Raymond Loo recalls how an enraged farmer flew up his driveway years ago to
let loose.
Loo (pronounced Low), 49, of Pleasant Valley was spreading sodium bicarbonate and corn oil over his potatoes to help control blight.
The incensed driver, a conventional potato farmer, thought Loo was spraying chemicals just like other farmers but trying to do so on the sly while passing himself off as an organic farmer.
When the fuming farmer finished his rant, Loo calmly explained how he could make biscuits with what he was using for spray.
“I said 'what you guys are putting on the land is very different. So it’s not the sprayer that makes people sick, it’s not the sprayer that’s the problem. It’s what’s in the sprayer.’’’
Loo decided to roll up his sleeves and plough headfirst into organic farming in 1992 with his father Gerrit, who died in 2001. The move has proven to be one of much more than simply changing farm practices to meet the organic standard.
Loo has also been the driving force behind opening new markets for himself and others while putting the practice of organic farming in a far more favorable light.
“I think we can credit Raymond with certainly being a leader and a conciliator for all of agriculture,’’ said Phil Ferraro of the Institute for Bioregional Studies, a non-profit, charitable organization that encourages the adoption of technologies and practices that are deemed to be socially, economically and environmentally sustainable.
“He certainly, I think, helps bring to the Island a very high level of credibility and recognition for organic agriculture.’’
Ferraro says Loo continues to innovate with new crops and create new opportunities for other farmers.
Loo believes organic farmers enjoy greater acceptance on P.E.I. today than say 15 or so years ago when they were largely viewed as a group that would spread disease as well as all kinds of hardship for neighbours.
“I hope over time we’ve been able to show that we’re all farmers and we just do it a different way but what happens in a conventional farm can threaten the organic guy and what happens in the organic farm can threaten (the conventional guy) and if we work together we can solve the problems,’’ he said.
Elmer MacDonald, chair of the P.E.I. ADAPT Council that promotes environmentally sustainable agricultural production, describes Loo as both an ambitious producer and ambitious marketer with boundless energy devoted toward growing organic farming in the province.
“He has a wonderful way of bringing people on board,’’ said MacDonald.
“He knows there will be setbacks (in organic farming) but he is looking at it for the long term.’’
Loo has opened up markets in Japan, where he has traveled each of the past seven years, for crops including black currants, buckwheat and even dandelions that make for a popular coffee brew particularly with pregnant women and nursing mothers in the Land of the Rising Sun.
A sixth generation farmer, Loo is committed to finding ways to produce healthy food with the smallest possible environmental impact.
He has established two wetlands on Springwillow Farm in Springfield. He has also been planting a lot of hedgerows to help bring back many birds to the area. As a result, numerous bobolinks – a distinctive black and white bird of open grasslands – have been flocking to his 250-acre farm that includes about 70 acres of woodland.
Loo also prides himself with diversifying his organic farming to include beef, a variety of vegetables and crops ranging from dandelions to black currant.
“It’s very much a mixed farm and you rarely have failure in everything,’’ he said.
“So I don’t usually ever get any assistance from the government as far as disaster relief because we never trigger that. And I don’t think we should be living off a check from the government anyway.’’
Loo, who is active with many environmental and agricultural organizations, was given honourable mention in 2008 in the Outstanding Organic Farmer of the Year contest held by the Organic Crop Improvement Association Research and Education – one of the world’s foremost organic groups.
Recently, he received a $15,000 Neuffield Canada scholarship that is awarded to enterprising Canadians with a passion for agriculture. He is using the scholarship to help determine how islands like P.E.I. can work cooperatively to supply markets.
Loo was thrust into farming early in life. He was just eight when a bad car accident made farm work impossible for his father.
“At that time we had to get up in the morning and go milk the cows and we then come in the house and had breakfast and get ready for school and then in the evening get home and clean the cows and milk the cows and go in the house and do homework and get ready for bed,’’ he said.
Loo took environmental technology at Holland College but did not finish due, he says, to the fact he got a job and got married in 1983 to Sheila Pollard.
The couple had two boys together, Blake and Adam, before divorcing in 1990.
He married again in 1996 to Karen Donovan. They have a 10-year-old daughter named Bridget.
Loo has earned steady income over the years as a butcher first with Stewart Crabbe’s Meats in Milton and today at MacPhee Meats in Clyde River.
“The butchering, you know, is just a trade I learnt and it’s not something that I really enjoy doing but it’s something I know how to do and I can make money at it,’’ he said.
Something he does love doing and hopes will earn him and many other Islanders an increasingly good living, of course, is organic farming.
“We have to figure how are we going to farm in such a way that we can provide healthy food,’’ he said.
“So I think what we need to do is figure out how do we grow the crop, grow the pigs, grow the cattle as naturally or as close to naturally as we can and then we are probably going to have healthy food. And that’s where I see organic and small farms in Prince Edward Island having a huge advantage in the marketplace in the next few years if we embrace that.’’
Snapshot of Raymond Loo
- He is churchwarden of the St. Elizabeth Anglican Church that was built by
his great, great, great grandfather.
- He is vice chair of P.E.I. ADAPT and is on the board of the P.E.I.
AgriFood Alliance.
- His sisters Joyce Kelly and Margie Loo have organic farms and his brother Ricky is an organic farmer. His brother Bill, who is a retired correctional officer, is also considering the move into organic farming. A fifth sibling, Gary, is a carpenter.
- Loo sees a huge marketing opportunity if the entire province was 100-per cent organic farming. “If we had a sign coming off the bridge saying 'You’re entering the only GMO-free organic location in North America’, we would have a lot of people coming to have a look. But to get there we have a lot of convincing to do.’’
- Loo finds blissful escape dipping his 16-foot Coleman canoe in the water.
“There is nothing better than putting that on the roof of the van and taking off driving in the evening usually just before dark and dump in the water and go out under the stars and the moon for a canoe ride...I enjoy it immensely.’’
