Presented at: GSEF2016 Montreal

Organisation: Eco-Ethonomics Inc. (Private or hybrid enterprise), Greenbelt Fund (Government and public agencies)

Date: September 8, 2016

Presenter: Mr. Ryan Turnbull (Founder and President), Mr. Franco Naccarato (Program Manager)

Contacts: ryan@ecoethonomics.ca, fnaccarato@greenbeltfund.ca

Summary: 

Greenbelt Fund is a branch of the Greenbelt Foundation, a non-for profit organization put in place and funded by the Ontario government to protect agricultural land and support the Local Food Economy in Ontario. Greenbelt Fund supports both local food businesses and community-food initiatives, like the Ontario Fresh platform. The OntarioFresh platform is an online tool that is assisting approximately 2700 users to achieve great visibility, improve market access, shorten their supply chain, bridge the urban rural divide by ridesharing their local food and increase the amount of local food grown and consumed locally. An extensive consultation process and some key findings on Ontariofresh V2.0 will be presented focusing specifically on three needs for improvement, namely: additional streamlining, marketing and the addition of a distribution route map tool. Eco-Ethonomics partners with the Greenbelt Fund, among other projects, in the planned extension of the OntarioFresh Platform with a highly innovative tool for Inter-regional Trade Optimization of local food distribution and logistics. This “RideShare for Local Food” concept represents a technological innovation, aimed at democratizing the local food economy and hence at protecting the agricultural land, led by Greenbelt Fund, in collaboration with the government and many cross-sector partners.