Farm & Food Care Tour 2017

Last week was Local Food Week, and some of our OHEA members had the opportunity to visit local farms and learn about how our food is grown and raised. The tour was hosted by Farm & Food Care Ontario with support from CropLife Canada, Turkey Farmers of Ontario and Greenbelt.

A big thank you to Michele McAdoo, Erin MacGregor & Heather Grebler for sharing their photos and information from the tour.

The morning started at Weber Turkey Farm where the group learned about turkey production in Canada and put on white suits (pictured below) to respect the bio security of the turkey farm. There are 180 turkey producers and 300 farms across the country. Canada produces 170 million kg of turkey meat each year, 80 million kg of that right here in Ontario!

Next they visited Vaughn Agricultural Research Services and learned about the development of new crop protection services (pesticides). After testing is completed on site, and at another site at The University of Guelph, Health Canada has the final approval for new pesticides. Something interesting that the group learned about pesticides - more often people get sick from E. coli on fruits and veggies from natural fertilizers (organic or otherwise) than from trace pesticides, so be sure to always wash your produce but organic doesn't always mean it's safer than non-organic!

​They also enjoyed a local lunch with an awesome centrepiece, pictured below.

Comment and let us know what you did to celebrate Local Food Week!