Generally, Canadian agriculture – particularly Ontario’s agricultural landscape – is characterized by declining numbers of farms and increased acreage per operator. According to Statistics Canada and Agriculture and Agri-food Canada (AAFC), family farms are most affected as their numbers have been dwindling over the past years. Profitability and access to local distribution networks can indeed partly explain these circumstances, but the fact that farmers are aging and the lack of succession can also be considered as even more significant factors.
As a result, Le Conseil de la coopération de l’Ontario prepared, organized and provided awareness-raising workshops, followed by training sessions about cooperative models and their application to rural economic issues such as succession planning, access to local markets, processing of products, and reduction in cost of production. They brought together many participants to understand the issue and benefits of succession planning in their business management processes.
Le Conseil de la coopération de l’Ontario prepared, organized and provided awareness-raising workshops, followed by training sessions about cooperative models and their application to rural economic issues such as succession planning, access to local markets, processing of products, and reduction in cost of production.
Through these 14 workshops, they raised awareness and mobilized numerous representatives from the socioeconomic and institutional spheres; they became more familiar with issues and challenges surrounding farm succession and business succession outside the family, and particularly with job and business creation opportunities in rural agriculture and other sectors.
Participants were mostly producers and potential collective entrepreneurs from rural communities (70.1 %); among those were 125 producers, consumers and rural interest groups (147, or 38.69%).
Project end date: Jan 31, 2013
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