Food processing and manufacture

Hugh Fraser describes one of the highlights of his career, contributing to the development of reusable plastic shipping containers for Ontario's agriculture industry. He describes his work with both the corrugated cardboard and plastic industries to make this happen. He notes that they are now collapsible, can stack, and require less room in shipping. In a testing phase they followed food products from California right through to Toronto. "It was very interesting – very proud of that work."

Hugh Fraser is an agricultural engineer who grew up in rural Quebec and completed a year as an agriculture student at the University of Guelph before switching into the engineering program there. He attributes his interest in agricultural to his teenage summers working on his family's dairy farm, working field machinery, bailing hay, wrangling steers and picking rocks. His interest in engineering came from his interest in mathematics and science and their applications to baseball statistics, "Magic Brain" Calculators, and board games. While in university, he spent two summers helping to deliver a year's worth of goods to communities on Baffin Island and in northern Quebec, a third working for the Ontario Department of Agriculture conducting surveys to support farmers who were installing tile drainage, and learning to troubleshoot, and a fourth working for a John Deere parts plant in Grimsby. His first job was at the John Deere factory in Welland, reviewing warranty claims, and a year later rejoined the Ministry of Agriculture as the county extension engineer for Brant and Hamilton-Wentworth Counties based in Brantford. He became an expert in Minimum Distance Separation, which stipulates the minimum distances between livestock barns and neighboring homes, transferring the implementation from paper-based rules to electronic computer programs in the '80s. He did work on the post-harvest handling of fruits and vegetables, developing standards for forced-air cooling based on experimental work, and introduced reusable plastic shipping containers to the agriculture industry in Ontario. He mediated disagreements between farmers and their neighbours, in accordance with the Ontario Farming and Food Production Protection Act, and also worked with the Ontario Dead Animal Disposal Act. In retirement, his interviews with farmers between St. Catherines and Beamsville about their irrigation needs, has led to a proposal to create a pressurized pipeline system to irrigate grapes, tender fruit, and other crops. He is currently President of Ontario Barn Preservation, an organization that finds ways to save old barns, has written a book on old barns, and is currently working on a second book. He describes the transitions in his professional career, offers advice to high school students considering a career in engineering, and presents a list of 13 recommendations to new engineering graduates who want to improve their careers.

Agricultural engineer Yves Choinière describes his work – he considers himself generalist who applies technology from many engineering disciplines to the creation of food. Over the past two decades, farming has been transformed by automation – for example: monitoring animal well being, milking robots, feeding robots in milk production; GPS-controlled tractors that optimize seeding, fertilizer or pesticide spraying. He works with specialists from civil engineering, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, food, chemical and food processing engineers. He selected a career in agricultural engineering because, he wanted to be an engineer and grew up on a farm – he still owns and operates a farm. He recalls the small, not very efficient, farms of the '80s and the re-engineering of farm production that was necessary to reduce workloads and enhance quality of life and productivity. At the time there was a deficit in Canadian food projection – Canada was not producing enough beef, chicken, vegetables and fruits to satisfy its own needs. He describes the development of natural ventilation systems for livestock housing, returning to the University of Ottawa to earn a Masters degree, supervised by Professor Tanaka, using wind engineering to develop systems for farm buildings. After a decade with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food, he returned to Quebec to assume control of the family farm near Granby from his father. He started a private consulting company that rapidly grew - largely in response to the need for modern agricultural enterprises to be efficient – prices have not really changed over the past 40 years but costs have markedly increased.