The Rural Voice, 1994-02, Page 28t may not quite be
turning a sow's ear
into a silk purse, but
Market Grey -Bruce
wants to sec the farm
products produced in the
two counties turned into
something more than
raw materials for the
food industry bcforc
they leave the region.
With that in mind the
organization, which was
formed in 1993 by thc
Grey and Bruce Fed-
erations of Agriculture,
will hold a conference in
Owen Sound February
14 and 15 at the
Bayshorc Arena. The
idea behind the
conference is to bring
farmers, entrepreneurs,
business people and
anyone interested in the Gerry Poechman studies the Market Gre
GREBRUCE
Setting a course to have farmers
control their own destiny
By Keith Roulston
future of Grey Bruce brochure. The conference seeks to bring
A panel discussion will be held to
show how promotion of local
products can pay off. Charlie Fitch, a
well-known former manager of Food
City in Owen Sound and an
enthusiastic promoter of local
agricultural products, will take part,
as will Dave Ziegler who turned a
part-time hobby into Southampton
Flour Milling Inc., a successful, full-
time international business.
The roots of Market Grey -Bruce
lie in the Rural Connection II
program, says Karl Braeker,
Chairman of Market Grey -Bruce. He
remembers a wrap-up meeting for
that program, which had been
designed to help people cope with the
pressures in the modern rural
community, after which half a dozen
people sat around and talked about
how they were tired of picking up the
pieces after things went wrong in the
community. They wanted to do
something to change the situation. As
they talked they realized that they
had all the ingredients in Grey -Bruce
to make a difference: human and
natural resources and tourism. The
group turned to the Ontario
Agricultural Training Institute
(OATI) for funding to try to make
some of this happen. The conference
would not only educate those taking
part, but provide a higher profile for
the whole concept of co-operative
development within the
community.
The conference idea was
formed soon after Market
Grey -Bruce was formed and
the committee spent last
summer fleshing out the idea
and putting together a grant
application. "Our main focus
at this point is to empower
the farmers to get out and
start thinking about new
ideas and new alliances in
the community," says Gerry
Poechman, one of the
members of Market Grey -
Bruce.
"Farmers perceive them-
selves to have these problems
alone, but other businesses in
our community have related
kinds of problems. When we
all get together in a room we
find a lot of common ground
y -Bruce conference and that's maybe where we
entrepreneurs together. should start for future
together to see how the the farm
products already grown in the two
counties can be used to stimulate
greater economic activity and wealth
creation for the region.
Market Grcy-Bruce took a first
step in building alliances between
food producers and thc rest of the
community when it participated in
the annual banquet and meeting of
the Grey -Bruce Tourism Association
last year. To make tourist operators
more aware of the food grown
around them, food for the banquet
and social hour was donated by local
producers, commodity boards and
commodity organizations. Even the
flour to make the gravy came from
the OntarBio Co-op.
The February conference will seek
to build more bridges between
farmers and the business community
and stimulate possible alliances.
Examples of how others have already
done this will be presented. Barbara
Maynes, Commissioner of the
Vermont Department of Travel and
Tourism and Kate Finley Woodruff,
marketing specialist with the
Vermont Department of Agriculture
and Food will tell about the
successful efforts in their state which
have combined quality agricultural
products, the beauty of the state and
the advantages of Vermont as a year-
round vacation spot.
24 THE RURAL VOICE
development. Quite often the more
people get together the more
resources we are able to tap to solve
each others' problems and everybody
comes out a winner.
"All the other people are looking
for opportunities so we just need the
farmers to get looking for
opportunities and get them matched."
The Vermont project shows how
everyone co-operating can
provide more than the sum of
the parts. People coming away from a
visit to Vermont associated all the
good things of the state together,
Poechman says. "We see tourism as
still a growing industry in Grey and
Bruce, " he says. "It have been very
much untapped from the agricultural
side. If we can get people who visit
here going back thinking 'Grey -
Bruce' then they'll think of Grey -
Bruce as a source of their living not
just a place for vacations: Grey -
Bruce beef or pork, Grey -Bruce
furniture, and so on ."
One of the other speakers will be
Julien Den Tandt, general manager of
United Breeders Inc. in Guelph who
previously worked in the dairy, feed
and turkey processing industries, and
a former CEO of Norbest, a 200 -
million -a -year turkey meat marketing
co-operative in Utah. "We felt he was
a `kindred spirit'," Poechman says.
Den Tandt recognizes that Canada's