Hutterittes

We met up with Ryan Bonnett, a 2011 Nuffield scholar who works in grain marketing just out of Calgary. I met Ryan at the CSC in Europe in March. Ryan took us out to 2 Hutterite communities, which are religous farming colonies, that are scattered over Alberta. These guys were amazing! Although they block the outside world from there lives in terms of schooling, TV's, Radio, Socialising etc, they are state of the art farmers, who are able to almost self sustain there whole community as well as run a very profitable business selling produce. They produce everything on farm. Beef, Lamb, Hogs, Poultry, wheat, barley, canola, eggs, an array of vegies, milk and more. From their produce they make their own bread and butter, and only have to buy limited things to keep their community going!

 Hutteritte community leader, Mary, showing us there very large food store container, where they can and jar a lot of their produce. The whole community 60-120 people eat together in a communal kitchen for 3 meals a day, which the ladies prepare! The lady shown above was extremely welcoming and a fantasitic host and tour guide!

Shea talking to a few of the boys about thair farm machinery. They had a lot of good, large fun farm toys for us to look at! This was one of their three seeder bars, which had variable rate and section shut off, where they could turn off and lift sections of the bar.

In Vigour GM canola crop. Tolerant to Liberty Link. This was one of the more advanced crops. All Hutteritte communites grow GM crops, and have no opposition to it. As GM is grown almost everywhere, cross contamination and co-existance is not even an issue. There GM crops are outyielding conventional canola by such a large margin, that it would be difficult to not grow them!!

Shea and Ryan, with 2 colony leaders. We gave them the latest copy of the Farm weekly, and they were looking forward to the read!

Found this fantastic pea crop on the way to town. A rare sight compared to the extensive wheat, barley and canola paddocks. Peas is the only and very rarely grown legume in the area. But if it grew as good as this one did every year I am sure they would all have it in their rotations!

Weeds do not seem to be a major problem for these farmers. They do not use a pre emergent spray, and wild oats is their biggest problem which they spray out post em with the broadleaf spray. No other control methods are used other than herbicides, which is concerning! Glyphosate resistance is evolving but maneagable at the moment. They are all continuous croppers and very rarely will have a fallow phase. Canola, Cereal, Cereal is a typical rotation.

We were able to meet up with Ed Green, another Nuffield from England, for a drink and dinner. Ed is studying beef so had been out catching up with some graziers. We made it back to Calgary Hotel, and bed is calling. An early start tommorow to get to a canola field day in Lacombe.