Canada’s 2017 Outstanding Young Farmers are Derek & Tannis Axten of Minton and Véronique Bouchard & François Handfield of Quebec.

The Axtens are third generation owners of Axten Farms along with their children Kate & Brock.

Derek has a Diploma in Farm and Ranch Management, and together with Tannis’ background in Biology, they began to research how they could farm differently.

Tannis talks about the difference improving the soil health, and water capacity have made on their farm:

"It's made a big difference, and we have seen it visually in our soil," she said. "We have increased our organic matter, and we've noticed bottom line improvement. We use a lot less synthetic fertilizer and chemicals. Using more or a biological and carbon-based, system. Our inputs are a lot lower which is making our net process in the end higher."

She says they have sandy soils in a low rainfall area, noting it was a concern as the rainfall they did receive wasn’t always infiltrating the soil it would run off.

"As we started educating ourselves and learning about the soil food web and how soil should actually function, we have been very focused on the plants," she said. "Once we started learning about the soil we realized our focus had been in the wrong area, so that's where we shifted our focus to soil and the soil microbiology to retain water and cycle the nutrients for us. Tt's been really exciting and a lot of run learning and trying new things."

The Axtens operate a no-till grain farm while the other finalists from Quebec, Veronique Bouchard and Francois Handfield, have an organic vegetable operation.