Day 1: Toronto & Niagara Falls
Arrive in Toronto and travel to Niagara Falls, an iconic landscape shaped by water, trade, tourism, and agriculture. As students enter one of Canada’s most productive agricultural regions, they can begin considering the foundational role geography plays in food systems. Fertile soils, climate, transportation corridors, and access to major urban markets all influence what can be grown, how it moves, and who benefits from its production.

Day 2: Niagara Region, New Hamburg & Kitchener
Begin the academic program in the Niagara Region, where fertile soils and a distinctive microclimate support a wide range of fruit, vegetable, greenhouse, and specialty crops. Visit a local agricultural operation to consider how place, climate, labor, and consumer demand shape regional production.

Continue to a large-scale certified organic vegetable farm near New Hamburg. Growing more than 40 vegetable varieties and managing packing and distribution on site, the operation offers a useful lens for examining the complexity of organic agriculture beyond the field. Students can explore the relationship between soil health, crop diversity, certification, pest management, food safety, seasonal labor, and supply-chain coordination.

Day 3: Waterloo Region, Guelph & Kitchener
Today considers how agriculture is shaped by experience, research, and technology. Begin in Waterloo Region with a visit to an Old Order Mennonite farm, where orchard production, maple syrup, beef cattle, and mixed farming provide an introduction to diversified agriculture and longstanding rural traditions. Consider how a community’s values shape decisions about technology, labor, land use, and the pace of change, and how diversified production can help farms manage uncertainty.

Continue to Guelph for a visit with a livestock genetics and reproductive-technology company. Learn how artificial insemination, embryo transfer, in vitro fertilization, and genomic selection influence dairy and beef production. The experience creates an opportunity to consider how genetic technologies can support animal health and productivity while raising questions about access, ownership, genetic diversity, and the ethics of intervention.

Later, visit The Arboretum at the University of Guelph, a major collection and research landscape connected to the Ontario Agricultural College. Through work such as its Elm Recovery Project, the Arboretum demonstrates how conserving genetic diversity can help ecosystems and agricultural landscapes respond to disease and environmental change. Students can consider the connections between biodiversity, conservation, land-use pressure, and the long-term resilience of food-producing regions.

Day 4: Stratford & Ottawa
Travel through Southwestern Ontario, where broad acreages of grain and field crops reveal the scale and infrastructure behind everyday food. Visit a family-owned cash-crop operation near Stratford to explore the often-unseen work that happens after harvest: drying, storing, grading, transporting, and marketing grain.

The visit highlights how farmers manage uncertainty. Weather, energy costs, commodity prices, storage capacity, transportation networks, and international trade can all affect a farm’s decisions long after crops leave the field. Depending on final scheduling, an additional visit may introduce poultry, pork, egg, or arable production, offering another perspective on the regulations, biosecurity measures, and supply systems that protect animal health and food safety.

Continue to Ottawa for the evening.

Day 5: Eastern Ontario & Montreal
Today focuses on the interconnected systems that allow a farm to manage both crop and livestock production at scale. Visit an integrated dairy and cash-crop operation, where milk production is linked to thousands of acres of field crops, grain storage, drying, feed management, and commodity trading.

Students can examine how decisions in one part of the farm affect every other part. Crop yields influence feed supply; storage capacity shapes marketing options; animal health affects labor and profitability; and weather can alter an entire year’s plans. This experience offers a concrete example of agriculture as a complex business and biological system that must balance production goals with financial risk, environmental conditions, and long-term resource management.

Continue to Montreal, a major cultural and commercial center whose surrounding agricultural regions supply food to millions of people.

Day 6: Montreal & Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue
Travel to McGill University’s Macdonald Campus Farm in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, where research, teaching, and working-farm operations come together. The campus includes dairy, poultry, horticulture, agronomy, and large-animal facilities, creating a practical setting for considering how agricultural research moves from theory into daily practice.

Explore how researchers and students are addressing questions related to animal welfare, crop production, soil and water management, climate adaptation, and food-system sustainability. The visit also provides an opportunity to consider the role universities play in shaping agriculture’s future: What research is prioritized? How is success measured? How do scientific findings become accessible to farmers, communities, and policymakers?

The afternoon may include an additional regional agricultural visit, offering further context for Quebec’s food and farming landscape.

Day 7: Rawdon, Yamachiche, Saint-Albert & Montreal
Today offers three distinct perspectives on how farmers create value, respond to markets, and use technology to shape the future of food.

Begin at a bison farm and interpretation center in Rawdon, where grazing animals, educational exhibits, and a visitor trail connect livestock production with regional history, landscape, and public engagement. Consider how agritourism and direct connections with consumers can influence public understanding of food and farming.

Continue to a specialty livestock farm near Yamachiche raising wild boar, sika deer, and bison. With on-site processing, a smokehouse, and a farm-based dining experience, the operation demonstrates how producers can retain more value by connecting breeding, raising, processing, branding, and hospitality. Enjoy a regional lunch featuring local products.

Later, visit a large-scale robotic dairy operation near Saint-Albert. Automated milking systems and detailed herd data offer a very different model of agricultural innovation. Students can consider how robotics may affect labor, animal monitoring, consistency, productivity, and the economics of dairy farming, as well as who has access to the capital and technical expertise such systems require.

Day 8: Montreal & Departure
Conclude the program with final farm visits in the Montreal region, selected to complement the group’s academic interests. Depending on availability, experiences may focus on poultry, pork, egg production, field crops, or another area of Quebec agriculture.

As students prepare to depart, they can reflect on the diverse agricultural models encountered across Eastern Canada. From family farms and organic fields to research centers, integrated commodity operations, specialty producers, and robotic dairies, the journey offers no single answer to the question of how agriculture should evolve. Instead, it reveals the choices and tradeoffs behind the food systems that sustain us.