He and his family operate Chaffe Farms near Mitchell
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Beef Farmers of Ontario (BFO) has a new president, and his name is Jack Chaffe.
The board of directors elected Chaffe as the organization’s new president during its annual general meeting in late February.
Chaffe replaces Rob Lipsett, who stepped down as president but will remain on the board of directors as a background director.
Craig McLaughlin, who operates a cow-calf and backgrounding operation in Renfrew County, will serve as BFO’s vice president.
Becoming the new president of BFO took nearly 10 years for Chaffe.
“It’s very exciting and I’ve worked my way into this leadership role,” he told Farms.com. “I’m going into my eighth year on the board of directors, and it takes time to familiarize yourself with all the files and prepare for a position like this.”
Chaffe operates Chaffe Farms north of Mitchell, Ont. in Perth County with his oldest son, Owen, who represents the fifth generation to raise cattle on the land. Jack’s brother Joe is also part of the operation.
Together they market approximately 2,500-head of cattle per year through the Ontario Corn Fed Beef program.
In addition, the farm puts calves and yearlings out to background under custom feeding agreements with other producers in the province and, at times, feeding cattle shipped in from Alberta and Manitoba.
Going forward as president of BFO, Chaffe has identified a few key issues he would like to focus on.
The first is additional funding for business risk management programming.
The provincial government announced a $50-million expansion to the program in July 2020.
BFO will be looking to have that dollar amount increased further, Chaffe said.
“Our current ask is an additional $100 million,” he said. “We’ve made budget submissions, so hopefully we’ll see something here in the next few weeks when the government presents its budget. If we don’t, then we’ll continue lobbying into the June election.”
The government’s original deadline to present its budget was March 31, but lawmakers passed an amendment to change the deadline to April 30.
Another issue for the Ontario’s beef and overall livestock sectors is processing capacity.
In November 2021, the provincial and federal governments announced up to $7 million in funding to help rapidly increase processing capacity in plants across Ontario.
That funding is a good start but there’s still room for improvement, Chaffe said.
“We’re appreciative of the funding that the processing sector has received,” he said. “But we continue to lobby for more capacity and innovation within larger and smaller processing plants. There’s still lots of work to be done on that file.”
Chaffe has been a part of the BFO board for about eight years.
And there are some industry issues that were present when he started that still require attention today.
“Traceability of beef cattle is one that seems to be dragging its feet. That file has been ongoing since BSE hit in 2003. There was some work done on it then, but it seems to come in and out of focus based on who the president of the (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) is,” he said. “We’re actually hoping to see something come out in the next year that we can comment on.