These ideas were celebrated recently at a ceremony in Brighton honouring regional winners of the Premier’s Awards for Agri-Food Innovation Excellence. Local fruit and vegetable producing recipients included:

Algoma Orchards Ltd. – Clarington

Apples are fresh and ready for their close-ups at Algoma Orchards. These growers are the first in Canada to refine and tailor a processing system that can sort different apple varieties into 22 distinct quality grades. Imaging equipment categorizes 54 images per apple per second during the sorting process. This helps the facility inspect, handle, naturally preserve and package apples at a rate of 64,000 pounds an hour. Little is wasted since the owners also built a juicing plant capable of pressing 12 million litres of fresh apple juice a year to handle any juice grade apples. Their efficiency extends to the wastewater management system which processes and recycles all water after it goes through sorting, packaging and juice lines. This modern facility can store up to 1.2 million apples in controlled environments that naturally minimize the fruit’s aging process.  

Burt’s Greenhouses – Odessa

When Brian Burt and Alex English were looking into biomass heating systems for their greenhouses, they could not find exactly what they needed, so they re-designed an existing system from the ground up. The results are impressive with lower emissions, the potential for a by-product that can be used to fertilize soil, and an astounding 65 per cent savings in heating costs. Instead of using 120,000 litres of heating oil a year, the owners use 600 tons of wood construction waste, making the operation clean, green and far less expensive.