The Health Foundation has begun a new program to raise money for the new hospital. Farming for Health will see the foundation grow a crop on 733 acres of land, with the money raised from the project going to support a new health care facility to be built in Yorkton.
Ross Fisher, Executive Director of The Health Foundation, says that there are two goals for the farming project. First, the effort will raise some much needed funds for a new regional hospital. Second, it will also show that the community is ready for the hospital, and the farming plan will show the range of support in the community for the new facility as well as setting ambitious plans to get the money ready.
"We needed to demonstrate that the community is behind it, not just the business community but the broader community in the region. The farm community in our area is a big part of that," Fisher says.
He notes that the support for the project has already made it a success, with very little cost for The Health Foundation itself. The first crop is Nexara Canola, which was provided at no cost by Dow Agri Sciences. Yorkton Distributors and Monsanto provided chemical for spraying. The crop was seeded by White's Ag and Maple Farm Equipment, while Rocky Mountain Equipment and Yorkton New Holland did the spraying. Parrish and Heimbecker donated fertilizer, Scott Park and Agri-Trend provided the soil testing and management, and Yorkton Co-op has donated the fuel for seeding, spraying and for harvest. Canamerra has agreed to do the trucking for no charge. Louis Dreyfus Commodities will be the buyer for the crop.
"It has been a tremendous success from our point of view, in terms of getting businesses to say yes, this is something we will work with and support," Fisher says.
Darryl Flunder with Louis Dreyfus is part of the planning committee, and says that this will be a high profit event when the crop comes off in the fall. He says that for his company, this is a great project to be involved in, since they are a regional business and this is a regional hospital, so it affects many of the people who they buy from LDM as part of their operation.
Fisher says the hope is that the project will continue as long as the land is available. He also says he would like to see more companies get on board and to get different suppliers for different parts of the crop rotation.
"The goal is to spread it around so each year we're not asking the same ten people to donate the bulk of it. If we can rotate and spread around what's needed, we should be able to spread around, so it will help their costs and their budgeting," Flunder adds.
Fisher says that the level of support for the first year shows that the region is ready for a new hospital, and is already in the process of getting the 20 per cent of the funding needed at the community level.
