Ernie Pacz handles all the HR, packaging, marketing, accounting and retail while Ernie looks after the machinery, planting and direct farm-related duties. The combination of skills turned out to be exactly what was needed and helped to transform the former tobacco farm into a prosperous and innovative peanut operation with old tobacco kilns now used to dry the peanuts and the strip room offering a space for hand-grading and storage.

By 1990, the farm was growing between 150 to 200 acres of Velencia peanuts. From their own seeds. An ideal harvest is 2000 pounds per acres. The crops provide a variety of products: in-shell, salted or unsalted, a variety of flavours, peanut butter, bird seed, beer nuts, candy and even horse bedding made from discarded shells. The entire process from soil to table is done by Kernal Peanuts – grown, processed, packed, shipped and sold.

The American harvest technique is to cut the crop and leave it drying on the ground for two weeks before running the plants through a harvest machine that separates the shelled peanuts from the stalk. The short growing season does not leave Canadian producers that two-week drying period and in the early years, losses were 37 percent.

Racz took the problem to the university and the result was a combine harvester that cuts the plant and detaches the shelled peanut in the same operation. The shelled peanuts then are put into a former tobacco kiln for drying the same day, reducing losses to an “acceptable” 10 percent.

As the largest producer of peanuts in Canada, innovation remains key to the overall success f the peanut industry.

• Formation of experimental crops for government agencies in aid of research and develop of sustainable peanut crops in the province prior and post 1977
• Ecofriendly approach to the overall operation of farming, processing and packing
• Redevelopment and invention of specific equipment for planting and harvesting in Canada
• Peanut oil stockpiled for bio-diesel fuel
• Peanut shells recycled on-site for fuel to operate processing plant
• All buildings on the farm are heated with an outdoor wood furnace (fueled by peanut shells) and I used in the drying process along with hot water supply
• Development of health-conscious peanut butter under the Kernal Ltd. Name
• Development of new peanut “jet-black” in colour and unique to the peanut industry which is proudly marketed as Norfolk County’s own
• Largest producers of peanuts in Canada