A few weeks ago I was attending a farm show in Ontario.
I know what you’re are thinking: ‘They farm differently than we do, so I am not sure what an event like that might offer for us back on the Prairies?’
You would be right. Here in Oxford County, farmland is close to $20,000 an acre, they grow 170 bushel corn, 50 bu. soybeans, 80 bu. wheat and there is a lot of dairy and poultry.
Those who grow canola see only 35 bu. yields, so there isn’t much of it. Grain farms are smaller and need higher, per acre margins.
Read Also
Interest in biological crop inputs continues to grow
It was only a few years ago that interest in alternative methods such as biologicals to boost a crop’s nutrient…
The harvest, late like ours, won’t start for another six weeks. Farm machinery at the show is just as shiny as the stuff in our neck of the weeds, just smaller, and planters are found instead of air seeders.
This farm show does have something interesting that we haven’t seen on the Prairies since the move in the 1990s to reduced tillage and continuous cropping: field and live animal demonstrations.
Farmers gather by the hundreds in fields adjacent to the show to watch machinery work.
Different brands and models run head to head. Experts provide in-field extension agrology with sprayers and cropping strategies. Seed companies plant plots on the site, and farmers tour them without leaving the grounds. A dairy barn operates competing brands of robotic milkers.
I asked several producers what they found most useful at the farm show, and they all answered, “field demos.”
Some drove three hours from eastern Ontario, Quebec and New York, but most travelled less than a hour. About 45,000 showed up over three days.
I attend a number of shows every year. Many are bigger and the prairie ones have more things applicable to our farms, but the farmer in me sure does like those field demonstrations. It makes Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show one of my favourites.
The show, like The Western Producer, is owned by Glacier Media, but I wasn’t paid to praise it here.
Here is a video that highlights the show’s demonstrations.
