C&M Seeds and Palmerston Grain

On October 23rd the Norwell LEAF program went to C&M Seeds and Palmerston Grain. During the tour of C&M Seeds we met up with Mike Holzworth - a farmer that works at C&M seeds as well as on his own farm. He took us into the facility and told us a little bit about the history of this company. We learned that the business has been family- owned since 1979 and that they are wheat researchers not breeders. The difference being that they do not create new wheat varieties. They receive wheat varieties from other researchers in different countries around the world and test the wheat seeds to see if the varieties are successful in Ontario. When testing the wheat they check not just for a good yield, but for disease resistance, new diseases, as well as good characteristics for milling use. They test for this in the 6000 plots they have on their land as well as farms all over Ontario and other provinces all over Canada. The reason they test in so many places is to test for changes in the soil as well as the weather. For example, the plot that they have in Kincardine has different results than in Palmerston. C&M Seeds as about 15 employees during the spring, fall, and winter but during the summer they have more employees because they hire students to work for them during that time. At C&M Seeds they grow a large amount of wheat varieties such as winter, spring, hard, soft, red, white and durum. These wheats are used for many different things. Durum wheat is used for making pasta while soft wheat is used for making pastries and hard wheat is used for making bread. The reason durum wheat is used to make pasta. Also at C&M Seeds they grow barley, oats, and hemp. Our stop at Palmerston Grain was a lesson in the marketing and storage of grains. Our local farmers and grain marketers are connected to domestic and international markets. We walked by several large bins that contains soybeans waiting to be shipped to China. We would like to thank C&M Seeds and Palmerston Grain for this excellent tour and teaching us about our local agriculture businesses.