In order to increase the consumption of local food and impact the local economy, Rural Oxford Economic Development Corporation developed a set of thirteen canning classes, four PD Day Camps for youth, and eight culinary classes to teach canning and preserving fresh local food. Hundreds of participants signed up and classes sold out. Learn how to create and promote these popular courses in your community by reading the toolkit.

Read the It's In Our Roots toolkit to creating popular local food canning and preserving classes

For their local food literacy project, Forest Meets Farm, Roots to Harvest created and led a series of four hands-on, experiential workshops designed for four local high schools. The workshops explore the many aspects of our local food system, highlighting foraging, hunting and fishing, farming and preserving. The youth learned to celebrate the wild and cultivated foods of Northern Ontario as the project engaged community partners and indigenous knowledge keepers.

Find the toolkit with lesson plans and recipes here

Watch the first webinar on the project: An Overview and The Curriculum

Watch the final webinar on the project: Evaluation Findings and Toolkit

Everdale's “A School Focused Work Book to Build a Micro-Farm” is a practical guide and toolkit for learning about and planning a Micro-Farm, and  for facilitating discussion between parents, community members, school faculty and administration.

Read A School Focused Work Book to Build a Micro-Farm

The Greenbelt Fund and the Nutrition Resource Centre (NRC) at the Ontario Public Health Association (OPHA) collaborated on a research project, in partnership with the Food Innovation & Research Studio (FIRSt) at George Brown College (GBC) and the Helderleigh Foundation, and released its final report: Current State of Local Food Awareness and Utilization in Meal and Snack Programs Targeted to Young Children in Ontario.

See also their infographic: Opportunities for Local Food and Food Literacy in Child Care and Student Nutrition Programs

Mohawk College has developed an online course in Local Food Procurement designed for professionals working in a foodservice setting at public institutions to grow their local food and sustainable procurement knowledge, and learn strategies for identifying, procuring and promoting local foods. Learn more about the course and register online at: mohawkcollege.ca/local-food-procurement

From November 2-11, 2018, the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair celebrated 96 years of getting ‘agri-cultured’, showcasing the best in agriculture, local food and equestrian competitions from across the country.

Victorian Order of Nurses Windsor-Essex through their community support program Ontario Student Nutrition Program, created a series of local food literacy materials for introducing students and their parents/caregivers to local Ontario produce. Each Tasty Ontario Tuesday for 8 weeks a new local item was featured.

Each week’s materials contain:

• storage and selection tips, nutrition info
• kid-friendly healthy recipes
• trivia, local farm pics, and games!

Find the 8 week set of Tasty Ontario Tuesdays materials here

Informed by industry research conducted through a targeted literature review, in-depth interviews with stakeholders from across the college foodservices supply chain, and a province-wide student survey, this report identifies a set of common challenges to local food procurement in the Ontario college system, and lays out a series of opportunities with recommended actions that will support increased local food procurement at Ontario’s 24 colleges.

Read the Research Report: Increasing Local Food Procurement at Ontario's 24 Colleges

Mohawk College has created a scalable, transferable toolkit that includes a step-by-step guide, resources, along with tools to increase local food procurement at Ontario’s 24 colleges. While it's focus is on colleges that use third-party foodservices operators the ideas and initiatives described may be applicable to self-operated foodservices and other institutions throughout the public sector.

Read The Local Food Framework for Ontario Colleges: A step-by-step guide to bringing more local food to Ontario colleges

Meal Exchange's Campus Food Report Card: Local Food on Ontario University Campuses measures the success of Ontario universities in providing locally-grown food - as rated by students, campuses themselves, and the physical food environment. It includes a review of initiatives by campus foodservice providers to provide local food to students.

Read the Campus Food Report Card - Local Food on Ontario University Campuses