Dairy program helps farmers explore on-farm processing

Thursday, April 11, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

Dairy Farmers of Ontario is introducing a follow up program to a previous one called project origin that helped interested farmers explore on-farm processing.

Project origin II is designed to determine if more farmers are interested in on-farm processing or if any existing or new on-farm processors want to become federally registered rather than provincially registered, DFO says in a report released at its recent spring policy conference. Getting a federal license would enable on-farm processors to distribute their product across Canada as opposed to being restricted to Ontario, which they are with a provincial license.

There are currently three on-farm fluid milk processors and eight cheese or yogurt on-farm processors in Ontario.

Bonnie den Haan, who is part of the on-farm fluid milk processing company Sheldon Creek Dairy near Loretto (near Orangeville), says they were part of project farmgate, which DFO introduced in 2009 to assist farmers establish on-farm fluid milk processing. But many farmers interested in the program wanted to manufacture cheese, and to encompass both fluid and industrial milk projects DFO established project origin.

Bonnie, her husband, John, and their family own Sheldon Creek Dairy. They pasteurize and bottle whole and dark chocolate milk from the Holstein cows on their farm, Haanview Holsteins. The milk is sold in one-quart bottles and isn’t homogenized.

Den Haan says they weren’t part of project origin, where the farmers in the program applied as a group to get money and used a consultant that DFO selected.

She says project farmgate was awesome. They received help from DFO for some consulting work to design their facility. They also had access to a DFO report about on-farm processing in the United States.

About helping on-farm processors become federally registered, den Haan says that’s something farmers should take on themselves after they get set up. She says at Sheldon Creek Dairy they don’t have any plans in the near future to get federally registered and if they do “we’ll do it on our own.”

“DFO should be helping Ontario farmers supply Ontario consumers,” den Haan says. “We’re a domestic industry and that’s the direction we should be staying in.”

She says the on-farm processing at Sheldon Creek Dairy “has been a really fun experience. People love our product and they love coming to the farm.” BF