Ontario farmers have been facing challenges of receiving quality and needs-based services due to a lack of coordination and functional networks among agricultural advisory service providers and farmers. Therefore, it is necessary to understand how the current pluralistic advisory system in Ontario facilitates partnerships among relevant actors to provide quality service, and thus drive adoption by the target sectors and individuals in a timely manner. This research aims to map out existing advisory service providers, their networks and partnership mechanisms, and assess organizational capacity, quality of service and the effectiveness of the methods used. This research employs stakeholder analysis, forums, surveys, and workshops and draws on the ‘best-fit’ approach toward assessing pluralistic agricultural advisory services.
This research aims to generate two key benefits:
  1. enhanced understanding of the effectiveness of current advisory services for the adoption of sustainable management practices, and
  2. development of a strategy to improve pluralistic advisory service networks in Ontario.

This project is funded through the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance‘s Knowledge Transfer and Translation Program from 2019-2021. The research is led by Dr. Ataharul Chowdhury in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development at the University of Guelph. The project is supported by the following partners: Livestock Research Innovation Corporation, Ontario Federation of Agriculture, Vineland Research and Innovation Centre.