Agriculture Hits the Trails

AGCare (Agricultural Groups Concerned About Resources and the Environment) and the Ontario Farm Animal Council (OFAC), in partnership with the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation have launched the Agriculture Hits the Trails project, featuring signage along walking and cycling trails throughout the Greenbelt in Ontario. 

AGCare and OFAC along with other project partners have developed a series of six (6) interpretive signs about farming and environmental stewardship that have been installed along trails across the Greenbelt in Ontario. The signs host information on Environmental Farm Plans, the use of conservation tillage to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, how farmland provides us with more than food, how farmers are protecting water quality, the importance of buying local food and how farmland provides wildlife with habitat.

The interpretive signs will be installed along the Oak Ridges Trail and the Elora Cataract Trailway.  Other project partners include Conservation Ontario, Credit Valley Conservation, the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority, the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, Conservation Halton, the Hamilton Conservation Authority, the Bruce Trail Association and the Oak Ridges Trail Association.

Farmers are the environmental stewards of the land and are doing great things to help protect and preserve our environment, including Environmental Farm Plans, nutrient management plans, crop rotation, minimum tillage and other stewardship projects.  Each sign has been designed to make hikers and other trail users aware of their surroundings and what farmers are doing to protect our environment.  Many of the trails within the Greenbelt in Ontario are located on or near farmland. 

Copies of the signs are available by clicking here.

News Release - click here

Media Advisory - click here

Project Backgrounder - click here

Wrapping around the Golden Horseshoe, the Greenbelt is 1.8 million acres of potential to make Ontario a better place. Encompassing the Niagara Escarpment, the Oak Ridges Moraine, Rouge Park, hundreds of rural towns and villages and some 7,100 farms, Ontario's Greenbelt is the largest and most diverse in the world. 

AGCare (Agricultural Groups Concerned About Resources and the Environment) is the voice of Ontario’s 45,000 farmers who grow fruit, vegetables, and field crops on environmental issues.

The Ontario Farm Animal Council (OFAC) is the voice for animal agriculture, representing over 40,000 livestock and poultry farmers, associations and businesses on issues in animal agriculture such as animal care, food safety, biotechnology and the environment.

For more information about the project, please contact AGCare at 519-837-1326 or visit www.caringfortheland.com and www.agcare.org.