Meet Travis Willerton, fourth generation farmer at Willerton Farms Ltd. Willerton Farms Ltd. currently supports an extended family including Travis’ parents, his dad’s two brothers, along with Travis and his cousin. The farm is predominately a grain farm of 5000 acres, growing canola, wheat, peas, feed barley and oats. This year Travis said that the farm will be trying soybeans for the first time and he is as interested as the rest of us to see how that works out. The farm also runs about 100 head of commercial mother cows. The cattle side is one area that Travis hopes to expand in the future.
Travis has a real passion for agriculture, a passion he pursued by attending Lakeland College in Vermilion, AB. He graduation from Crop Technology in 2013 and has since returned to the family farm full time. He is excited about all the opportunities in agriculture! He states one thing he really appreciates about farming is the ability to make his own schedule and be his own boss. His own schedule allows Travis to be involved in things like the AYFR board of directors.
Travis is currently the secretary for the AYFR and has been a part of the group for a number of years. He had the opportunity last year to travel to the Canadian Young Farmers Forum Conference in Ottawa as one of the AYFR delegates. This conference is an annual event with this year’s taking place Feb 23-25 in Saskatoon, Sask. He mentioned that having the opportunity to speak to young farmers who were growing raspberries in B.C., to talking to dairy farmers from Ontario was a major highlight! He also really enjoyed the Farm tour that was held the day after the conference and gave him a look at the farming practices in that part of the country.
When asked why he is involved in AYFR, Travis replied, ‘It’s kind of a personal development thing. I want to continue to learn about production methods, but also learn more about things like marketing.’ He added, ‘The networking aspect is huge as well.’ He is very excited to be a part of the AYFR and he hopes to see it continually grow and provide knowledge and networking opportunities for young farmers into the future.