Directed by the Council. Executed by the Staff.

NFU-O Regional Council members are responsible for setting the strategic direction and making high-level decisions about the organization. The NFU-O staff are tasked with implementing and executing the day-to-day operations of the organization.

Max Hansgen and Orlando Martin Lopez Gomez visit an urban farm in Toronto.

Our Staff

Krista Long with basket of seeds in her backyard.

Krista Long

Executive Director

Krista is a passionate advocate for farmland protection, ecologically viable farming practices, and local, equitable food systems. She has over 20 years experience in the not-for-profit sector with a variety of organizations including the Canadian Organic Growers, the Waterloo Region Food System Roundtable, and the Ontario Farmland Trust. She brings her experience in fundraising, policy, research, and program development to her role at the NFU-O.

Dave Thompson with cherry blossoms.

Dave Thompson

Farm Labour & Special Projects Manager

A modest backyard gardener and former slinger of banana bunches, David has a lifelong respect for the labour required to bring food to the table. David is an experienced community organizer and researcher with a PhD in Canadian history. He is passionate about building grassroots, people-centred social movements that are dedicated to sustainable local farming, cultural and social diversity, and economic equality and security. He believes growing food is a political act. David was the lead researcher and writer of the July 2021 NFU-O publication, Reframing the Farm Labour Crisis in Ontario.

Briana Vanular holding basket of young onions.

Briana Vanular

MEMBERSHIP and local support coordinator

Briana is an experienced farm worker and researcher with a Master’s degree in Environmental Assessment. She operates a small market garden in Sudbury, ON growing vegetables and flowers. Briana has previously worked with the NFU-O as the Land Access and Protection Coordinator, and is passionate about land access and farmland protection, the shift to environmentally considerate farming practices, supporting diversity in farming, and maintaining strong farming communities and localized food systems across the province. 

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Peachtree Boucaud

regional agridiversity Coordinator

Andrea Boucaud, "PEACHTREE," is an advocate for and supporter within the grassroots organizing and community development spaces. She has worked within the community development and arts spaces for over 20 years. Peachtree advocates for all things "GREEN," focusing on land re-connection, beekeeping/ bee supporting, seed saving, access to land, development of community gardens, farming, farmers markets, green employment, herbal medicines, resource supports for underrepresented peoples and all ways food and land intersect with equity and representation within Black communities. Peachtree is a mother, daughter, social justice advocate, an ancient soul, and an Indigenous African woman in the Diaspora, re-learning how to reconnect with the land and grow good food and medicines every day.

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Jessica Tong

Land Access coordinator

Jess (she/they) is a first-generation, young, queer farmer. She has familial roots in China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Scarborough, ON. After studying agriculture, Jess worked on several farms throughout Ontario. Alongside her partner, she started and operated a small market-garden that sold at Farmers’ Markets, a Food Co-op and through a small CSA program. She has experience leasing land, growing via incubatorships as well as purchasing/stewarding (and losing) farmland. Jess comes into this work with the intention of building meaningful relationships with the land, nourishing community connections and uplifting intersectional food sovereignty movements. These intentions are grounded by the past and present work already being done by amazing communities beyond her.

Our Regional Council

Max Hansgen in front of many potted plants.

Max Hansgen

NFU-O President & Region 3 Coordinator

Max works with his wife Shelagh in their market garden called Earth’s Mirth just outside of Lanark Village in eastern Ontario. Earth’s Mirth grows vegetables to sell at the Almonte Farmers’ Market and for a food box program. His first paying job was harvesting and processing garlic on a large organic farm in the area. For two years after high school he worked as a paid intern/apprentice on a bio-dynamic farm. There he found a lifetime interest in sustainable farm practices by helping tend to pigs, goats, diverse vegetable crops, and by working with horses. For the past 15 years Max has worked at Kiwi Gardens where he currently manages production of ornamental perennials, maintenance of display gardens and retail sales at the nursery. Max has been selling Kiwi Gardens’ plants through farmers markets for many years.

Ken Bassindale in a corn field.

Ken Bassindale

National Board Member

Ken and his wife Lisa farm 530 acres of corn, soybeans, wheat and hay as well as cover crops in Haldimand County. He has a 25 cow/calf operation of Polled Herefords and he also runs an apiary under the name KBee’s. He has been raising chickens—for both meat and eggs—for the past few sesasons. He is a member of the EFAO and has been working toward regenerative practices on the farm as well as a holistic approach to management. He still manages to muster donning the pads for some recreational hockey and enjoys spending time with his four grandchildren.

Claire Perttula

Claire Perttula

National Board Member

Claire Perttula (she/her) started farming in 2017 and worked on organic vegetable and meat farms in the Kawartha Lakes region of Ontario for several years. Working with cows, chickens, pigs, ducks, and horses, running market boots and helping with CSA drop-offs, Claire really found a love for farming. Currently, she manages a 2-acre community farm in Scarborough, Ontario and coordinates a staff team working on agriculture training programs and food justice projects in the neighbourhood. Claire is also passionate about food policy and has a masters degree in public policy, specializing in economic and environmental policy, and is a PhD student at York University researching farmer-led policy and planning frameworks around the farm succession crisis.

Rav Singh holding some seedlings.

Rav Singh

Rav Singh

youth advisor & ViCE PRESIDENT

Rav is a new and young farmer in Mississauga. She runs a food and climate justice organization called Shade of Miti and specializes in growing okra and bitter melon. Rav started as an urban farmer and environmental educator and focuses on climate resilient farming.

Orlando Martin Lopez Gomez in an apron.

Orlando Martín López Gómez

BIPOC Advisor

Orlando oversees FoodShare’s food growing projects across the city – turning under utilized schoolyards, hydro corridors, and parks into vibrant and productive urban farms and community gardens. Orlando is passionate about food justice, and community leadership, and provides lots of resources and support for communities to design, implement, and run their own growing and composting projects. He is a trained agronomist with an incredible depth of knowledge in all aspects of growing food.

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Linda Laepple

Women's Advisor

Linda has experience in many different farming sectors, including as a farm worker for 11 years on a large cash crop, dairy and sport horse breeding farm in Ontario and as a relief worker in Germany working for the farmers health insurance looking after farm families during illness or death. After her marriage, Linda returned to Canada with her husband and family and started a mixed organic farm which is still going strong after 26 years, growing grass fed beef, potatoes, grains and forage. Recently the management has transitioned to the next generation. Linda strongly believes in preserving farming at a human scale and the need to engage the next generation of farmers at an early age by networking and giving credit to skills learned with the ultimate goal of farming becoming a skilled trade in Canada.

Roger Rivest in front of a white wall.

Roger Rivest

DIRECTOR-at-Large & TREASURER

Roger grew up on a mixed farm in Staples ON. He graduated with a Food Technology degree from St. Clair College. He started transitioning one farm in 1987 & that farm was organic certified in 1990. He then transitioned and certified an additional 100 acres for the next 6 years, and started a CSA in 1991 through 1993. He started two successful businesses, Roger Rivest Marketing and Nature Lane Farms Organic Fertilizer, both of which closed when he retired in 2018. A year into retirement Roger got bored, and built a greenhouse and expanded his garden to two acres to supply health food stores and restaurants in Chatham and Wheatley. He raises pastured chickens—for both meat and eggs. Roger is also a long time member of COG and was a Board member of EFAO.

Brendan Grant with his young son, who is standing on a hay bale.

Brendan Grant

DIRECTOR-at-Large

Brendan Grant and his wife Marcelle Paulin own Sleepy G Farm along the north shore of Lake Superior outside of Thunder Bay, where they produce certified organic vegetables and beef from a small heard of Shorthorn cattle. A strong advocate of regional food systems, Brendan has spent 15 years building a highly productive farm in a region with significant climate limitations and a modest agricultural history. Brendan built an on-farm vegetable storage facility that enables the farm to wholesale and direct market vegetables to local consumers, nearly year-round. Brendan asserts that farming is a professional occupation, and that the key to food sovereignty in the future is to get more farmers in the field now!

NFU Ontario Accredited Farm Organization Drawing Woman with Chickens - Flat Edge

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NFU Ontario Accredited Farm Organization Drawing Woman with Chickens - Flat Edge