Energy independent farming (Part one): Wood Biomass Energy

In this series of articles we explore options to produce on-farm green energy in the form of fuel, heat and electricity to reduce one of the largest costs of a farm business as well as to work towards ending farm dependence on fossil fuels

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Tree planting, Northumberland County, 1930
(Image: http://www.northumberlandcounty.ca/)

Before the green revolution extended into Ontario and traditional rotations were supplanted with more intensive cash crops, most farms here in eastern Ontario kept woodlots. Once the harvest season was over and the frost rolled in, woodlots provided off-season work for farmers, a source of firewood for heating, lumber for building, and even as a cashcrop for sale to sawmills or papermills during the boom years of the Canadian lumber trade.

While many such woodlots were merely selectively cut native forest, as early as the 1910s the government of Ontario began subsidizing and encouraging the establishment of tree plantations on farmland to prevent erosion and desertification. Such tree plantations could be established on land otherwise unsuitable for farming, and provided higher yield and higher quality lumber than unmanaged woodlots and were often used in multigenerational rotation with pastures after clearcutting. This system had very significant benefits - both economically as on off-season supply of income and ecologically in preventing dessication of both farmland and riparian land, as noted by an Ontario Department of Agriculture report on reforestation in 1908:

"The policy of putting these lands under forest management has many arguments in its favour. It will pay as a financial investment; assist in insuring a wood supply; protect the headwaters of streams; provide breeding ground for wild game, provide object lessons in forestry, and prevent citizens from developing under conditions which can end only in failure."

However, times have changed. Farmers no longer primarily rely on wood for heat given the affordability and availability of fossil fuel heating, they no longer fell trees for their own building lumber given the quality and availability of bought lumber and the increasing popularity of non-wood structures on farms, and the lumber trade has slowly died, with prices being too low to interest most farmers. Tree plantations, which take 2-3 decades before any return can be realized, are now mostly the domain of dedicated logging businesses or are established as permanent windbreaks with no direct value returned to farmers.

A 140MW generating station in Vaasa, Finland powered by
a mix of forestry waste and dedicated energy wood produced
by farmers (Image: http://www.power-technology.com/)

The same is not true elsewhere in the world. In northern Europe and the British isles, tree plantations are making a comeback in an unexpected form - energy wood. With increasing interest in renewable fuels many former fossil fuel generating stations are being converted to "biomass" generating stations which are fuelled by wood chips.

In Europe, however, farmland is a precious and limited resource. Turning over farmland to a crop which will only yield once every 20-30 years is infeasible given the price received by farmers for chipped wood fuel. European farmers have instead had to refine woodlot management techniques that produce significant amounts of woody biomass on a short rotation. These techniques, now known as Short Rotation Forestry (SRF) and Short Rotation Coppice (SRC), mainly supply large generating facilities in Europe. Eslewhere in the world, the mixing of tree plantations of cropland, known as Agroforestry is a popular system for the production of energy wood. Here in Canada though these techniques are mainly of interest for the on-farm generation of heat and/or electricity, especially here in Ontario given the economically lucrative Feed in Tariff system.

Short Rotation Forestry

7 year old hybrid white willow
(Image: http://silvanusforestry.com/)

While traditional tree plantations take up to 30 years to yield a harvestable amount of lumber, in recent years there has been developments of hybridized fast-growing tree species that can reach maturity in as little as 5-10 years. While such trees don't yield useful lumber for sale to sawmills, they can produce high yield woody biomass on a short rotation enough rotation to be a profitable farm crop for farmers. While the most popular species for this system are hybrid birch and hybrid poplar, which are harvested at 8-12 years of age, shorter growth hybrid willow can also be used for round wood production, harvestable in as little as 5 years. Such plantations can also yield valuable crops for farmers; white willow bark is a valuable natural pain relief tea which retails for up to $8.80/lb, birch can yield birch syrup which retails for up to $250/L, and poplar remains the most common tree for sale to the pulp and paper industry.

Short Rotation Coppice

Coppice sprouting from a willow stool
(Image: http://www.willowbasketmaker.com/)

"Coppicing" refers to a traditional English woodlot management technique used on some types of fast-growing trees of felling a tree, and then leaving its stump in the ground to sprout new smaller trunks which can then be later harvested during winter up to 10 times before the stump must be removed and the tree replanted. Traditionally SRC was used to harvest willow and hazel for basket-weaving, with dozens of farms in the UK still producing traditional coppice products today. However since coppice can be harvested once every 2-4 years, allowing for an incredibly short rotation without replanting after every cutting, SRC has also become the dominate form of wood energy production in the British Isles and the Nordic countries. The most common tree used for this purpose is hybrid willow planted in double rows, though hazel and hybrid poplar are also used planted in single rows.

While the woody biomass produced in SRC far outyields SRF to the acre, harvest is a challenge. Harvest of coppice is a tedious task that can only be done in the short period between complete leaf loss (and thus beginning of dormancy) for the tree and the first major snowfall, typically November to early December. While small plantations can get away with hand harvest, larger plantations use a variety of different mechanized harvest systems:

New Holland forage harvester with 130FB
coppice header (Image: www.wnif.co.uk)

Chip harvesting: The most widely used system, this one-pass harvest has the highest productivity and is preferable for the largest plantations. Essentially a modified forage harvester is used to cut the coppice into wood chips while harvesting, both smaller pull-type models and headers for self-propelled forage harvesters are available. While the most productive in the field, this method has a drawback. The wood chips have above 50% moisture content at harvest, and if left to store in open heaps will ferment and develop bacteria which can lead to losses of over 28% of the fuel value of the wood. In order to maintain the value of the chips long-term it is essential to build indoor storage facilities, preferably ventilated, and even then the chip will lose heating value moreso than other harvest methods stored outdoors. Additionally the chip system is more useful in shorter rotations (2-3 years) than longer ones, as larger coppice will lead to more frequent jamming of the harvester.

Salixab coppice billet harvester
(Image: http://agroenergie.ca/)

Billet harvesting: Using a modified sugarcane harvester, these self-propelled systems cut the coppice into 20cm or 10cm long logs. These "billets" store much better than wood chip, with fuel value losses of as low as 3% after a year's outdoor drying. However the billet harvest system is an expensive investment compared to other harvesting machines, and harvests less acres/hour than chip harvesters. Another drawback is the need for a second harvesting step: once the billets are dried and ready to be used, they have to be chipped using a stationary wood chipper. Additionally the system still loses some fuel value to fermentation compared to whole stem harvesting.

Anderson BioBaler
(Image: http://www.landwirt.com/)

Whole stem harvesting: These harvesters simply cut the coppice at the base and bundle the whole stem for later processing. While their productivity per acre is much lower than the other two systems, whole stem bundles have zero loss in fuel value even when stored outdoors in uncovered heaps for periods of over a year. As with the billet system, the bundles must be chipped before use. While not as productive for larger plantations this system is recommended for smaller plantations due to the ease of storage. There are three different styles of machine for whole stem harvesting; the first is the BioBaler, manufactured in Québec, which relies on using a 200hp+ tractor mounted with a ram to knock down the coppice and feed it into the trailed baler which produces round bales of coppice stems.

NB Stemster Mk III Harvester
(Image: http://www.nordicbiomass.dk/)

The second is a trailed harvester which can be hauled by a 75hp tractor manufactured in Denmark that cuts the coppice and lays it into a trailer, this trailer can then eject the pile of willow once full. Though the BioBaler system is the more productive of the two, the high-power tractor requirement may be a barrier to most interested producers, and the equipment to shred the biobales will need to be larger (and more costly) than a smaller wood chipper sufficient for the Danish system. The Danish system is also preferable for those doing longer rotations (3+ years) as it can handle thicker coppice than other
harvesters. Another similar piece of equipment is Weremczuk Aronia Cutter

Weremczuk Aronia Cutter
(Image: http://aroniaharvest.com/)

manufactured in Poland for an 80hp tractor. This machine is designed for the clearcutting of aronia berry plantation, which coppice readily and need to be re-cut every several years to continue producing. Unlike the Danish harvester which collects the coppice into a trailer, the aronia cutter knocks it into strait lines beside the rows. From there it has to be collected using a front loader or by hand. The aronia cutter may be more suitable to those who intend to do wide row spacing for co-use as pasture or for those who intend to store their coppice in the field and use it as needed, the heaps of whole stems will store outdoors with no loss in fuel value.

Naava Grip 1500 25-E Feller-Buncher
(Image: http://www.canadianbiomassmagazine.ca/)

The third is an energy header feller-buncher, attached to either tractor-mounted forestry arms or dedicated log wagons, are designed to grab, cut, and move coppice as whole stems. This is the least productive harvest system in terms of acres/hour, but it is also the cheapest, with a tractor mounted feller-buncher coming in at around $9,000, and with other headers these machines can be useful for other farm tasks as well. Also, like the Danish trailed harvester, these felling heads can accomodate thicker coppice from longer rotations.

Agroforestry

Ginseng among a tree plantation in Maryland
(Image: http://www.hardingsginsengfarm.com/)

Both SRF and SRC systems can be integrated with field crop production for mixed-use farming known as "agroforestry" instead of dedicating land to biomass production alone. Tree plantation strips within a field provide natural windbreaks that generate economic value while preventing erosion, particularly important for those of us with erosion prone sandy or muck soils. Tree plantations also provide shade to crops which require it, which would otherwise require costly artificial netting. Agroforestry may be of particular interest to ginseng producers due to the shade produced and the fact that ginseng is produced on a similar rotation length to SRC and SRF.

Another use for coppice plantations is as pasture for sheep. In England, traditional coppice plantations for basketry are usually stocked with sheep to "clean" the plantation of any grassy overgrowth before harvest. And the coppice is of benefit to the pasture too - in poorly drained or compacted clay and muck soils the deep tree roots can help improve the productivity of pasture. As well, nitrogen fixation by the pasture and manure from the sheep acts as a natural fertilizer to a plantation. Establishing an enclosed wide-row coppice plantation stocked with sheep can help add value to otherwise low-productivity land.

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While tree plantations are a major source of on-farm bioenergy, they are not the only one. In later articles we will explore agricultural byproducts for energy use as well as dedicated energy crops, and how to turn all of it into environmentally-friendly cost-savings and even cash profit for your farm.

Against the conventional wisdom on pastured pigs

Pastured pigs at a farm in
Massachusetts
(Image: robbwolf.com)

As any farmer can tell you, consumers are becoming ever more aware of the supply chain that provides them their meat, and are becoming more demanding in what practices they expect in that supply chain. Largely the market has shifted against battery farming of livestock towards "free range" systems where livestock are given room to move about freely.

This shift in the market is leading to some interesting conceptions of "pastures". We have farmers talking about pastured chickens and pastured pigs, despite neither being capable of actually digesting roughages in pasture the way ruminants such as sheep, goats and cattle will. While chicken is to a degree capable of using pasture, as it will peck at forage grains and soil insects as well as tender sprouts, pigs aren't capable of getting any significant portion of their diet from a conventional pasture.

When left in pasture, a pig's primary behaviour will be to "root" at the soil, unearthing it with their nose, both to create areas to wallow and thermoregulate, and to search for any tasty big bugs and roots that the pig can find. This is the natural behaviour of all pigs, indeed both domestic pigs and boars have a specially evolved bone in their snout for rooting at soil. Farmers have even adapted this behaviour to their advantage in Europe, where trained hogs are used to root for truffles among tree roots.

But this behaviour is disastrous for farmers hoping to stock pigs in their cattle pasture, as the pigs will gradually tear apart the entire pasture and destroy productive forages without eating them. Hogs will rarely get any significant portion of their diet from a conventional pasture; their rooting will provide them with a degree of the minerals required in their diet and the hogs will occasionally eat any larger roots they encounter as well as young sprouts of certain highly palatable annuals like oats.

Just take a look at this simple guide to pig ration building for small producers in New South Wales:

While it is true that pigs love rooting in and eating pasture, they cannot survive on pasture alone. They need a balanced ration usually based on cereal grain. Pigs are monogastric (single stomach) animals and are inefficient digesters of fibre (only 50% efficiency).

Diets based on pasture are high in fibre... The more fibre in the diet the lower the digestibility.

Pasture should be 10% or less of their daily intake for best results.

Pigs on a pasture based diet have a reduced dressing % due to the increased gut volume for fibre digestion.

Pigs, as monogastrics, have a digestive system very similar to humans. Since we cannot adequately digest roughages, neither can pigs. As farmers it's time to stop stocking our pigs on pastures not designed for them, and keep the roughages for the cow. There are alternatives to pasture building for pigs, that fly in the face of conventional wisdom, that provide far more digestible pasture and better dressing out of your livestock.

A tuber crop pasture will provide your pigs much more useable pasture than simple forages. "Strip-grazing" (leaving your pigs in highly stocked pastures for a single day to forage) of some tuber crops was a once popular here in North America, and today we can improve such systems in either annual or perennial systems.

Annual pastures

If your farm uses pasture as a part of its crop rotation, a perennial pasture will not be your best bet as many perennial tubers are very difficult to eradicate once established and will not be deterred by simply being ploughed under. There are, however, many annual tubers with both agronomic benefits and high digestibility for your pigs.

Daikon (brassica family): this large taproot, related to radishes, is great for its decompacting effect on your soil and its tuber's high digestibility. This crop is a good choice for those of us with more clay-filled soils that don't take well to other tubers, as daikon is very competitive and will drill into less tuber-friendly soil. The young leaves are also fairly digestible for pigs. And whatever tubers are left over, feel free to harvest and eat yourself, this vegetable is a staple throughout East Asia.

Mangelwurzel or Fodder Beet (aster family): related to the red beets we eat, these larger, golden white beets are used primary for livestock feed in Europe. Though it is easily the best yielding of all the crops on this list, it is sensitive to compacted soil and grows best on sandier soils. The tops are not highly digestible to pigs, who will simply tear into the roots, however you may choose to strip-graze your cattle, sheep or goats on the tops at maturity as they are highly digestible to those livestock.

Peanuts (legume family): while not a true tuber, this unique plant we all know flowers aboveground before curling its stems and drilling its fruit below ground to form in safety. As a legume, this crop has the advantage of fixing nitrogen for other crops in your pasture or rotation. However it should not be overstocked as peanut shells are highly fibrous and this will impact the dressing out of your pigs.

Carrots and Parsnips (umbellifer family): these sweet vegetables, while they don't have the yield of the other options on this list, respond very well to muck soils and are an option to consider for those farming black soil. Care must be taken not to overstock these crops, as umbellifer family crops are full of chemicals known as furanocoumarins that can cause rashes and burns when overconsumed raw.

Note that for annual pastures it is not recommended that you sow potatoes. Potatoes, once unearthed by the pig and exposed to sunlight but still in the soil, will begin producing a poisonous chemical known as solanine and turning gradually green. This can cause serious health issues for your pigs and it's recommended that you plant and harvest potatoes yourself for feeding to pigs rather than allowing them to pasture-feed on potatoes.

Perennial pastures

If you intend to dedicate a portion of your land to being permanent pig pasture, it is much more economical to sow perennial tubers rather than the annuals we're more familiar with. All of these perennial tubers are somewhat uncommon crops you won't find in a supermarket, however they are hardy, high-yielding, and perfectly digestible.

Sunchokes or Jerusalem Artichokes (aster family): this little known vegetable is indigenous to eastern North America. A very rustic perennial tuber crop, sunchokes are nearly impossible to eradicate once established, even for your pigs. Sunchokes have a history in North America of being used as strip-grazed pasture for pigs. For pastures of a more permanent nature sunchokes are a primary choice.

Groundnut tubers
(Image: onlyfoods.net)

Groundnut or Potato Bean (legume family): this vine, also indigenous to eastern North America, produces both edible beans and large strings of edible tubers. As a legume, this crop has the advantage of fixing nitrogen for other crops in your pasture. This crop is somewhat drought-sensitive, so ensure you are planting it in soil where it receives adequate moisture year-round.

Hog peanut (legume family): another vine legume indigenous to eastern North America, like peanuts this crop forms its fruits underground. Both its seed pods and roots are edible, though it does not form large tubers like groundnut. Hog peanut is an option to consider in drier soils where the more sensitive groundnut may not thrive.

Oca or wood sorrel (wood sorrel family): this tuber indigenous throughout the Americas is regularly cultivated in the Andes as a vegetable crop. While high-yielding, oca is frost and moisture sensitive, and is not a good choice for those of us located further north.

Skirret (umbellifer family): a relative of carrots and parsnips indigenous to the UK, this vegetable forms rare fibrous taproots and repopulates itself year after year. Like other umbellifers, skirret are full of chemicals known as furanocoumarins that can cause rashes and burns when overconsumed raw, and so should not be overstocked.

Farm biofuels: a green solution to the peaker and off-grid problems

The centrale de Bécancour gas-fired generation
plant remains operable despite the wave of fossil-
fuel plant closures in Québec (Image: Le Devoir)

When it comes to electricity generation, Québec is a model to be followed. Hydro-Québec's massive high-north projets have ensured that 97.2% of Québec's total energy production is sustainable hydroelectricity, while simultaneously having the lowest electricity prices in North America. Coal and oil power plants have been completely abolished across the province.

And yet, Hydro-Québec hasn't been able to crawl that final few percentile to total sustainability. For better or worse it is unable to rid itself of its few remaining gas and diesel power plants, which together provide 541MW of generation capacity in the province - which, though it comprises less than 2% of total electricity generation, is essential to the provincial electrical grid.

There are two functions these remaining plants serve. The first is to produce electricity in remote locations off the main electricity grid. Hydro-Québec runs 24 such plants, mostly located in remote far northern communities but also including the centrale des Îles-de-la-Madeleine diesel generation plant which supplies the entire electricity needs of the Magdelan Islands, a chain in the Gulf of St Lawrence famous for its pied-de-vent cheese and extensive white sand beaches.

The second is as what is known as a "peaker plant". Hydroelectricity is not a form of power generation which can be turned on and off rapidly, and when rapid changes in electricity demand occur causing "peaks" the grid requires large amounts generated within a very short time frame. The only reliable method we have of doing this is thermal power generation from fossil fuels. Québec's current peaker station is the centrale de Bécancour near Trois-rivières, a 4-unit gas turbine plant using natural gas. As described by Hydro-Québec itself,

"Given the relatively high cost of fuel needed to run these facilities, they are used only during periods of peak demand. These generating stations have the advantage of taking only minutes to start and stop operations, compared to the longer time frames required by other thermal power stations."

And right now, while Québec continues to burn fossil fuels fracked from shale and rinsed from tarsand in other provinces, there exists a renewable, carbon-neutral source of electricity the province could utilize without any capital investment that can be produced in Québec nearly immediately and in doing so help revitalize the rural economy: the biofuels - biogas and biodiesel.

Anaerobic digesters like this one in Stirling, ON
can utilize waste manure as well as wet biomass
like corn silage to produce biogas suitable for
electricity generation (Image: Biogas Association)

Here in Ontario the idea of producing agricultural biogas to fuel gas turbine power generation is nothing new. Currently 35 farms across the province have installed anaerobic digester / gas turbine systems which derive biogas from manure, vegetable crop stalks and excess silage. The system is surprisingly efficient: a single tonne of cattle manure can produce 48KWh of electricity, while a single tonne of corn chaff produces 335KWh.

In the case of manure, with a single head of cattle producing 21.9 tonnes of manure a year, the entire Bécancour plant could be fueled by capturing the gaseous output of only 391 cattle - or, put otherwise, the output of only 7 average québécois dairy farms. The equivalent in corn silage, with average wet biomass yields coming out to about 20 tonnes to the acre, would require only 62 acres.

Biofuels can also help to deal with the Magdelan Islands' diesel dependency. The madelinots have had to contend with oil spills recently from the shipment of diesel to the plant, when instead it could be using some of the $1.1 million worth of cereal crops produced in the region annually to produce their own diesel, creating jobs in this region with some of the highest unemployment levels in Québec.

Creating value-added production such as biogas is not only ecologically sound it is economically stimulating. The simple reality is that when processing of agricultural products is moved to the farm, jobs are created, and agricultural communities flourish. For Québec - and furthermore, the world - to make the final leap away from fossil fuels, it will take biofuels to be possible.

Mythbusting the critique of the dairy quota system

It's hard to get straight facts about the much maligned quota system which governs Ontario dairying. Despite the fact that every single major farmer organization supports the system - from the National Farmers Union to the Ontario Federation of Agriculture to the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario - the major media outlets tell us time and time again just how awful it is. From staunchly conservative papers like the National Post and Maclean's to liberal papers like the Toronto Star, even in academia such as this paper from the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy, the average Canadian hears nothing but opposition to supply management.

It seems that everyone is against supply management except for farmers themselves, for whom it has done exactly what it was intended to do - keep milk prices consistent and fair. So where's the truth to it all? What is supply management really doing for Canada? We're going to break down some common misconceptions about the quota system, and what its real impact is on Canadians.


Myth: The quota system, with the total cost for a single head of milking cattle being above $20,000 in most provinces, makes it impossible for new farmers to break into the industry

"if you’re a new farmer, [supply management] is a major barrier to entry: as much as 75 per cent of start-up costs." - Maclean's Magazine 15/08/11

Fact: The reality is that the quota system has several options set up to provide a start-up quota to new farmers. As an example, Dairy Farmers of Ontario, the body responsible for transfer of quotas, offers the New Entrant Quota Assistant Program, which will loan new farmers 12kg of quota for up to 16 years without cost - which, in Ontario, is currently a $300,000 value.

Also, quotas are not the majority of start up costs for most new farmers. With average farm land prices at $4000/acre, a single pedigreed Holstein heifer at $2600 - $3400, and state of the art milking technology running a $210,000 price tag, dairying is a tough game to break into, which is why New Entrant program exists to lessen the burden.


Myth: Supply management is effectively a subsidy from the Canadian consumer to farmers, since dairy prices are much higher in Canada than in countries without supply management.

"Canadians pay up to three times as much for milk than their neighbours to the south... dairy production quotas alone cost the economy $28-billion per year. That’s thousands of dollars per household." - National Post 20/09/13

Fact: unlike most major dairy producing countries, Canada does not directly subsidize farmers a single nickel. The United States, a country without supply management, provides over $4 billion in direct subsidies annually to the dairy industry. In no sense of the word is supply management a "subsidy", it is in fact supply management which allows dairy farmers to continue farming without any subsidies whatsoever. And, the quota system itself does not cost the economy a single penny since quota exchanges are entirely farmer-run, farmer-operated, and farmer-funded, and are not government institutions.

As to the allegation that Canadian dairy costs 300% that it does in the USA, the current average retail difference between US and Canadian milk is $0.44/L or a 29% increase, the current retail different between US and Canadian cheddar is $0.93/kg or a mere 6% increase. This is actually lower than the general difference between the two countries in food prices, which are 57% higher on average in Canada than in the US.


Myth: Eliminating supply management would reduce the price of dairy products for consumers.

"There is no question that phasing out supply management brings benefits to almost all members of society, excluding the producers, through lower prices and especially to low-income people." - Professor Ian Lee, Carleton University Sprott School of Business

Fact: When Australia eliminated supply management of dairy in June 2000, the price of milk rose three times as fast in the proceeding 3 years as it had in the preceding three years - having increased only $0.9/L from 1997-2000, but having increased $0.27/L from 2000-2003. Over the same time period, milk prices in both Canada and New Zealand (Australia's neighbour which has retained its supply management system) remained near-constant. The only side effect that Australia's experiment in eliminating supply management has produced is making farm gate prices for milk more volatile.

Solving the seasonal agricultural worker crisis

Despite the federal government's new reforms in the use of temporary foreign workers following revelations in the media of abuse and misuse of the program, the agricultural stream of the temporary foreign worker program has remained practically untouched. In fact the program has been flourishing, having gone from 13,590 approved positions in 2005 to 39,700 in 2012 - with nearly 3/4 of total approved positions being through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP).

Many Canadians are starting to feel cheated by the temporary foreign worker program with the number of temporary immigrants admitted now being higher than the number of permanent immigrants. They feel cheated out of jobs that, in a weakened Canadian economy, could potentially be going to Canadians or be used to bring permanent new arrivals.

But to this, Canadian farmers can only shrug. After all the federal government seems to agree with them, there is enough a demonstrated lack of available seasonal agricultural workers to merit the protection of the SWAP. Just listen to Mr. Edwin Klassen, manager of a potato farm in Manitoba, as he tells of the human resource difficulties being faced by farms,

“If I got three skilled applicants today I’d hire them on the spot... Right now the labour market is very tight. I’m getting very few quality applicants for hire,” says Klassen. “I’ve been in this position for five years and in the past I would very often have had a list of anywhere from 10 to 20 applicants who would want to be grading potatoes, and since last summer that list is down to two or three.”


“I know that other potato growers and cereal farms are drawing labour from Winkler, Morden and other areas as well,” says Klassen. “Quite a few grain farms are operating 10,000 to 20,000 acres, so they have a workforce of a dozen or more. They’re all looking for the same skills — guys who can operate equipment or repair a piece of equipment.”

The catch of course is that the positions this company is having great difficulty filling are seasonal jobs, guaranteeing employment for a few months at best, and they are requesting workers with a fairly wide breadth of specific skills already under their belt.

It may be a hard pill for farmers to swallow, but seasonal jobs are not a liveable income for workers. The reason you can't find help is that no skilled, experienced worker is going to take a job with zero job security that will only provide for them and their family for a few months. A worker with marketable skills will only take work that, at the very least, provides a liveable income and a significant degree of job security.

So what are the alternatives? Let's break down a few.

1) Student summer jobs

With most seasonal positions needing to be filled over the summer season, an obvious choice is the one segment of the population who are available for hire during the summer only - students. And there's certainly no shortage of summer student labour. This summer alone 460,581 Canadian post-secondary students were looking for but unable to find a summer job, with the post-secondary student unemployment rate sitting at 16.5% percent this summer. Over twice the rate of the general population.

Around the end of the school year farmers should be trying to advertise a summer job in places where students can see it. Colleges and universities typically have summer placement centres of some sort that will be glad to take your job posting. It's also possible to hire students who enrolled in college programs with cooperative education components, especially in the many horticultural programs in Ontario colleges.

2) Apprenticeships and cooperative education

Most farmers are seeking out workers who already have the fairly wide breadth of skills required in agriculture under their belts instead of training workers themselves. This is a missed opportunity since training itself is a form of payment which costs little to the farmer but is invaluable to many, especially so young workers trying to get a start on their career.

A common route that many youth are happy to go is apprenticeships - with more provinces rolling out agricultural apprenticeship programs such as the dairy, swine and fruit farm apprenticeships in Ontario, the farm technician program in PEI or the "green certificate" programs in Alberta. Taking on apprentices is also rewarded with tax breaks and wage subsidies that offset the cost of taking on full-time workers.

3) Coopératives d’utilisation de main-d’œuvre

A popular system in Québec translating to "cooperative for the use of labour", it involves several local farms coming together to form an association which employs full-time, salaried workers collectively. The workers are shared between the farms, which are quite often involved in completely different facets of production than one another, allowing the workers to be engaged throughout the year working with many different crops.

The primary advantage to the farmer is that they have the benefit of multiple skilled workers available throughout the year at a fraction of a cost of engaging full-time workers; the primary advantage to the worker is that the employment is full-time rather than seasonal with high job security. This solution requires quite a bit of cooperation with your fellow farmers, but if you're on good terms with your neighbours this can save you a mint in labour costs.

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Agriculture is the basis of the rural economy. When agricultural producers are unable to provide an employment model which is viable for workers and are forced to rely on temporary foreign labour - who contribute nothing to the economy, and instead export their wages back to their home country - there is a crisis at hand.

Farmers have a responsibility to ensure the vitality of rural communities. Rather than depending upon a broken program extended by a government which is more than happy to introduce anything which dilutes the local labour market and thus the conditions of working class Canadians, farmers should be finding innovative and cooperative solutions to create viable employment opportunities, especially for the youth, who are the future of our rural communities.

Where were eastern Ontario's public colleges when Kemptville needed them?

Province-appointed facilitator Lyle Vanclief addresses the public
at the July 16th town hall meeting in Kemptville. He refused to take
any questions.  (Image: Nick Gardiner, The Recorder and Times)

As many of you already know, on March 12th the University of Guelph announced that it will be closing its two Ontario Agricultural College campuses in Kemptville and Alfred, leaving the only remaining agricultural diploma in the province at Ridgetown in Kent county - a campus located over 600km away from most eastern Ontarians and teaching for entirely different agricultural conditions.

In their March 12th statement the university attempted to justify its austerity actions,

"Despite efforts over the past several years to introduce new revenue-generating educational programs and attract new students, enrolment at both campuses remains stagnant while operating costs have increased. Costs per full-time equivalent student are substantially higher at these campuses..."

The wording of the announcement is very telling. The decision was not educationally motivated but financially - what they call "stagnant" enrolment rates have been consistent without decrease ever since U of G took over Kemptville operations in 1997.

Kemptville is being discarded as a bad investment by the university, regardless of its essential nature to the economy of eastern Ontario, it failed to be "revenue-generating". I for one was under the impression that colleges were a public service, not a source of revenue for university administrators to furnish their sunshine list salaries.

I myself was hoping to attend Kemptville this September and was shocked by the news. Kemptville has been an institution among eastern Ontario farmers for nearly 100 years. Any and every kid hoping to take over the family farm went to Kemptville if they could. For generations it has been the basis of farm education in our communities, and without it a whole generation of rural youth will be without access to the latest agricultural knowledge.

Fortunately for me there was an alternative. Immediately after the closure announcement for Campus d'Alfred talks were underway with Collège boréal and La Cité collégiale, Ontario's two French-language colleges, to keep the doors of the tiny francophone campus open. In the end a funding partnership with Collège boréal, through which Alfred already had a partnership for its veterinary program, managed to save the campus. By March 29th the institution was once again accepting applications, just over two weeks after the official announcement of closure.

Other prospective Kemptville students are not so lucky to be bilingual as I am. For them, the choice faced right now is between a jump to the other side of the province and abandoning the family farm, or no education at all.

So, while Ontario's French language colleges immediately came to the aid of Campus d'Alfred, where were the English language colleges of eastern Ontario?

Afterall the Kemptville College Renewal Task Force, a committee formed by the Kemptville College Foundation, announced on April 8th that they were in talks with St Lawrence and Algonquin colleges. Yet by a month to the day later when the task force launched a formal request for expressions of interest, it seems the colleges had lost interest.

When I was in Kemptville on July 16th for a town hall meeting (that's me with the ponytail in the video!), we were informed that the task force had received only two formal expressions of interest by the May 28th deadline - one from a private sector group and one from a public sector group, both of which were said to be "international" (as in, not Canadian institutions) but remained unnamed.

Furthermore we were told that at this point Kemptville would not be resuming operations in time for September, and that even a potential September 2015 start date was unlikely at this time. The solution that was ultimately reached for the interim was having the municipality of North Grenville operate the college itself, a task it was willing to take up so long as it could be assured that municipal taxpayers wouldn't be footing the bill. Since this solution requires both negotiations with Guelph over their "intellectual property" (the agriculture diploma program) and negotiations with the province over funding, the task force informed us they were expecting a three-year period before the college would be up and running once more.

So what happened to the interested colleges? It couldn't be that they got cold feet about having satellite campuses since St Lawrence College already has three campuses, as does Algonquin. At any rate we weren't getting any answers from the task force as to why the colleges had dumped them - when asked outright, the task force dodged the question. Presumably because any negotiations which took place were strictly confidential. 

From Algonquin we can get a bit of information from the minutes of the Algonquin President's Council for their March 12th and April 2nd meetings,

"PC members discussed the potential impact and opportunities of the closure on Algonquin College and agreed it will conduct a high level financial and academic program review of the Kemptville College entity and report back to PC by the end of June on what opportunities may be available..."

The minutes give a report back date of April 2nd. Sure enough in the April 2nd meetings, we see this,

"C. Brulé updated PC members on the review of the University of Guelph's Kemptville campus. Discussion included steps taken to date, anticipated next steps and the expected frequency of the exchange of updated information. Discussion followed regarding apprenticeship and communication strategy."

And then, nothing. The minutes list no follow-up date, and Kemptville isn't mentioned in any subsequent PC meetings. From St Lawrence we get even less information, the minutes of the May 6th meeting of the Board of Governors gives a brief mention by Vice President Academic Lorraine Carter,

"The Sr. Vice-President provided a quick verbal update on Kemptville, pointing out that the team is still looking at ways that St. Lawrence College could support this demographic"

I've sent an email to both Claude Brulé and Lorraine Carter, who are mentioned in the minutes, to ask whether Algonquin or St Lawrence respectively plans to be involved in the Kemptville renewal process but as of yet I've received no response. I haven't got high hopes that I'll receive anything but the same vague answers provided at the town hall meeting.

One thing's for certain, both St Lawrence and Algonquin definitely chose to abandon Kemptville and consequently abandon all of eastern Ontario's agricultural communities. Perhaps they made the same revenue-based analysis that U of G had made. Both of these colleges have much larger budgets than Collège boréal and yet were seemingly unwilling to come to the aid of this vital educational institution in their locale the way boréal did so swiftly. And without these colleges' aid on the horizon, the future of agricultural education in the province looks bleak indeed.

Let's set the record straight - hemp is not a miracle crop

In March of this year, the US state of Colorado opened registration for the first legal hemp crop in the USA in 56 years, the first among the 10 states where hemp has been made legal to do so following a landmark federal farm bill in January. Hemp advocates countrywide rejoiced - and boy, there sure seems to be a lots of these advocates. Just take a quick look at social media and you'll see things like this facebook page with over 125,000 likes and this twitter account with over 58,000 followers all dedicated to the hemp plant. It's hard to imagine that if for some reason other bast crops such as flax or jute were prohibited we'd see this many people dedicated to their legalization.

Of course, the reason so many "activists" have rallied to the cause of this humble fiber and grain crop is its association with its narcotic cousin, cannabis. Because of this, the pro-hemp movement is made up largely of free-spirited folks with little to no agricultural knowledge who are prone to hyperbole when it comes to extolling the virtues of Cannabis sativa. Namely, some ideas that get thrown around a lot are the notions that hemp is a miracle crop and that legalization of hemp will save the world. These are talking points which are being reiterated by fairly respectable American liberal publications over and over again.

Pictures like this can be found all over social media. It should be clarified that hemp has not been proven to be effective medicine and it cannot produce plastic - there is however plastic fiberglass which uses hemp bast fiber as filler. For example BMW's new i3 electric car uses hemp-based fiberglass in its interior paneling

And I'd just like to break it to any hopeful Americans - hemp is no miracle, and it won't save your country.

Here in Canada we had the sense to legalize this harmless crop way back in 1998. Canadian farmers have been seeding hemp for 16 years now - long enough that I can remember biking past a few hemp fields as a kid in Hastings County. Over the years total hectarage has varied widely as farmers experiment with this new crop, but so far its peak was in 2006 with 19,458ha, the majority of that being in Manitoba's Parkland Region where there is a hemp cooperative focused on grain production.

19,458ha is not a lot. Consider that in 2006 Canadian farmers seeded 807,975ha of flax, a similar crop also grown for both its grain and bast fibers. And flax is by no means a major crop in Canada itself. Contrast those two crops to canola, Canada's most popular oilseed, which saw well over 5 million hectares seeded in 2006.

So why hasn't hemp farming taken off as expected here in Canada? A few major reasons.

Firstly, grain hemp has a fairly narrow range of uses, since its oil has too low of a smoking point to be useful in frying. Hemp nut and hemp oil have been limited mainly to use as a food grain and as a dietary supplement respectively, mostly for sale to that same crowd who love hemp for its association with cannabis and supposed miracle health benefits. Hemp is by no means a staple food, the market for it is niche and thus small.

Secondly, there has been a lack of a domestic market for fiber hemp. Prior to 1998 Canada was without any major facilities for the processing of bast fibers. The production of flax, at the time the only bast crop grown in Canada, had always been oriented towards grain due to the low value of flax bast fibers. The price for flax straw has been so low for the past few decades that farmers in the prairies have simply taken to burning any remaining straw in their fields after grain harvest rather than waste money baling and transporting it. Even today given that hemp bast fiber is a niche market in North America with only a handful of fairly small-scale manufacturers as buyers, and that the process of separating bast fibers is quite intensive and requires multiple expensive pieces of equipment, the industry remains at a standstill.

At the moment the only existing processor of fiber hemp in the country is Kenex Ltd. in Chatham-Kent, which focuses mostly on grain hemp but also buys low-grade hemp straw and processes it into bast fiber for export to the USA. The operation is fairly small. When interviewed by the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1999 after the first major harvest of Canadian hemp, Kenex Ltd.'s general manager had this to say of the year's minuscule 1,021ha Ontarian hemp crop,

"It’s given us one hell of a glut of grain and fiber. There’s been a major overestimation of the market that’s out there."

Not very encouraging words for the budding industry. Since then, through trial and error, farmers and processors have learned where the market is for hemp and adjusted accordingly - away from fiber and dual-purpose production and towards grain production.

And, thirdly, hemp harvest is a difficult ordeal. Hemp was initially used mostly for the production of rope, and attempting to reap a hemp crop is a lot like trying to mow a field of rope. It wreaks havoc on harvesting equipment intended for use on much more tender crops. Even the best sicklebar mowers used for fiber harvest clog frequently, and combines are often slowed to a halt during grain harvest when bast fibers make a mess of headers.

France is Europe's largest hemp producer and the second
largest producer in the world after China, with segmented
fibre production for the manufacture of cigarette paper
comprising over 70% of the total 11,637ha crop in 2012.
Despite being a world leader in hemp production with the
majority of European hemp hectarage, hemp accounts for
only 0.0004% of total French farmland, which goes to
show the small size of the global market for hemp
(Image: hectares of hemp by département, CETIOM)

Studies coming out of Europe have highlighted a lack of adequately suited harvesting equipment for hemp, especially for fiber. And that's in a region where hemp production has never faced prohibition and there are several major producing countries of hemp, such as France. Though some specialty harvesting equipment exists in Europe for segmented fiber hemp, as of yet the only method for whole-stalk harvesting of fiber hemp is the use of sicklebar mowers intended for grassland operations, followed by repeated tedding (fluffing up the crop with a rake to speed up the drying process) and windrowing (pushing mowed crop into neat rows which can be easily collected by a baler).

This harvesting process is labour intensive, produces only fiber of moderate to low quality, and ultimately nets a low price for the farmer compared to many crops of equivalent soil requirements such as winter wheat. Until a harvesting system is developed that allows harvest in fewer passes and greater control over retting (a process by which the fibres are separated from the stalk's woody core, usually performed in the field), fibre hemp will continue to be very infeasible for farmers in North America.

So while I applaud those adventurous farmers in Colorado who have seeded 1,273 acres this first year of legal harvest of a crop which should have never been prohibited, I'd like to ask advocates to tone down the "miracle" rhetoric and not to expect American hemp to become anything other than what it has achieved here north of the border - a niche crop with a whole lot more hype than real market opportunity.

Processing vegetables: a missed opportunity for the eastern Ontario economy

Field vegetables grown for the processing industry is an Ontario speciality, and a profitable one at that. As of 2010, the value of vegetables grown for the Canadian processing market totalled over $128 million, with 48% of total production coming from the province of Ontario. In 2013 alone Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers (OPVG), the provincial marketing board responsible for negotiating contracts on behalf of farmers, secured contracts for over 450 farmers with 19 different food manufacturing facilities.

Only issue is that not one of these contractees, neither farmers nor manufacturers, are located east of the GTA. In fact OPVG itself only has organized district committees extending as far east as the border of Hastings County. Everything beyond that is no man's land as far as vegetable processing is concerned. So why aren't eastern Ontario producers growing for the vegetable processing industry?

It's certainly not a production capability issue which limits us - field vegetables are already a regular crop on many eastern Ontario farms which produce for pick-your-own, farmer's market stalls, or CSA sales models. Sweet corn, the most important processing crop by area, is practically a staple come July in the Ottawa valley.

And it's also not an issue of required capital investment - the majority of southern Ontario's processing vegetable crop is hand-harvested, and in fact many of OPVG's contracts actually mandate hand harvest. While there is mechanical harvest equipment on the market designed specifically for larger processing vegetable operations with significant hectarage, the high value per hectare of processing vegetables can make hand harvest worthwhile at any scale, large or small. As an example, take the above-linked hand harvested butternut squash contract. At 2014 prices of $138.50/tonne with the average winter squash yield in Ontario at about 20 tonnes/hectare, a farmer could count on a $2770/hectare revenue - double or triple that of many conventional rowcrops grown in eastern Ontario.

No, the major roadblock to processing vegetable production in eastern Ontario right now is access to buyers, who are currently concentrated in the manufacturing belt of southern Ontario. Transportation from field to buyer is an out of pocket expense for farmers, and when your only buyer is a 600km truck ride away it's usually more financially feasible to produce what can be marketed closer to home. In eastern Ontario's case, that has tended to be limited to dairy, beef, corn and soybean production. Especially now with the collapse of the local pork industry, eastern Ontario farms are becoming increasingly less diverse and sticking to those four products.

Just take a look at this business directory for eastern Ontario food producers. You'll find a number of companies under the cheese, meat, grains and cereals sections. But flick through the vegetable section and you'll find nothing but on-farm operations marketing directly to the public.

Without any processors within a reasonable distance, this is the only available option for vegetable farmers - to sell directly to consumers. What few local processed goods are produced in the area are made entirely on farm by the farmers themselves for sale to locals. Given the relatively low population of rural eastern Ontario these operations have a small consumer base and consequently tend to be small and low-income themselves.

This is at a time when unemployment in the region remains above average and many rural eastern Ontario communities are attempting to diversify their agrifood sector in response to the collapse of other local industries such as forestry. And vegetable processing seems a prime candidate for an agrifood diversification opportunity since unlike many industrial sectors in the province it is an expanding industry - especially in the manufacture of frozen products.

While most of the food processing sector suffered from competition with imports after NAFTA, the vegetable processing industry has remained strong and even managed to net a $9 billion export:import surplus. As well, it's one of the only industrial sectors in Ontario where employment numbers have actually been increasing over the past 10 years, due in large part to the expansion of the frozen vegetable industry. (Source)

Since despite local government effort to attract food processing industry there is an absence of local processing corporations, it seems like any potential future for processing vegetable agriculture in eastern Ontario will be entirely contingent on the development of value-added agrifood industry - that is, industry owned and operated by farmers' cooperatives themselves. However, as has been noted before, eastern Ontario is far behind the rest of the country in the development of value-added agriculture,

"One wonders why there are so few value added Agri-Food businesses in Eastern Ontario. According to data from the United Counties of Prescott-Russell, only three such businesses are established in the area. As for Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry counties, one finds branches of large corporations such as the Kraft Company, but within city limits...

...in 1996, the United Counties of PR and SDG sold $364.47 million worth of agricultural products. This level of sales is comparable to that of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick individually. Yet, almost all of those products are directed in areas other than our counties for processing. And so is the additional cash flow."

And it's a lack of social and economic development that prevents this kind of value-added development from taking place - most notablly manifested in eastern Ontario in the continuing youth emigration as less and less options remain for rural youth, the lack of educational development among the east's sizeable francophone communities (over half of the francophone population in eastern Ontario reports reading comprehension levels of 1 or 2 out of 5, signifying extreme difficulty reading), and the increasing difficulty of achieving financing or subsidy in an era of austerity.

So long as these conditions persist and sufficiently diversified agrifood industry doesn't take root in rural eastern Ontario, farming in the area will continue to be dominated by more conventional livestock-oriented production and sale of raw cash crops for processing in other regions - and the production of processing vegetables in the region will remain nothing but a missed opportunity.