The Ontario Greenhouse Alliance (TOGA) is a strategic partnership of Ontario’s greenhouse vegetable, pepper and flower growers.

BACKGROUND Historically, the Ontario greenhouse industry as a whole has evolved as a collection of co-existing silo operations and organizations.

In the spring and summer of 2001, the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, Flowers Canada (Ontario), and Ontario Pepper Growers, with the support of Agri-Food and Agriculture Canada CANADAPT program commissioned the Ontario Greenhouse Industry Issues Resolution Study.

Upon reviewing the findings and recommendations of this report, it became apparent to a number of industry stakeholders that in order to overcome the historical challenges to cooperation, what was needed was a new organizational vehicle where all industry organizations and stakeholders could meet on common ground. It was felt that only through this new, neutral vehicle, could the industry as a whole realize its fullest potential.

The Ontario Greenhouse Alliance (TOGA) was a proposed vehicle to bring together the historically silo operations of various greenhouse industry stakeholders onto an equal playing field to achieve those outcomes which they less effectively achieve by their current independent approaches.

TOGA’s vision is to provide an infrastructure and approach that will integrate all the current resources and future potential of the Ontario greenhouse stakeholders into a community and international marketplace presence, with the synergy and standards to be a world leader in greenhouse operations.

Achieving these standards will directly maintain and promote the retention and increase of the industry’s over 35,000 jobs directly and indirectly related to the greenhouse business in rural Ontario.

TOGA will contribute to the viability of rural, community and industry stakeholders; improve our environmental quality, and create a body of knowledge, which can serve as a reference standard for other rural initiatives.