Our Regional Meeting will be held on Wednesday, August 15th at Brigden Fairgrounds. The guest speaker will be Crystal MacKay, Executive Director of the Ontario Farm Animal Council, along with a representative from OFA. Crystal is an excellent speaker and OFAC is a registered non-profit agricultural, educational organization who represents Ontario 35,000 livestock and poultry farmers plus many other groups and businesses involved in animal agriculture and food production. It will be a great hot beef buffet meal and tickets are $10.00. Call the LFA office soon to reserve your tickets!
Farming in much of Lambton is quieter this summer with fewer fields of wheat and there is less straw to bale than in years past. The dry weather has impacted most of the county with a few exceptions of pockets of rain.
Our Regional Meeting will be held at Brigden Fairgrounds on Wednesday, August 15th at 6:30 p.m. The meal is $10.00 and tickets can be obtained from any director or by calling the office at 519-828-5028. Our guest speaker will be Crystal MacKay, the Executive Director of Ontario Farm Animal Council (OFAC). She is a fabulous speaker and has a message about animal agriculture which would be appreciated by all farmers.
OFAC has published a booklet called “The Real Dirt on Farming” which is informative on how your food is produced with pictures of real farmers and their families. Some people from our region have a photo included but the real value of this is the message it conveys in an attractive package. It highlights the big picture of agriculture and about the economics of farm size and our share of the food dollar. The booklet shows the diversity of agriculture in Canada with a quiz about what grows in which province. It has a large segment on food safety discussing pesticide training and the on farm food safety courses available for livestock producers and explains integrated pest management and bio security. There is an article on natural or organic foods and even the slow food movement.
Spotlighted is the commitment of raising farm animals which depend on care seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day and includes the guidelines that are in place for humane handling and controls for abuse.
There is a “Quick” Tour of Farm Animal real estate and the question of “Why did the chicken cross the road?” There is information on free range eggs and cow igloos and the trend for alternative livestock with llamas and deer being part of agriculture too.
Animal welfare or Animal rights is explored along with several pages on the environment. Crops are part of the mix, with bio diesel and a list of products that can be extracted from corn. It reviews how farmers are active environmentally as shown by all those environmental Farm Plan Gate Signs. It explains biotech and all the regulations imposed on agriculture by the government agencies.
This publication is available from OFAC or your local federation. It is a great resource for all with our ever specialized agriculture and is a great way to learn about your neighbor’s farm business.
~Debbie Coke~
President, Lambton Federation of Agriculture