Communications & Producer Engagement

Ontario Beef Magazine

Ontario Beef was published five times in 2020 (February, May, August, October and December) and distributed to approximately 16,000 of BFO’s members, industry partners, MPs and MPPs. The magazine provides BFO members and industry stakeholders with timely information, updates on current industry issues, upcoming events, market statistics and more. We continue to update our circulation database to better reflect our active and current membership data, with the goal of ensuring all active members of BFO are receiving this publication. If you have had interruptions in receiving Ontario Beef, please contact the BFO office to verify your complete mailing address. Beginning in 2020, Ontario Beef is now also available digitally on the BFO website.

Bull-etin Board E-Newsletter

The Bull-etin Board e-newsletter was issued weekly to our subscribers in 2020. The e-newsletter captures the headlines of the week, news releases, upcoming events and weekly market information. If you would like to receive The Bull-etin Board in your inbox, please visit the homepage of BFO’s website to sign up.

Social Media

BFO is active on a number of social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Information is posted daily to our social channels. We appreciate our following, but are always focused on increasing our engagement and reach with our members.

Sharecost Program

The Sharecost Program continues to provide financial support to BFO’s local associations for their hosted producer and consumer engagement activities. In 2020, 26 local associations received a total return of just under $62,100. While COVID-19 prevented some events and programs from occurring, we did see a number of new and innovative engagement ideas take shape by the local associations. Qualifying producer applications in 2020 included drive-thru farm tours and educational workshops, while consumer activities included local beef promotions and drive-thru barbecues.

Partnership with Feed Ontario

In 2020, BFO provided our annual donation of $20,000 to Feed Ontario to purchase fresh ground beef. An additional $10,000 was also donated to support Feed Ontario’s COVID-19 Emergency Food Box program that created prepacked emergency food boxes with a week’s worth of food in one centralized location for food banks across Ontario. BFO is pleased to report $3,875 in cash donations was also raised after BFO challenged producers and consumers to rally together to support the Feed Ontario Food Box program. As a result, 403,000 emergency food boxes were packaged and shipped to every corner of the province to help alleviate the impact of COVID-19 for families in need.

In addition to BFO’s financial support for Ontario food banks, many local beef farmers continue to support their regional food banks and community programs across the province.

Sponsorship & Events

BFO continued to support a number of initiatives throughout 2020 despite the challenges of the pandemic:

• 4-H Ontario - Virtual Discovery Days

• AgScape

• Beef Industry Convention

• Beef Symposium

• Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario

• Fall Finale Beef Show

• Grey Bruce Farmers’ Week

• Ontario Federation of Agriculture Virtual AGM

• Ontario Forage Council

• Ontario Junior Angus Association Virtual Show

• Royal Agriculture Winter Fair

• University of Guelph, College Royal

Producer Engagement

To provide opportunities for producers to network and feel engaged within the industry, BFO’s producer engagement team had planned a wide range of activities for 2020. Early in the year, BFO was pleased to be part of another successful Beef Symposium conference at the University of Guelph, and the second edition of the Young Producer Development program held at the BFO AGM was well-received by participants.

However, the pandemic took a toll on many of the planned activities for the rest of the year. Our inaugural Feedlot Management School was to be held at the end of March, but obviously needed to be postponed. Likewise, our Beef Youth Development program, as well as the Cow-Calf Management School planned for August met the same fate.

We did, however, continue with online programming as much as possible, including our continued collaboration with OMAFRA and Ontario Sheep Farmers on three virtual Grazing Cover Crop sessions, and we hosted a couple of webinars in December for producers – one to provide an overview of Ontario’s Risk Management Program and one featuring Steve Kenyon of Greener Pastures Ranching Limited who spoke about the soil benefits of grazing cattle.

To address the health of our members, we launched an article series in Ontario Beef magazine and an accompanying webpage called Wellness on the Farm, which focuses on the overall wellbeing of farmers. As an extension of these efforts, in July we organized a virtual evening presentation open to all members with agricultural mental health advocate, Lesley Kelly, as the keynote speaker.

The last component of our producer engagement activities in 2020 focused on the development of a number of online resources.

We worked with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture to support their Feeding Your Future initiative, a program focused on agri-food jobs and training opportunities in Ontario. Filming was completed at a cow-calf and feedlot operation to highlight employment opportunities in the production sector.

We also provided financial support to the Quebec Beef Producers to develop a Cattle Transport Training Webinar for eastern Canada which will be used to help transporters, auction barns and their employees understand and comply with the new livestock transportation regulations.

Lastly, we launched a video series on calf clubs in January, 2021. The intent of these videos is to highlight existing calf clubs, how they work and encourage producers to view these clubs as a viable option to raise and market their animals.