Rails to travails
Proposed trail on railway lands in south Simcoe has agri-business and safety impactBY BERNARD TOBIN
"It gets pretty busy out here," says Linda Davidson, standing on the abandoned railway line that bisects the yard and loading area at W. D. Potato Ltd., on the outskirts of Beeton, Simcoe county.During potato harvest as many as 500 trucks travel through the yard in a day, says Linda, who with husband Walter owns and operates this potato storage and transportation business that employs 50 people and has annual sales in excess of $25 million.
The property that the CN tracks ran on before the line was abandoned in the 1970s is now owned by the Town of New Tecumseth. In the coming weeks, town council will consider whether it should turn the railbed into part of the Trans Canada Trail, a proposal that will bring funding from the federal government's Millennium Fund.
Trail enthusiasts say the railbed that runs from Caledon to Cookstown with a spur to Alliston will link with parts of the Trans Canada Trail that already exist or are currently under construction.
But farmers and business operators such as Davidson say the rail trail could be one big trial for owners of adjacent land.
New Tecumseth mayor Larry Keogh says, "I don't think council is going to say the heck with the farmers. That's not going to happen."
Keogh says there's lots of support for the trail, which proponents say will be an economic shot in the arm for the area, but "it's not going to be an easy decision."
There are huge obstacles to overcome, including the W. D. Potato situation, Keogh says. "I can't see us putting a trail through that property at this point. We'll have to find an option." The area features a lot of intensive potato operations, and spray drift is a concern, Keogh admits. He also notes that in some areas water and sewer mains are above ground.
Two other issues also have to be hammered out. Part of the right of way is not under the town's jurisdiction - a private tour company runs a steam engine along six kilometres of track. There is also the question of whether a group of land owners who applied to lease the right of way that runs adjacent to and in some cases through their property have the right to lease the railbed before it can be turned over to the trail. The landowners applied to lease the land in 1994, but discovered only last month that the application had been approved.
The right of way runs through Dave MacKenzie's 1,200 acre farm. MacKenzie - vice-chairman of the Ontario Potato Growers Marketing Board - believes the cost of upgrading the property will be prohibitive. The project has a $538,000 budget, but MacKenzie says that kilometres of the railbed that "are no longer there" will have to be rebuilt. Dilapidated bridges will also have to be upgraded.
MacKenzie is puzzled by the need for yet another trail when the scenic Bruce Trail is only 20 kilometres away. "This is not pretty country," he says. "There are no water falls, only dry creeks." Most of the hikers will be "blown away and covered with sand," says Linda Davidson.
Eric Saunter, a University of Guelph crop science graduate and trail expert who is advising the New Tecumseth Millennium committee, believes the 66-foot-wide rights of way and the buffer provided by headlands will eliminate concerns about spray drift. He also acknowledges that in the interest of safety some areas the trail will have to be re-routed. Whether adjacent landowners will be willing to co-operate is another matter.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Handling has a price tag
Beef farmers can expect to hear more about stockmanship soon.OMAFRA beef specialists are updating handling guidelines for dealing with beef cattle. A topic high on everyone's list is the need to decrease the number of needlings. There's pressure coming from all directions, says Nancy Noecker, eastern Ontario-based beef specialist. The Quality Assurance program reduced bruising as well as damage from needles stuck in higher value cuts of beef. But there is also a strong feeling that better handling means less stress and also less sickness, so fewer antibiotics are used to treat cattle in their lifetimes.
Noecker cites a study on Kahua Ranch on Big Island, Hawaii, where University of Hawaii handling guru Burt Smith corralled 40 500-pound unbred heifers, ran them down a chute, ear-tagged and weighed them. Another 20 corralled animals were simply returned to the pasture.
The 40 calves were "worked" through the chutes 20 minutes every hour for three hours, with half of them being worked for six hours. At all times the animals were driven by cowboys on foot, silently, without canes or whips.
After 44 days the heifers were weighed again.
The unstressed animals gained 25 pounds whereas the lightly stressed animals, worked for three hours, gained 20 pounds and the moderately stressed animals only 16 pounds. Smith asserts that there was no compensatory gain on these animals, and handling them for longer periods has a long-term price.
Here in Ontario, former Ontario Cattlemen's Association president Bob Dobson is looking at changing his weaning practices to reduce the amount of bawling by about 100 calves when they are taken from their mothers in the fall on his Renfrew area farm.
Traditionally, separating mothers and calves results in four days of pacing and bawling by uncomfortable, stressed youngsters.
Last year Dobson separated his calves and cows by 500 feet. Putting the calves out on good pasture appeared to reduce the high-stress weaning period by one or two days.
Sickness rates were cut by 50 per cent and no animals needed more than one treatment with a long-acting anti-microbial.
Dobson thinks that putting calves out on a good pasture in familiar surroundings helps.
This year he is considering following a new protocol and separating cows and calves with only a well-marked electric fence. Cow and youngsters can touch noses and lie beside each other but the calves can't drink milk. In theory, at least, this should avoid the deep depletion of immune systems that occurs with longer, more stressful weanings. - Don Stoneman
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Will beach battle bubble again?
Environmental activist Joe Gleason is leaving semi-retirement in Hawaii to return to the shores of Lake HuronBY ROBERT IRWIN
To be sure, there are differences. But life after Joe doesn't seem too bad. "The ultralight isn't flying over my place any more," observes Henry Vander Burgt, Dashwood, whose hog farm was a regular in-flight attraction for crusading American environmentalist Joe Gleason.A lot of water has rolled onto the beach under the cliffs behind Gleason's home near Zurich since he moved to Hawaii in 1997. When he left, he promised to return and launch a class action lawsuit for more than $1 billion against Ontario Pork and various government agencies for what he believed was their role in Lake Huron pollution.
In those days, Gleason - a personable Michigan native - had time on his hands, having, at the age of 32, developed and sold a successful business that provided software through the Internet. He rallied fellow Huron county vacationers under the umbrella of a group called SOLVE and used his own money to publish and distribute an environmental newsletter.
His focus was hog farms. As a result, pork producers like Vander Burgt became pariahs in their communities.
Gleason claimed manure was solely responsible for beaches being closed due to high coliform counts. He even spearheaded a water-sampling program based on bacteria resistance testing, which he claimed would positively identify the source of the pollution. He based his conclusions in large part on information gleaned from the Internet.
"If it's human waste that's causing the beach to shut down then I deserve to be thrown out of town, I'm the mad man," Gleason told Farm & Country in the summer of 1997. The test results eventually arrived and were, like some of the surrounding waters, murky. Gleason, speaking on the phone from Hawaii, says initial data showed agriculture was the culprit.
He says after some further number crunching "based on a new theory, which was totally stupid," and which he alleges was influenced by farm interests, human waste was fingered "for 98 per cent of the contamination."
Tom Prout, general manager of the Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority, says farm nutrient management plans and zoning are still important issues, but the fuss Gleason and the interest groups raised also led to improvements in operation and maintenance of the town of Zurich's sewage lagoons. Hamlets such as Granton, Nairn and Crediton, which Prout says have been contributing human waste to the watershed through faulty septic tanks, are seeking solutions.
Prout notes the city council in Goderich, where the beach is often closed due to high bacterial counts, is responding positively to needed improvements at the municipal sewage plant. The plant discharges a corrosive-smelling, treated effluent through a concrete spillway down the side of a hill adjacent to the municipal beach.
Gleason used another idea featured on the Internet to stabilize the rapidly eroding beach behind his house. Several years ago, he installed an illegal structure known as a groyne. It consisted of large pre-formed concrete blocks set out underwater perpendicular to shore.
Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) quietly laid charges against Gleason, claiming he was damaging the very lake he was trying to protect.
"Groynes cause erosion on the downstream side," explains conservation officer Jack Overholt.
At the time, officials couldn't release details: Charges aren't public until the accused is legally served. As much as MNR staff might have enjoyed a trip to Hawaii, that's not the way the Ontario government works these days.
From Hawaii, Gleason vowed to sue MNR. His brother had just died, and he was outraged by what he viewed as harassment by heavy-handed government officials who he says upset his father by relating that Joe would be arrested on sight if he set foot in Ontario.
Last summer, cooler heads prevailed. The groyne was removed and the charges were dropped.
Lake Huron's pollution problems remain, but most people no longer consider hog farms the sole source of contamination. Vander Burgt has expanded his farrowing quarters without incident, and a few new hog barns have gone up in the area.
Last year, the Huron County Farm Environmental Coalition, representing a variety of commodities along with SOLVE, evolved into the Huron County Surface Water Coalition, which has five working groups.
Coalition chairman Evert Ritter, a Huron county farmer since 1965, concedes there are still "some groups that want to eliminate livestock from Huron county." However, he says, they aren't part of the mainstream and "are reacting on an emotional basis without any facts."
Prout notes, "the coalition is being driven by the interests of the community." He says government agencies might help by chairing or taking minutes at meetings, but don't set the agenda.
"If [the coalition] wants to go down a road and chase E. coli or chase grants, that's where it's going to go."
Prout and other area residents are obviously pleased to see an end to the blame game and legal threats. Still, he admits the "Joe Gleasons of the world" help keep the public aware of the need for improvement.
The coalition is a member of a steering committee guiding a two-year University of Guelph research program aimed at identifying the sources of specific bacteria.
Meanwhile, in Hawaii, where Gleason has unveiled a sophisticated do-it-yourself web page service for professionals who don't want to bother learning design skills, environmental problems aren't going unnoticed. "They do stupid, stupid things with the shoreline here," he charges.
Another irritant, he notes, is smoke on Maui from constant burning of sugar cane.
So sometime later this summer, with great misgiving Gleason says, he and his family will leave Hawaii for the shores of Lake Huron. He's kept in touch with the situation thereand says the coalition approach is too soft. And he vows he's ready for a fight.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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U.S. faces check-off revolt
Producer dissatisfaction with NPPC has implications for Canadian hog industryBY ROBERT IRWIN
Some time in the coming months, no one is quite sure when, U.S. pork producers will vote on the future of the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC). Regardless of the outcome, the situation spells bad news for Canadian pork producers."As far as Canada is concerned, NPPC has been an A-1 organization to deal with," observes Carl Moore, vice-chairman of the Canadian Pork Council and past chairman of Ontario Pork.
Early last year, the Campaign for Family Farms, a coalition of advocacy groups based in Minnesota, Missouri and Iowa, began circulating a petition seeking a halt to the mandatory hog check-off in the U.S. The coalition charges NPPC favours large corporate interests over family farms.
The 15-member National Pork Board, appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture, collects 45 cents US per $100 from every hog sold by the 85,000 U.S. pork producers. The NPPC is responsible for lobbying and promotion and administers most of the money.
Moore says NPPC speaks with one voice for the whole U.S. industry, making it easier to deal with hog movement across the border and health protocols such as that established recently on pseudorabies. In the worst-case scenario, he predicts defeat of the check-off could mean Canada would have to contend with a variety of divergent splinter groups.
When North Dakota farmers blocked the border last winter, "NPPC went to bat for Canada," Moore emphasizes.
Conflict has been brewing for several years between NPPC and several rural lobby groups. At one point there were charges NPPC used producer money to spy on these groups.
A few weeks ago, an audit called to deal with accusations of improper NPPC spending found no misuse or loss of producer funds. The Office of Inspector General concluded the check-off programs had benefited pork producers, including small and disadvantaged ones.
Ontario Pork chairman Will Nap won't be surprised if NPPC takes a harder line against the Canadian pork industry in the months leading up to the vote. "It may mean that in order to appear to be doing a good job for the producers they may tackle pork imports," Nap reasons.
Ontario hogs emerged as an irritant for American producers when prices bottomed out last fall. Nap says despite NPPC's need to curry favour at home, he hopes "reason will prevail because we're not sending very many hogs over now."
McNutt maintains he wants to continue a harmonious relationship with Canadian producers. However, he is annoyed by what he considers unreasonable health requirements imposed on Canadian packers who import American hogs.
"Canadians need to be very aware how important it is for the U.S. industry to have access to Canada," he warns. In December, NPPC heralded long-awaited changes in Canadian health regulations allowing access to Canadian markets for live U.S. hogs.
Now NPPC is focused on recent Canadian packer charges that a number of requirements, such as on-site truck clean-out, are prohibitive. Talks last month between U.S. and Canadian government and industry officials produced a draft agreement to reduce some Canadian government health-based requirements.
The Campaign for Family Farms announced last month it had gathered 16,500 signatures on their petition. That is 1,500 more than the number required to trigger a vote on check-off.
The group wants the vote held this summer. However, government officials say they need five to six months to validate signatures, and then another year establishing rules for the vote and providing required notices to producers.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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