Everdale

Everdale Environmental Learning Centre

Everdale is an organic farm and environmental learning centre. Everdale’s purpose is to teach sustainable living practices and operate an exemplary organic farm. Everdale staff do this by demonstrating, in practical ways, the enormous promise of sustainable agriculture, renewable energy and alternative building methods. Hands-on educational experiences – including tours, school programs, workshops and apprenticeships for all ages, cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds – are provided on the fifty-acre property.

Specialists in straw bale and cob construction, canning and preserving, farming and organic gardening facilitate learning on the farm in Hillsburgh, Ontario. The farm site includes livestock, a model home, classroom, forests and meadows. Everdale is promoting the health of the land while forging partnerships that in turn foster community health.

What do you think are the most pressing food and agriculture issues facing Ontario?

Farmland preservation.

Assisting a new generation of ecological farmers to become established on the best farmland in Canada.

What policies could best address these issues?

Farmland preservation and conservation (keeping land in good health).
Make developers and municipalities that convert farmland contribute to a Farmland Preservation Fund to be managed by land trusts.

Preserve farm properties, but facilitate cooperative ownership and management to enable small-plot, bio-intensive agriculture.

Incentives for longer-term farm leases and support lease-to-own programs.

What role do you see Sustain Ontario playing to address these issues?

Sustain Ontario is vital coordinating body to enable a cluster of organizations and businesses to develop a unified set of policy recommendations, and link with governments, especially the Province, to put these recommendations forward.