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Daniel Doerksen was hosted by his mentor, Mike McMorris, following the CYL negotiations and governance training at the CCA Semi Annual Meeting in London, ON in mid August. Daniel is a rancher from Gem, AB. For more information on Daniel and Mike you can visit out Participant Spotlight page.

After attending CYL Step 2 Training in London, Ontario I had the opportunity to spend a couple days with my mentor Mike McMorris touring London and Guelph.

On day one we started off touring the town that Mike lives in as we made our way to Guelph were Mike’s office is.  I had an opportunity to meet the staff at BIO and gave a short presentation to them about our farm and how I see BIO helping us with our operation at home.  This was a great opportunity to work on some public speaking skills.  As well, I got a rundown on how BIO’s software system works.  After lunch we headed to the Elora Beef Research farm were we got a tour and learned about some of the projects that they have going on there. Following
our tour there we headed  to the University of Guelph were I had the opportunity to meet with researcher Ricardo Ventura were he explained to me a research project they have going on right now.  This was very interesting because one of the projects that Ricardo is working on has a group of our cattle being used for the study.  That evening we headed to Toronto were we took in a Blue Jays vs. Boston Red Sox game as well as took a tour up the CN tower.

Day two we toured VG Meats with Cory Van Gronigen and Buis Beef with Mike Buis. Both of these operations have focused their attention on marketing their own beef through their own retail stores.  While they both go about it in different ways they both have the same end goal in mind: providing a great eating experience ever time for their customers.  It was interesting to see how they have added value to their product and it got me thinking of things I can do in our operation to try and be more profitable.

As we travelled around these two days we had lots of opportunity to talk about a variety of things but one thing that Mike really emphasized was the importance of building relationships with people in the industry and the need to work together.

This trip was a great opportunity to see new things and meet new people and I look forward to what the rest of our mentorship has in store.

-Daniel Doerksen