Bus tour features value-added farm business
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
by JIM ALGIE
A planned bus tour, April 23, of value-added, farm-based businesses near Moorefield is the third in a series of collaboration-building activities for the Five-star Food Hub for the southwestern Ontario counties of Grey, Bruce, Perth, Wellington and Huron.
Spearheaded by Huron Business Development Corporation economic development manager Paul Nichol and coordinated by consultant Gayl Creutzberg, the proposed hub seeks to serve growers in all five counties. Precise details of potential markets and hub operations have yet to be determined as Cruetzberg and a 12-person working group develops a core of farmers willing to carry the project forward.
“We’re actually building the collaborative first,” Creutzberg said in an interview from her office in Wroxeter. “This is about the farmers and the farmers need to support this. They’re at the foundation of what we’re building,” she said.
Specifics about necessary facilities for marketing, storage and handling as well as profitable markets will await a firm assessment of growers’ and community needs, Creutzberg said. Public meetings last summer and fall show support for the concept, she said.
The April 23 bus tour is open to anyone considering value-added dimensions for their local food business. It includes visits to Reapers of Hope dehydration facilities, Harvest Table butcher shop and the on-farm, ice cream and yogurt processing facilities at Mapleton’s Dairy.
Cruetzberg is a local food consultant who spent part of 2013 touring local food projects internationally on a scholarship from the Nuffield Foundation. She hopes to encourage further, local food development in southwestern Ontario.
The Five Star project has received county financial support to date and awaits results of an application for provincial government funding.
A food hub for the region could include a demonstration farm and restaurant as well as office, marketing and storage facilities. Locations for any future facilities have yet to be determined but Creutzberg referred to possible sites in the Howick Township community of Clifford which borders of four of the five counties involved.
There are similar planning exercises underway in at least three other southwestern Ontario regions. Creutzberg hopes to build on existing facilities and studies.
As well, there are established local food projects within the five-county study area, notably, Elmer Brubacher’s Kinloss Produce which operates regular local food auctions in Lucknow. A Howick-based group, Gorrie Line Produce, manages and ships produce for 28 area growers, Creutzberg said.
Grey and Bruce counties have Chef’s Forum and the Grey-Bruce Agriculture and Culinary Tourism Association. Wellington is developing local food branding and Perth County has completed its own feasibility study.
The Five Star objective is to build on the “network of existing projects already on the ground,” Cruetzberg said. “So you bring what’s already established whether it’s storage, processing or other aggregating sites and then we’re building and strengthening that,” she said. The current planning process should lead, Creutzberg said, to “shovels in the ground,” within three years.
Even so, project details will depend on further planning for capital and operations.
“It’s not a political project,” Cruetzberg said. “It’s a social enterprise and where it ends up will be decided by the collaborators.” BF