Canada - RFQ-CA-2025-1-037 - Farmer perspectives on best management practices in the Lake Simcoe watershed

Description

There is a concern that farmers in the Lake Simcoe watershed in central Ontario are not adopting environmental BMPs or taking advantage of applicable government support programs to the same extent as their peers in southwestern and eastern Ontario. This project is intended to understand why this is, what key factors differentiate farmers in this region from others and suggest modifications to programming that could better support farmers and environmental outcomes in this region.This project is to include: a brief review of the scientific and grey literature on farmer motivations to adopt environmental Best Management Practices, co-development of detailed research questions and methodologies with local agricultural influencers, and a series of four focus groups before planting season begins in April 2025. These focus groups should be supplemented by at least 25 farmer interviews focusing on communities or commodities which were under-represented in the focus groups. The preliminary results of this research would be presented to farmers in a second series of focus groups in late 2025 or early 2026 for their feedback, with additional interviews conducted as needed to address any questions that emerge from those meetings.Concurrent with this proposed project is a second project underway by the Lake Simcoe RegionConservation Authority, University of Waterloo and Toronto Metropolitan University to model the environmental benefits of agricultural best management practices in the Lake Simcoe watershed, under current and future climates. The intent is to run these two projects concurrently, such that the initial focus group meetings in April 2025 will inform the modelling study, by helping to select the portfolio of Best Management Practices to include in the model. The second set of focus group meetings in late 2025 will share preliminary results from both the modelling and this proposed sociological research.  The expectation is that sharing this information may both influence farmers to think deeply about the future of environmental management on farms, as well as provide a venue for farmers to suggest innovative Best Management Practices which might be effective at addressing emerging environmental concerns, to be included in revisions to the model in 2026.

Opportunity closing date

20 February 2025

Value of contract

to be confirmed