Experimental farm in Chatham-Kent celebrates its first harvest

The Ontario FangZheng Agriculture Enterprise has harvested its crop of medium-grain rice

The Ontario FangZheng Agriculture Enterprise celebrated a milestone Friday, with producers harvesting the farm's first crop of medium-grain sticky rice.
Farm manager Wendy Zhang said the experiment was a success, describing the harvested rice as "perfect."

"We didn't get any disease or pest problem this year," she said. "The yield should be good — not excellent — because we still do not apply too much fertilizer."FangZheng relied on equipment supplied in part by Tri-Hark Farms to harvest the rice crop.

Jim Hawkins, co-owner of Tri-Hawk Farms, said the rice crop looks promising.

Despite the farm's successful harvest, John Zandstra, a professor of fruit and vegetable cropping systems at the University of Guelph's Ridgetown campus, explained that there's still quite a bit of work ahead for the initiative.