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Feeding the Future

The agri-food industry is the most important in the world – we all need to eat. Research and innovation have enabled tremendous change in the livestock sector, and we can expect that change to increase in rate.

This year, the Ontario Agricultural College is celebrating its 150th anniversary. In a bold and exciting initiative, Feeding the Future, the University of Guelph is seeking input by asking “What can the University of Guelph do to help the Ontario agri-food system be the best in the world?” 

Feeding the Future seeks input from the people and businesses that make up Ontario’s agri-food sector from production to distribution, and everything in between. This is a collaboration between the University of Guelph, government, industry, and you. Together, we’ll lay the groundwork for the future — an efficient, productive and impactful agri-food innovation system that strengthens Ontario’s economy and benefits the health and well-being of all Ontarians.
 
Your insights will help identify key challenges and opportunities for the U of G to help contribute to Ontario’s agri-food sector being best in the world. You can share your input through an online survey or connect with Feeding the Future at a Listening Post event in your area.

Source : Livestock Research

Trending Video

Selling Hay for 40 Years: Fritz Trauttmansdorff, Dunlea Farms

Video: Selling Hay for 40 Years: Fritz Trauttmansdorff, Dunlea Farms



Fritz Trauttmansdorff came to Canada from Austria in 1980, bought a 45-cow dairy farm at Jerseyville, and within two years had more hay than he knew what to do with. He sold the quota in 1986, went debt-free, and built a hay business that has kept some of the same customers for forty years. Today Dunlea Farms runs about 2,500 acres — roughly 600 of it hay, the rest IP soybeans and grain corn — and Fritz makes the case that hay isn't the crop you grow when grain doesn't work. It's the crop that makes the grain work.

"If you grow corn, soybeans and wheat, you're on a three-wheeler. If you put hay in the rotation, you're on a four-wheeler."

WHAT WE COVER • Why the hay market moves independently of the Chicago Board — and what that does for farm-level risk
• The real cost of a mistake: five bushels in grain, versus the whole crop in hay
• Getting a second job out of the same iron — planting tractors that mow all summer, tillage tractors that bale
• How a grain farmer can get hay into the rotation without buying a single piece of hay equipment
• Drilling Timothy in the fall and double-cropping soybeans into it the next June
• What it actually takes to go all-in: roughly 500 acres, good sheds, and a baler you didn't buy used
• Local, regional and international hay markets — and choosing which one you're building for
• Why 40-year customer relationships are the asset, not the equipment