Every year, the Quebec Farmers’ Association offers deserving students pursuing studies in agriculture scholarships through its charitable foundation – The Warren Grapes Agricultural Education Fund.

Since the first winners were announced in 1999, the QFA has awarded 155 scholarships. And last year, at the organization’s annual general meeting, six more names were added to the list of recipients.

Here are the 2024 winners:

Sonia Auger: Sheis a second-year student at the Farm Management and Technology program at McGill University’s Macdonald Campus in Ste. Anne de Bellevue. She claims to have been working on her parents’ dairy farm since the age of 5. This is a farm her grandparents ran, and her great-grandparents before them in the town of Ste. Françoise de Lotbinière in the Centre du Québec region. She intends to one day help run the farm, but before then also aims to do a major at McGill’s Agro-Environmental Sciences program, and become an agronomist.

Sheena Ben-David: She is asecond-year FMT student at Macdonald Campus. Early memories of her grandparents’ garden, an interest in choice quality food ingredients in preparing meals and the COVID-19 pandemic experience seeing the abrupt drop in accessibility to an array of these quality ingredients fuelled her interest in greenhouse food production. In 2022, she and a partner purchased 75 acres and launched a not-for-profit incubator operation for new farmers.

Aiden Velthius: A third-year student in the FMT program at Macdonald Campus, his family runs a dairy-cash crop operation in eastern Ontario. He describes growing up on a family farm as “a gift.” His plan is to return home and be one of the successors to the family business.

Massimo Malorni: He is also anFMT student. Growing up, he spent his summers on his grandparents’ farm in Italy, where he helped care for livestock and learned how to harvest grapes. Now, his aim is to bridge the gap between old and new. As he says, “combining the wisdom of previous generations with the technological advancements of today” to foster a more sustainable future for agriculture. Agriculture, stands at a pivotal moment, he believes, and he is eager to be part of its transformation toward a more sustainable and equitable future.

Alice Charlebois: As second-year FMT student from Coteau du Lac, this is her first experience at an English educational institution.She did not grow up on a farm, but rather in a farming milieu. She has worked for other farmers. Now, she intends to pursue her studies to become an agronomist, with an eye to possibly starting her own lamb operation, an interest she has dabbled in.

Florence Bolduc: She is another example of a non-farm kid who has taken a keen interest in agriculture, working for about three years now on a large dairy farm in St-Stanislas-de-Kostka, where she has obtained first-hand experience working with a large herd and all that goes into that.Her aim is to continue her studies to become an agronomist.

The Warren Grapes Agricultural Education Fund was created in 1998 with the aim to promote agricultural education among the English-speaking community in Quebec.

The fund was named after Warren Grapes, who was a past president of the Quebec Farmers’ Association.

He grew up on a farm in Sawyerville, Quebec, in the Eastern Townships. And for a time was the president of the Townshippers’ Association. He was also a graduate of Macdonald College.

He became a teacher, offering a course in agriculture at Champlain Regional College in Lennoxville. And taught for many years.

The fund was named in his honour after his death to highlight his dedication to agricultural education in Quebec.