Giants of agriculture
Farmers inducted into Atlantic Agricultural Hall of Fame
BIBLE HILL, N.S. – Four Atlantic Canadian farmers have been honoured as members of an esteemed group.
During a ceremony at Dalhousie University’s Agricultural Campus on Friday, one man from each Atlantic province was inducted into the Atlantic Agricultural Hall of Fame.
“I did a lot of planning, but one thing that was not in my plans was being up here,” said Nova Scotia representative Gilbert W. Allen, who lives in Kings County.
Allen graduated from the Nova Scotia Agricultural College with an Advanced Farming Diploma and worked with Agriculture Canada, conducting crop research, for seven years. After he and his wife, Dorothy, bought their own farm he left his position with Agriculture Canada to pursue his dream of farming full time.
G. W. Allen nursery began as a mixed operation with beef cattle and apples, but his passion was certified strawberry plants and raspberry canes. Allen’s commitment to improving root stock earned him a reputation for supplying quality plants and in 1975 he grew the first crop of Canadian strawberry plants for export to Florida for the winter industry.
Allen noted that, because of his own health issues, he was very grateful when his son, Jeff, wanted to buy the farm.
“There is a possibility there could be a third-generation farmer on the farm, as Jeff and Kathy’s son Patrick is now studying plant science,” he said.
HECTOR WILLIAMS
Newfoundland and Labrador Hector Williams, of Goulds, was excited about joining the hall of fame.
“I didn’t think I’d ever get to the Nova Scotia Agricultural College but I guess, after 60 years, I got there, one way or another,” he said.
He and his brother, Eric, took over the family farm after their father’s death. They expanded their herd of dairy cattle from 30 head with 75 acres to 300 head and 450 acres and operated H& E Williams Dairy Farm together until Eric’s death in 2000. Today, the farm is run by the fourth generation of Williams farmers, Hector’s son Terry.
Williams was one of the founding farmers of the Milk Marketing Board, now the Dairy Farmers of Newfoundland and Labrador (DFNL).
He said during the early 1980s brokers started to bring milk from other places into the province.
“We put the wheels in motion and we formed the Newfoundland milk marketing board, and in 1983 we came under supply management, and the dairy industry has been going good since.
“We do have our hiccups and our ups and our downs, but we get over them.”
Williams served in several agricultural and community organizations, and for two years sat on Goulds Town Council.
He admits he likes to talk, and said his wife told him,
“You didn’t walk to the hall of fame, you talked to the hall of fame.”
New Brunswick
Maarten van Oord was born in 1956 in the Netherlands, where he studied agriculture and mechanical engineering before immigrating.
In 1979 he bought a dairy farm in Springfield, N.B. He later transitioned ownership of the dairy farm to his son, Joas and wife Lisa, but remained in the area, helping on the farm and growing apples, cherries, peaches and plums.
One of the accomplishments he is most pleased with is helping bring English- and Frenchspeaking farmers together to form the New Brunswick Federation of Agriculture.
“We also changed our attitude toward government, and I think it was an extremely meaningful change because these people were not there to harm us; these people were there to help us,” he said.
He’s served as a member of several organizations and was recognized by the New Brunswick Institute of Agrologists with an Environmental Stewardship Award.
As chair of Sunrise Partnership for Agriculture Development and Education (SPADE), van Oord works to develop employment opportunities for newcomers and unemployed people.
RODNEY DINGWELL
Prince Edward Island Rodney Dingwell graduated from the Nova Scotia Agricultural College in 1967 and became a seventh-generation farmer.
He and his father incorporated under the name Mo Dhaicdh; Gaelic for ‘my home.’
Dingwell, his brother Blois, and son Craig now have potatoes, mixed grains, soybeans, a cow/calf operation, and a baling service on the farm in Marie. He passed on the hog operation to his son, Scott.
He’s been a member of several agricultural and community organizations and, in 2001, went to Kenya to take part in a development project with Farmers Helping Farmers.
“I was very fortunate to have the privilege of working in a field I’ve enjoyed, and that’s not something everyone has the opportunity to do,” he said.
He is concerned that people are becoming far removed from the production of food.
“I know it’s something we can’t stop,” he said. “Our cities get larger, our farms get larger, there gets to be less people involved but we somehow we have to, I feel, share the message that we do produce the safest, best, the cheapest food in the world, or some of it.”