It is hard to believe, but the COFS is already history. The show was a tough deadline for our group to get some essential things accomplished, which might have dragged on for much longer.
Our name change from OBPG to OBPC required numerous changes on our website, registration forms as well as standard handouts. With the new name we now also have an attractive logo, which required a substantial effort from some of our board members.
Our policy, to give members a chance to promote their business during OBPC events, has been a genuine success. Switch Energy Corp. (Don Nott) and New Energy Farms (Dean Tiessen) participated at our booth. Their promotion material und to some extent their direct presence made a real difference to the success of our biomass display.
With the generous footprint of our tent at the farm show we could offer a roof for booths of Ontario Agri-Food Technologies (Dr. Gord Surgeoner’s group), REAP-Canada and a group of UofG PHD students of Dr. Mohanty’s Biocomposites team. The students were a refreshing addition to our team of rather seasoned board members.
Even though the efforts for a show presence were quite substantial, we obtained some significant rewards. We managed to meet all kinds of interesting people who play important roles in the biomass industry. One of the highlights was a visit of Catherine Tredway, from White Cloud Innovations. The farm show was an excellent opportunity to introduce Catherine to some significant challenges biomass producers face with their crops. Don Nott’s personal tour guidance at the OSCIA Biomass Trial Plots was probably the best biomass producers 101 Catherine could have asked for.
Dr. Mohanty also managed to visit his students and our group. It is really important that researchers and producers get to know each other more closely and find innovative ways for an improved cooperation.
We met people with wide ranging biomass interests at the farm show. It has become very obvious that there are numerous biomass applications and end uses and the sky can be the limit. With the shortage of some commodities like, wheat straw, oat hulls, regular hay, etc., we get some new attention from the mushroom industry, animal feed companies and others.
The future for biomass producers looks more promising than ever before!
