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| Ohio Agriculture Day honors the Dull farm |
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By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent BROOKVILLE, Ohio — ODA Director Robert Boggs along with local farmers and community officials visited the Dull Homestead to celebrate Ohio Agriculture Day and to recognize Ralph Dull, a forward-thinking farmer and industry leader.
Boggs presented Dull with ODA’s Ambassador of Ohio Agriculture award for his innovative and sustainable agricultural initiatives.
“The character and achievements of Ralph Dull and Dull Homestead are an indication of the potential that we in our state have in agriculture and the possibilities that we can achieve,” Boggs said.
“This farm is an amazing testament to how one operation can combine so many elements - large livestock farming, renewable energy, enterprise diversification, seed improvement, and not just to have diversification but to have quality in each of these areas,” he said.
One form of renewable energy that the Dulls use is an attention getter; passers-by stop can’t miss the six wind turbines. They supply 15 percent of the farm’s needs and the Dulls sell electricity back to Dayton Power and Light.
The farm’s two main enterprises are hogs and seed corn.
“This farm produces 55 thousand bags of seed corn per year for an Ohio company, Seed Consultants,” Boggs said. “This unique arrangement not only boosts Dulls’ Homestead’s income but also helps the local economy through employing an additional 200 seasonal workers.”
There is no waste involved in the production of the seed corn. The Dulls use everything and make money doing it, Boggs said.
The corncobs are ground and used for bedding while the waste seed corn is used as a fuel for a biomass system that dries new seed corn in lieu of propane providing the farm an estimated savings of $150 thousand per year.
Ralph Dull, who was born in 1929 on the land he now farms, said: “We get discard from other seed companies and store it. In the fall we grind it and run it through an air stream into the flame in the furnace and the ground corn just disappears because it is so hot in there.
“That keeps us from using 55 thousand gallons of propane gas that we used in the old drier,” Dull said. “When you use propane it takes a gallon to dry a bushel of seed corn. With commercial corn you can dry eight bushels with a gallon of propane.”
The farm is a full scale, state-permitted livestock operation that houses nearly 5000 hogs from farrow-to-finish. This operation produces 2.2.million gallons of manure annually yet the farm is known for its environmental stewardship.
Also, the Dull family has preserved 302 acres through ODA’s farmland preservation program and 700 additional acres through the Montgomery Soil and Water Conservation District.
Ralph Dull emphasized that Dull Homestead is a family farm.
“I’m down to about half time now but year-round there’s 16 of us and 12 are family members. I do have to explain this to some of my city friends,” Dull said.
“Some people are against all corporations but we’re incorporated, we have been since 1976.
They’re for family farms and we have a family farm. They’re against mega farms; we’re classified as a mega because we have to get a permit to raise hogs. We are a family farm; we’re also a mega farm, and we’re also incorporated so be careful what you say about corporations and mega farms.
Family farms are just larger than they used to be.”
This farm news was published in the April 2, 2008 issue of the Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
| 4/2/2008 |
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