A look back at 2011

At this time of year, it’s good to reflect on what the past year has brought, and what is to come in 2012.

We’ve had a very busy year at the PIC, culminating with the Poultry Innovations Conference, held Nov. 10 and 11 at the Best Western Lamplighter Inn Hotel and Conference Centre in London, Ont. This was the first year the conference was held in London…and it certainly won’t be the last! This was clearly a good move as, despite incredible weather for farming, attendance rose by approximately 25 per cent from the previous two years to a tremendous 265 attendees. What follows are some of the highlights of the conference. Should you require any further information, please don’t hesitate to contact us at PIC.

Farmer Health
The conference was preceded on the morning of Nov. 10 by a special forum, “Better Farmer Health, Better Farm Business.” The forum presented some very sobering statistics on farmer health from Australia, which according to regional general practitioner Dr. Rob Annis from the Listowel Family Health Team, is likely to be repeated in Ontario. However, we don’t know how we truly fare because we don’t have statistical information in Canada that separates farmers out from rural populations.

It turns out that producers do not fit the popular stereotype of being “robust, fresh air, plenty of exercise, healthy lifestyle” individuals. In fact, the situation is quite the opposite. Hypertension (high blood pressure), obesity, high cholesterol, alcohol abuse, chronic fatigue, suicide, cancers – all very serious, life threatening conditions – are significantly higher in producers than the national average.
In Australia, a program called Sustainable Farm Families, developed by farmer, professor and public health nurse Dr. Sue Brumby, is tackling the issue head on.

Dr. Brumby was the keynote speaker at the forum, and she described how farmers identify their health risks and make necessary changes and the beneficial effect it has on their lives, and consequently their businesses. The point was made quite clearly that if you are unwell, your business suffers and you put yourself at risk of having an accident, which will exacerbate the existing situation on the farm caused by your illness.

Dean Anderson, chair of the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association (CASA), left us in no doubt that the risks involved with cutting corners on safety (and let’s face it, when we’re below par or in a hurry, we all do it) far outweigh the cost and time of keeping safe. What do we do? Plan to ensure you stay well. Get regular health checks, don’t push yourself beyond the limit when you are not 100 per cent – you could risk losing more than a few dollars.

Do we need an awareness-raising, proactive program such as Sustainable Farm Families in Ontario? Probably, but the first step is to engage with the health profession. This profession was well represented at the forum, with half of the 67 people in attendance at the session coming from the health sector. Feedback from the workshop is that health professionals want to engage with agriculture, so over the next year PIC will be working to facilitate this and we look forward to industry support.

If you feel that your health is and should be an important issue that you may not have been addressing or if you’re not sure whether you look after yourself properly, ask your wife.That’s what they did in Australia and they got a pretty definitive response, which I’ll leave you to ponder.

Innovations Conference
The Innovations Conference was a stimulating mixture of current issues and future tools, delivering information on how to make your businesses more efficient and profitable. Lighting took up a significant portion of the discussion both in the lecture hall and around the coffee and lunch tables. We heard from local, inter-provincial and international speakers, all of whom had a very similar message – to some extent, we’ve taken lighting for granted. Times have changed. With a much greater emphasis on the productivity impact of light intensity and light spectrums, we now have the potential to manage our flocks using light to positively influence productivity and flock care, in addition to daylength manipulation.

LED lights are now being manufactured that will meet specific needs of the animal that will be exposed to it. They are also getting tougher – it’s likely that many of you reading this will have at some point wished for a bulb that didn’t explode when you hit it with the hose or knock it when moving equipment. Good news, there’s one on the market that you can throw across the room and it won’t break.

New information technologies were demonstrated and discussed at length. It seems we’re a bit behind other agricultural sectors in the development of smart tools to assist with business decisions and increase our efficiencies. Rob Hannam from Agnition, a technology company that specializes in developing mobile applications for agriculture, demonstrated for us a phone application that advises the sowing rate for soybeans and phone tools that advise which elevator is paying the best price at a particular time. I’m not sure we have this sort of poultry business tool available yet – but we should and will. We also heard how Abbotsford, B.C. poultry manager Scott Salter has implemented cameras in his barns, and learnt that this type of time saving technology is slow to be adopted. Other high-quality technical information presented included everything from calibrating medicators to identifying egg defects.

At the PIC, our aim is to bring you more of this type of information over the next 12 months, combined with the usual messages and information about general good management and best practices. As we said at the end of the conference, if you attended this conference you would be able to go back to the farm and save money – no question. The conference is also a great time to meet old friends, make new ones and it provides an unprecedented opportunity to discuss similar issues amongst the sectors and learn from one another. Don’t miss it next year.

Also look out for the upcoming Producer Updates and the last of the Growing Forward funding workshops in the next month or so.

From all of us at the PIC, we wish you a prosperous and healthy 2012.