OFT is excited to announce that we are the chosen recipients for the Ontario Land Trust Alliance’s (OLTA) “Award for Excellence” in 2020!
Every year, OLTA chooses a land trust in Ontario who is “raising the bar for excellence in conservation or community engagement”. This year, OFT was honoured to be chosen as that land trust.
The OLTA Awards Committee was impressed by OFT’s ongoing outreach efforts into the agricultural community, and particularly by the joint initiative from OFT and National Farmers’ Union – Ontario (NFU-O) that addressed the farm succession crisis. At the beginning of 2020, OFT and NFU-O hosted several workshops across Ontario to address this crisis. These workshops were aimed at educating farmland owners about farmland preservation, and providing farmland owners with the resources they would need to create a written succession plan. These workshops also aimed to bring together farmland owners and farmland seekers and allow them to network and connect. In total, these workshops reached 115 attendees in various rural communities across Ontario, and allowed us to gain valuable insight into the farm succession crisis in Ontario.
OLTA also recognized OFT for our work to align ourselves with the highest Canadian Land Trust Standards and Practices within one year.
OFT would like to extend both gratitude towards OLTA for the recognition, and congratulations to the other individuals in the land trust community that were recognized at this year’s gathering.
If you would like to learn more about the OLTA awards, click here for a summary.
Read more about the farm succession crisis here, and more about how our farmland easements can help in succession planning here.