The Rural Voice, 1983-10, Page 12Being Involved
Harold and ;%/ary Poechman
Harold Poechman has many sidelines -- as well as farming, he is an agricultural supplier and presi-
dent of the Bruce County Federation of Agriculture.
by Mary Lou Weiser
My father had a mixed farm and
now I'm a mixed-up farmer.
That's how Harold Poechman,
president of the Bruce County
Federation of Agriculture describes
his fanning operation on the outskirts
of Hanover in Bruce county.
While Poechman is certainly
following in his father's footsteps
with a wide variety of farm com-
modities ranging from cash crops to
egg production, mixed-up hardly
seems an appropriate word to
describe Poechman and his keen in-
volvement in agriculture.
Poechman is well-acquainted with
many aspects of the agricultural sec-
tor, especially when he practises them
first hand everyday. Along with a
son, Gerald, and a full time worker,
he farms a total of eight hundred
acres, half of which is rented.
Another son, Wayne, helps on the
farm in the evenings.
Poechman has a sideline to his far-
ming operation - selling herbicides,
twine, seed grain, fall wheat, Pioneer
corn, and alfalfa.
The sale of herbicides and grains
started on a very small scale fifteen
years ago with Poechman and his
uncles and brothers forming a co-
operative and it has evolved into a
business with over one hundred
customers. Poechman was fed up
with suppliers who were taking more
than what he considered a fair share
of profits from farm supplies. "We
just couldn't put up with that; he
said, and so the South Brant Buyers
Club was formed.
"At one time we called a meeting
and we would take farmers' orders. I
would list them out on a sheet of
paper and I would get a price from a
supplier, and they would pay that
supplier for that commodity,"
Poechman says. "It got that some
farmers needed a little extra and some
brought it back. There was no place
to do that because we bought a
truckload of Atrazine or a truckload
of something else."
So Poechman went to a different
system. He obtained a vendor's per-
mit for handling herbicides and
became a supplier. "We buy in
volume, and sell at the best possible
price so there's a bit of profit in it for
us," he says. He still sees many cases
of excessive profits, especially in an
PG. 10 THE RURAL VOICE, OCTOBER 1983
area where there are few suppliers.
Such is not the case in Poechman's
area, and many farmers use him for a
bargaining tool. A majority of his
customers are federation members
and he wants it that way. "We don't
bend over backwards for anyone who
doesn't support agriculture' he says.
The Poechmans cash crop a hun-
dred acres of wheat and have three
hundred acres of corn and one hun-
dred and twenty-five acres of barley,
with the remainder in hay.
Poechman normally keeps between
thirty and fifty stockers from spring
to fall but the cattle market has been
so unstable that he has a barn full of
hay but no cattle this year. "We
couldn't see that we were going to
make much so we stayed out of
them' says Poechman. He sees an
urgent need for some form of control
not only in the cattle industry but
with pigs as well.
The farm supports a finishing hog
operation with about five hundred
hogs shipped out per year, at a weight
averaging 210 pounds. Poechman is a
director with the Bruce County Pork
Producers and realizes the plight of
many pork producers, especially with