Before the end
Delhi’s farming story did not end with tobacco. The federal research station began working on other crops well before the old tobacco economy gave way.
Peanuts and new crops
From 1977 to 1980 the station hosted a University of Guelph research programme on peanuts, funded by the Ontario and federal agriculture departments. In 1981 it added a new crops programme for the large area of sandy soil not used for tobacco, vegetables or fruit.1
The station closes
By 2012 the station, now called the Southern Crop Protection and Food Research Centre, was working on specialty crops such as ginseng, hemp and hops, on field vegetables, and on minor-use pesticide trials.23 A Better Farming report that year called it “a centre of tobacco research in its heyday” that had become “a showcase for alternative crops.”4
It was cut in the federal budget of March 2012 and closed on 31 March 2013, eighty years after it opened.43 An industry study that spring looked at what the 160-acre site could become, from a water research institute to an agri-food innovation centre.3 What became of it, we are still finding out.
Still farm country
Norfolk stayed farm country. Statistics Canada’s 2016 Census of Agriculture, as Norfolk County summarizes it, counted 1,307 farms with 196,403 acres in crops, and 7,619 farm employees, 6,493 of them seasonal or temporary.5
By the same count, Norfolk was Canada’s leading grower of asparagus, tart cherries, ginseng, peppers, pumpkins, and squash and zucchini, and Ontario’s leading grower of cabbage, rye and strawberries as well.5
Tobacco did not vanish. The same summary counts 98 tobacco farms in Norfolk in 2016, up from 63 in 2011.5 And the Delhi Tobacco Museum’s exhibits now take in ginseng and alternative agriculture alongside tobacco.6
Photos wantedThe research station, any decadeField days, the kilns, the greenhouses, the new-crop plots. We don’t yet have a photo of the station we can share.Share a photo →