Guelph, ON – –Partners, DJ Wassenaar and Matt Bergman, of Haybury Farms Inc located at Jarvis, ON were named Ontario’s Outstanding Young Farmers for 2024 at their regional event held near Guelph on Aug 22, 2024.
Matt grew up on a dairy farm and started farming for himself at the age of 23 working an off-farm job and using his farm land to pay the farm mortgage. DJ was born a farmer and agriculture was a major focus from a young age. Coming from a beef farm, his initial interest was in beef which evolved into growing crops.
In 2018 with 500 acres of rental ground to their name, they needed to maximize every acre so they looked at field management and row crop farming a little differently than traditional farming. Their focus was towards profit per acre. They decided the best way to maximize hay acres was rotation with organics.
They decided to do 25 acres of organic corn as a trial to see if it worked on their ground type and if they could manage and handle the extra workload that went with it. By maximizing the premium on IP beans and acre contracts for organics, allowed them to become profitable in row crop farming.
Increasing to 400 acres of organic corn and soybean rotation in 2019 lead to the creation of Claybank Organics. In 2021, they expanded into northern Ontario/Algoma District, purchasing a farm to grow straight timothy hay for overseas customers.
Now in 2024, Claybank Organics farms 1000 acres a year of organic corn, soybeans and hay, and Haybury farms 3200 acres. They have gone from farming with borrowed, leased, and rented equipment, to having and maintaining their own fleet both in Jarvis and the Algoma area. They each use their strengths to run and manage the farm business. Matt manages and makes most of the crop input decisions. DJ is the face of the farm and handles sales and customer relations while constantly chasing new opportunities.
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