$60,000 Awarded to Local Projects Supporting Agricultural Innovation in Abbotsford

We’re excited to announce the recipients of this year’s Agriculture Enhancement Grants!

This year, we hosted our annual cheque ceremony in the courtyard of the Gur Sikh Temple, a national historic site and the oldest existing gurdwara in Canada. We are so grateful to the Khalsa Diwan Society for sharing this space with ACF for this year’s event.

We awarded a total of $60,000 to support of 2 projects supporting agricultural innovation in Abbotsford. Thanks to our partnership with the City of Abbotsford, the following initiatives are receiving an Agricultural Enhancement Grant this year:

• BC Chicken Growers Association – Poultry in Motion Trailer & Website Enhancement
  The Poultry in Motion Trailer Enhancement project is advancing Agri-Education by integrating state-of-the-art tech to adapt their trailer to deliver immersive virtual experiences to schools, fairs, and public events. They also wish to expand their website’s multilingual capabilities to reflect Abbotsford’s multicultural diversity.

• University of the Fraser Valley’s Food & Agriculture Institute – Agritech Pitch Toolkit Project
  This toolkit will be tailored to the specific needs of the agricultural industry in the Fraser Valley, which is smaller scale and more intensive than the agriculture found in innovation hotbeds such a Guelph and Calgary, requiring regionally specific approaches to solving problems. This project will directly support the creation of a local and regional agricultural innovation ecosystem by networking local entrepreneurs and stakeholders with interested venture capitalists and mentors.

Pictured to the left: Satwinder Bains, our Board Chair & Agriculture Grants Committee member, Mayor Ross Siemens, along with this year’s Agriculture Enhancement Grant recipients.

We welcomed recipients to receive their funds and take a moment to share their impressive work with those in attendance. At the event, Satwinder Bains, our Board Chair and member of the Agriculture Grants Committee commented, “We are excited to see projects that will advance our local agriculture sector while demonstrating agricultural innovation in unique and inclusive ways. Our partnership with the City [of Abbotsford] continues to provide significant opportunities for Abbotsford’s farmers.”

Areni Kelleppan, our Executive Director, noted that, “Thanks to a longstanding commitment from the City of Abbotsford, we have been able to award over $1.3 million in grants to Abbotsford’s Agricultural sector. Since 2013, ACF has supported projects from saki to saffron, strawberries to chicken, along with agri-tourism, drone technology in field management, robotic harvesting and so
much more. Our agricultural industry is innovative, adaptive, and creative. We hope to offer this funding now and for always to ensure a thriving agriculture industry in Abbotsford.”

Our Agricultural Enhancement Grants open in January of each year. Learn more about this program that is open to Abbotsford farmers, agri-tech producers, and research organizations conducting their work in Abbotsford here.