Chicken Farmers of Canada elects new executive committee

Chicken Farmers of Canada (CFC) has unveiled its 2021 executive committee. CFC’s 15-member board of directors, made up of farmers and other stakeholders from the chicken industry, has elected:

Benoît Fontaine, chair
Stanbridge Station, Que.
Hailing from Stanbridge Station, Que., Benoît Fontaine, CFC’s chair, first joined the board of directors in 2013 as an alternate and became the Quebec director in 2014. He farms in the Lac Champlain area and raises chickens and turkeys. A former high school Canadian history teacher and principal, and second generation chicken farmer, Fontaine has also been heavily involved with the Éleveurs de volailles du Quebec since 1999. He became chair in 2016.

Nick de Graaf, 1st vice-chair
Port Williams, N.S.
Nick de Graaf is a third-generation poultry farmer in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia operating the farm founded by his Dutch grandfather in the early 1960s. Today, the farm produces both chickens and turkeys. De Graaf is also part of Innovative Poultry Group (IPG), which farms broiler breeders and owns Maritime Chicks, a new, state-of-the-art hatchery employing the HatchCare system. In addition to poultry, de Graaf grows more than 2,000 acres of wheat, corn and soybeans. He is self-sufficient in the production of corn and soybeans for his on-farm feed mill, where he processes poultry feeds for his own flocks. De Graaf is in his ninth year as a director with Chicken Farmers of Nova Scotia. He has held several roles with CFC, including as chair of the production committee and the representative to the National Farm Animal Care Council (NFACC). De Graaf and his wife, Trudy, have three children and three grandchildren.

Tim Klompmaker, second vice-chair
Norwood, Ont.
Tim Klompmaker lives in Norwood, Ont., and was elected to the CFC board in 2017. He started farming in 1984 along with his wife Annette and his three sons. He is a third-generation chicken farmer with the fourth generation already in place and running chicken farms of their own. Klompmaker served as a district committee representative for CFC before being elected to the Ontario Board in 2010. He previously served as alternate representative for Ontario from 2012 to 2013, and has participated on the production committee, the policy committee, the governance committee, and as the representative to NFACC. He has also served as second vice-chair of Chicken Farmers of Ontario.

Derek Janzen, executive member
Aldergrove, B.C.
Derek Janzen, the executive member, and his wife Rhonda have farmed in the Fraser Valley since 1998. They currently raise chickens and manage commercial laying hens. Prior to farming, Janzen worked for B.C.’s largest poultry processor for nearly nine years. He worked his way up from driving delivery truck to sales and marketing where he took the position of major accounts manager. His experience in the processing industry has served him well with his board involvement. Janzen has held various positions on a variety of other boards too, including chair of the B.C. Egg Producers Association and he was appointed by the Minister of Agriculture as a member of the Farm Industry Review Board, B.C.’s supervisory board.