Our Philosophy
In the agriculture industry, the high use of chemicals has created environmental problems, such as harmful effect to the land and to the surface and run-off water. This deterioration in the health of the land has created a loss of faith in farming practices. Many people believe that the quality of food is diminishing and has had a negative impact on their health because of residual chemicals in the food they eat. Therefore, the choice of sustainable and healthy farming methods is our aim and makes good sense. Our customers appreciate the resulting high quality, organic products.
Profile & Market
We have been growing organic crops on our family farm since 1681. As more and more of the local farmers began switching to organic farming, the need for a specialized marketing outlet became necessary. In 1989, we created Poplar Valley Organic Farms Inc., our grain marketing company. Our reputation for delivering and assuring reliable supply of consistently high quality products is well known among our customer.
Our marking and distribution system includes Canada, USA and Europe.
Our History
Clem and Linda lived on a small acreage for 5 years before moving onto the family farm where still live today. Clem was farming 4000 acres with his father, brother and uncle. He knew that conventional farming wasn't for him. They had a good sized farm with cattle and were barely making it.
He didn't like what they had to do to get a crop. Putting all of the inputs into the ground and then selling their grain to the huge grain companies at their price which is influenced by world commodities.
Clem did all the spraying from a young age. He didn't know anything about the products he was using to spray their field with and took no precautions such as gloves, masks and protective clothing.
In 1985 they started to farm organic. We had purchased a half-section which had 40 acres of bush land which had never been sprayed or fertilized. They decided to grow 40 acres of Organic Flax.
In 1986 the crop was larger and we had our first inspection. A gentleman from Flora came down to check our field and records to make sure that everything was well documented; there was not certification body. It was a private certification. Our transition to Organic was an easy decision.
Poplar Valley Organic Farms Inc.
They were increasing their production and realized they needed a grain cleaning facility and marketing company. We incorporated Poplar Valley Organic Farms Inc. in 1989. In 1995 they built the cleaning plant. They were shipping a lot of product to Europe in the beginning. Slowly they watched the markets in Canada and the USA as they grew. They realized that as the markets in North America grew they were getting more and more competition in the bulk and bagged market. They knew that they had to differentiate themselves from the rest. They pride themselves on customer oriented and quality product.
In 1997 they decided to launch an organic horse feed called “Genesis” Organic Horse Feed. They made some to try it our but were ahead of the time. In 2010, the time had come. The world is ready for organic horse feed.