Advantage Traceability Profile: Hillside Gardens Ltd.A Proactive Innovator in Traceability"We've been industry leaders ever since George Verkaik bought
the first 90 acres in Holland Marsh in 1934," says Ron Gleason
CEO and general manager of Hillside Gardens Ltd. "We're proud
of our long history of innovation as well. Participating in the
Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs' (OMAFRA)
Traceability Pilot Project has enhanced our reputation of leadership
in the field." Traceability is a system designed to help people in every branch
of agriculture collect, retain and share information about raw
materials, production, as well as the finished products. 
Figure
1: Ron Gleason, CEO and General Manager
with Dan Vander Kooi, Plant Manager of
Hillside Gardens Ltd. Hillside Gardens installed:
Back in the early days, the Verkaik family prepared the land by
hand for spring planting of potatoes, celery, lettuce, onions and
carrots. As the business grew and more land was acquired, they needed
to become more efficient and so they became the first to automate
in Holland Marsh: a machine for topping radishes; an automatic celery
harvester; and a self-propelled carrot harvester. Gleason, whose wife is a Verkaik, joined the business 16 years ago "keeping it in the family." He says that the company has always been customer driven and in recent years food safety has become important to their customers. Gleason and Hillside responded. Now they grow onions and carrots and market directly to large retail outlets as well as through brokers or distributors. Prior to the pilot project, Hillside Gardens tracked their produce from the fields to the customers' doors on paper. "But," Gleason says, "This was cumbersome. We wanted to streamline it, make it more efficient. When the opportunity to work with OMAFRA on an electronic traceability system arose we jumped at it. A colleague who recently visited the farm was really impressed. She said she'd never seen anything like our system in the industry." The company bought ProducePak™- software that can track every stage of the operation including field-by-field preparation and other operational tasks. Crop harvest and inventory management modules in the software track the produce from picking to storage. All packing and processing information is recorded using handheld computers, PDA's (Personal Digital Assistant) with bar-code readers, making it a simple task to select produce for shipping. The electronic system provides many benefits for Hillside Gardens, Gleason explains. "The man hours just in generating production reports at the end of the day used to be tremendous - you can imagine counting 6000 bags of carrots by hand! So we've saved a lot of time and also improved our inventory control because we now have real time data on what's happening in the field with our hand held PDA's. It's helped reduce spoilage and waste and we've our improved our order-taking because we can easily access our inventory and give our customers top notch service." "There is also value-added in the traceability system," Gleason comments. "It gives us much better quality control right to the customers' door so they can be assured that we've done our due diligence and are working hard to ensure food safety. It lends integrity to the company." Gleason also says the company's participation in the Traceability Pilot Project has helped raise awareness of the importance of food safety among Hillside Gardens' employees who "take pride in their work…" and have made food safety part of the culture. "Hillside was the first to automate, then first to go into food safety and then to start using a paper form of traceability and now first to have an electronic traceability system. This new system is an important tool for us in our efforts to grow our business. It also puts us in a position to help others to develop similar systems," he notes. Hillside Gardens' history is filled with examples of innovation and leadership that has resulted in a great reputation for the company and its produce. Participation in the Traceability Pilot Project confirms their leadership in the industry. Traceability Can Help your businessWhat Hillside Gardens has implemented since it began the Traceability Pilot Project:
"We have improved our inventory control because we now have real time data on what's happening in the field with our PDAs. This helps reduce spoilage and waste." - Ron Gleason, CEO and General Manager, Hillside Gardens Ltd.
Funding for the Food Safety Initiative Traceability Grant Program and Pilot Project was provided under the Agriculture Policy framework, a federal-provincial-territorial initiative.
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