Ont. producer growing crops on a former landfill

Sep 27, 2018

The land belongs to Walker Environmental in Niagara Falls

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

A farmer from the Niagara Region is producing crops in an unlikely location.

Kyle Smith, whose family operates Beaverloch Farms, harvested a winter wheat crop on a field that used to be a landfill.

“We harvested the crop this July and I would say it was an above average crop,” Smith told Farms.com. “We were really dry during grain fill, so we had smaller kernels. If we had average rain fall in the area, I’m confident we could’ve had a bumper crop from there.”

The 60-acre East Landfill in Niagara Falls belongs to Walker Environmental, a family-owned waste management company. The landfill operated from about 1980 until it closed in the early 2000s.

In 2006, Walker consulted with the community about end uses for the site, and a few farmers brought up the possibility of returning the land to agricultural use.

“Walker funded a four-year $500,000 study with the University of Guelph to determine whether or not the land was farmable both economically but – more importantly – whether it could be done safely,” Darren Dry, a project director at Walker Industries, told Farms.com. “And the study concluded that both were doable.”

Walker helped prepare the land for agricultural use.

“We had to add additional clay on top of the one-metre clay cap so that there’s a two-metre thick barrier between any waste and the crops above,” Fry said. “We also had to improve the soil to increase fertility. We did that by applying N-Rich (fertilizers) from our biosolids management plant in Niagara.”

Smith noticed the company’s efforts into land improvement during seedbed preparation.

“We had to do a lot of tillage to get it ready for planting and we could tell the soil composition was good,” he said. “We did soil tests and the fertility was through the roof. We were hopeful we’d get a good crop, but you just don’t know.”

Next year the former landfill will grow soybeans, Smith said.

The wheat Kyle Smith planted in the East Landfill
Walker Industries photo

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