The Greenbelt Farmers' Market Network's interactive marketing campaign utilizes positive messaging to address issues around transparency, relationship building, affordability, and accessibility. The tagline: Fresh. Local. Fair: Trust in Farmers’ Markets uses survey results to re-enforce the elements most appreciated about farmers’ markets. Featuring arresting visuals with bold statements, the campaign also makes use of humor and colloquial language that applies to multiple age groups while maintaining a focused and direct message of trust-building. 

Read the Fresh. Local. Fair. Farmers' Market marketing campaign user guide

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 Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Alliance (GHFFA) project, Serving Up Local, is a partnership with Durham and Halton regions, and the City of Hamilton, to increase the amount of local foods offered in their facilities with a special focus on long-term care homes. To help build the capacity of other regions wanting to take on a similar initiative they have generated case studies, a project manual, and communications pieces which are available on their website.

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

Check out Sustain Ontario's New Urban Agriculture Toolkit!

The toolkit covers a wide range of urban agriculture topics, including: raising hens, growing on private property, school garden, community garden, beekeeping, farmers' market, and more!

Sustain Ontario has developed a toolkit geared towards Ontario municipalities and broader public sector institutions looking to initiate sustainable procurement policies and programs in their regions. Learn more about the Local Sustainable Food Procurement For Municipalities and BPS on Sustain Ontario's Website.

St. Joseph’s Heath System created a guide to help organizations and institutions conduct food origin audits. The guide includes steps involved in food origin audits, details, and examples for each of the steps, as well as useful tools, such as a template for a letter of endorsement.

Read Conducting Food Origin Audits: A Step-by-Step Guide 

Here is all the information you need to plan a successful and rewarding farm tour as an engagement and education piece for your local food program. A well-rounded tour includes visiting a produce farm, farm-raised meats shop, a dairy or cheese facility, and providing a meal, showcasing local menu items.

Read Farm Tour 101