Agricultural innovators recognized at Premier's Awards

Five farmers, entrepreneurs from county receive cash incentives for work
JOANNE SHUTTLEWORTH

GUELPH (Apr 16, 2007)

A natural food additive that allows livestock to digest food better. DNA discoveries that make it easier to ensure food safety. Modifications to a delivery truck that translates to healthier pigs.

Not much in common at first glance but these innovations, made by some local farmers and entrepreneurs in the agri-food sector, represent the kind of thinking behind the Premier's Awards for Agri-Food Innovation.

The provincial government is giving out $2.5 million over five years to the innovation program and these awards mark the first. A total of 55 awards will be given out this year.

Fourteen agriculture-based business owners in the southern Ontario region -- five from Wellington County -- were honoured Friday for their part in inventing equipment, procedures or using raw materials in ways that benefit not only their own operations, but the agriculture industry on a broad scale.

"We need new, value-added ways of approaching the market to move the industry forward," said Guelph-Wellington MPP Liz Sandals as she handed out plaques and cheques for $5,000 at the ceremony. "These are wonderful entrepreneurial stories of ingenuity, leaps of faith, honest hard work, creative thinking and leadership."

Jake Kraayenbrink sells breeding stock at Kraayenbrink Farms, just west of Arthur, and in order to ensure the health of the pigs, he modified his delivery truck with a retractable catwalk.

Pigs are susceptible to illness, Kraayenbrink said, and viruses can spread quickly through a herd. Cross-contamination from one pig to the next or from one herd to another is a big fear, especially for someone like Kraayenbrink, who often ships herds of pigs from his farm to his clients.

So he outfitted his truck with a retractable catwalk and a loading chute that is raised and lowered by an electric winch. This means workers don't have to touch too many things outside the truck or even stand among the animals. And that greatly reduces the chance of introducing illness to a healthy herd. In the end, it lowers the need for antibiotics, and that in turn makes the food safer for humans.

"The industry is always changing so we all have to think of new ways of doing things," he said.

David Craig has developed a natural food additive that improves the digestive system in livestock. He tested the product on his own herd of dairy cattle at his 200-acre farm north of Arthur some 20 years ago and has since developed additives to help swine, beef, poultry and even the pet-food industry under the name Animal-Probiotic Products Inc.

"For example, horses are prone to gastric ulcers -- it's a huge problem with race horses. But this product enhances the digestive system so the horse can break down its food and utilize the nutrition for peak performance," Craig said.

He said the new awards are both incentive and recognition that farmers and related businesses must be resourceful and creative to keep afloat.

"The government recognizes that farm gate sales are not everything to the industry. And there's so much more to it than just farming."

Guelph-based Beef Improvement Ontario is an industry-operated organization dedicated to providing genetic and management information services to the beef industry. Its subsidiary, Agri-Food Knowledge Solutions, has figured out a way to identify the genetic qualities that make for tender steak.

It has also developed the technology to track an animal from farm to fork, so in any kind of outbreak situation, the steak on your plate can be tracked to the farm from where it originally came.

"We have been innovative since the beginning and we are always trying to be a step ahead. This award feels like acknowledgement of that," said Elaine Graham, BIO's general manager.