KEMPTVILLE — The future of Kemptville College agricultural campus is still up in the air.
As it stands, three public schools, a daycare and community soccer groups use the grounds. But there are almost 50 empty buildings on 847 acres. The Semex Alliance has rented a building for heifers and some land for crops as its insemination unit is just south of the campus. The college robotic milker is still collecting dust and, considered an older model, is of little use to a modern dairy farm.
Meantime, the local township of North Grenville will have to wait until at least 2018 to take over the campus, if it ever does. Farmers Forum has learned that negotiations with the province are not going smoothly. The township hopes to lease the buildings to businesses and floated the idea of a research and training facility to combat climate change.
The college graduated its last agricultural students in 2015 and ended its short courses in the spring of 2016 while graduating 28 students in horticulture, heavy equipment repair, welding, and horse care.
The college opened in 1907 and was the go-to college for many Eastern Ontario farmers for decades.
