Farmers getting ready to gather in Toronto for annual convention

Nov 12, 2024

By Larry Davis, Director, Ontario Federation of Agriculture

Farmers from across Ontario will be coming to Toronto at the end of this month to hear updates on key issues affecting agriculture, debate resolutions and network with each other.

They’ll be participating in the annual general meeting of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the leading advocate and strongest voice of the province’s farmers through government relations, farm policy recommendations, public and community outreach and more.

The event’s theme is “Always in Season” – a perfect way to describe agriculture in Ontario. That’s because with more than 200 different commodities produced in this province, someone is always busy with planting, growing or harvesting.

Just now, many farmers with fruit, vegetable and field crops may be close to wrapping up their harvest, whereas Christmas tree and holiday flower growers are just coming into their busiest six weeks of the year – and greenhouses that grow transplants for next year’s tomato, celery, onion crops will be gearing up for January.

The annual meeting is the most important event on the OFA’s annual calendar and a great opportunity to reflect on the year that’s wrapping up and plan for the one ahead.

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Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators