Have you checked out the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) resource for Specialty Crop Growers?
Specialty Cropportunities assists growers transitioning to production of new, specialty or non-traditional crops, providing a general overview of production information on a variety of specialty crops.
“OMAFRA field staff receive enquiries on a diversity of specialty crops each day,” says Evan Elford, New Crop Development Specialist with OMAFRA. “We created this specialty crop resource to assist growers in their preliminary search for information, making it as regionally specific and farm applicable as possible.”
Users can find their specific crop on an alphabetical list, or by simply clicking on one of the categories: Specialty Vegetables, Herbs, Specialty Fruits and Nuts, Industrial and Misc. Crops, or Field and Grain Crops.
A Crop Selection Tool will assist growers in identifying crops suited to their growing region and operation.
There is also information provided on general agronomics and business planning & marketing.
A regularly-updated specialty crops blog also offers more information and advice, with a recent post looking at Environmental Impacts on Alpha Acid Formation in Hops.
For further questions or to offer feedback on the resource, specialty crops contacts are provided.
The project was led by OMAFRA specialty crop staff and funded by Agri-Food and Rural Link. Wherever possible, research from Ontario-based institutions was used to create the crop profiles, with information from other regions incorporated when needed.
