture in the Greenbelt and Ontario. The fund supports farmers and local food leaders to ensure more Ontario products are served and distributed through public institutions, retail and foodservice markets.

Since its launch in 2010, the Fund has handed out $8.2 million in funding for 89 projects, the Fund’s May 13 press release says. The funding has resulted in a projected return of $49.3 million, or a six-to-one return on investment for every dollar spent, the release says. BF