Farmers have until Sept. 16 to complete the questionnaire
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) is asking farmers to complete a survey about local selling opportunities.
The organization is giving producers until Sept. 16 to fill out the Cultivating Local survey.
“We’re looking to better understand farmers that are already or who want to get involved in direct-to-consumer sales, agritourism and value-added agriculture,” Danielle Sharman, a farm policy analyst with the OFA, told Farms.com.
Questions farmers can expect to answer include “what are your top challenges and benefits with selling agricultural products directly to consumers?”
The survey is part of the OFA’s Cultivating Local: Seizing Opportunities to Grow Ontario’s Local Agri-Products Sector project.
As part of the project, the OFA will host nine free online workshops between November 2024 and February 2025 to provide key experts and resources for Ontario producers.
The results from the survey, which are kept confidential and only reported in aggregate form, help inform the workshops and resources the OFA is developing.
Workshop themes include selling at farmers’ markets, selling online and leveraging social media platforms, and selling local products in rural and remote Ontario.
The OFA ran similar surveys in 2019 and 2022, which helped guide the organization to launch the Cultivating Local project.
“We’re seeing this trend of more interest and more motivation to look into these topics” Sharman said. “And as much we talk about food, there’s so many more opportunities when you talk about Christmas trees, or flowers, or beauty products.”
Indeed, Ontario has seen an increase in the number of farms reporting direct sales of agricultural products to consumers.
The 2016 Census of Agriculture counted 7,474 Ontario farms reporting these kinds of sales. In the 2021 ag census, that number increased by 223 to 7,697 farms.
“We know there was quite an uptake and an interest in selling local and direct during and after COVID,” Sharman said.
Nationally, 24,510 farms reported direct to consumer sales in the 2016 ag census. In the 2021 ag census, that number rose to 25,917 – an increase of 1,407.