Heather Latter
The future of the Emo Agricultural Research Station (EARS) is looking more positive than its Thunder Bay counterpart, which is slated to close at year’s end due to a lack of funding.
“It’s really unfortunate to lose anything,” said EARS manager Kim Jo Bliss.
“I feel bad that the government didn’t see the value of having that station,” she added.
Bliss feels having both stations remain open would be ideal since the climates of Thunder Bay and Rainy River District differ completely.
“I certainly feel bad for those producers,” she remarked.
“But I’m certainly happy that things are continuing on here so far.”
Bliss said things seem to be fairly positive at the local research station.
“The University of Guelph chose to close Kemptville College so that has seemed to free up some funding,” she explained, noting she reports to the university but the provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Food still contributes funds to the research station here.
“From what we’re understanding is the university and the Ministry of Ag and Food do not want to lose the station in the north,” Bliss said, clarifying that she’s referring to EARS because the station in Thunder Bay has been privately-funded since one of the previous round of cuts.
One reason Bliss is feeling positive about the future of EARS is that the University of Guelph and the ministry seem to be investing in it.
“They re-tiled the place this fall, which was expensive,” noted Bliss, citing a cost upwards of $30,000.
“We certainly weren’t part of any of the project that farmers were able to apply for,” she added.
“I’m excited about that because we were having some major drainage issues, so we were getting limited on the area where we could do some of our better work,” she said.
“I didn’t know if it would ever happen and then it did.”
Bliss added the station also is really revisiting things that she said were sort of pulled back from them.
“We were limited on how much extension work we should do and now there are saying that is part of the service we should be providing,” she explained, noting it’s something they probably have been doing there anyway.
“To me, having producers that are happy and thinking you are helping them in the long run is what is going to save our butts, too,” she reasoned.
Bliss said they even are making sure the local research station has all the right equipment.
“For example, we have a fair bit of corn grown in the district, but it’s really hard for us to do any corn research because we don’t have any corn equipment, so it’s difficult,” she stressed.
“[They are] looking into getting some equipment that, say, another station isn’t using that we could make use of here to get some data here for people who are looking for that kind of information,” Bliss added.
She noted both the University of Guelph and the ministry still want EARS to generate income.
“They still want us to have partners that are paying for some work done here,” Bliss said.
“They are not asking for us to find private funding, but they are really looking for us to partner with people.
“It’s not the fun part of the job, looking for money and looking for partners, because you are competing with so many,” she admitted.
But EARS already has a signed agreement with the University of Minnesota to do some canola work.
“My job for the winter is to keep looking for more partners and especially right now, I need to concentrate on some forage partners, like some grass, hap, pasture-type partners,” she noted.
Bliss said that’s because the tiling destroyed most of their perennial trials.
“It was tiled at 40 feet, and now they went in and re-tiled so that the whole station is 20-foot spacings,” she explained.
“That ruined a bunch of the trials so we’ve plowed up a lot of our plots.
“We salvaged a few things but not much,” she added.
“I really have to concentrate on finding some forage work because even though our grain numbers are growing, we still have a lot of beef cows and so grass and that type of work is very valuable to the station.”
Bliss added said the boss she’s been reporting to is retiring in March, so that also will be a change.
“Every time we change to a new person, it worries me a little bit because we’ve been so fortunate to have people who care,” she remarked.
“They are not in Emo but they still see the value and they still care that we’re here.
“So things are quite positive but anything could happen,” Bliss warned.
She said she’s trying to be cautiously optimistic.
“We did some off-farm trials this summer which was kind of exciting,” she enthused.
“We did a canola project with North End Farms and we did a little bit of work at the community pasture.
“So that’s exciting, too, because I feel the producers feel connected to it when it’s not just only at the station,” she said.
And Bliss indicated this past summer was pretty good at the research station.
“It was a tough year weather-wise at the beginning, but we’ve certainly had a wonderful fall and we had some decent yields,” she noted.
She was especially pleased with their soybean yields.
“So yield-wise, it was a pretty good year,” Bliss said.
“It makes you more excited for next year because we should have even better stuff next year.”
