Ontario Agriculture

The network for agriculture in Ontario, Canada

AALP Class 13 North American Study Tour Day 3

July 7, 2010 – Today was a step back in time as we continued our tour through north-central Ohio. Our first stop was the Mansfield water treatment plant. Not specifically a historical site, but the plant manages to treat and pump 9 million gallons of water per day to supply a local population of 50,000 people with few technological upgrades since the 1980s. We definitely saw evidence of the recession where plant closures such as the GM plant to the North causing a 33% drop in the Mansfield population. We were lucky because they never give tours but made a special exception for us giving access to their testing labs, settlement ponds and sand filtration tanks.

Next our bus took us back to the 1940’s/50s on some winding roads to the Malabar Farm State Park. Malabar Farm is a 900-acre farm that was the home of Louis Bromfield, a Pulitzer-prize winning author. Our tour guides Denise and David gave us a wagon-ride to Bromfield’s 32-room farmhouse which has been preserved by the state into a heritage museum. The house tour gave us a glimpse into the Bromfield’s glamorous lifestyle where we saw photos of movie stars who visited Bromfield including Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (who were married right at the house). Bromfield was also an innovator in conservation farming practices such as terracing, no-till and conservation tillage and rotational grazing. With rotational grazing the cow does her own harvesting and manure spreading. We saw many of Bromfield’s practices being used as we drove through the Amish community.

After our afternoon in the sun we hopped back on our air-conditioned bus for a sleepy ride out to the heart of Amish country, Berlin, Ohio. We were joined by our tour guide La Vonne DeBois and our evening’s host David Miller, an Amish farmer and ordained minister who shared information about the Amish culture. It was a real treat to hear the stories David shared about his family and way of life. We were surprised to see that some Amish use electronic milking equipment and tractors. The trick, we heard, is to know where to draw the line. For example, the Millers are new order Amish and they can use a tractor for transporting the bales - but not in the field for cultivating or harvesting. David really emphasized the importance of family, faith and community to their culture. We ended our day with a delicious home-cooked meal prepared and served to us at the Miller’s farm by the family. This was by-far the best meal of the trip (chicken, roast beef, mashed potatoes, a delicious peanut butter spread and three kinds of pies!), and we were honoured at the end to hear two songs from David and his family, one in English and one in German. We climbed back in to the bus, full and happy, and made our way to Akron for the night.

John Borland, Matt Langford and Katija Morley - AALP Class 13

Views: 35

Comment

You need to be a member of Ontario Agriculture to add comments!

Join Ontario Agriculture

Agriculture Headlines from Farms.com Canada East News - click on title for full story

Climate change worries Canadian farmers: poll

A poll released Dec. 11 suggests that Canadian farmers worry more about the impacts of climate change than they do about input costs and market prices for canola, corn, wheat and cattle. The poll of 858 producers from coast to coast determined that farmers rank climate change as their No. 1 concern. “When farmers and ranchers were asked an open-ended question—at the very beginning of the poll—about the top challenge for the agricultural sector for the next decade, climate change was the number one answer,” says Farmers for Climate Solutions, a group, that as its name suggests, is focused on climate change mitigation and adaptation within Canadian agriculture. The organization hired Leger, a market research firm, to conduct the survey. It was done by phone from Aug. 8 to Sept. 8. The headline question from the poll asked farmers to identify the top challenge for the agriculture sector over the next 10 years. The results? 17.9 per cent said climate change. Input costs were 17.2 pe

Livestock producers are warned to watch for a larval disease

A disease that lives off the flesh of living mammals has been confirmed in Chiapas, Mexico. New World screwworm (NWS) is a parasitic larval disease of warm-blooded animals where the female fly will lay eggs near an open wound and the larvae can infest the wound and cause significant infections. NWS can infest livestock, pets, wildlife, occasionally birds, and in rare cases, people. Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) Associate Director Dr. Lisa Becton said the confirmation comes on the heels of a report in October from Guatemala where the first case was identified. “This larva and the fly were identified at the Mexican border in cattle that were coming through in Guatemala and so this is a very significant concern of especially grazing animals but really of any warm-blooded animal,” she said. “It does cause destruction when a wound gets infected.” Animals can exhibit very painful draining wounds that don’t heal. It has a negative impact on production and can include mortality o

Durum Ending Stocks Tighter from November

Agriculture Canada has whittled down its 2024-25 durum ending stocks estimate from last month, although it remains up from a year earlier. Monthly government supply-demand estimates released Thursday showed durum ending stocks at 650,000 tonnes, down 150,000 from the November forecast but still well up from the previous year’s 407,000. The reduction reflects Statistics Canada’s Dec. 5 crop production report which put this year’s Canadian durum crop to 5.87 million tonnes, down from the federal agency’s previous estimate in September of just over 6 million. However, this year’s durum crop is still 44% larger than the 2023 harvest, 20% above average and the sixth largest on record. Ag Canada trimmed its domestic use estimate slightly to reflect this month’s downward revision in the durum crop, but left its export forecast unchanged from last month at 4.9 million tonnes, up from 3.558 million in 2023-24 but still below over 5 million in 2022-23. At $325/tonne, the average expecte

Alberta Canola Seeks Grower Support for First Service Charge Increase in 20 Years

Alberta Canola is urging canola growers to approve its first service charge increase in over two decades. The proposed change—from $1 per tonne to $1.75 per tonne—will be put to a vote at the organization’s Annual General Meeting on Jan. 22, 2025. The increase is critical to addressing financial challenges and ensuring Alberta Canola can continue supporting farmers amid rising operating costs, declining production, and evolving industry pressures. A Challenging Landscape “Alberta Canola was built by farmers, for farmers, and that hasn’t changed in our 35 years,” says Karla Bergstrom, Executive Director of Alberta Canola. “What?has?changed is the world we operate within.” Bergstrom highlights the dual challenges of reduced public research funding and increased regulatory demands. Meanwhile, consumers, increasingly removed from farming, are demanding greater transparency in food production. With over 90% of its operating revenue coming from its service charge, Alberta Canola has face

BMO underscores trends affecting Canadian agriculture

The Bank of Montreal has published an in-depth analysis of nine key trends. Here’s a topline of several economic indicators and what to expect in 2025. ???????

© 2024   Created by Darren Marsland.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service