Ontario is recognizing and celebrating local agri-food innovators whose ideas and projects are strengthening the province’s agri-food sector.
The regional recipients of the 2015 Premier’s Award for Agri-Food Innovation Excellence were honoured during a ceremony in Cambridge on Nov. 9 for their contributions to the creation of new products, adding value to existing products, supporting a sustainable environment, helping support job creation, and boosting economic growth in Ontario.
The award recipients in Wellington County include the following.
Beef Improvement Ontario (BIO), Elora
Your typical beef farmer doesn’t spend a lot of time behind a desk. And that’s what makes desktop-computer traceability systems clunky. But thanks to Beef Improvement Ontario’s mobile livestock recordkeeping software, producers can now use their smartphone to record and access data wherever they happen to be. The Go360|bioTrack system makes food safety simpler, allowing users to track animal identification, movements, feed, health records, biosecurity and more. Spotty connection? Not to worry: the software works offline as well, automatically uploading and backing up your data when an Internet connection becomes available. The data-capture solution is now available for sheep and goat producers as well and has caught the attention of markets in Alberta and the United States.
Best Baa Dairy, Fergus
The Amish farmers who supply Best Baa Dairy faced a conundrum. According to food safety rules, they have to cool their sheep milk to four degrees within two hours of milking. However, their traditions prohibit them from using electricity. So Best Baa Dairy stepped in to develop a solution. The cheesemaker equipped a 240-litre stainless steel tank with a small engine to drive a standard refrigeration compressor. The prototype successfully cooled milk in just 35 minutes and also heated a barrel of washwater to boot. Best Baa built a second one, and then three more that used solar panels instead of a gasoline engine. Today, Best Baa gets great sheep milk, Amish farmers can adhere to their traditions, and the new off-the-grid technology can be used anywhere that farmers don’t have access to electricity.
Jewels Under the Kilt, Fergus
Customers go nuts for Jewels Under the Kilt – a line of locally grown walnuts, pecans and hazelnuts roasted with an addictive mixture of flavourings that range from chipotle to pumpkin pie. In the early days, Elizabeth Burrow grew all the nuts herself on her 95-acre farm, using sustainable practices such as shellfish-based fertilizer, strategic inter-planting and organic insecticidal soap. As the popularity of her snacks has grown, she has planted other nut varieties to expand her offerings. Burrow has also turned to other farms to supplement her nut supply, as well as provide maple syrup, peaches, apples, pumpkins and other flavourings. Now, if discussions with chain stores prove successful, she’ll be upping her orders – and Jewels Under the Kilt could soon be winning new fans.
Since 2007, a total of 425 producers, processors and agri-food organizations have received a Premier’s Award for Agri-Food Innovation Excellence.
