Celebrate with AGCare!

Jackie Fraser, Executive Director, AGCare

AGCare is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year. Looking back over the past twenty years, what exactly have we achieved? The task that brought us together in the first place, addressing public concern over agricultural pesticide use, led to the development of pesticide safety training for farmers. That bit of proactive thinking has now been held up as a reason for exempting agriculture from the current proposed provincial pesticide ban. AGCare was instrumental in creating the Ontario Farm Environmental Coalition (OFEC), a coalition that still exists today and has become the voice for all of Ontario’s farmers on environmental issues. As part of OFEC, we helped create the highly successful Environmental Farm Plan program, which is now available across the country. We have helped organize several waste agricultural pesticide collection programs, providing farmers with the opportunity to get rid of any unwanted pesticides at no cost to them. In 1992, we worked with government and industry partners to launch the Ontario Pesticide Container Recycling Program.

When crop biotechnology became available to Ontario growers in 1996, we expanded our mandate to include communicating to the public about farmers’ use of genetically modified crops.

Over the years we have been involved in many proactive communications projects with the Ontario Farm Animal Council (OFAC). This began with the “Thank You” campaign back in 1998, which featured ads in major daily newspapers highlighting the ways in which Ontario farmers are caring for the environment. We now share office space, staff, co-host annual meetings and media tours, work on urban media projects, and promote agricultural awareness with OFAC. We are
working together on “Agriculture Hits the Trails”, a project funded by the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation designed to inform trail users about how farmers protect and enhance the environment.

We’ve created many resources for use in schools by partnering with various groups and Ontario Agri-Food Education (OAFE). We’re working with the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association (OSCIA) to promote the Environmental Farm Plan to both farmers and the general public. Through this project
we created a poster and activity insert for OWL magazine, which has been enthusiastically received.

Last year, AGCare launched “Caring for the Land”, a report on the environmental achievements of Ontario’s farmers over the past twenty years, to celebrate Canadian Environment Week. The launch included a website and information brochures for the public. Media uptake was excellent, ranging from CBC radio to globeandmail.com and Harrowsmith magazine, reaching over one million people.

AGCare remains a humble organization. Our core budget is very modest, but we now use our parent organizations’ investment and multiply it by six through grants from OMAFRA, the Agricultural Adaptation Council, and the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation, as well as project management revenue. This allows us to do so much more on behalf of our parent organizations.

AGCare and OFAC, which is also turning twenty this year, are celebrating our achievements at a gala event as part of our annual general meeting. Mark your calendars for the evening of April 17 and plan to join us at Guelph Place. We are having a reception and dinner, complete with a presentation celebrating our two decades of achievements and musical impersonator, Mat Gauthier. Tickets are $50 per person and can be ordered from www.agcare.org or by calling Heather at 519-837-1326.

Please join us as we celebrate twenty years of moving forward with AGCare!