AgriSuccess
Young farmers
Enthusiasm and innovation
By Mark Cardwell
Though he grew up on a layer farm, Emmanuel Destrijker says the idea of owning his own poultry business only came together after he'd finished school and moved away from home.
"I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life," recalls the 34-year-old egg producer from Quebec. "So I decided to travel and work in jobs related to agriculture."
While harvesting grapes in France and working on a fish farm in his home province, Destrijker learned he had a real passion for agriculture.
That desire only grew as a result of the specialty courses on farm management he took at an agricultural college. The courses also helped Destrijker make up his mind to go into the poultry business. "It made sense," he says. "It was something I knew pretty well."
Chickens had always been a big part of the Belgian-born Destrijker's life. His first visit to Canada at age five was spent mostly on a Montreal-area layer farm that was owned by family friends. During the trip, "my parents fell in love with Canada.When we got home, they sold everything and we moved back here 10 months later."
The Destrijkers bought an existing egg-laying operation with 28,000 layer hens in St-Ludger, a farming village near Quebec City. Destrijker, like his two younger siblings, spent most childhood mornings and weekends picking and packing eggs for the family business.
It was that first-hand experience in the poultry business that helped Destrijker, whose parents were too young to retire, come up with a novel way to create his own business.
"A problem my parents always had was getting their laying hens from a single source," he explains. "So I suggested that I would raise chicks and become their main supplier."
With the financial backing of his parents, Destrijker bought a 425-acre woodlot near Plessisville, a 90-minute drive from the family farm. He constructed a building to raise newborn chicks to around 20 weeks, when they begin laying. In January 2002, he received the first of the two shipments of the 54,000 day-old chicks he gets each year.
Three years ago, Destrijker added 22,500 laying hens and egg production-and-sale to the mix.
In addition to building a successful business, he's devoted many hours to the promotion of agriculture and the development of tools to help young producers. "It's easy to sit at home and criticize," says Destrijker, a former president of Quebec's Young Farmers' Federation and the founding and current president of Quebec's two-year-old Chick Growers' Association. "Me, I like to help build things that will help producers and our industry."
He credits his entrepreneurial success and activist streak to both his upbringing and his leaving home. "It really opened my eyes about the world and farming,"says Destrijker, who now has young children of his own. "I recommend to anyone who grows up on a farm to leave it for a few years and then go back. If not, you'll only know your farm and your way of doing things."
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