Henry Reinders promotes agricultural education and innovation
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Henry Reinders, a cash crop producer from Grey County, didn’t know he would receive a special honour until the last possible moment.
“I knew that I had been nominated for the Tommy Cooper Award, but the organizers keep it a secret right to the end,” he told Farms.com today. “I found out I won the when they called my name.”
Reinders received the award during a ceremony on Apr. 21. It is presented to a person making great contributions to the agricultural and rural lifestyles in Grey and Bruce counties.
Reinders promotes ag education and innovation, and his contributions to the industry have been felt at home and abroad.
Henry Reinders accepts the Tommy Cooper Award from Robin Garvey of Bayshore Broadcasting, one of the award's sponsors.
He’s the chair of Grown in Grey, an agricultural event designed to educate elementary school students about the industry. He believes teaching children about agriculture when they’re young can go a long way into paving their future.
“The best thing that we can do as producers is educate consumers about things that go on around the farm,” he said. “Consumers are becoming more removed from the farm and don’t understand what we’re doing or why we’re doing it.
“If we don’t promote ourselves, our message can get distorted and people think we’re doing things we aren’t supposed to,” he added. “We feed our families the same food we feed everyone else.”
And for the last 20 years Reinders has been involved with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, which helps address world hunger through projects funded in part by crop harvests.
He recently returned from Africa as part of a Canadian Foodgrains Bank organized learning tour. Reinders and others observed what farmers had been taught by partners of the organization in Malawi.
“One of the issues in Malawi specifically is that they have relied on corn as their staple crop for years and years,” he said. “The soil has been depleted of resources.
“We introduced the farmers to crop rotations and cover crops. Overall, there was just a lack of knowledge that was holding these farmers back.”
The farmers now understand soil fertility and climate change. They have increased yields to the point where they can feed their families and sell some of their harvests to send their children to school, Reinders added.
The Tommy Cooper Award has been given out every year since 1959. Cooper served as a provincial government farm extension worker in Grey County, and he retired the year the award started.
Past award recipients include Ralph Dietrich, the current chair of Dairy Farmers of Ontario.
Reinders is pleased to have his name associated with the award and its past winners.
“I look at the list of winners and there’s a lot of people I have a great deal of respect for,” he said. “I’m very happy people think I should be in that group.”