Four Lambton County farms, including one from Enniskillen Township and one from Plympton-Wyoming, are among 55 regional award winners of the Premier’s Award for Agri-Food Innovation Excellence.
An awards ceremony honouring local winners was held June 6 in Strathroy.
The Lambton winners are:
• Al McColl Farms, Plympton-Wyoming: The McColl family not only automated its turkey farm, they made it into a state-of-the-art production facility fitted out for maximum efficiency.
A number of improvements over the years have meant increased biosecurity, decreased labour, more eggs laid, reduced energy use and better income. The business has a flock of 3,600 breeding hens and the barns have natural ventilation, automated feeding systems, compact fluorescent lighting and more. Biosecurity is maintained since everything is connected so no one ever needs to go outside.
A new facility, which has gone through all the development stages, is being built and will mean even greater achievements: 50 per cent more birds using only 10 per cent more labour than the original operation.
• Steve Vokes, Enniskillen Township: You would think farming on flat land would be easy but Vokes, who crops on more than 2,000 acres in Lambton County, knows every terrain comes with different challenges.
Flat land needs several municipal ditches to provide outlets for farm drainage. But keeping drains clean and functioning can be expensive and time-consuming for farmers and municipalities. Vokes created a solution in his own farm shop. His excavator device is based on “wicking” principles and involves directly wet-rolling the surfaces of unwanted vegetation with herbicides. This targeted approach prevents spraying herbicide to other plants.
By modifying his excavator, Vokes can easily access both sides of the ditches from one location by “rolling” along the vegetation, since pulling out weeds and woody growth by the roots could destabilize the banks. This one-man show pays huge dividends with operator safety and maintaining clear, stable ditch banks.
• Hog-Tied Farms Ltd., Thedford:
A U.S.-based ventilation system that John VanEngelen modified to meet his own hog operation’s needs is lowering production costs while improving air quality, increasing growth rates, and making barns safer and more environmentally friendly.
Twelve fans support 16 rooms at the facility compared to the one to three fans per room in traditional hog barns. His system has also shown the pigs are ready for market in 15 per cent less time than in more traditional systems. VanEngelen has hosted many farm tours and at least eight other barns in the area have been built using the same technology in the last six years.
• MacKellar Farms, Alvinston: When Jacob MacKellar was looking for a value-added product to supplement his 3,000-acre cash crop operation, he chose edamame — a type of soybean harvested in the pod right before it reaches the “hardening” stage.
It is a popular food in Asia and increasingly, in North America it is consumed as a snack or as a vegetable dish used in soups or processed into sweets. This non-traditional crop replaces imports and provides excellent returns.
Industry representatives project a 500,000 pound market in the next few years, and McKellar will be ahead of the pack with a planned harvest of 100,000 pounds in 2011.
“Ontario farmers are on the cutting edge. I am proud to recognize the hard-work and dedication to innovation of our local farmers who do so much to provide us with the good things that grow in Ontario and support our rural communities,” said Lambton-Kent-Middlesex MPP Maria Van Bommel.
The Premier’s Award for Agri-Food Innovation Excellence program recognizes and rewards outstanding innovations developed by farmers, agri-food businesses and organizations.
Ontario’s agri-food sector is one of the province’s leading industries, contributing more than $33 billion annually to the economy.
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