Changes to Growing Forward 2 Ontario for Organizations & Collaborations

Significant changes have been made to the popular agri-funding program, Growing Forward 2 Ontario for Organizations & Collaborations, which covers up to 50% of eligible project expenses up to $500,000 grant funding per project.

The Agriculture Adaptation Council (AAC) has announced its next application intake period using these new guidelines, which has an application deadline of July 23, 2015 followed by an October 15, 2015 deadline. If you’re planning any multi-partner collaborative activities, please read on as grant funding could be available to support your inititiave.

Applicant Eligibility and Project Impacts: This stream of GF2 Ontario is specific to collaborations between industry associations, post-secondary institutions, for-profit businesses, and non-profits to help the Ontario agri sector:

  • Maximize labour productivity
  • Access new and emerging markets or retain and expand existing markets
  • Market products that meet buyer demand through adoption of assurance systems and/or adding value, such as agri-products and food for health
  • Use best business and leadership practices
  • Use energy, water and other inputs efficiently
  • Reduce and/or respond quickly and effectively to key risks
  • Be better able to adapt to climate change

Projects must be innovative and a focus is being placed on training, skills development, and assessment/planning based projects to help support the advancement of Ontario agriculture and agri-food sector.

Successful Projects:

  • Toronto Food Business Incubator won $760,000 on 1 project for the expansion of their incubator (read more), as well as winning on 2 more projects.
  • Chicken Farmers of Ontario won $799,522 to develop an ERP system utilized by the poultry industry called Chicken Business Operating System (CBOS) (read more).
  • Riz Global won $340,750 to developing a market readiness of Halal meat the value chain partnership creation (read more).

Project expenses cannot incur until the application is approved, but cannot occur after October 31, 2017 and include:

  • Goods, services, and all related shipping/transportation costs
  • Labour
  • Land rental for research purposes
  • Facility, equipment, or machinery rental
  • Communication materials including design, printing, translation, etc.
  • Travel, meal, and catering costs (if applicable)
  • Up to $100,000 in capital costs per project, including software, computers, office equipment, construction machinery 

Get Started: We will need to prepare a pre-proposal quickly to meet the July 23, 2015 deadline, so if you have any questions or would like to explore this funding opportunity in further depth, please reach out to me directly. 

 

*Article from Mentor Works Ltd.

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