TORONTO - The kids are barely back in school and harvest season is just around the corner, but in Ontario's beleaguered agriculture sector, election season means it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

Farmers have been showered with a flurry of government-funding announcements of late, and the latest -- an expanded tax exemption for agriculture workers -- has Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Geri Kamenz humming Christmas carols.

"The tune I could not get out of my head for the rest of the day, and I kid you not, was `It's (Beginning) To Look A Lot Like Christmas,''' Kamenz said last week.

"There has been just a whole pile of announcements targeted at agriculture.''

While the timing is clearly linked to the Oct. 10 election, the focus on the attention-starved sector marks a "stark difference'' from the 2003 campaign, Kamenz said.

"They've waited . . . but they're delivering and that is significantly different than any election I've been involved in the past.''

Equally tantalizing promises from the Progressive Conservatives and the NDP suggest politicians are finally waking up to the importance of agriculture to the economy, he added.

Agriculture is the No. 2 economic driver in Ontario, second only to the auto industry, and helps employ about 650,000 people once the food from the province's fields makes its way through several industries and into supermarkets, Kamenz said.

But with all three parties vying for rural support, expect to see tractors, corn fields and farmers themselves as common props on the coming campaign trail.

"One of the things I've learned is that there's no job that requires a person to be more resourceful or more flexible than farming,'' Premier Dalton McGuinty said during a recent news conference in Picton, east of Toronto, where he drove a tractor and rubbed elbows with local farmers.

"To do it well you've got to be an expert businessperson, a skilled mechanic, an electrician, an engineer, sometimes a veterinarian and the list goes on and on.''

All three parties have announced plans designed to help farmers manage risk in those years when it's impossible to turn a profit because of factors like low market prices, foreign subsidies, and a higher Canadian dollar, energy prices and interest rates.

During a farm-themed news conference earlier this summer, New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton promised to take some pressure off the family farm.

"Major corporations couldn't and wouldn't carry that kind of risk; they'd try to offload some of it on to government, and yet today we expect individual farm families to carry all of that risk,'' Hampton said. "It's simply wrong.''

All three parties have also pledged to better promote Ontario-grown produce and to encourage shoppers to buy local.

Kamenz hailed Conservative Leader John Tory's plan to ensure that food imported from other countries meets Canada's tough standards.

"Canada has the highest food safety standards of any civilized country in the world, but Canadians don't recognize that, so we're starting to position Ontario agriculture as the safest food choice,'' Kamenz said.

Botulism in carrot juice from California, spinach tainted with E. coli and the closure of the Hershey chocolate plant in Smiths Falls, Ont. after salmonella was found in an imported ingredient illustrate how vulnerable consumers can be to foreign food, said Kamenz.

Tory said he got the point after browsing through a selection of dozens of different types of apples at a grocery store and having a hard time figuring out which were Canadian.

"A lot of these apples coming from other places are not sitting on these store shelves on a level-playing-field basis.''

"It is just not fair to have our farmers growing apples in good faith to the rules we have in place . . . and then turn around and let in truckloads of apples from China, where perhaps they have no regard for our rules at all.''

Kamenz said he won't officially endorse any party but he's happy that all the leaders seem to be taking the concerns of the agriculture sector seriously.

"Parties recognize the needs, the economic stress that the industry has been in for the last three years, and recognize that it really does take some strategic investments to reposition the industry as a profitable secure industry for the future,'' he said.