General Mills among others will contribute $50,000 to help expand the number of organic farmers in Western Canada.
The region has received a total of $1.2 million from the federal Western Diversification Program. The money is going toward a four-year program called Prairie Organic Grain Initiative, which is being rolled out this spring by western Canadian Organic Growers association with a cost of $2.2 million.
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This initiative is supposed to help enhance the capacity of organic growers in the west so they can better compete with the global organic food market in terms of quantity and quality. In addition the money will also be used to up production, quality and profitability.
The reason General Mills is investing in POGI is to pursue and further enhance the quality and availability of organic grains by 2018. It represents a unified effort to increase access to organic grains especially for General Mills.
This is following the company’s announcement earlier this year claiming it will almost double its natural and organic sales by the year 2020.
