RAWF to educate city folk about farming

The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair is going to put the emphasis on educating the urban public about agriculture this year.

“Get Agricultured hits at the core of our original mandate established almost 100 years ago,” said Charlie Johnstone, chief executive officer of The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair since 2015. 

“Everybody has an interest in gaining knowledge on food, agriculture and the richness of our environment, as well as the role these play in our lives,” he said.

“In many ways, The Royal is more relevant today than it’s ever been. Most importantly, it continues to offer education in one of the most memorable and enjoyable ways – through experience,” Johnstone said.

Burnbrae Farms is sponsoring a new culinary academy, there is a new Country Music Culinary Festival and a competition for craft beers and cider.

What remains the same are competitions to judge the best livestock, poultry, fruits and vegetables and the horse shows.

Ford promises natural gas for rural Ontario

Ontario Premier Doug Ford used opening day of the International Plowing Match and Rural Expo to announce the government’s plans to introduce a new Access to Natural Gas Act that would encourage partnerships between private gas distributors and communities to develop projects that expand access to natural gas. 

If the new legislation is passed, the Ontario government says it will work with the Ontario Energy Board to develop regulations to enable the program this fall.

“We have been pushing for the need for more widespread, affordable natural gas energy across rural Ontario, so this is encouraging news for the agricultural community,” said Keith Currie, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.

“Energy is one of the largest inputs on farms, and we need access to natural gas to help boost the competitiveness of rural Ontario communities, businesses and farms,” said Currie. 

“And natural gas is the single most important investment that will deliver a competitive edge to continue to drive growth in rural Ontario.”

Floods claim millions of chickens

Hurricane Florence flooding is wreaking havoc on farms in North Carolina.

Sanderson Farms issued a statement saying that 60 of the 880 broiler houses at its independent farms have been flooded, destroying about 1.7 million broiler chickens. 

About 30 farms housing approximately 211,000 chickens each are isolated by floodwaters and cannot be reached by feed trucks.

Purdue Foods and Tyson Foods both said their losses have been “minimal”, but they did not provide figures or any details.

The North Carolina Pork Producers Association reported that several manure lagoons have been breached and some others are topping up as rains continue, especially in the north-eastern part of the state.

But meat-packing plants have reopened.

Lasers chase away crop-damaging birds

Farmers in Argentina are using Dutch laser technology to counter bird damage to their crops, such as sunflowers, berries and grapes.

Bird Control Group of the Netherlands conducted successful trials and demonstrations on deterring birds with Agrilasers at agriculturalfields in Argentina. 

Local farmers decreased their crop loss by 70 to 90 per cent. 

The projects were sponsored by the Dutch government as a part of the subsidy scheme for demonstration projects, feasibility studies and investment preparation studies (DHI).

"In recent months we have been conducting trials with our Agrilaser technology in various regions of Argentina. We wanted to test the effect of our laser technology on different birds and investigate how we can increase the profitability of the local farmers", said Imre Knol, commercial director for the Bird Control Group. 

The company is the global market leader in innovative laser bird repelling solutions. 

The trials were done in collaboration with INTA, the only nationally and independently operating agricultural research center in Argentina.

New products from sweet corn

Mirexus Biotechnologies Ltd. has opened a $7.2 million-dollar facility in Guelph to extract PhytoSpherix from sweet corn.

The substance has many uses, including health care and cosmetics.

The 12,000-square-foot plant in the Hanlon Creek Business Park is based on research at the University of Guelph where PhytoSpherix was discovered. It has been trademark

Trump ups tariff war with China

United States President Donald Trump has slapped tariffs on another $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.

The tariffs begin at 10 per cent, but on Jan. 1 they more than double to 25 per cent.

The new tariffs are in addition to 25 per cent tariffs imposed earlier on about $50 billion worth of Chinese goods.

That means half of the goods imported from China now face tariffs.

It’s not yet clear what the Chinese will do, but their response to the earlier tariffs was tariffs on many U.S. products, including soybeans and pork.

That has hit Canadian farmers who have nothing to do with the U.S.-China trade dispute. The Chinese tariffs force exporters to either cut prices to sell to the Chinese or find other markets and that, in turn, has depressed hog and soybean prices.

Since both commodities trade freely across the Canada-U.S. border, there have been price declines in the Canadian soybean and pork markets.

Trump has promised U.S. farmers $12 billion worth of relief. So far the Canadian government has offered nothing, other than pointing to its existing AgriStability program that cushions declines in profits.

According to reporter Bob Woodward’s book, Fear, most of Trump’s economic advisors have strongly opposed his plans to impose tariffs. While the logic is on their side, Trump has remained defiantly in favour of tariffs.

His book also notes that Trump has been warned that 96.6 per cent of the U.S. antibiotics come from China.

It’s down to three in butcher competition

Three butchers have made it to the final round to select the Finest Butcher in the province.

The winner will be chosen Oct. 20 at The Meating Place at Blue Mountain near Collingwood.

The annual competition is organized by the Ontario Independent Meat Processors Association. The round that resulted in the three winners for the final round was held on the weekend at Halenda’s Meats in Mississauga.

The three are:

Brent Herrington, Herrington’s Quality Butchers, Port Perry, @butcherherri

Nicholas Matusiak, Halenda’s Meats, Oshawa, @HalendasMeats

Paul Kennedy, Nesbitt’s Meat Market, Lindsay, @NesbittsMeatMkt

“When the dust settled, everyone was a winner. We came together as an industry, celebrated our craft and had some fun in the process” said Franco Naccarato, OIMP executive director.

Competitors had 30 minutes to transform a fresh pork bone-in leg, bone-in butt, and bone-in loin, into merchandisable cuts of their choice, and were judged on the degree of difficulty/efficiency and skill level in boning, trimming and cutting, primal cut utilization and financial performance.