Ag edition: Meat and Potatoes
A pick-up truck inches along the backroads bordering Mulmur and Melancthon. Bert Tupling is at the wheel waving at passing cars and stopping to chat with a cousin. He seems to know everyone on these roads around Honeywood but not as many as he used to, he says. The community has changed.
At 79 years old, he has been out to feed the cattle that morning before reporting back to the main office at Tupling Farms where he still puts in full days, with his wife Pat, who does the administrative work, and their sons Andrew and Aaron. Three of their fivechildren have indicated they too intend to work on the farm.
As both parents and business owners, the Tuplings were relieved when their son Andrew said he wanted to work on the farm, same with Aaron, eight years his junior.
“We were so short of help,” said Tupling. “When you’re building a business, and you’ve worked hard, and sacrificed some things, it means a lot. I was so proud.”
He said it doesn’t mean that he and Pat can retire, but they are ready to.
The Tuplings farm 5,300 acres of potatoes, barley, wheat, alfalfa and corn in Mulmur, Clearview, Melancthon and Grey-Highlands. The barley is sold to make baby food, and the grains are used as cattle feed. The manure is used to supplement fertilizer for the potatoes and other crops. The cattle are finished for the beef market.
The Tupling family settled on crown land in 1852. In his hometown of Honeywood, Tupling points to the cemetery where his great-grandparents, grandparents, parents and many relatives are laying in rest. It’s where he attended a four-room schoolhouse before leaving to farm.
Tupling takes pride in what he’s built. A modern fabric-covered cattle barn, a granary, a fleet of tri-drive trucks and tandems, dump trucks and tractors, with a large mechanic’s shop, wash bay, and a state of the art processing facility.
Tupling Farms has six climate controlled buildings, with another in the planning stages, that can store 50 million pounds of potatoes.
They grow 17 varieties that are carefully stored for year-round delivery to retail, foodservice and processing markets.
The storage allows for the option to market the produce when it is most desirable and profitable.
The sheds, climate controlled to maintain 95 per cent humidity, have computerized venting to control air flow and ventilation. The ideal conditions depend on the variety of the potato.
“The starch will convert to sugar if the temperature gets too low,” says Tupling. Tupling has seen a tremendous difference in attention being paid to ground conditions.
Modern farmers utilize the latest science and technology to maximize yields.
The soil is tested for nitrogen, phosphorus, pot ash and nutrients, and pivots – something Tupling says wasn’t a common sight in the Shelburne area until about a decade ago but is now considered somewhat essential.
“We potato growers do not supply enough potatoes for the province of Ontario,” he says.
Tupling says he and his peers are doing everything they possibly can to get the best yield and maximize the return on investment.
He has seen his costs balloon from below $400 per acre to today’s cost of $4,000 per acre.
“In order to maximize that return on investment we need to make use of new technology and modern day varieties to maximize that yield,” said Tupling.
In terms of land stewardship, Tupling thinks about his grandkids. He wants to leave them with healthy soil and a sustainable operation that they can build on and find success. He thinks about sustainability in terms of reducing waste and practicing crop rotation to make the land more productive.
It takes a team of 15 employees, and up to 32 during the fall harvest, to grow, store, process and ship potatoes.
Tupling Farms started the packaging plant in 1984, back when they were using jute bags, and began automating in the 1990s.
A devastating fire in 2017 destroyed a 44,000 square foot processing facility and administration offices. Tupling Farms rebuilt, almost doubling the size of the facility.
Inside the processing plant, two storeys of conveyors whir. There is an earthy smell in the air as potatoes – plucked from storage – speed past seemingly going in all directions. They move through baths and sorting stations before ending up in paper bags or boxes bound for their various outlets. The sorting is aided by digital imaging that sends potatoes, depending on their size, to their proper destination – and soon, Tupling Farms will be utilizing a type of x-ray technology to scan for potatoes with hollow centres.
Automation is also used to bag the potatoes and stack them onto pallets. Sometimes the potatoes are loaded directly into trucks at a rate of 80,000 pounds in less than an hour.
One-third of Tupling Farms’ yield is sold to Super-Pufft, one of North America’s largest manufacturers and co- packers of salty snacks for retailers and national brands. The rest are packed in 10- and 50-pound bags with the Tupling Farms label, or branded for retailers.
Anyone sitting down to dinner at a Swiss Chalet restaurant could be biting into a fresh-cut French fry or baked potato grown at Tupling Farms.
That crisp, golden French fry’s light colour is totally dependent on precise storage conditions, which is why strict attention is paid to infrastructure and technology.
Trina Berlo photo: Thousands of pounds of potatoes flow through the processing plant at Tupling Farms. The plant has the capability of creating an 80,000-pound load of potatoes in under an hour.
