In a joint press conference on Wednesday, Ontario’s Agriculture Minister Lisa Thompson and Liberal MP Tim Louis — standing in for federal Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food Marie-Claude Bibeau — announced the two orders of government are committing a combined $68 million to make Ontario’s farms more productive and resilient.
The investment includes the Resilient Agricultural Landscape Program (RALP), a five-year program making $56.7 million available to farmers completing resilience projects such as reducing tillage, creating water retention ponds and other efforts to reduce their overall greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon.
An additional $7 million investment is being made in the On-Farm Applied Research and Monitoring program (ONFARM), a four-year research program supporting practices that promote soil health and water quality across Ontario.