East Central Marginal Lands Initiative launches with cost-share funding for farmers
Posted: November 20, 2025
Categories: Funding Opportunities / GoodFoodBites
The East Central Farm Stewardship Collaborative is pleased to offer a new funding opportunity for farmers in East Central Ontario through the East Central Marginal Lands Initiative, with funding provided by Conservation Ontario through the Resilient Agricultural Landscape Program.
The initiative provides farmers with up to $16,000 in cost share funding across seven eligible categories focused on creating or enhancing natural features on marginal agricultural lands to cut greenhouse gas emissions, boost carbon sequestration, improve soil health, reduce nutrient losses and enhance ecological goods and services, like pollinator habitat and biodiversity.
To access funding, farmers must rent or own agricultural land in capability classes 4-7 in the Canada Land Inventory rating system, have a Farm Business Registration Number and complete their free Environmental Farm Plan through the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association.
Eligible projects include:
- Strip planting of perennial cover to create grassed waterways or to manage salinity within a field (includes terraces and farmable berms)
- Convert marginal and high-risk annual cropland to permanent grassland (or perennial biomass crops; includes establishment of native or tame forages)
- Creation or widening of buffers (trees or shrubs) in agricultural fields adjacent to surface water sources, as well as other actions to protect existing riparian areas such as reshaping of edges and fields
- Establishment of pollinator strips or other perennial cover for pollinator habitat or other biodiversity purposes in fields or field margins of existing cropland
- Establishment of shelterbelts for farmyards, livestock facilities, and fields as well as intercropping with trees on annual cropland
- Planting of trees or shrubs on marginal or high-risk cropland
- Wetland restoration and enhancement, construction of new wetlands
Projects are eligible for 80% funding up to a maximum of $16,000 depending on the practice, helping farmers to offset the cost of materials and implementation.
This project is funded in part by the Governments of Canada and Ontario under the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (Sustainable CAP), a five-year, federal-provincial-territorial initiative.
To learn more, interested farmers can visit ecfarmstewardship.org/east-central-marginal-lands-initiative, or contact project coordinator Katie Maitland at Farms at Work at 705-743-7671 or education@farmsatwork.ca.