The Ontario government has pledged a one-time $10 million investment to launch an industry-led risk management fund supporting a provincewide cattle feeder group’s signature brand of beef.
The Ontario Cattle Feeders’ Association will administer what’s to be called the Ontario Corn-Fed Beef risk management fund.
Few details about the planned program were available Tuesday, although the province said the program “will help stabilize pricing for participating producers, encouraging further growth in the sector” and will also support the province’s “local food” strategy.
The program was described as “an innovative approach to business risk management” which “supports the marketing of a premium Ontario product, all the way from the farm to the family dinner table” and will use a “professionally-managed fund to co-operatively benefit an entire sector.”
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The Woodstock, Ont.-based OCFA represents about 90 producers who combined produce over 55 per cent of the fed cattle in Ontario, or about nine per cent of the cattle marketed each year in Canada.
OCFA executive director Jim Clark said Tuesday the Ontario Corn-Fed Beef program will mark “a new way of thinking about business risk management tools.”
The province’s release Tuesday outlined the general idea behind any risk management program, in that it’s meant to help “protect farmers by helping them manage risks from income declines due to events beyond their control” and functions “like insurance to provide support to farmers when input prices are high and market prices are low.”
The association’s members, Clark said, “appreciate the support of the province in helping to build a more stable, sustainable market that benefits everyone — producers, processors, retailers and consumers.”
The OCFA’s Ontario Corn-Fed Beef brand, launched in 2001, is now featured in 241 Loblaw and affiliate stores and 120 other retail outlets in the province. Producers taking part in the Corn-Fed Beef branding program are required to follow “stringent quality assurance protocols,” according to the OCFA.
“This partnership builds on our introduction of the Local Food Act,” Premier Kathleen Wynne said Tuesday in her role as agriculture minister. “Ontario Corn-Fed Beef is a model of the way forward — helping producers market their products based on where or how they are made.”
Related story:
Ontario reboots ‘local food’ legislation, March 26, 2013
