TOUGH CHOICE +PLUS YOUNG FARMER

WESTERN EDITION
country-guide.ca
February 4, 2014 $3.50
TOUGH
CHOICE
YOUNG FARMER
DUSTIN WILLIAMS
SEARCHES FOR LAND
HE CAN AFFORD
+PLUS
OTTAWA FUNDS NEW GROWER CO-OPS,
BUT IN UKRAINE, NOT CANADA
THAT WAIT FOR LOWER LAND RENTS
LOOKS LIKE A LONG, LONG WAIT
ENERGY FROM THIS FARM KEEPS
THE WINNIPEG JETS ON ICE
NothiNg
hits harder.
or lasts loNger.
Mailing Address Label
Publications Mail Agreement Number 40069240
22657_01BU PrePass NothingHits_8.125X2.25.indd 1
PrePassTM delivers SoilActiveTM control for
21 days, guaranteed. BUlK UP before
February 20th and save 50¢/acre. Call
1.800.667.3852 or visit cerealsolutions.ca.
Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company (“Dow”)
or an affiliated company of Dow. 01/14-22657 BU
® TM
1/3/14 10:08 AM
S:7”
ALL OF OUR SEED IS FIELD-TESTED.
JUST LIKE OUR REPS.
S:10”
45H29
• Leader hybrid
• Very good standability
and harvestability
• Built-in Pioneer Protector®
Clubroot resistance trait
(races 2, 3, 5, 6 & 8)
• Excellent resistance
to blackleg
Your Pioneer Hi-Bred sales representative is out there every day, working
the same ground you are. Which gives them the unique expertise needed to
recommend the right seed for your acres. They know your weather, your soil
conditions and your challenges, because they’ve faced them too. It’s this
type of deep knowledge that makes the DuPont Pioneer team both industry
leaders and trusted local advisors. Talk to your local Pioneer Hi-Bred sales
representatives or visit pioneer.com for more information.
Our experts are grown locally
Roundup Ready ® is a registered trademark used under license from Monsanto Company. Pioneer ® brand products
are provided subject to the terms and conditions of purchase which are part of the labeling and purchase documents.
The DuPont Oval Logo is a registered trademark of DuPont.
®
, ™, SM Trademarks and service marks licensed to Pioneer Hi-Bred Limited. © 2014, PHL.
@PioneerWCanada
CONTENTS
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
BUSINESS
8
BLOOD, SWEAT AND DEALS
12
TOO YOUNG TO GROW?
19
STICKY LAND RENTAL RATES
22
AT THE HELM
26
THE OTHER ENERGY BUSINESS
30
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
34
AN AGRITECHNICA PhD
After a landmark 2013, Federal Ag Minister Gerry Ritz
shares how he is going to reshape Canadian agriculture.
Canada’s next generation of farmers are smart, ambitious —
and trapped on small acreages.
If you’re waiting for rental rates to go down as much as grain
and oilseed prices, you’re in for a very long wait.
Viterra boss Kyle Jeworski is used to being called a young man
in a mature man’s business. He says it gives him an edge.
Manitoba’s Colleen Dyck is building her farm-made
Gorp energy bars into a national brand.
Can you be a farmer and a food processor too?
Our Steve Biggs goes looking for the answer in Quebec.
The world’s best farm classroom may be the cafeteria where
international farmers rub shoulders at the German farm show.
36
GUIDE HR — A QUESTION OF CHARISMA
37
‘BETTER’ MARKETING!
40
THE WORLD’S NEXT BREADBASKET
64
IT’S A VERY DIFFERENT MARKETING YEAR
66
68
70
How are young farmers going to build sustainable farms
if they can’t afford to buy land? It’s 2014’s conundrum,
from coast to coast.
Great leaders seem special, but with Pierrette des Rosiers’ help,
you can generate just as much loyalty as they do.
Fast food chain A&W isn’t doing anything farmers haven’t
already tried, Gerald Pilger reports. They’re just doing it better.
After dismantling the Canadian Wheat Board, Ottawa is using
our tax dollars to build a new series of co-ops — in Ukraine.
Now is the time to start hunting for new-crop profits in what
our Errol Anderson says is sure to be a difficult marketing year.
GUIDE LIFE — A PLACE FOR WOMEN
PRODUCTION
48
NEW RULES
50
LEARNING CURVE
54
MORE PLANTS MEAN MORE PROFIT
56
BIGGER BANG THEORY
58
THE CHEQUE IS IN THE MAIL
60
WHEAT BELLY
62
KEEPING BEES
Women are making progress in farm management,
but not enough women, and not fast enough.
EVERY ISSUE
5
PG. 12 THE TOUGHEST QUESTION
MACHINERY GUIDE
Self-propelled sprayers are among the fastest growing
machinery segments, and among the most technological too.
Will an updated plant breeders’ rights attract more research?
Precision ag still has a long way to go to become mainstream.
Jay Whether shows why canola stands need to get denser.
WGRF seeks more research across the West.
Pull the plug on company programs, writes Warren Libby.
GUIDE HEALTH
These rules from Marie Berry will help make sure
your heart medications keep your heart healthy.
HANSON ACRES
The call came just as Jeff’s parents disappeared
on the other side of airport security. What would you do?
This best-seller says wheat is bad for you. Hmmm…
Seed treatments are in the crosshairs, but don’t pull trigger yet.
Our commitment to your privacy
At Farm Business Communications we have a firm commitment to protecting your privacy and security as our customer. Farm Business Communications will only collect personal information if it is required for the proper functioning of our
business. As part of our commitment to enhance customer service, we may share this personal information with other strategic business partners. For more information regarding our Customer Information Privacy Policy, write to: Information Protection
Officer, Farm Business Communications, 1666 Dublin Avenue, Winnipeg, MB R3H 0H1.
Occasionally we make our list of subscribers available to other reputable firms whose products and services might be of interest to you. If you would prefer not to receive such offers, please contact us at the address in the preceding paragraph,
or call 1-800-665-1362.
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
country-guide.ca 3
desk
EDITORIAL STAFF
Editor: Tom Button
12827 Klondyke Line, Ridgetown, ON N0P 2C0
(519) 674-1449
Fax (519) 674-5229
Email: [email protected]
Associate Editors:
Gord Gilmour
Cell: (204) 294-9195
(204) 453-7624
Fax (204) 942-8463
Email: [email protected]
Maggie Van Camp
(905) 986-5342
Fax (905) 986-9991
Email: [email protected]
Production Editor:
Ralph Pearce
(226) 448-4351
Email: [email protected]
ADVERTISING SALES
Andrew Winkels
(204) 954-1414
Cell (204) 227-5274
Email: [email protected]
Lillie Ann Morris
(905) 838-2826
Email: [email protected]
Tom Button is editor of Country Guide magazine
It’s the vision we need
If there was ever a time for great farm
leaders, it’s now. If you’re like me, though,
what you see in government, in farm organizations, in marketing boards and in
myriad other groups are rank upon rank
of strong, dedicated, capable leaders. But
not inspiring leaders of vision.
There’s an irony here, because the leadership that today's farmers are providing
their own farms has never been stronger or
more highly skilled.
Even so, the lack of industry vision is a
great worry for the coming decade.
With or without such leadership,
I’m confident Canada will reach 2020
with a phenomenal capability to produce
crops and livestock. But what of the years
beyond?
I’d be interested in your views, but
it often strikes me that agriculture may
never have been so unequal as it is today.
Mid- to late-career grain and oilseed producers who have sized up and then went
into 2008 with reasonable debt loads, and
who had good fortune in their marketing,
have emerged stronger than perhaps any
group of grain farmers have ever been in
this country. They’ll stay strong too, riding out the current bear market.
Surrounding those farms, however, are
neighbours whose timing wasn’t quite so
good, and who face the conundrum of
either being undersized in a world where
lower margins require more acres, or of
being saddled with debt payments in a
market turned stingy.
4 country-guide.ca On every road, there are farmers who
want only to be left alone to grow and
thrive. Beside them, though, are farmers
who, if being left alone is all they can
look forward to, will have a tough outlook.
That’s without even mentioning the
complication of supply management, and
the difficulty that grain and oilseed farmers can have in competing for land against
poultry and dairy farms.
All these farmers feel entirely justified, as
they should. Late-career farmers struggled
through years of bleak returns to get to a
point where they could reap some rewards.
Supply management farmers face their
own serious pressures. Nor can young
farmers be faulted. How can you blame a
35-year-old for not having bought more
land seven years ago?
The easy assumption is that these farmers can’t be brought together, and that the
discord must inevitably get worse, hence
the need for leaders who can get us to
focus on end points, not on how we get
there. What do we want our agriculture
to look like in 10 years? Are we seriously
saying goodbye to the family farm?
One of the keys is to fous on the factor that unites all of these farmers. It’s
their passion, not for the lifestyle (because
that can mean so many things) but for the
farm.
Of course, the other key is to listen.
Are we getting it right? Let me know. I’m
at [email protected].
Head Office:
1666 Dublin Ave., Winnipeg, MB R3H 0H1
(204) 944-5765
Fax (204) 944-5562
Advertising Services Co-ordinator:
Sharon Komoski
Fax (204) 944-5562
(204) 944-5758
Email: [email protected]
Designer: Jenelle Jensen
Publisher: Lynda Tityk
Email: [email protected]
Associate Publisher/Editorial Director: John Morriss
Email: [email protected]
Production Director: Shawna Gibson
Email: [email protected]
Circulation Manager: Heather Anderson
Email: [email protected]
President: Bob Willcox
Glacier FarmMedia
Email: [email protected]
Contents of this publication are copyrighted and may be
reproduced only with the permission of the editor. Country
Guide, incorporating the Nor’West Farmer and Farm & Home, is
published by Farm Business Communications. Head office:
Winnipeg, Manitoba. Printed by Transcontinental LGMC.
C o u n t r y G u i d e is published 13
times per year by Farm Business Communications. Subscription rates in Canada — Farmer $39
for one year, $58 for 2 years, $83 for 3 years. (Prices include
GST) U.S. subscription rate — $35 (U.S. funds). Subscription
rate outside Canada and U.S. — $50 per year. Single copies:
$3.50.
Publications Mail Agreement Number 40069240.
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of
Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund
of the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Canadian Postmaster: Return undeliverable Canadian
addresses (covers only) to: Circulation Dept., PO Box 9800,
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 3K7.
U.S. Postmaster: Send address changes and undeliverable addresses (covers only) to: Circulation Dept., PO Box
9800, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 3K7.
Subscription inquiries:
Call toll-free 1-800-665-1362
or email: [email protected]
U.S. subscribers call 1-204-944-5766
Country Guide is printed with linseed oil-based inks
PRINTED IN CANADA
Vol. 133 No. 2
Internet address: www.agcanada.com
ISSN 0847-9178
The editors and journalists who write, contribute and provide opinions to
Country Guide and Farm Business Communications attempt to provide
accurate and useful opinions, information and analysis. However, the
editors, journalists, Country Guide and Farm Business Communications,
cannot and do not guarantee the accuracy of the information contained
in this publication and the editors as well as Country Guide and Farm
Business Communications assume no responsibility for any actions or
decisions taken by any reader for this publication based on any and all
information provided.
february 4, 2014
Machinery
By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor
In no time at all, you’ll be out in the field finishing up with herbicides and checking your phone apps for the latest alerts on
insects and diseases. So, before the snow melts, here’s our latest on self-propelled sprayers, a category that has seen some of the
fastest-growing sales and some of the fastest upgrades in technology of any in the farm equipment sector. From Tier 4 compliance on emissions to advanced ergonomics for improved operator comfort, each of the four models featured in this edition has
something new. If you’re in the market for an upgrade, or if you’re considering a switch from pull-type sprayers, these will be on
your list, but check company websites. You’ll want to know who has the very best self-propelled for you.
case ih patriot 3240 and 3340 
apache 2014
When it comes to finding the right sprayer for your operation, performance is important, and so is flexibility. To meet those demands,
Case IH brings the new Patriot 3240 and 3340 sprayers to the market, complete with more horsepower and new options for improved
spray control. The new AIM Command PRO system offers individual
nozzle control in a next-generation version of the AIM Command
spray system, delivering constant rates and pressures under a range
of speeds. Another option is the capability to turn nozzles on or off,
one at a time, cutting down on skips, overlaps and overspraying. The
Patriot 3240 and 3340 offer a 6.7-litre FPT Tier 4B/Final compliant
engine, with 250 hp and 284 hp, respectively. With its selective catalytic reduction (SCR) emissions control technology, the company says
farmers will also see fuel efficiency to go with added power.
Last August, Equipment Technologies rolled out its 2014 lineup
of Apache sprayers featuring a suite of cab enhancements plus field
computer compatibility. For 2014, the Apache lineup offers superior operator comfort with an ergonomic cab design coupled with
advanced “plug-and-play” ISOBUS technology. Now, every 2014
Apache sprayer can connect any ISOBUS-compatible field computer
system to Equipment Technologies’ Pilot System. That delivers as
much control as it does ease of operation. It’s complex and innovative,
yet simple, with a field computer system that the company says will
add value and efficiency to a farmer’s operation. Apache sprayers also
have a standard operator foot throttle and reoptimized HVAC, boasting
automatic climate control for the ultimate in comfort.
www.etsprayers.com
www.caseih.com
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
country-guide.ca 5
hagie 2014 sts
Billing itself as the pioneer of the industry, Hagie introduces the new
2014 STS sprayer with a new drive system and improved cab design for
improving efficiency, safety and overall performance. The STS sprayer is
available with 1,000- or 1,600-gallon capacity, plus “All Wheel Traction
Control” as standard, enabling the machine to carry on through any
conditions or over the most rugged terrain. As with other manufacturers, Hagie has gone to great lengths to enhance operator comfort, with
an increase of 25 cubic feet over previous cabs. Yet through all of that,
operator safety has also been enhanced, including Bluetooth capabilities and a standard backup camera. The 2014 STS also offers farmers
a decal pedal, droplet size monitor, and an infinitely programmable
drive system that measures field efficiency. Hagie’s Cummins engine
design is also Tier 4-compliant and comes with optimized airflow.
www.hagie.com
rogator rg700 
It may be a little smaller than previous RoGator sprayers, but the
RG700 comes to the farm with the same durability and attention to
detail. Launched late in the fall of 2013, the RG700 combines professional-grade quality with dependability. At the same time, it provides
operators with greater flexibility with a 700-gallon design.
Other key features include adjustable track widths, courtesy of two
axle configurations which allow for multiple track widths for smooth
and easy operation, no matter the crop, the crop height, or the field
conditions.
The RT700 provides sprayer and boom-height controllers, plus
assisted steering systems. There’s also the RoGator Management Center and AGCOMMAND system that monitors your performance data.
Plus, the 165-hp engine produces more torque for more consistent
power in any field, wet, dry, flat or hilly.
www.agcocorp.com/rogator
6 country-guide.ca FEBRUARY 4, 2014
RELENTLESS ON WEEDS.
SAFE ON WHEAT.
FLUSHAFTERFLUSH™ CONTROL.
It’s rare to find a herbicide you can count
on for long-lasting stopping power
that’s also safe on wheat. The advanced
safener technology in EVEREST® 2.0 makes it super selective for
best-in-class crop safety. Safe on wheat, it’s also relentless on
weeds, giving you Flush-after-flush™ control of green foxtail,
wild oats and other resistant weeds. And a wide window for
application means you can apply at your earliest convenience.
It’s time you upgraded your weed control program to the next
generation: EVEREST 2.0. To learn more, visit everest2-0.ca.
SAFE
ON WHEAT
RELENTLESS
ON WEEDS
FLUSH-AFTER-FLUSH
CONTROL
CONTROLS HARD-TO-KILL
GRASS WEEDS
INCREASED
YIELD POTENTIAL
Always read and follow label directions. EVEREST and the EVEREST 2.0 logo are registered trademarks of Arysta LifeScience North America, LLC. “Flush-after-flush” is
a trademark of Arysta LifeScience North America, LLC. Arysta LifeScience and the Arysta LifeScience logo are registered trademarks of Arysta LifeScience Corporation.
©2013 Arysta LifeScience North America, LLC. ESTC-232
ESTC-256_Evolution Print Ad_Country Guide.indd 1
12/4/2013 2:54 PM
BUSINESS
BLOOD,
SWEAT
DEALS
After a landmark 2013, Gerry Ritz sets his goals
for the future shape of Canadian agriculture
By Maggie Van Camp, CG Associate Editor
erry Ritz knows how to make news,
whether it’s at an Ottawa media scrum,
or if it’s 42 C and he is standing over a
barbecue — in a leather apron — cooking beef in China. After years of closed
borders to Canadian beef, China had just opened to
young animals.
That particular Canada Day was in 2010, and
Ritz and then-governor general Michaelle Jean were
determined to start getting the word out to 1.3 billion
potential customers. Between them they handed out
thousands of samples of Canadian beef.
Lifting his head from the grill, Ritz saw masses
of people, and an equally massive need for food. In
a snapshot, he now says, he saw the vastness of the
opportunity for Canada’s farmers to feed the world’s
growing population.
“When I took over six years ago, our mantra
was that it was going to be from the
marketplace, not the mailbox.” — Gerry Ritz
Since that day, Ritz’s passion to open more trade
routes for Canadian agricultural products has popped
up in one news story after another. There have been
deals, retaliations, and negotiations, and along the
way there have been domestic politics too, including
the CBC taking him to task for having racked up the
biggest travel and hospitality tab of any of his Conservative colleagues in recent years.
Trade issues continue to dominate agricultural
news, and Ritz has somehow managed to shake hands
through, around and over enough diplomatic stumbling
blocks to silence most of his critics.
COUNTRY GUIDE talked to Ritz shortly after he
returned from the recent WTO negotiations in Bali.
During those trade talks, Ritz networked among the
myriad trade alliances he has built over his years and
his many travels.
He tells me about how, years ago, he gave a pair
of cowboy boots, made from the ostriches he raised
8 country-guide.ca
on his own farm in Saskatchewan, to the Russian
minister of agriculture, forging a friendship. He talks
about the small-farm versus big-farm debate he had
with Tom Vilsack. He talks about how, after countless meetings on four trips to China, Ritz finally got
the call from the minister, went out for lunch and
finished the trade agreement.
“Getting deep into China, we have access that
Americans don’t,” Ritz tells me.
Before writing this story, COUNTRY GUIDE talked
with a panel of Canada’s top ag journalists, representing different publishers and publications. The consensus is that Ritz talks a lot. But it’s also a consensus that
Ritz has done a lot.
In fact, in just a few years, the current Conservative
administration may have made more changes to agriculture than any other single federal administration in
the country’s history.
“There have rarely been more changes in such a
short period in Canadian agriculture. You may not
agree with what he’s done, but he’s done it,” says John
Morriss, associate publisher and editorial director of
Farm Business Communications, which publishes the
MANITOBA CO-OPERATOR.
After pushing through the monumental ending of
the Canadian Wheat Board’s grain-marketing monopoly last year, Ritz hasn’t backed down.
Now, he’s looking forward to the CWB’s plan for
restructuring and how they’ll maintain market share.
During this past year, the CWB made the news with
sweeping cuts to staff and office space, and significant
investments in bricks and mortar on their handling side.
When 2013 was just new, Ritz announced a new
federal agricultural support program, called Growing
Forward 2.
The news hit the headlines with a bang, mainly
thanks to provisions that cut payouts under AgriStability when farmers suffer moderate losses (technically,
when individual farm margins drop to between 70 and
85 per cent of the farm’s adjusted long-term average).
Ritz says this was offset by an increase in coverage
when farms need it the most, and more money was
earmarked for innovation and trade development.
“In order to keep Canadian agriculture on the cutting
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
business
Not afraid of the spotlight, Ritz has introduced more sweeping changes than farmers have seen in at least a generation.
edge, investments must be focused on research and
innovation,” Ritz says.
Ritz also wants to see the remaining gap be filled by
private market insurance, and he has been working on
ways to make it happen in this country so farmers will
buy into it. “Insurance-based programming should be
your first line of defence against any changes in market,” Ritz says, adding the qualifier, “Government may
have to backstop it until there’s economies of scale so
that it’s an affordable program.”
Besides the GF2, the whole year seemed to be peppered with federal cutbacks and downsizing. In August,
the Canadian Grain Commission cut its services due
to changes to the Canada Grain Act and the Canada
Grain Regulations, and it moved to a user-fee system.
In past, the federal government covered about half of
the CGC’s budget. Now, most CGC revenues will come
straight from farmers and grain companies. “We still
will be relying on their grading system,” Ritz insists.
Also, both the Prairie Shelterbelt and the Prairie
Farm Rehabilitation Administration programs were
terminated, and the vast federally managed pastures
in Saskatchewan were turned back to the province
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
to either manage, lease or sell. It was a move that
brought out the critics, including Canadian literary
diva Margaret Atwood. But don’t expect Ritz to
apologize. He won’t.
Ritz is also on side with how Ottawa is stepping
back from supplying farm services. Many such services
should be delivered by companies, he says. “We have to
look at new funding models, with industry and government collaborating.”
In a similar way, Ritz strode into the perennial
Prairie discussions around grain transportation. New
federal legislation, he says, will “make the railways play
nice in the sandbox,” being more accountable for the
movement of cars and number of cars. However, with
the bigger-than-expected 2013 harvest, the system is
strained, and storage is bulging at the seams.
In mid-December Ritz also introduced Bill C-18, the
Agricultural Growth Act, into the House of Commons.
This legislation would amend not only the Plant Breeders’ Rights Act, but also the Feeds Act, Fertilizers Act,
Seeds Act, Health of Animals Act, Plant Protection Act
Continued on page 10
country-guide.ca 9
business
Continued from page 9
and the Agriculture and Agri-Food Administrative Monetary Penalties Act. The bill
would also amend the Agricultural Marketing Programs Act (AMPA) and Farm
Debt Mediation Act (FDMA).
The government plans this August
to sign on to the new international
agreement for the protection of plant
breeders’ right. Canada’s existing Plant
Breeders’ Rights Act is based on the
1978 global agreement
Ritz says farmers will still be able to
save and plant their own seed under the
new law, but he believes the updates to
plant breeders’ rights will see more investment in genetic research come to Canada.
This change in legislation coupled with
open wheat and barley marketing should
encourage companies to develop higheryielding varieties of grain, he says.
Ritz also plans to continue working on
trade, chopping away at the non-sciencebased issues that get trotted out to sidetrack trade agreements.
Meanwhile, U.S. regulations under its
2008 country-of-origin labelling (COOL)
law look like they will continue as the
single biggest trade irritant for Ritz going
into 2014.
The dispute boiled over in 2013 when
the U.S. cooked up its own set of rules to
meet the WTO complaint that favoured
Canada’s position, leading Tyson Foods
to say it would stop buying slaughtered
cattle from Canada because of the high
costs associated with COOL. Ritz blustered back with threats of
trade retaliation. “I said to Tom Vilsack, this is harming your industry, not
just ours.
“It’s a political solution for a social
problem, saving their small farmers,” says
Ritz, frustration ringing in his voice.
Despite such contentious trade issues,
Ritz says overall during his tenure, it has
become easier for Canada to negotiate
trade deals with other countries. “It’s like
we’ve come of age,” he says. “Prime Minister Harper is like the dean out there.
Everyone looks to him…”
Ritz also says that the editorial press
coverage saying supply management is
derailing trade deals is wrong. “Supply
management is not holding us back,”
he says.
As the Conservatives gear up for a
federal election in the fall of 2015, Ritz
says his first priority is maintaining trade
routes. Second, he wants to continue
pushing his agenda of innovation and
self-reliance, partly through the value
chain roundtables that have been set up
for many commodities
After six years as federal minister of
agriculture, Ritz hopes to be remembered
as the agricultural minister who helped
Canadians realize that agriculture is business, and that farmers must adjust to the
realities around them and work on their
bottom lines.
Canadian farmers need access to
global markets, Ritz says, and they need
a dynamic domestic market with more
innovations moving forward. But, he
repeats, “When I took over six years ago,
our mantra was that it was going to be
from the marketplace, not the mailbox.”
He says it firmly. Clearly, Ritz sees no reason to change. CG
Farm living inspiration, ag business insight.
Gain a new perspective on your farm, your family and your future
with this informative video series from Farm Credit Canada.
Current AGCanadaTV topics include:

Management Moment: Seasonal Price Trends
Kevin Stewart explores how following season price trends can
help you get the most for your ag commodities.
Don’t
Let Negative Habits Shape Your Outlook
Motivational speaker Darci Lang challenges us to keeping complaints to a
minimum and focusing on the 90 percent of your life that is positive.
Talking
Leadership with General Rick Hillier
General Rick Hillier explains some of his favourite leadership phrases and
how they speak to innovative and inspirational leadership.
When you’re ready to be inspired & informed…
AGCanadaTV is sponsored by
visit www.agcanada.com/video
10 country-guide.ca FEBRUARY 4, 2014
Model # JD Sans Medium 55 pt, Model Discriptor JD Sans Medium 16/21pt
I can fx your combine
from 100 miles away.
Remote, but still in control.
You might know that you can manage your machines from
almost anywhere. But you might not know that I might be
able to get you up and running before I ever leave the shop.
If your tractor is generating a trouble code, we can use our
systems to fgure it out before we come out. If you need
parts, we know which ones to bring.
With John Deere FarmSight,™ real-time information is as
close as your tablet or smartphone, putting you in control,
from almost any location.
With telematically enhanced equipment, and customized
services, working together for your operation, no one else
can turn data into information like John Deere.
This is just one of the many services our dealership can offer
you. To learn more, stop in and ask us how we can help you.
JohnDeere.com/RealStories
business
Too young
to grow?
By Angela Lovell
s land prices ride high across Canada, it’s a struggle for young and midcareer farmers to compete against
established farms and outside investors to buy land, or even to find it.
They also need to ask themselves some tough questions. How much can I afford to pay? Can I service
the debt?
And then there’s the most important question of
all: Is this really the right investment to make?
“Each year you think the land price has topped
out,” says Dustin Williams, a young grain and oilseed farmer who is the fifth generation to farm his
family’s land near Souris in southwestern Manitoba.
“Then the year following, you get another 30 per
cent increase,” Williams says. “You are tying up a
lot of money buying land.”
Bullish factors are driving up the price of land
from every direction. Low interest rates make mortgages attractive. High farm cash receipts mean there’s
cash for down payments, especially on grain farms
that went into the past five years with low debt.
Besides, the buying splurge, especially in the
last three years, has seen farms invest big dollars in
high-capacity machinery and on-farm bins, meaning
they’re ready and able to expand their acreage base.
And then there’s the land market itself, where
success breeds success. For farmers, it’s hard to find
a more secure or more lucrative investment. Nor are
farmers alone. With Statistics Canada saying farmland has averaged a return on investment of 10 per
cent a year since 1950, investment companies are
12 country-guide.ca Stymied by bidding wars
and by farms that
get sold without ever
hitting the market, young
farmers like Manitoba’s
Dustin Williams are too
often mere bystanders
singing the praises of Canadian farmland, and financial advisers are encouraging more of their clients to
become absentee farm landlords.
That said, over 60 per cent of farmland in Canada is still owned by the people who farm it. But
that in itself presents a challenge, especially when
the older generation wants to retire or pass the farm
on to the next generation.
Succession often requires expansion to generate
the cash flow needed to allow the outgoing generation to fund their retirement and the incoming one
to be able to make a go of it, not to mention the
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
Photography: Sandy Black
Canada’s next generation
of farmers are smart,
ambitious — and trapped
on small acreages
business
years in between when there are two generations
that need to earn a living income from one farm.
It all means that the only land that many young
farmers can acquire is from retiring family members,
friends or neighbours they have known for a lifetime.
Williams took over the family farm a few years
ago and has only been able to increase his land base
over the past couple of years by around 300 acres to
its current 4,500 acres. He wants to expand further,
but says it’s a continuous struggle to find more acres
to move on to, and to compete against the larger
established farms in the area.
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
Although he knows he’d only have to move one
municipality over to find a lot of outside investors
bidding at every sale, “it’s predominantly farmers in
the neighbourhood who have been getting a majority of the acres here,” says Williams. “I guess maybe
it speaks to how little land has actually transferred
in our area and how close to home the seller can
stay and find a buyer. At the moment it doesn’t stay
on the market long enough for anyone outside to
really get a hold of it.”
“Each year you think the price has topped,” Williams says.
Continued on page 14
country-guide.ca 13
business
Show your stuff
It might be time to take
that off-farm job.
Across the country, farmland
prices have outstripped the productive
capacity of the land to pay for itself.
“Unless you have got a huge equity
base that you can spread the debt over
and term it out over a number of years,
it’s really tough,” says Terry Betker, CEO
of Backswath Management. “To buy
some land and then have the productivity of that land make the payments is
just really difficult.”
“That’s the reality for a lot of young
producers,” says Betker.
But as always, the nature of the
challenge itself might suggest how
best to overcome it.
Betker says that persuading the
bank manager to lend you the money
is a big problem for many young producers, who often don’t have much of
a track record with the bank.
That’s something they need to
think about changing, which means
they need to start building their own
relationship with their banker, says
Betker. “When the lender has been
in the business for a while, oftentimes
their primary relationship is with the
young farmer’s parents, not the young
farmer,” he says. “The young farmer
needs to create his or her own relationship and build confidence in his or
her management ability.”
It’s also a good idea to try and build
up as much cash as you can, says
Betker. If you decide to add off-farm
income to do that, it speaks volumes
to the banker about both your management ability and your work ethic.
“If you have cash for a down payment on land, it will help to a huge
degree when you go to a lender,” Betker says. “If you go to a lender with
only equity, it can work, but if you go
to a lender with $50,000 in cash and
you’ve saved this up over the last five
years, what does that tell the lender?”
Building up your own working capital will also show liquidity, which is
equally important to a bank. “Liquidity is going to be huge in grain and
cattle,” says Betker. “It’s always has
been important, but with more volatility in the industry it’s just going to be
increasingly important.”
14 country-guide.ca Dustin and Laura Williams
are watching for their chances,
building relationships with
retiring farmers, but they know
the odds are long
Continued from page 13
Across the country, tales of bidding
wars are rife in the coffee shops, and
with a lot of farmland purchases still
being handled privately, it’s not always
easy to get a good handle on the exact
price being paid.
“It’s hard to know what land is selling for unless you go straight to the
owner,” agrees Catherine Jordan, who
farms with husband, Don, near Manitou in south-central Manitoba. Even
then, you can’t always be sure, she
adds. “People are still secretive about
what they get for the land, but when
you hear who has purchased the land,
you can make an educated guess at
what the price was.”
It’s equally hard for landowners to set
a price, she also agrees. “Most owners
will state a reasonable price, but when
they look around at the middle-aged
farmers driving new trucks and machinery, they have a higher price in mind.”
The Jordans want to expand upon
their half-section of grain land, but they
know it’s not going to be easy with land
around them reputedly now selling for
$4,200 an acre, well out of the reach of
this young couple just starting out.
“We had an opportunity to purchase
land that was of more sentimental value
than anything, and of course we could
not match or come close to the price
that was offered,” Jordan says. “Naturally we didn’t get the land and now
we see how it’s being bulldozed and
cleared. It’s very sad to see a century
farm gone for just that little extra bit
(of crop land).”
Finding the land is the first problem. Being able to afford it is the next.
Young farmers don’t typically have the
deep pockets or the asset base to spread
the purchase over. Then there’s the
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
business
added problem of figuring out just what
the “going rate” for land really is.
What’s the right price?
In many areas, it’s rare to see a real
estate sign at the edge of a field or even a
“for sale” notice in the local newspaper.
More often than not, land purchases are
private transactions and both parties are
apt to be close-mouthed about the price
they agree on. That makes it hard for a
potential buyer to even figure out what
he or she should offer for the land.
“When you try to bid and you look
at what the municipal assessment value
for the land is, and you look at the
long-term productive capacity of the
land, none of those values have really
changed,” says Williams, so neither are
very useful as a guide to pricing land
value. “You are trying to throw a dart in
the dark, and pick a number that makes
sense for the banker who is looking at it
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
and that is going to be enough so that
the seller feels that they too have cashed
in at the right time.”
In the end it comes down to a lot of
negotiation, says Williams, and it may
not always end up how you had hoped.
“Where we start and where we end up
can be quite a ways apart,” he says,
speaking from his own experience. The
question is really whether you chase land
when it gets that expensive, but depending on the condition and the circumstance, it might be land that you can’t
afford to walk away from.”
“Maybe from a business standpoint
you were offering something initially
that made sense and wasn’t going to
triple your debt,” Williams adds. “But
by the end of the deal, you might be
back to where you didn’t want to be
in the first place, and you don’t have
a choice.”
Sometimes there is no option but to
walk away from a deal, but that can be a
lot easier said than done.
“To push yourself away from the
table is hard,” says Williams. “From
my own experience, I know it’s a tough
call when it comes down to it, to back
away from land that is in your heart or
that you have farmed yourself for a long
time. You’ll have a hard time seeing that
land farmed by someone else.”
Although you have to keep a sane
head in negotiations, Williams still
believes that land is a good investment
for the farm and it’s worth giving it every
best effort to try and purchase the land
that you need. “You are going to have to
try your hardest to make those (land purchase) decisions first and maybe sacrifice
a little bit on other parts of your budget,
whether it’s the equipment or the extent
of the crops you grow,” Williams says.
Continued on page 16
country-guide.ca 15
Photo: Basil Holewka
For young farmers, it’s extra hard to
know what’s a fair price in this market,
says Catherine Jordan
BUSINESS
Continued from page 15
GETTING CREATIVE
Options to secure land may come
down to exploring some new and creative
arrangements and approaches such as land
sharing, long-term leasing or limited liability partnerships. Williams is open to any
and all creative approaches to increasing
his land base and has already used a few.
When he took over the farm from his
own father he didn’t go the traditional
family succession route. “We built our
own farm company first, and then as my
dad wanted to reduce the size of his farm
and reduce his responsibilities, my farm
company took his operation over,” says
Williams. “In the end we purchased his
company outright and now have a landlease agreement with him and some other
landlords to get us going.”
Agreements with retiring farmers
don’t always mean that they have to sell
the land outright on the spot. With the
right relationship, agreements can extend
the purchase of the land over a period of
time, which has benefits for both parties.
“From a retiring farmer’s perspective
there is a significant tax advantage to
rolling the operation out over a longer
period of time and keeping active own-
ership of land or equipment, but not
having to make the financial or risk decisions any more,” says Williams.
A new program from Farm Credit
Canada is designed to assist young
farmers to make these sorts of arrangements. FCC’s Transition Loan program
assists young producers aged between
18 and 39 to purchase land or assets.
The seller is paid in disbursements
over five years and FCC guarantees
the full sale price to the seller. Interest is charged only on the amount disbursed and FCC will, if the purchaser
qualifies, finance the down payment for
up to seven years. The purchaser can
Another
stellar
tm
Performance.
16 country-guide.ca
22076-03 DAS_Stellar 15.125X6.5.indd 1
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
BUSINESS
choose to make interest-only payments
to improve cash flow or principal-plusinterest payments to help build equity.
High crop prices have undoubtedly had
an effect in driving up the price of land.
Now, they might spark some bargains, but
only for those who are fast on their feet.
“The grain sector has always cycled
and it’ll cycle again,” says farm adviser
Terry Betker. “The young guys out there
should be watching the grain market right
now because if the grain market starts to
go sideways or soften, there’s going to be
some landowners who will want to sell
now in case it goes down. So they should
be watching for that to occur.”
Having a plan is vital in the search
for land, Betker adds, so get out the
municipal map and identify any producers in the area who may be retiring
soon. Williams agrees. If you want even
a chance to own more land, building
relationships is vital, he says, and that
happens over a lifetime. “My experience
has been you have to keep a good rapport with your neighbours and you need
to be on a first-name and a friendly
conversation basis with everyone so
they think of you when the time comes
for them to move on.”
Most retiring farmers would still prefer to sell to a young person starting out
who is from the local area, says Williams.
“Those lifetime friendships are important
and you shouldn’t be too shy or awkward about letting the farmers know your
intentions,” he says. “And making sure
that you put it out there that this is where
you want to go and this is what you hope
for the future, and that there’s no missed
opportunities because the right conversation hasn’t been had.”
“No young farmer on their own has
the equity to compete at these prices
and make a go of it,” adds Williams.
“It’s going to be a real struggle to
try and keep the young farmer in the
game.” CG
top-performing annual broadleaf weed control + superior resistance management.
• The best weed control performance in wheat, barley and oats
• Controls cleavers, buckwheat, chickweed, hemp-nettle, kochia, more
• Two modes of action, three actives, overlapping control
• Get all the benefits of Stellar in your oats too.
and save
before
march
20th.
Go to cerealsolutions.ca or call 1.800.667.3852.
Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company
(“Dow”) or an affiliated company of Dow.
0114-22076-03
® TM
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
country-guide.ca 17
12/19/13 9:41 AM
business
How much can you pay?
First, ask yourself these six questions
“When you see that ad in the local paper for land for sale, there are six things you need to consider before you pick
up the phone,” says Jacqueline Gerrard of Backswath Management.
1. Carrying cost
5. Return on investment
“Think of this as your interest or opportunity cost,”
says Gerrard. “In other words, what will it actually cost
you to own the property?” For a farmer purchasing land
at $2,500 per acre which is 100 per cent financed at five
per cent interest, the carrying cost of owning that land is
$125 per acre for the interest only. However, it still costs
you money even if you paid the full amount upfront. That’s
because you could have been using that money as an
investment. Even if you had it deposited at two per cent in
the bank, you’d still have earned $50 an acre.
Each farm operation is different so each producer will
need to calculate what he or she is going to be able to
make as a return on his or her investment in new land
expressed over the whole farm operation. “If you know
you are going to make $100 per acre net profit on the new
land at a cost of $2,500 per acre, that gives a four per
cent return (i.e. $100 divided by $2,500), but the whole
farm return may be different,” says Gerrard. “You need to
determine how the new asset fits into the whole basket of
assets on the farm.”
2. Leverage versus cash
6. Additional costs of expansion
Cash is still most definitely king, and there’s always a
way to make money with money, unless you have to borrow it. When you start to accumulate some interest-earning cash reserve it may be wise to do the math carefully
before you make an investment decision you might regret.
“One million cash in the bank earning two per cent
interest will give you $20,000 per year,” says Gerrard. “If
you took that million in cash and invested it in 400 acres
at $2,500 per acre and you make a net profit of, let’s say,
$100 per acre, you will make $40,000 per year. But if you
need to borrow a million at five per cent interest, it will cost
you $50,000 to make $40,000 per year, and we are only
talking about the interest cost here.”
Consider any additional costs of expansion that might
be necessary as a result of purchasing new land, such as
machinery, bins, barns, technology or land improvements.
These costs will factor in to the overall return on investment and the net operating profit of the farm.
Depending on the circumstances of the farmer and the
availability of land in the area, the answer to these questions might best be weighed by asking another question.
Would it be cheaper to rent land? “You really need to think
about what the answers mean,” says Gerrard. “Does the
purchase of new land push you past rental costs? Is the
carrying cost higher than rental? Is it a good addition to
what you already have? And we are only talking about the
productive capacity of the land; remember you will never
capitalize on the land itself unless you sell it.”
Farmers will often make the point that there isn’t any
land in their area to rent, adds Gerrard. But true as that
may be when they are looking at a land purchase, they
should also consider whether it’s really worth paying three
times more than the current rental rate (or whatever it
pencils out to be).
The “what if?” questions should be the next ones you
ask, says Gerrard. “What if interest rates went up, what
would the effect be? What if profits went down? Can you
always rely on that $100 per acre net profit or whatever
you calculate it to be on your farm?” she says. “When
you want to capitalize on your purchase, who will you sell
it to? Is there a possibility you may be selling it one day to
your kids and if so, it may not be possible to get the cash
out that you are hoping to get for your retirement.”
3. Weighted average cash
outflow for capital
Farmers may sometimes try to justify the cost of new
land by averaging it over the whole farm (including land
that they already own or are paying for at a lower cost than
the new land). This gives a cost per acre that is weighted
against the full land base of the farm and it may be higher
or lower than current land rental rates in the area.
4. Net operating profit
This is a figure that will vary from farm to farm and is
one that you absolutely must know. Take your accrued
financial statements and calculate what your net profit
(after all expenses) is per acre.
18 country-guide.ca FEBRUARY 4, 2014
business
Sticky land rental rates
With other farmers bidding up
2014 rates, your only choice may
be to go big or stay home
rain prices have sunk, but it’s no news in farm
circles that farmland rental values don’t look set
to follow anytime soon. Nor, perhaps, should it
be any surprise.
“If we look at the trends in rental rates versus
crop receipts… rental rates go up slower than crop income, but
then they also take some time to come down,” says James Bryan,
an agricultural economist with Farm Credit Canada in Regina.
“They’re sticky on both ends.”
In theory, when projected and actual returns begin to decline,
so too should rental rates. But there are two caveats that can
prevent this.
“If farmers perceive declines in commodity returns to be a
short-term phenomenon, there’s no reason to expect rental rates
to decline,” says Jared Carlberg, an agricultural economics professor at the University of Manitoba.
If farmers’ expectations are that commodity prices and, hence
returns, to farmland, will increase, the opposite, in fact, will
occur.
“Given excessive demand for access to land, I would expect
to see no decline in rental rates,” Carlberg says. “The supply of
land is fixed and there are many, many, many producers looking to get bigger. So quite aside from any normal variations in
returns, rates could be expected to face upward pressure due to
demand-side factors.”
Rick Dehod, a farm financial specialist with Alberta Agriculture’s livestock and farm business branch, says softening grain
prices have spurred growers to talk about the high rental rates
that have been negotiated in the province the last five years.
Even so, Dehod expects that with so many commercial farms
looking to grow and capture economies of scale, the continued
strong competition to rent land in No. 1 soil areas will maintain
high market values.
“You get in that corridor in Olds, Strathmore, Lethbridge,
where there are good cash flows and strong farm families, and
it’s very competitive,” Dehod says. “Everyone’s saying we can’t
get land, we can’t get land.”
Similar scenarios prevail in farm districts all across the country, with similarly strong resistance among landlords to drop
their expectations.
Many of those landlords also know they have an even stronger position than they might have in previous cycles.
Photo: Sandy Black
By Richard Kamchen
When times are good, rental rates lag
behind the growth in land values. When
times aren’t so good, though, they’re
also much slower to fall
Continued on page 20
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
country-guide.ca 19
business
Rent, or share?
Innovative rental agreements are as cyclical as rental rates
The popularity of renting farmland has risen in Canada in the last 30 years.
In 2011, 61.5 per cent farmland was owned and 38.5 per cent was rented out,
according to Statistics Canada.
Proportionately, the West rents more, although rental levels were high across the
country: 29 per cent in Ontario, 34 per cent in Manitob, 36 per cent in Saskatchewan, 40 per cent in Alberta, and nearly 44 per cent in B.C,
What is identical across the country, however, is that the lease rates on those
property rentals depend heavily on farmers and what they’re willing to pay.
When producers weigh their bids, they’re taking into account their cost of production and also expected revenues, with the latter based on anticipated yield and
crop prices. The quality of the land and expected input prices are additional factors.
Farm Credit Canada’s James Bryan adds that interest rates can have an impact
on both rental and farmland values. Higher interest rates can boost the returns on
safe assets like farmland, as well as bonds and money markets.
“As interest rates go up, it should be putting upward pressure on rental rates,”
says Bryan, based in Regina. “But that doesn’t mean they will go up, because if
producers are bidding on their cost of production, if they can’t afford it, they should
have a max bid and stick to that.”
The price of farmland, though, takes into account broader considerations than
rental rates.
“In addition to factors that influence rental rates, farmland values may reflect
expectations regarding interest rates, government payments, and future non-ag
uses of the land like residential housing,” says Brady Deaton, ag economist at the
University of Guelph.
Deaton explains that farmland values are also based on the expected
net returns to the land parcel in future
years, not just the coming one.
Rental rates and farmland values
are expected to move in similar directions, though there are a number of
factors which may influence farmland
values in a more pronounced manner
than rental rates, as cash rental rates involve much shorter expectations than
farmland values. The cost of renting climbed from 2009-10 to 2012-13, but in
jurisdictions like southern Ontario, it hasn’t risen at the same rate as farmland
values, Deaton says.
“Though rental rates appear to have appreciated over the last couple of years,
I don’t think they rose in the meteoric fashion that land values have,” says Deaton.
The majority of rental contracts are for cash and a term of one year, although the
relationships between renters and landlords extend longer than that. In southern
Ontario, farmers typically rent from the same landowner year after year for, on average, close to 10 years, Deaton says.
There are also cash rental contracts with a bonus, in which a farmer’s rent
would increase if crop prices or his yields hit certain levels, says Bryan. But he
believes those kinds of flexible cash rental contracts are rare.
Sharecropping in Canada and the U.S. has become less common over the last
30 years, but that’s just the sort of contract that could take into account changing
circumstances for farmers, Bryan says.
“Sharecropping is actually one of the easiest ways to allow the rental rate to fluctuate with increased commodity prices and yields.” Bryan says. “But at the same time,
we have to remember that for lots of people, if they aren’t familiar with farming and
don’t know the risks of farming, they might not be comfortable with a share lease.”
Data is scarce on who the sharecroppers are, but most analysts believe they
tend to be landlords knowledgeable about agriculture. An urban-dwelling landlord
might not understand the discrepancy in paycheques from one year to the next.
Share agreements can
balance farm risks and
profits, but will the
landowner go along?
20 country-guide.ca Continued from page 19
Commodity prices have dipped,
but that doesn’t mean farmers lack the
wherewithal to continue bidding up
rental rates. Working capital remains
strong from the 2012-13 crop year, and
although 2013-14 crop prices have fallen,
robust yields will aid in supporting good
gross revenues.
“Though margins will tighten into
2014, strong balance sheets developed
in the last five years will continue to support a strong rental market, as operations
continue to grow and compete for land,”
says Dehod. “The difference in land rentals to land payments is still substantial,
so for young producers expanding, land
rental — even at higher rates — is still
attractive.”
Dehod adds that landlords won’t be
keen on offering discounts anyway, especially since many of the contracts they
were locked into when crop returns rose
in 2010 to 2012 didn’t provide for profit
sharing. In other words, they felt they
didn’t get their slice of the extraordinary
run-up in grain prices in those years, so
it’s time they started getting some of their
own now.
Yet in fringe areas with poorer soil
and on pasture land, rental values could
at least stabilize. With cattle numbers
coming down, there just isn’t the same
demand for pasture, says Dehod.
Land prices and land rental rates
generally would weaken too if there is
another large global crop in 2014, which
would further decrease grain and oilseed
margins into 2015, Dehod notes. But that
remains to be seen.
In Ontario, the University of Guelph’s
Brady Deaton saw farmers actually pay
their landlords a bit more in rent than
they had initially agreed to pay when
commodity prices were high.
“From preliminary survey results…
approximately 14 per cent of farmers
surveyed in southern Ontario said they
paid more than the required rental rate
to the landlord for a given property in
2012,” says the ag economics professor.
In times of lower commodity prices,
would landlords reciprocate? Deaton
doubts it. Nevertheless, the majority of
farmers surveyed didn’t expect to pay
more: “We also asked farmers if they
expected rental rates to increase in 2014,
and approximately 31 per cent of farmers in southern Ontario expected it to
increase, while 69 per cent didn’t.” CG
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
NEW
CDC Kindersley
✔ 6% higher yield than AC Metcalfe
✔ earlier maturity than AC Metcalfe
✔ strong straw
Date Produced: December 2013
Size: 8.125” x 10.75” Bleed 8.625” x 11.25”
Barley on tap for 2014
Genes that fit your farm.
866-665-7333
www.secan.com
®
*Compared to AC Metcalfe in Coop Registration Trials
Developed by Crop Development Centre, University of Saskatchewan
Genes that fit your farm® is a registered trademark of SeCan.
business
At the helm: Kyle Jeworski
Viterra’s new boss has
always been a young
man in a mature
man’s industry. This
time, though, he’s in
one of the biggest ag
jobs in the country.
Critics know what
his job really is
By Anne Lazurko, CG Contributing Editor
hile occupying the
corner office at Viterra
is relatively new for
Kyle Jeworski, holding a spot at the top
of his peer group is not. In 2011 he was
named one of “Canada’s Top 40 Under
40,” while acting as vice-president of
grain merchandising and transportation
at Viterra. In December of 2012, Swissbased Glencore Xstrata made him boss
shortly after it acquired Canada’s largest
grain-handling company. A year into this
endeavour he’s just 39 years old. A young
CEO with a big resumé.
Saskatchewan born and raised,
Jeworski has a business degree from
the University of Regina through its
co-operative education program. The
work portion of his degree found him
employed at Saskatchewan Wheat Pool
and the rest, as they say, is history. Over
the next 17 years, Jeworski held various positions as the co-operative dissolved into a publicly shared company
and then was further restructured into
Viterra, with Jeworski appointed CEO
of its current incarnation as Glencore’s
North American grain business.
Along the way he’s seen the company through seven years of Prairie
drought that left it nearly bankrupt, and
the “refocusing and right sizing” that
brought it back from the brink.
22 country-guide.ca FEBRUARY 4, 2014
business
“I was fortunate to be with the company as
it built itself back up,” Jeworski says. “It leads
a person to reflect on what has happened, and I
think it grounds you. If you came into this industry
and had seen nothing but the highs or nothing but
the lows, you may not have perspective. I’ve been
fortunate, if you can put it that way, to have seen
both. You learn to celebrate the highs, but you
don’t get complacent and you make sure to do the
little things right. You can’t lose sight of the core
business because you need a strong company to
weather the downtimes.”
Grain is at the core of Viterra. In its $6.2-billion takeover bid, Glencore dealt away almost
all Viterra’s processing and some grain-handling
assets to Richardson’s International, and its farm
supply retail business to Agrium, recouping about
$2.5 billion.
It’s become a lean grain-handling machine,
focusing on a critical mass of grain and oilseed
production with access to what Jeworski says is
“the best global trading group in agriculture. Glencore is in 50 countries and can provide real-time,
unbiased market information and real-time insight
into what customers require. We have more face
points with end-use customers than ever before.”
While Jeworski has had exposure to all aspects
of the business, his strengths as CEO neatly align
with Glencore’s vision for Viterra, which is to lead
in the merchandising, risk management and transportation of grain. And to do it efficiently. The
company’s new found critical mass will help in a
Canadian industry heavily reliant on export.
“We are 1,650 kms from the Port of Vancouver,” Jeworski says. “Other countries are producing on major waterways, and so for us to compete
on a global scale we have to be efficient.”
That efficiency is being tested with the West’s
huge 2013 crop. Grain and oilseed prices are
dropping as elevators plug and as rail cars become
scarce. “This record crop is going to show us
where there are pinch points or challenges in the
industry,” Jeworski says. “And we see Canada
producing ever-more grain, so the challenge is
to address efficiency, and this is the reason we
are spending capital in the country (elevators) in
receiving and shipping, investing in ports, and
working with the railways to see what we can do
to increase capacity.”
Glencore took over Viterra only a year ago, and
Jeworski has been CEO for roughly that long. But
in that same year the company spent $20 million on
facility upgrades at four grain terminals in Saskatchewan, and announced another $34 million to go
toward expanded terminal operations in Alberta.
With 2,000 employees, 65 Prairie elevator points,
over 1.5 million tonnes capacity, port terminals, and
a small number of processing facilities, Jeworski is a
busy man.
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
Leadership style
Jeworski doesn’t claim to do it alone. “I believe
in surrounding myself with good people,” he says.
“Good people make me look good and they help
each other as well. I feel we have the best people in
the industry.”
Jeworski is big on mentorship and succession, and
strives to provide training to employees whether it’s
in Regina’s head office or out in country operations.
That others might think him relatively young to
be leading and mentoring is not lost on the CEO.
He’s been told the same thing at various points
throughout his career, but sees it as an advantage.
“I’ve had to be better prepared at all times in order
to prove myself,” he says. Clearly it has worked.
“I believe I’m tough and focused, and I like to
stay on top of, and be current with, the business,”
Jeworski says. “I think it’s important to be grounded
and clearly understand the day-to-day operations
without micro-managing. Because of the risk and
volatility of the industry, it’s important to be fully
engaged in every aspect of the business.”
Communication is key, Jeworski says. “People want
to do what’s right and that requires them to be informed
and to understand what’s going on. Being candid and
open for questions create the right atmosphere.”
Jeworski sees a plus when he’s called
too young: “I’ve had to be better
prepared at all times to prove myself.”
And he doesn’t believe in creating a bureaucracy.
“If I have a question about IT, and I run into an IT
guy in the elevator, I’ll ask him the question. I don’t
have to go to the head of IT. And the head of IT isn’t
threatened by that.”
Jeworksi also cultivates a culture that recognizes
the historical significance of the company. While
it has morphed over the years, Viterra is a heritage organization. “I feel a lot of responsibility
because of the history of the company,” Jeworski
says. “It’s been earning farmers’ business for 100
years and now we have to keep earning it… we have
to embrace the past but have the proper foresight to
anticipate the future. We don’t want to be reactive.
We want to be leading change.”
So that is what keeps Jeworski energized and
challenged. Innovation, embracing and enacting
change, leadership.
And it would seem Glencore has set him in an
environment where he can thrive. Viterra has 100
per cent regional autonomy, and its growth plans all
come out of Regina. For Jeworski, it’s a chance to
flex his leadership muscle. CG
country-guide.ca 23
Ag Outlook
2014
Understand the trends, see the opportunities
Hear the coming year’s economic outlook, learn how weather patterns could impact your operation
and get insight into market trends. Discover how a focus on farm management could positively impact
your success in the year ahead, and boost your enthusiasm for ag with motivating facts and positive
stories about the industry.
Get an expert’s opinion on trends and opportunities coming in 2014, and be confident your business
decisions are based on the most up-to-date information available.
t
L
Tuesday, March 4
Thursday, March 13
1:15 – 4:30 p.m.
Mosaic Place
1:15 – 4:30 p.m.
Best Western Plus Resort Casino
Moose Jaw
Camrose
Seating is limited – register for free today.
fcc.ca/AgOutlook 1-888-332-3301
t
m
Presented in partnership with Country Guide.
Economics
Commodities
Weather
J.P. Gervais
Drew Lerner
FCC Chief Agricultural Economist
President,
With more than 15 years of
World Weather Inc.
experience in domestic and
Daily assessments of crop
international analysis of
and weather expectations make
agricultural policy and markets
Drew’s forecasts a favourite
to draw on, J.P. will provide
among farmers, commodity
insight into major economic
market watchers and others
trends that shape the Canadian agriculture industry today.
in the agriculture industry. Hear how weather trends and
Learn how they could impact your farm in the coming year.
global climate change could affect your operation in 2014.
Mike Jubinville
Lyndon Carlson
President, Pro Farmer Canada
FCC Senior Vice-President,
In 1997, Mike started Pro Farmer
Marketing
Canada, a service he continues
In 2012, Lyndon was named
to run today and where he
the Canadian Agri-Marketing
remains active as lead analyst.
Association’s Agri-Marketer
Benefit from his experience as
of the Year and was presented
he explains current and future
with the Queen Elizabeth II
trends in agriculture, the current state of commodity
Diamond Jubilee Medal for his contributions to 4-H Canada.
markets and what we can expect next.
Discover how a focus on farm management can get your
operation to the next level, and find out how you can be
a champion for agriculture.
business
The other energy business
While Grant focuses on the farm, Colleen Dyck is
building their Gorp energy bars into a national brand
By Rebeca Kuropatwa
always knew I was going to start something,” says Colleen Dyck. “I just didn’t
know what it was going to be or what it was
going to look like.”
Of course, many people have dreams, and
many people nurture a hope that they will become,
build, or do something special.
It doesn’t always happen. But Dyck turned her
ambition into reality.
Here’s how she did it.
If it seems a circuitous route, that may just be
because in business, sometimes it seems that the
straight lines aren’t always the ones that take you
where you want to go.
Dyck began by studying business administration with a major in entrepreneurship at Winnipeg’s
Red River College. When she finished college, she
applied for a job at aircraft engine specialist Standard Aero, where she got her first taste of how business works in the real world.
26 country-guide.ca Next, Dyck switched to Mountain Equipment
Co-op (MEC) to be part of an industry she felt more
passionate about.
That in turn gave Dyck more opportunities to
spend much more time outside, which then led to
her participation in triathlons.
Now an extreme athlete, Dyck realized she
needed extreme food. “Extreme athletes typically
look for a convenient source of fuel to keep them
going and going,” says Dyck. For her, the best
answer seemed to be energy bars.
During her search for fuel-filled energy bars,
however, Dyck learned that the energy foods on
most supermarket shelves were packed with preservatives and additives that are turn offs to many
athletes, and she began experimenting and making
home made energy bars.
Dyck shared her bars with other athletes; they all
wanted more. And thus, a new business was born.
“I’ve always been really careful about what I put
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
business
in my body,” Dyck says. “One of my favourite sayings is ‘Food is a tool. What are you building?’”
After researching what she wanted in an energy
bar, Dyck began sourcing the best ingredients she
could get her hands on, with a mindset of “first
local, and second organic.”
Growing up in the small southern Manitoba
town of Niverville, at the age of 18, Dyck moved to
Edmonton. Eventually, the Prairies called her back.
In her early 20s, Dyck had been certain she
would never marry a farmer — yet, that is exactly
what she ended up doing — and now she has rediscovered a huge passion for agriculture.
Dyck’s husband’s father was a farmer who passed
away early. Grant (Dyck’s husband) had big shoes to fill
while he was in his own early 20s, taking over a large
family farm at that time (7,000 acres). “He took this
on and a lot of our staff who had worked for his dad
stayed on the team and worked with him, which he was
really grateful for,” says Dyck. “Grant managed to grow
and keep the farm, and we didn’t go under.”
They also learned to transform their challenges
into opportunities. “When our old farmhouse
burned down,” Dyck recalls, “we knew I had this
energy bar idea to pursue, so when we rebuilt, we
built the basement to be at a level suitable for a
food-handling facility.”
While the farm — now at 14,000 acres — is still
the Dycks’ main business, its proximity to Niverville
has been a blessing for the energy bar business with,
as of now, Dyck not quite yet needing full-time production workers.
As for the bars’ ingredients, Dyck sources most of
her supplies locally, importing “southern” items such
as coconut, peanuts, and brown rice protein.
Finding just the right protein was one of the
more difficult tasks. Athletes are under stress, Dyck
says. She needed to find a source that wouldn’t
upset their stomachs. “There are just so many cheap
proteins out there that upset the gut and have a lot
of fillers in them,” says Dyck.
After intensive research, Dyck found an excellent
brown rice protein that is hypo-allergenic and made
in the U.S.
“Something I hear from a lot of people is that the
bars sit really well on the stomach — actually, something many of the Winnipeg Jets have mentioned,”
says Dyck. “The Jets have been using the bars since
they returned to Winnipeg.”
To develop the bar, Dyck went to the Food
Development Centre in Portage la Prairie, which
was costly and, partly, the reason it took as long as
it did to get the bars onto the market.
“Eventually, we got a recipe that worked and
then it was just a matter of getting my hands on
some loans,” says Dyck. “Through the Women’s
Enterprise Centre, which gives funding to women
specifically, I got to buy the packaging machine I
needed. This was the missing piece — a big ticket
item I needed to get started.”
Dyck began by making the bars available locally,
giving away free samples at local fun runs and marathons. She also gave out samples at the Swamp Donkey Adventure races, partnering with race organizers
and showing up at all the races, giving away samples
and conducting taste tests to gradually get the Gorp
name out there.
It didn’t take long for satisfied customers to
start doing the selling of the bars through word of
mouth, telling others how good they are. Today,
Continued on page 28
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
country-guide.ca 27
business
Continued from page 27
Dyck regularly receives telephone
calls from retailers, informing her of
the many customers who come to their
stores asking for the product.
Home grown ingredients
“We try to grow the ingredients on
the farm that go into the bar, but once
you send the crops to the processor, they
get mixed with crops from other area
farms,” says Dyck. “Then we buy product back from them, so I can’t necessarily say it all comes from our farm.”
The Dycks work hard to grow as
many of the ingredients and buy locally
back from the processors in their own
backyard — including oats, sunflower
seeds, hemp, flax and honey, as well as
prairie-grown pea fibre.
Dyck is also working to find ways
to cut gluten from her products, as this
seems of increasing value to consumers.
Overall, Dyck believes whether it comes
to gluten-free, organic, or other more specialty elements, “There are many different
ways to grow food and feed the planet. As
long as we’re moving forward and trying to
do better, we’re going to get better.”
The making of the Gorp bars is currently a fairly manual process. “After
having tried a bunch of different
machines when we were at the Food
Development Centre, we just ended up
crushing the bar to smithereens — to the
point you could barely tell you were biting into an almond,” said Dyck.
“I thought we’d just do it the oldfashioned way until we could afford the
machine, still keeping the texture and
integrity of the bite.”
With “Fuel for your
next adventure” as their
tagline, the Dycks are
building an adventure
of their own
After all the ingredients are combined
in a large mixer, the rolling crew rolls
them out by hand, with about eight people around a long table rolling batch
after batch.
Dyck went to a local welding shop
and custom-designed a cutting machine
to cut the bars. In fact, much of the
equipment for rolling, forming, and
other operations is custom-made locally.
The bars go into a packaging machine
(a conveyor that wraps the printed packaging). Then they are packed by hand
into boxes and shipped out.
The energy bars are shipped mainly
to locations in Manitoba, but sales are
building across the country, and Dyck’s
goal for 2014 is to build Gorp into a
national brand.
That means forging relationships
with national retailers, such as Mountain
Endorsed by the
Winnipeg Jets,
Gorp energy bars
sell at a premium
to other bars.
28 country-guide.ca Equipment Co-op (MEC) which plans to
stock their shelves across Canada with
Gorp bars after having tested them in
2013 in their Winnipeg location.
Next on the horizon for Dyck is to
expand the Gorp bars’ production to
a new location in the yard. Dyck will
retrofit an older shop building, and
although the building isn’t very big, it
is situated right on the yard — keeping
production local.
In Winnipeg, Gorp bars are available at
health retail outlets, such as Vita Health,
Nutrition Plus, Organza, Sunrise Health
Foods, and Humboldt’s, as well as at some
chiropractic offices and fitness centres.
“Usually, these kinds of energy bars
sell for around $3,” said Dyck. “Ours
sell for about $3.25 to $3.49.
“We have a lot of repeat customers,”
Dyck says.
There are three different kinds of Gorp
bars: cocoa, hemp, and almond; peanut butter and apple; peanut butter and raspberry.
“We’re always thinking about new
flavours,” says Dyck. “There are new
products that have been shelf-life tested
and that we’re about to launch in the
next couple of months. We’re not quite
talking about them yet, but soon.” CG
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
S:7”
Breakthrough
in plant health.
This NEW formulation combines the power
of three different fungicide actives, including
NEW prothioconazole, for complete systemic
and contact protection from the most serious
seed- and soil-borne diseases like fusarium
graminearum, true loose smut and pythium.
Don’t limit the potential of your crop –
use the toughest thing in pink.
To learn more about Raxil PRO Shield,
visit BayerCropScience.ca/Raxil
BayerCropScience.ca/Raxil or 1 888-283-6847 or contact your Bayer CropScience representative.
Always read and follow the label directions. Raxil® and Stress Shield® are registered trademarks of the Bayer Group.
Bayer CropScience is a member of CropLife Canada.
C-55-12/13-10150465-E
S:10”
The Stress Shield® component of
Raxil® PRO Shield provides superior
emergence, increased vigour and a healthier
plant that’s better able to withstand
unforeseen seasonal stresses. This includes
things like drought, disease, nutrient loss,
frost as well as wireworms.
BUSINESS
Food for thought
If you decide you want to be both a farmer and a food maker,
is it inevitable that you will give up one or the other?
By Steven Biggs, CG Contributing Editor
arlier last fall, I was hanging out here in
the Charlevoix region of Quebec for a
sort of family vacation. We were exploring local farms that have developed food
businesses — a part of Canadian agriculture where Quebec seems to be the clear leader.
My focus was what farmers here are advertising as their local taste trail, and I brought my wife
and kids as my own consumer panel to help me tell
whether these farms are actually hitting the mark.
Some are surprises. The duck farm selling foiegras was a big hit with my kids, although that was
partly because they were stoked about the waterpowered mill. So, as we pulled into the parking
lot at Laiterie Charlevoix, our next stop, it seemed
only natural that they would tear off toward the old
Massey-Harris they’d spotted in the picnic area.
While my wife followed to keep an eye on the
kids clambering into the tractor seat, I got past the
white barn and headed to the on-farm store. I had one
thing on my mind: fresh, warm, squeaky cheese curds.
They’re a staple around here. I’ve grown to love them.
But as I looked around me, the same question
started echoing again. Can you be both a farmer and
a food maker? Or, if you decide to start down that
path, is it virtually inevitable that one side or the
other will win out, and the other will drop away.
Opening the door, the store was bustling. I found the
curds, and as I looked through a large window into the
cheese plant, Richard Lambert strolled over to explain
the cheese-making process. They make cheese seven
days a week. “Cows don’t take holidays,” he quipped.
Then he told me the bag of curds I was holding
had been made that very morning.
PHOTO: STEVEN
30 country-guide.ca
BIGGS
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
BUSINESS
LAITERIE CHARLEVOIX
Stanislas Labbé and Elmina Fortin started this family-run on-farm dairy in 1948. At
first, they sold bottled milk locally in the Charlevoix region. In the 1960s, they started
making cheddar cheese with surplus milk. Then, the business grew to include a milk run
along the north shore of the St. Lawrence, all the way to Baie-Comeau — a five-hour
drive. But in 1982 they sold the milk run to focus on cheese.
Today, the dairy makes seven different cheeses and has 35 employees in the busy season. It processes approximately two million litres of milk annually, making 200,000 kilograms of cheese.
While a lot has changed since 1982, having a focus is still a big part of the mindset. The
focus is now on building their regional identity and on carving out an upmarket niche.
Laiterie Charlevoix is well placed to catch tourists, being on the main road and
being part of La Route des Saveurs de Charlevoix (meaning the Charlevoix taste trail.)
It is a tourist route that features food-related businesses including farms, restaurants,
and specialty food producers… everything from hard cider to bakeries, market gardens,
and foie gras.
Is this the future of agriculture? Certainly not for everyone, but for any farmer
thinking of diversifying into a more consumer-oriented, value-added direction, this is a
great road to travel.
The LA ROUTE DES SAVEURS DE CHARLEVOIX magazine that is given to tourists features profiles of area farms and businesses, recipes featuring local foods, and a map —
bringing together gastronomy and terroir, and they hand out magazines box after box.
You’ll see why when you hear the numbers.
SEVEN BROTHERS
Lambert lowers his
voice as if he’s about to
tell me a secret. “There
are no cows here.”
“Seven brothers are running this place,”
says Lambert as he talks about the seven
third-generation Labbé brothers.
Three of them work at the dairy fulltime. Dominique Labbé is head cheese
maker, Jean Labbé is the accountant, and
Paul Labbé manages shipping. A fourth,
Bruno Labbé, manages the family-owned
campground next door, while the three other brothers have full-time off-farm careers.
I ask about the dynamics of having seven decision-makers. Lambert says that they
want the business to continue to the next generation, adding, “They’re not always on
the same wavelength, but they talk it out and it’s OK.”
We chat for a while in the store before going to the sampling counter. Lambert
handles English public relations, so he can rhyme off the stores in Toronto that carry
his cheese. He has a brother there too — so we compare notes about traffic.
Then I ask how many cows they milk.
Lambert lowers his voice as if he’s about to tell me a secret. “There are no cows here.”
“There used to be a herd of Holsteins,” Lambert says — until 1989. The decision
to sell the cows had to do with focus. “They were dealing with the farm seven days a
week, the cheese factory seven days a week, and they also own a very big campground
here next to the dairy… They made a very hard decision,” he says.
LOSING FOCUS
PHOTOGRAPHY: www.fromagescharlevoix.com
The dairy uses milk as a way to differentiate its cheeses. Holstein milk — all from
the Charlevoix region — is delivered to the plant. “We buy our milk from the local
federation,” (the marketing board) Lambert says, adding, “We want to associate our
cheeses with milk produced here in Charlevoix.”
Milk from Jersey and Canadienne herds is kept separate. “We go get it with our
own truck,” says Lambert. Through an arrangement with the marketing board and
the farmers, they pay a premium of $0.10 per litre for the Jersey and Canadienne milk,
something Lambert says helps to make up for the fact that on a volume basis, these
breeds give less milk. This way, he says, the dairy ensures it continues to get milk suited
to making unique cheeses.
Continued on page 32
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
country-guide.ca 31
business
Continued from page 31
There is a new cheese every two or
three years, he says as he tells me about the
new Emmental-style cheese that they now
produce and will soon officially release.
“They always have ideas,” Lambert says
as he talks about the cheese makers. The
focus is on specialty products. “We don’t
do any ‘industrial’ production — we want
to make fine cheese,” he says.
Location, location
The store accounts for approximately
25 per cent of sales. It is more than a
cheese shop, with a wide variety of food
from other local producers, everything
32 country-guide.ca 22012-03 DAS Simplicity_15.125X6.5.indd 1
from pies to meats to preserves. Lambert
says that in the summer, there are often
1,200 people moving through the store
every day. “We’re lucky, we’re on the
main highway,” he says as he talks about
tourist traffic.
“Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver,
Toronto,” says Lambert as he rattles off
some of the cities where the cheese is
sold. While the dairy has someone working on national sales, a distributor takes
care of fulfilment. “We send our cheeses
to Montreal, and from Montreal he distributes the cheese,” says Lambert.
Even though they’re cheese makers
now, not really farmers, the old farm
skills and aptitudes help them succeed.
february 4, 2014
Photography: www.fromagescharlevoix.com
business
In 2010, for instance, the company
installed a facility to convert the 15,00020,000 litres of whey that they generate
annually into methane. This waste previously went into the septic system. After
passing through the digester, remaining
wastewater goes through a biofilter that
uses live plants. Treated water can then be
discharged directly into a nearby stream.
Cheese-making takes lots of hot
water for washing and cleaning — and
the dairy goes through about four million litres of hot water annually. All of
that water is now heated by methane.
“Before we used to heat water with a
very old boiler,” says Lambert, adding
that it took a lot of heating oil.
The facility cost of $2.8 million was
defrayed by approximately $800,000 in
federal and provincial grants. The estimated timeframe for the system to pay
itself back is 10 to 12 years.
When I ask about plans for the
future, Lambert says that there are now
five members of the fourth generation
working in the company. “They want
to continue for the fourth generation.
They’re working on it right now.” At
this point, it’s a matter of transferring
some of the responsibility.
The focus of my trip to the store — the
curds — are delicious. Unfortunately for
me, they’re for the local market. The focus
for the Ontario market is fine cheeses. CG
ElitE WilD OAt CONtROl
iS juSt the beGinninG.
Success starts with the #1 Graminicide brand in wheat.
• Growers who use it say it works the best
• High performing on a wide range of weeds
• Superior wild oat control + bonus broadleaf control
• You’ve got to use it to know how good it is
Go to cerealsolutions.ca or call 1.800.667.3852.
and Save
before
march
20th.
trademark of the Dow Chemical Company
(“Dow”) or an affiliated company of Dow.
0114-22012-03
® tM
february 4, 2014
country-guide.ca 33
12/20/13 8:53 AM
business
An Agritechnica PhD
For farmers, a visit to Agritechnica
is a path to a unique education
By Scott Garvey, CG Machinery Editor
n Germany earlier this winter, I was sitting
across a table from Ralf Küsel, a South African farmer, as he sipped his coffee in the International Visitors’ Lounge of the Agritechnica
showgrounds in Hanover. “I’ve heard somebody say an overseas trip is worth a degree,” Küsel
said. “Of course it costs you (the equivalent of) a
degree, but it opens your mind and gives you a different perspective and different ideas.”
Küsel was sitting with his business partner, Kurt
Klingenberg after enduring 14 hours flying to northern Germany from their mixed farming operation in
the eastern part of South Africa. They came to see
what was new in farm machinery at Agritechnica,
the world’s largest equipment exhibition.
If it’s true that an overseas trip is worth a degree,
Küsel and Klingenberg were well on their way to a PhD.
“Everywhere, we find something we’ve never seen
before,” said Küsel as he looked at Klingenberg, who
nodded vigorously in agreement. “We came with the
attitude, look and learn.”
During a wrap-up press conference, executives of
the German Agricultural Society (i.e. DLG, the group
that organizes Agritechnica) announced that 450,000
visitors had come to the November show. About
112,000 of those were from outside Germany.
Nearly every region of the world was represented,
meaning, apparently, more than a few degrees had
been earned. And the show’s organizers helped give
those degrees a wide-ranging scope. Places like the
International Visitors’ Lounge facilitate meeting farmers from other parts of the world to learn how they
see agriculture and its future.
“I come to Agritechnica to have conversations
with people like you,” said Klaus Münchhoff, who
has been farming his family’s traditional homestead
in the former East Germany since 1991. That’s when
the agricultural land was returned to the families of
those it had been confiscated from. “The family fled
to the west in 1953, and I went back in 1991,” he
explained, speaking in German.
“Everybody is here (at Agritechnica),” Münchhoff went on. “It’s more important to talk to people
than look at the machinery.”
Although Münchhoff, Küsel and Klingenberg
wanted to hear other points of view and unfamiliar
ideas, the machinery was still an important aspect
luring them to this event.
“You don’t get one big eye-opener,” said Münch34 country-guide.ca hoff. “There are a lot of little things. All the small
things together gives you a lot of inspiration.”
Küsel agreed. “You’ve got to walk the whole
show,” he said. “There are a lot of little things. It’s
all those small, little, different things that you pick
up. You think, here’s something. You take a photo
of it or get a brochure. They’re things you wouldn’t
have seen or thought of before. Maybe they are a
solution to your circumstances. The big companies,
we just walk past them. Those are things you can see
anywhere. That’s just showmanship. The big companies can only mass produce a single solution.”
With a record 2,898 exhibitors, Agritechnica
had far more than “the usual suspects,” as one British journalist expressed it. In fact, it was important
to keep your eyes open for the small, unusual displays. Some, like the RHEA project sponsored by the
European Commission, had eye-opening concepts to
reveal. The engineers in that consortium developed
a totally robotic weed control system in conjunction
with the University of Madrid.
Directed by automated aerial drones that employ
optical sensors to locate weeds in a field, wireless,
real-time signals are sent to driverless tractors that
respond to the identified locations and spray the
appropriate herbicides only where required. The
project managers hope to attract a manufacturer to
license and commercialize their creation.
There are also more immediate alternatives for
farmers looking for equipment solutions today.
“Ninety to 95 per cent of our equipment (in
South Africa) is imported,” said Küsel. “Here we get
to see what is available rather than what an importer
tells you is available.”
In the past when he couldn’t find exactly the
machine he wanted in his home country, Küsel went
pretty far afield to find it. “We’ve imported our own
stuff directly,” he went on. “We bought a (Hagie)
sprayer from the U.S. that we brought in ourselves.
The world is getting smaller.”
“I came to get an overview of what’s new with
digital technology,” added Münchhoff. “The most
important topic for me is data management. I’ll be
making investment decisions next spring and I’ll
want the companies to come to my farm and show
how these new technologies will work for me.”
And like Küsel, Münchhoff sees having the best
machine for the job as critical to his operation. But
despite his focus on digital technology, he wouldn’t
february 4, 2014
business
Clockwise: Farmers from all around the
world were able to meet and share ideas at
Germany’s Agritechnica machinery show, which
is held every two years in Hanover, Germany.
Klaus Münchhoff farms 1,000 hectares
(about 2,470 acres) in Eastern Germany.
Kurt Klingenberg (l) and Ralf Küsel
travelled to Agritechnica from South Africa
where they operate mixed farming operations.
Photos: Scott Garvey
“Everywhere, we see
something that we have
never seen before.”
— Ralf Küsel
compromise on having the right iron in
the field to advance his digital ability.
“Having the best machine is more important than getting standardized digital systems,” he said emphatically.
As Münchhoff sees it, different brands
excel at certain types of machines. “The
best is Claas for combines and John
Deere for tractors,” he said. (That’s a
relatively common view among German
producers.)
And like many Canadian farmers, he
believes dealer support is paramount.
Said Münchhoff, “If the combine quits,
every minute it’s not running costs me
eight euros (roughly $11.50).”
As you’d expect, when you have
farmers together from all corners of the
february 4, 2014
planet, opinions differ on how best to
work their fields.
“What is lacking to me here is the
amount of conservation tillage equipment,” said Küsel. “The thing that was
disappointing to me was the lack of notill solutions… I think there should be
people trying to promote it.
“I thought equipment suppliers would
be thinking about it, trying to change
farmers’ minds,” Küsel said. “Obviously
they look at the market and see there’s no
demand there. But sometimes you need
the mindset to be the other way around.”
In South Africa, Küsel estimated, no
till has climbed to 50 from about 10 per
cent in 10 years. In the last few years, it
has been snowballing.
But Münchhoff sees things differently.
“Plowing is more cost effective,” he said.
“I need less crop protection products.”
He plows roughly two-thirds of his cropland each year.
The one thing all the farmers do seem
to agree on is Agritechnica is a place to
get new ideas that make you re-evaluate
your own operation.
“It’s a must to go see,” said Küsel.
“In two or three days I can get all the
information I’m looking for and talk to
all the right people,” added Münchhoff.
They’re both bullish on the future.
“I think we’re relatively positive,” Küsel
said. “We’re investing in farming.”
Said Münchhoff, “Agriculture has a
huge future ahead of it.” CG
country-guide.ca 35
HR
A question of charisma
Good leaders seem special. It’s a talent you can grow
By Pierrette Desrosiers, work psychologist, business coach, and author
eople with charisma stand out. It’s a trait
that we associate with leadership — that
something special that makes an individual
seem exceptional.
But it turns out that charisma has little
to do with good looks, wealth, titles or authority,
and although it can seem that individuals with charisma must have inherited it at their birth, we now
have a better idea of its actual ingredients.
In fact, charisma isn’t what we would call a “natural” quality at all. You aren’t necessarily born charismatic; you become that way.
This means you can actually boost your “charisma quotient” by cultivating the ingredients that go
into making a person charismatic.
Chief among these ingredients is trustworthiness,
says author David Hosager. “Trust has the ability
to accelerate or destroy any business, organization
or relationship,” Hosager says. “With greater trust
comes greater innovation, stronger brands, increased
retention of good people, higher morale, multiplied
productivity, better results, and a bigger bottom line.”
The take home is clear. Be sure to walk the talk,
but also take a hard look at the following questions.
Q: “Am I trustworthy? Do I keep my promises to
everyone?”
Have a vision. As a manager or boss, give meaning to everything you do. Have a vision for both
direction and content. Ideally, that vision or grand
project must align with your company strategy and
be consistent with your own personality. Therefore,
take some time to reflect on your vision for your
future and that of your farm. Write it down so you
can articulate it clearly and consistently.
Find stimulating projects, and get out of your
comfort zone. Individuals are capable of taking calculated risks for their projects. Therefore, accept
being unconventional, and invest in yourself emotionally and financially. At the same time, dedicate a
good part of your time to your mission, projects or
other causes that are important to you.
Q: “Where do I see my business in two, five or
even 10 years? What will it look like?”
Communicate your vision. You have to know
how to communicate your project or vision as well
as possible and be able to talk intelligently about an
emotional subject.
Q: “Do my family and employees understand
my vision?”
Know how to smile. Talk with your hands,
express yourself clearly, be enthusiastic and dynamic,
listen and do not judge. You must master your emo36 country-guide.ca tions. That does not mean containing them or not
expressing them but rather knowing how to recognize and manage them — in short, how to use them
appropriately depending on the circumstances.
Q: “How do I contaminate others?”
Emotions are contagious. As a leader, you have
a huge impact on others, so be consistent. To evaluate your charisma potential, it is crucial to analyze,
several times if necessary, the way you behave in
your private life. Am I a charismatic leader with my
friends? With my kids? If the answer is yes, you can
then try to reproduce certain attitudes and behaviours
outside the home that you adopt in your private life.
Be confident while remaining accessible and human.
Undeniably, there can be a thin line between confidence
and pretentiousness. Having a clear vision of the future
and confidence in your methods and values doesn’t
mean that you have to be stubbornly sure of yourself
and deny others’ concerns or even reject criticism. Furthermore, people who have charisma also know how
to say that they have doubts, uncertainties, fears and
desires, thereby making connections with others.
Q: “Am I at ease sharing my emotions?”
Practise it. It will benefit you. Listen to, respect and
think about other people. Above all, try to understand
others before being understood. Develop a healthy
curiosity about the people to whom you are speaking.
Take an interest in them and respect differences.
Q: “When I communicate, do I really want to
understand the other’s point of view?”
Recognize and value other people. Charismatic
people publicly recognize other people’s contributions. They regularly give positive feedback and
praise strengths. People really appreciate being recognized, and they feel heard, supported and respected
when others show them empathy.
Q: “How do I recognize others’ contributions?”
Remember that, whatever you do, charisma
resides in the way others perceive you.
How much charisma and what style of it do you
have? Curious?
Take the test:
What is your charisma quotient?
http://pierrettedesrosiers.com/outils_en.html CG
Pierrette Desrosiers, MPS, CRHA is a work psychologist, professional speaker, coach and author who
specializes in the agricultural industry. She comes
from a family of farmers and she and her husband
have farmed for more than 25 years (www.pierrettedesrosiers.com. Contact her at [email protected].
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
management
“Better” marketing!
A&W is showing farmers how to win with branding
By Gerald Pilger
ast September 23, the fast-food chain
A&W announced all its burgers would
now be made from beef raised without
the use of hormones or steroids, and by
ranchers committed to sustainable farming practices. This has got many ranchers fuming.
These ranchers believe A&W’s depiction of hormone-free beef as “Better Beef” means the A&W ads
are misleading customers into believing there is something wrong with conventionally raised beef.
Susan Senecal, A&W’s chief marketing officer
disagrees. “People are taking a lot more interest in
the food they eat and where it comes from,” Senecal
says. “Beef raised without hormones and steroids is
very important to our customers.
Says Senecal, “Better Beef is simply providing people with what they are asking for in a great burger.”
Senecal also told Country Guide that A&W does
not and has never claimed that meat raised without
hormones or steroids is healthier or more nutritious.
That is simply a perception people already had, and
A&W is responding to it.
wheat as high quality and high protein, and as a
superior wheat for making bread due to the climate
and farming practices of western Canadian farmers.
The federal government considers branding such
an important strategy in promoting Canadian agricultural products that Agriculture and Agri-Food
Canada created and funds the “Canada Brand”
under Growing Forward.
Some 600 agricultural businesses and organizations have been approved to carry the Canada
Brand. Besides being able to label their products with
the Canada Brand logo, these companies can also
access an extensive photo bank, graphics, and even
government market research at no cost.
A pro’s insight
Michael Baicoianu is a professional certified marketer in Toronto and his company, BrandUniq assists
small businesses in differentiating their products
or services. He is not sure why cattlemen would be
upset with A&W’s Better Beef promotion.
Baicoianu believes that in today’s global economy,
Unlike many writers, bloggers and cattlemen,
I salute A&W for its ‘Better Beef’ program
While A&W is the first national burger chain
in Canada to offer hormone-free beef, it is by no
means the only company that is using branding to
capture market share in the competitive food sector.
Cattlemen themselves (likely including some of
those upset by the A&W promotion) have tried to
differentiate their beef with branding that includes
“Alberta beef,” “barley fed,” “grass raised,” “Angus
beef,” “ranch raised” and “Kobe beef.”
Just like A&W, these cattlemen are attempting
to market their beef based on the perception some
consumers have that beef raised in Alberta rather
than elsewhere, or beef fed barley instead of corn, or
pasture rather than feedlot raised is “better.”
Other sectors of agriculture also use branding.
Seed companies and canola crushers vigorously market “healthy” canola seed to farmers, and “healthy”
canola oil to the food industry and consumers. The
Canadian Wheat Board, when trying to market overseas, relied heavily on branding western Canadian
February 4, 2014
virtually everything is a commodity, including beef.
Sellers can either compete for market share by lowering the price of the product they are selling, or by
changing the product into something the consumer
perceives as different from anything else on the market.
If sellers can successfully take advantage of consumer perceptions that a product is unique in the
marketplace, they can gain market share and sometimes also increase their selling price.
“It is no longer good enough for a food producer
to claim it is providing a high-quality product. Canadian consumers expect all food to be high quality
and safe,” says Baicoianu. “To get a premium price,
food producers must move beyond the product and
offer consumers something different. They have to
move the consumer’s perception that the product
they are selling is somehow better.”
Baicoianu lists a number of strategies that have
Continued on page 38
country-guide.ca 37
management
Continued from page 37
been successfully utilized to brand food products
and make them more appealing to consumers. These
include organic, buying local, packaging, private
labelling, product features such as preservative free or
enriching, changing the manufacturing process such
as cooking in low trans fat oil, improving the taste,
and improved service.
Unfortunately, differentiation and branding are a
lot more complicated than simply changing a product and hoping consumers buy it. First and foremost,
you have to know your customer and be willing to
change your product to meet the customer’s wants.
Too often in agriculture we do the exact opposite.
We expect customers to want what we produce,
rather than producing what the customer wants.
Second, we need to realize that the advantage of
branding is limited to those who market the unique
product. In the case of A&W, it is introducing the
Better Beef brand to sell more hamburgers and grow
its business, not to grow the business or bottom lines
of Canadian beef producers. If consumers really feel
hamburgers made with hormone- and steroid-free
beef are better, A&W will likely sell more burgers.
However, if and when this happens, other hamburger chains may copy the A&W differentiation
and A&W could lose the unique hamburger brand it
has invested so much into building.
Winners on the farm
Some cattlemen are also winners in A&W’s venture. Spring Creek Ranch has been producing and
marketing the type of beef A&W needs for its burgers
for a number of years. Spring Creek had already built
its own brand of ethically raised, hormone-free beef
which enabled it to become one of the three companies
that will be supplying the beef A&W needs.
Spring Creek was able to leverage its existing
unique brand of beef into becoming the supplier of
A&W’s unique brand of burgers.
Since Spring Creek is currently supplying less than
half of the beef A&W needs, and since A&W has had
Differentiation strategy
Branding expert Michael Baicoianu lists three important questions that
must be addressed before embarking on a differentiation strategy. (Excerpt
from Baicoianu’s www.branduniq.com website.)
• Is my brand the first in the category to claim this differentiating idea? If
one or your competitors already owns that positioning, your best bet is to
explore a different option.
• Will my business be able and willing to deliver on that competitive advantage over a long period of time? Brand building takes a long time, consistency and perseverance. If you are not willing to allocate the necessary
resources (which vary by industry and level of competition) then your
strategy will die in its infancy.
• Does my differentiation translate into a perceived benefit for the consumer? If the consumer isn’t willing to pay for your new product, then you
have to start from scratch.
38 country-guide.ca to import from the U.S. and Australia, there is a real
opportunity for Spring Creek to grow its business too.
In the future, Spring Creek will likely try to source
cattle from other Canadian ranchers who are willing
to follow the strict feeding, handling and husbandry
regiment Spring Creek has used to build its brand and
which is required for the A&W hamburger brand. It
is likely many cattlemen are already producing this
type of beef but have never been rewarded for the
“Better Beef” qualities simply because, unlike Spring
Creek, they have never marketed their production as
ethically raised and hormone and steroid free.
Unfortunately, any potential rewards these ranchers receive will be mitigated by the fact they will not
be producing a unique product. Rather they are simply producing a new type of commodity beef that is
hormone free. Any rewards that they do gather will
likely soon be lost as more and more ranchers compete to sell similar “Better Beef” to Spring Creek and
A&W and, as in any commodity market, the price
they receive for their beef will likely decline.
Indeed, the switch of the live cattle behind “Better
Beef” from a premium product to a commodity may
actually happen a lot faster than many ranchers expect.
A&W did not create the consumer perception that
beef raised sustainably and without hormones, steroids,
and additives is better, they simply acted on it. The
perception that this type of beef is better was already
widely held. Since 1988, Europe has banned beef which
has been implanted with hormones and steroids, effectively closing the border to Canadian and U.S. beef.
The EU trade deal
In late October of 2013, the Canadian government announced the signing of a European trade
agreement which would allow Canada to export
duty free an additional 64,950 tonnes of beef and
veal to the EU annually. But what the government
did not state was this beef still must meet current EU
standards of hormone and steroid free.
The perception was further enhanced for North
American consumers when in August, Tyson and
Cargill, two prominent North American packers,
announced they would halt purchases of cattle fed
the growth enhancer Zilmax.
The rising demand for hormone-free beef from
A&W and Europe combined with negativity arising
from the packer decision to refuse to process Zilmaxfed cattle will lead many ranchers to seriously consider changing to raising cattle without hormones.
Senecal says A&W is already getting two or three
calls a day from ranchers interested in supplying
hormone-free beef to A&W. She says she appreciates
these calls because part of the verification process
used to ensure the quality of “A&W 100% Pure
Beef” burgers includes A&W knowing the ranches
where the beef is raised, backed up with detailed
tracking of the entire life cycle of every animal.
Senecal invites any rancher interested in raising
beef as per A&W’s criteria to contact the A&W head
office in Vancouver. CG
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
“Too many things
slow me down.
I need to cover
more acres.”
We hear you.
Visit GoTechTour.ca to see how we’re redefining herbicide performance.
Growers in Western Canada asked us to “make spraying less
complicated.” So, our R&D teams are focused on finding solutions.
Enter to WIN an LED Sprayer Nozzle Light Kit at GoTechTour.ca.
Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company
(“Dow”) or an affiliated company of Dow.
0114-35734-02
® TM
35734-2 DAS_Arlylex 8.125X10.75.indd 1
1/8/14 11:58 AM
business
Ukraine
The world’s next
breadbasket
By Nicolas Mesly
The world has its eyes on the Ukraine. What it is seeing there is
nothing less than a new El Dorado in agriculture, based on some
the world’s most fertile and most underutilized soils. For centuries,
Ukraine was Asia’s breadbasket, but since the collapse of the
Soviet Union, much of its potential has essentially lain fallow. But
even at that, Ukraine is the world’s third leading exporter of wheat
and corn.
The question used to be, will the country ever get its agricultural
act together?
Now, the “if” questions are gone. Instead, they’ve been
replaced by two others. Who will reap the profits from an efficient,
productive new Ukraine? And what will that new grain juggernaut
do to global grain markets?
Now, Ottawa is investing $13 million to develop grain co-operatives like the pools that used to dominate Western Canada. The
objective is to equip Ukrainian farmers with a more effective, more
efficient marketing system that moves more grain and puts more
value back into the farmers’ hands. Ottawa is also betting that the
co-op business model will create hundred of jobs in rural areas of
the second-largest European country — a country that is in deep
economic crisis.
Ag journalist Nicolas Mesly has travelled with the Canadian
team in charge of this project. He has also met with international
investors, who discuss the challenges and opportunities of conducting business in Ukraine. Mesly also met farmers, like Ludmila
Nikiforienko, right, and he learned why another Ukrainian farmer is
a national hero in his country.
40 country-guide.ca FEBRUARY 4, 2014
business
Ottawa’s gamble
A year after pulling the plug on the Canadian
Wheat Board monopoly, Ottawa is funding a new
generation of Ukrainian co-ops
hen Camil Côté landed in Ukraine’s
capital Kiev last July, he was on a mission to establish grain co-operatives in a
country that used to be the breadbasket
of the Soviet Union. But if there was
any irony in a Canadian going to the heartland of communism to build new co-ops, it wasn’t on anyone’s minds.
Ukraine is sitting on the greatest — and most underperforming — expanse of prime farmland in the world.
To make that farmland productive is going to take more
than machinery, and more than seed. It’s going to take
imagination and some brilliant strategic planning.
And that may be just what is finally underway.
Côté’s assignment comes directly from Ottawa. At 64,
he is project manager at the cumbersomely named Canadian Cooperation Society for International Development
(Socodevi), and he is a veteran of international affairs.
Ottawa also set the terms. Côté has a budget of $13 million, and a time frame of five years to accomplish his task.
The official name of the project at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) headquarters is the
Ukrainian Grain Storage and Marketing Project. It has
received a green light by Canada’s former minister of interContinued on page 42
Dnipropetrovsk
Crimea
Roughly the same size as Saskatchewan, Ukraine has more land dedicated to
grain production than all of Canada. It also has direct access to year-round
shipping via the Black Sea, with competitive advantages into Egypt and
China, the world’s two biggest grain importers.
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
country-guide.ca 41
business
What is chernozem?
Chernozem is the rich black soil that makes Ukraine one of the most fertile places on
Earth. It’s a soil that was formed from very fine mineral particles that prehistoric winds carried away from ancient glacial beds. “The wind acted as a huge filter,” says Dr. Léon Hardy,
a Canadian geomorphologist in Ukraine. “There are no rocks in this soil.”
Grasses and broad-leaf plants thrived in these gigantic mineral deposits, and when
they died, their decomposition turned into the organic matter that makes chernozem so
black today.
Nor does the beauty of chernozem stop there. The soil is porous too, and the fields are
naturally undulating, so they don’t need expensive drainage. Plus, chernozem contains limestone, so there is no need to add lime, and it is ideal for no till.
Ukraine isn’t the only place in the world with chernozem. Some can even be found along the
U.S. border in Western Canada, but chernozem accounts for 60 per cent of the arable land in
Ukraine, and it seems to go on forever, commonly from one to as much as six metres deep.
A French connection
“It is the incredible potential of chernozem that brought us to Ukraine,” says JeanPaul Khim, a French grain farmer and one
of the five shareholders in KMR, a corporation they set up in order to get their slice of
Ukraine’s farm outlook.
KMR bought its first Ukrainian farm in
2006, followed by a second two years ago
near Dnipropetrvosk, an industrial city and
former Russian missile construction centre.
Today KMR farms 20,000 acres, having
invested $6.5 million since its arrival in the
former Soviet breadbasket.
“The very low price of the land has
allowed us to invest in machinery and technology, and to construct buildings and silos,”
says Michel Jean-Loup, another shareholder
met at one of the KMR farms.
The company employs 32 people, including one full-time person to manage rental
contracts with 1,300 landowners. KMR produces annually between 24,000 and 30,000
tonnes of wheat, colza, sunflower and spring
barley. All the crops are no tilled to minimize
wind erosion and retain moisture.
A big consideration for the French is that
they finance their operations through French
banks, using their French farms for collateral. If they had to finance through Ukrainian banks, the group would face prohibitive
interest rates of 25 per cent and more — the
same rates that Ukraine’s farmers must pay.
Farming in Ukraine isn’t always easy, say
KMR’s partners. For example, repair parts for
the combines or the tractors can take months
to obtain, and they can’t get the seeds that
they would like because of heavy restrictions
inherited from the former communist system.
42 country-guide.ca Attracted by the rich chernozem, the French
grain grower Jean-Paul Khim and four other
shareholders have been farming in Ukraine
since 2006. Their wheat yields in Ukraine are
around 4.5 tonnes/ha whereas they can go up
to more than seven tonnes/ha on their farms
in France. The extensive production system
found in Ukraine is similar to the Canadian
Prairies, says the producer.
Photo: Nicolas Mesly
Another problem is the extreme Ukrainian
weather. “In France, we cry when we lose 20
per cent of our yield; here it is sometimes 50
per cent,” says Michel Jean-Loup.
The other climate they have to deal with
is the business environment. All the wheat
production is sold internally, the sunflower
goes to a local processor and the colza is
exported. But the signed contracts on volumes and prices are not always respected,
warns Jean-Loup. “You need to know how it
works in order to not lose your shirt.”
Continued from page 41
national co-operation, Beverley J. Oda,
while visiting Ukraine in April 2012 —
which not incidentally was the UN Year
of Co-operatives.
This Canadian scheme does have
unusual optics, of course. Just four months
after the project was approved, the Harper
government axed the Canadian Wheat
Board (CWB) monopoly at a cost of some
$350 million of taxpayers’ money.
During its 75 years of sometimes controversial existence, the CWB acted as a
giant co-op, pooling and marketing on
behalf of Western Canada farmers’ more
than 20 million tonnes of wheat and barley for human consumption.
Even its opponents will agree, however, that the CWB contributed to
Canada’s reputation as a reliable and topquality wheat supplier, and that it helped
transition Canada’s West from a remote,
undeveloped agricultural resource into an
agricultural powerhouse.
Could a new generation of co-operatives help Ukraine achieve the same?
Camil Côté doesn’t let himself get sidetracked by political considerations. His
only concern is to achieve his “Ukrainian project.” He needs to build and get
grain flowing through two new elevators
in Ukraine with a combined capacity of
40,000 tonnes, at a cost of $4 million each.
I accompanied Côté and his team
on a recent trip to Ukraine to assess his
chances of reaching that goal.
As soon as he landed in Ukraine’s capital, Côté and his team tested the ground to
see what reception their project might get.
“You can count on us,” said an enthusiastic Volodymyr Klymenko, president of
the Ukrainian Grain Association (UGA).
The association is an umbrella group representing the gamut from individual grain
producers and domestic merchants to
international players such as Cargill.
Since Ukraine achieved independence in 1991, as the result of the fall
of the former USSR, “We have quickly
passed from a socialist system to embrace
a capitalist system with big, vertically
intregrated agribusiness operations,” said
Klymenko. Some of his individual members farm from 200,000 to up to 1.25
million acres.
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
business
Population: 44.5 million
GDP/capita: $7,500
Legend: Yellow band represents wheat fields;
the blue band represents the sky.
Ukraine recent history
1922 A fter
Pierre Giguère, a Canadian engineer and expert in grain elevator
construction talks with Camil Côté, in charge of the Canadian grain
marketing project in Ukraine. The two men discuss the possibility of
buying five ha of land to build co-op silos near the railways that cross
the village of Vasilkivka. Photo: Nicolas Mesly
But Ukraine cannot count only on big players, he says. The
country intends to double its annual grain output to 100 million
tonnes with the use of better technologies and better seeds, and
there is plenty of room for small- and medium-size producers to
operate under co-operatives.
On one hand, says Klymenko, UGA members want to see the
maximum possible volume of cereals going through their grain
terminals in order to make them most profitable.
But the scale is daunting. According to the United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the country needs $5 to $8 billion to modernize its publicly owned inland terminals as well as its
port storage capacity located on the Black Sea.
With such great needs, the Canadian investment in co-op
elevators is welcomed with open arms, especially since the
co-operative strategy could put more leverage in the hands of
Ukrainian farmers.
Côté and his team receive another warm welcome from Victor Andrievsky, president of the Agrarian Markets Development
Institute (AMDI), a non-governmental organization based in
Kiev. After independence, Ukraine’s 600 state-owned silos were
quickly privatized.
The country now counts 751 silos, of which 80 still belong to
the state. “Today our producers are in a situation like serfs were
during medieval times,” says Andrievsky. “Without appropriate
storage capacity at the farm level, they are forced to sell their grain
right after harvest at low prices to the elevators. A lot of them
(elevators) cheat on the grain quality and the volumes stored.”
Co-op elevators built along the country’s railways would create a balance of power, Andrievsky believes. How? By offering a
storage alternative to producers and more transparency on pricing, as well as extra access to markets.
Continued on page 46
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
the First World War, Ukraine tried to form an
independent republic, but in 1922 it became instead
a founding member of the USSR — the Union of the
Soviet Socialist Republics. Second in size only to Russia,
Ukraine became the granary of the 15 USSR republics.
1927 USSR
president Joseph Stalin launched massive, brutal
immigration from the countryside to industrialize the
cities. Under his first Five Year Plan, industrial output
increased fourfold.
1932 S ome
three to five million Ukrainians died in a famine
caused by Stalin’s farm collectivisation. The process gave
birth to the kolkhozes, the huge farms run by the state. In
Ukraine, the tragedy is known as the Holodomor.
During the Second World War, more than six million
Ukrainians died. Stalin freed Ukraine from the Nazis only
to better control it.
1986 The most terrible nuclear accident in human history happened at Chernobyl, contributing to the dismantling of the
USSR in 1991, when Ukraine obtained its independence.
However, a savage privatization program then led to the
birth of an oligarchy, with power and wealth concentrated
in a few hands.
2008 Ukraine
joined the World Trade Organization, with more
support from institutions ranging from the FAO to the
World Bank.
2011 Viktor
Yanukovych was elected Ukraine president. Considered pro-Russian, Yanukovych replaced Viktor Yushchenko, one of the two leaders of the Orange Revolution
launched in 2004. The Orange Revolution had promoted
democratic values and stronger economic integration with
the European Union (EU).
2013 Since
November 2013, Ukraine has experienced social
disturbances after the president Viktor Yanukovych
refused to sign an agreement for more integration with the
EU. Some 200,000 people opposed to the government
celebrated the new year 2014 in Maïdan Square, located
in the centre of Kiev.
country-guide.ca 43
Live: 7.25”
Live: 10”
TOUGH WEEDS, MEET EXPRESS .
®
Crank up the rate all you want, glyphosate alone still misses a number of hard-to-kill weeds
like narrow-leaved hawk’s-beard, flixweed, stinkweed, dandelion and volunteer canola.
With hotter-than-hot systemic activity, DuPont™ Express® herbicides don’t just control
weeds, they smoke them from the inside out, getting right to the root of your toughest
weed challenges with performance that glyphosate alone can’t match. It’s no wonder
Express® goes down with glyphosate more than any other brand in Western Canada!
Visit expressvideo.dupont.ca to see Express® in action – torching tough weeds like
dandelion and volunteer canola right down to the roots, so they can’t grow back.
Express® brand herbicides. This is going to be hot.
Questions? Ask your retailer, call 1-800-667-3925 or visit express.dupont.ca
As with all crop protection products, read and follow label instructions carefully.
The DuPont Oval Logo, DuPont™, The miracles of science™ and Express® are registered trademarks or trademarks of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. E. I. du Pont Canada
Company is a licensee. All other products mentioned are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies. Member of CropLife Canada.
©Copyright 2014 E. I. du Pont Canada Company. All rights reserved.
Live: 7”
Advertisement
MULTIPLE MODES OF ACTION
TAKE GLYPHOSATE TO THE NEXT LEVEL
P
How to manage the threat of weed resistance before it manages you.
rairie farmers depend on glyphosate for agronomic practices such
as pre-seed, chemfallow and post-harvest herbicide applications.
Recent years, however, have seen an increase in documented cases of
weed resistance, with glyphosate a key concern. What can growers do?
EFFECTIVE NON-CROP USE OF GROUP 2 HERBICIDES
UNDERSTAND WHY RESISTANCE OCCURS
For pre-seed weed control, DuPont scientists recommend a pre-seed
burn-off treatment of Express® (Group 2) or PrecisionPac® NC-00439
or NC-0050 (Group 2) with glyphosate (Group 9). This is particularly
effective if the crop rotation includes a crop such as Roundup Ready®
canola and weeds that are not effectively controlled by glyphosate alone.
Weeds become resistant when they’ve had too much of a good thing.
Practices that work well one year become less effective over time, if
there’s no break in routine.
For example, glyphosate alone will not control glyphosate-resistant
kochia and may increase the risk of glyphosate resistance occurring in
other weed species. Faced with Roundup Ready® volunteers and hardto-kill weeds not controlled by glyphosate alone, growers have found
that adding in DuPont™ Express® brand herbicides helps control these
weeds and manage the threat of resistance.
Group 2 herbicides are a highly effective tool to control weeds. Like
other herbicide groups, they should be mixed with herbicides from
other groups in the same spray to manage resistance.
Because Group 2 and Group 9 herbicides have activity on many of the
same weeds, growers get multiple modes of action working for them.
In certain situations, adding a third mode of action such as dicamba,
2,4-D or MCPA (Group 4) may be advisable when there are weeds
resistant to multiple groups.
Express® brand herbicides significantly improve control of tough
weeds such as narrow-leaved hawk’s-beard, flixweed, stinkweed,
dandelion and volunteer canola, compared to glyphosate alone.
This approach also helps proactively manage weed resistance.
DuPont Crop Protection is working with growers and retailers to protect
the use of all the best crop protection tools available. As growers seek
ways to manage weed resistance while maintaining profitable crop
protection, DuPont is with you all the way.
For pre-seed weed control, DuPont scientists recommend a pre-seed burn-off treatment of
Express® (Group 2) or PrecisionPac® NC-00439 or NC-0050 (Group 2) with glyphosate (Group 9).
This is particularly effective if the crop rotation includes a crop such as Roundup Ready® canola.
MANAGE RESISTANCE ON YOUR FARM
Crop rotation and complementary weed control
A field should have a rotation of at least three crop types. Consider also
weed control methods such as higher seeding rates, planting clean seed,
mowing out suspected resistant weed patches before they go to seed and
using herbicides according to label directions.
Multiple modes of action
Herbicides are categorized into 17 groups, based on how they target a
weed. For example, Sulfonylurea (Group 2) herbicides control weeds
by inhibiting an enzyme essential to their growth.
“If at all possible, producers should use mixtures of herbicides
that use multiple modes of action in the seeding year,” says
Ken Sapsford, University of Saskatchewan. “It’s one further step
to help stop resistance from developing.”
Untreated Check
Glyphosate
plus Heat®
Glyphosate plus
Express® SG
Source: Controlled growth room environment, 29 days after application, Dr. François Tardif,
Peter Smith, University of Guelph, Plant Agriculture Department, January 2013.
To see Express® brand herbicides in action,
please visit expressvideo.dupont.ca
Questions? Ask your retailer, call 1-800-667-3925
or visit express.dupont.ca
The DuPont Oval Logo, DuPont™, The miracles of science™, Express® and PrecisionPac® are registered
trademarks or trademarks of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company.
E. I. du Pont Canada Company is a licensee.
All other products mentioned are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies.
Member of CropLife Canada.
©Copyright 2014 E. I. du Pont Canada Company. All rights reserved.
Live: 10”
COUNT ON DUPONT
business
“To sell co-ops, you need
strong leaders!”
— Ludmila Nikiforienko
Ludmila Nikiforienko, 63, has bought the former collective farm located near the village of
Andriivka where she was milking cows with her
husband, Vladimir, 72. The couple started their
grain farm in 1991 with 125 acres but today
they rent 10 times more land. Nikiforienko
says that a co-op elevator would help sell her
wheat and sunflower crops. “We tried to form
co-ops in the past but it did not work because
there were too many different interests,” she
cautions. “Big producers already own some
storage facilities and the little ones don’t.”
Nikiforienko also says that, in order to get
off the ground, a co-op will need visionary
leaders. “I am too old for the task,” she says,
laughing. The biggest barrier to the rise of coops is psychological, she believes. Ukrainian
producers fear the co-ops will be too much
like their old collective farms, Nikiforienko
explains. “For many of them, it is going back
to the past.”
Photo: Nicolas Mesly
Continued from page 43
A misunderstood gift
Among other things, Andrievsky and his
team are working to strengthen Ukraine’s
national system for elevator accreditation.
If an elevator goes out of business, for
instance, AMDI wants to ensure producers
still get paid for their stored grain.
The rise of one or a few co-operative
elevators in Ukraine would give farmers
tremendous economic leverage, insists
Andrievsky. Producers must deal with
annual interest rates of 25 per cent and
more to operate their farms.
“It’s complete nonsense! For each
$100,000 dollars you borrow, you have
to give $25,000 dollars to the bankers,”
says Bodhan Chomiak, a Ukrainian who
left Ukraine and has worked for some 20
years in Alberta.
Director of the consulting firm
Lapersa, also based in Kiev, Chomiak
thinks the only way to farm in Ukraine is
through the injection of sovereign capital
or mutual funds in big and well-managed,
vertically integrated agribusiness companies. This is in order to achieve economies
of scale and to escape having to depend
on Ukraine’s banks.
Victor Andrievsky has an alternate
plan, however. He is working on a system that would put some money into
the hands of the Ukrainian producers
through the implementation of a Grain
Warehouse Receipt (GRW) system.
This system would be similar to
Canada’s Advanced Payment Program
(APP), under which producers can get
cash advances based on the value of their
future crops held in storage.
Andrievsky believes such a system
would allow Ukrainian farmers to buy
seed, fertilizer and tractors, and even to
build storage on their farm or to invest
in a co-op. The problem, however, is that
the Ukrainian government doesn’t have
the cash to launch GRW. “But we benefit
from $250 million in aid from the FAO to
implement the system,” says Andrievsky.
Strongly confident with the support
their project has received in Kiev, Côté
and his team fly 400 km southeast to
Dnipropetrovsk, capital of the state
of the same name. Dnipropetrovsk is
Ukraine’s third-largest agriculture state.
There, the team of 12 board a minibus for the 30-km trip to the rural village
of Vasilkivka.
What they find seems ideal for
launching a first co-operative elevator. An important railway system runs
through the village, and the area has 300
producers, each farming an average 750
acres of grains.
More importantly, their farms are
concentrated within a radius of 30 kilometres, a key consideration for reducing
the cost of grain delivery to the future
elevator.
Approximately 20 producers, men
and women ranging from 25 to 50 years
old, await Côté and his team in the city
hall, a grey monolith whose entrance is
shaded by a colossal statue of Lenin.
Maksym Maksymov takes the stage
and explains the advantages of a cooperative elevator. It would offer storage facilities, plus cleaning and drying.
It would also blend grains for sale by
the pool, and he says it would provide
these services for half the price charged
by surrounding elevators, according to
the team’s market study.
The project would be built in three
phases: a first silo of 20,000 tonnes
would be built near the main railway,
followed by two other silos of 10,000
tonnes each.
Questions fill the room, especially
regarding the financial obligations on
the farmers. There are answers too, but
suddenly, voices and tension increase.
One farmer gets up and quickly walks
out of the room, followed by almost
everyone else.
What happened?
In 2013, the Ukrainian government established a domestic quota of 26.5 million tonnes of
grain, roughly half of the country’s production. Only surplus grain can be exported. “More than
30 per cent of our population lives under the poverty line. Our government doesn’t want to
end up as the government of Egypt did,” says Volodymyr Klymenko, president of the Ukrainian
Grain Association. In 2008, the sudden rise of bread prices plunged Egypt into a deep social
crisis. Even so, Ukraine has become a major wheat exporter to Egypt and, according to the
FAO, it will soon displace Canada as a gobal wheat supplier.
46 country-guide.ca FEBRUARY 4, 2014
business
“The first draft of this project was laid
out five years ago. Each time, the Canadians
change the rules,” Leonid Chernoknijiyj,
president of the local grain producers association told us through an interpreter.
The issue is farmer control. Under the
original plan, farmers would have had 80
per cent control of the co-op. Under the
new plan, they’d get only 30 per cent.
The reason, says Côté, is that the elevator would be managed as a part of a larger
union of co-operatives. “We are not coming to Ukraine to build one or two elevators,” Côté says. “The goal is to spread the
co-op movement all over the country.”
Only three producers remained in the
room to discuss the project. Among them,
they farm less than 500 acres, and produce
less than 500 tonnes of grains.
The Canadian team seems very far
from its objective to rally at least 70 producers to get the critical mass necessary
to erect the first silo.
At the dinner following the disastrous
meeting, presided by Chernoknijiyj, the
few toasts filled with local vodka don’t
quite warm the atmosphere, but Ukrainians and Canadians promise they will
work out their differences.
According to Vadim Udovitskiy, chief
of Dnipropetrovsk’s agriculture department, it is very hard for the Ukrainian producers, having only known state farms for
more than 60 years. “Our producers don’t
realize that they can take individual business decisions within a collective movement,” says Udovitskiy.
Undeterred by this first meeting, Camil
Côté is now rethinking his strategy.
Four years ago, he launched a similar
program in the dairy sector and today
seven dairy co-ops operate in the country.
These co-ops have doubled the annual net
returns of 1,100 dairy producers, using
better feed management and better animal
genetics to increase milk production.
“We have done it in the dairy sector,”
says Côté. “I don’t see why we would not
succeed in the grain sector.” CG
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
Oleksly Vadaturskyy,
farmer and Ukrainian hero
Met on his home turf in the port city
of Mykolayiv, Oleksly Vadaturskyy is a
hero in his country. Following the dismantling of the former USSR in 1991,
the 66-year-old farmer founded Nibulon, a vertically integrated enterprise
which has become Ukraine’s largest
grain exporter.
Nibulon rents 200,000 acres, owns
its own truck fleet, and sells 3.2 million
tonnes a year of corn, wheat, soy, sorghum, and sunflower.
Cherished by the international bank-
ers, Nibulon has developed a network of
22 ultramodern grain elevators along two
of the country most important rivers, one
of which is the Dnipro, considered the
Ukrainian Mississippi. Cost of this investment to date is some $470 million.
In November 2007, then president
Viktor Yuschenko gave Oleksly Vadaturskyy the title of Ukaine Hero for the
social and economic contribution of his
company to the country.
Now, Vadaturskyy has been nominated for the World Food Prize.
Land ownership, Ukraine’s time bomb
From one extreme, Ukraine has gone to the other. Under the Soviet Union, the country’s
farms were centralized into a system of huge state farms. But following independence in 1991,
those state farms have have been privatized, with the result that more than seven million Ukrainians own farmland today, averaging eight to 10 acres apiece.
On top of this, Ukraine also has another 43,000 farms of 2,000 acres each.
As well, individual agribusiness companies rent from a low of 10,000 to as much as 1.2 million acres of land. Rents vary from $35 to $50 per acre, serving as an “invisible pension plan”
for millions of Ukrainians.
Land ownership is also a very sensitive issue in Ukraine since it is directly related to food
security in a country that has known terrible famines in its recent history.
Change is coming, however. But the change may be slow, and it may be hard to interpret.
Months after rumours started swirling about China acquiring rights to lease up to 7.5 million acres in a 50-year deal to feed grains and pork, it is still unclear exactly how much land is
covered by the deal.
Also unclear is whether Ukraine’s recent rejection of EU demands will mean Russian corporations will have the inside track on new land acquisitions.
country-guide.ca 47
Production
New rules
Ushering in a new era for plant breeders’ rights in Canada
By Ron Friesen
proposal to update Canada’s laws governing plant breeders’ rights to bring the
nation into compliance with an agreement that was struck more than 20
years ago is rekindling heated debate.
Ottawa has promised amendments to its Plant
Breeders’ Rights Act to bring it into line with the
International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV 91). Canada is one of the few
developed countries which has signed but not implemented the 1991 convention, although Ottawa does
belong to its predecessor UPOV 78.
Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz says
that, once ratified, UPOV 91 will enhance the scope
of plant breeders’ rights in Canada and encourage
more private-sector investment in plant breeding.
“The main effect will be to draw investment and
new varieties, level the playing field so that international plant breeders and Canadian breeders can
work in concert and see reward and return from their
labours, and offer Canadian farmers the best,” Ritz
told a December news conference in Winnipeg.
Breeders and the seed industry hailed the move,
saying it will open doors to greater varietal development in Canada by expanding the scope of their
property rights and giving breeders increased ability
to recoup investments in plant breeding.
“It’s going to improve
the intellectual property
environment and plant
variety protection
in Canada.”
— Rob Duncan,
University of Manitoba
canola/rapeseed breeder
48 country-guide.ca “It’s going to improve the intellectual property
environment and plant variety protection in Canada,” says Rob Duncan, a University of Manitoba canola/rapeseed breeder. “It should ultimately
improve cultivars in Canada and be the best for
breeders and farmers.”
But some groups, notably the National Farmers
Union, call UPOV 91 potentially dangerous because it
could restrict what farmers do with their seed.
“Amending the Plant Breeders’ Rights Act to
align with the requirements of UPOV 91 instead of
UPOV 78 will devastate farmers’ ability to save, sell
and reuse seed. At the same time, greater corporate
control over every aspect related to seed will mean
farmers pay much higher seed prices,” said Jan
Slomp, NFU president, in a statement.
What’s all the fuss about?
It’s generally accepted that, as governments
move away from variety development, the private
sector will play a larger role. To do that, the Canadian Seed Trade Association, representing 130 seed
companies across Canada, argues breeders need
more ability to generate a return on developing
new varieties.
CSTA notes that the private sector in 2012
invested nearly $100 million in plant breeding and
variety development. That’s an increase of 77 per
cent over five years. But nearly 90 per cent of that
investment was in canola, corn and soybeans, which
are covered by forms of intellectual property protection which include contracts, patents and technology
use agreements. These enable breeders to generate a
return on their investment. Private-sector investment
in breeding cereals, flax, pulses and special crops is
very low because of breeders’ limited ability to protect their new varieties. All they have is plant breeders’ rights, which is not the same as a patent.
As a result, improvements in wheat yields are so
slow that some analysts wonder if wheat could eventually become a marginal crop on the Prairies as higheryielding corn and soybean crops expand their acreage.
“Wheat yields have not risen nearly as fast as
those of corn, or even canola. And they are not
expected to catch up any time soon. The problem
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
production
is a lack of research funding,” Murray Fulton,
a University of Saskatchewan economist, told a
national agricultural policy conference in Ottawa
in January 2013.
That’s where ratifying UPOV 91 could make a
difference, says Patty Townsend, CSTA’s chief executive officer.
“This sends a signal that Canada is taking steps
toward creating an environment that will allow for
and foster innovation, both domestically and internationally, in our crop sector,” Townsend says. “It
opens another door for us to be able to show very
clearly that we’re open for investment.”
In its literature, CSTA goes to great lengths to dispel “myths” about what UPOV 91 will and won’t do.
According to CSTA, UPOV 91 requires a breeder’s authorization (which can include paying royalties) for: producing or reproducing seed of the
protected variety; conditioning seed for propagation; offering, selling or stocking seed for sale; and
exporting or importing it.
Under UPOV 91, breeders are able for the first
time to collect royalties on harvested seed. Previously, those could only be collected at point of sale.
However, CSTA says royalties on harvested material
will be collected only if the breeder has not had the
opportunity to collect on seed when it was sold.
There’s no double dipping — collecting royalties
first when the seed is sold and later when the crop
grown from it is combined.
UPOV 91 also extends breeders’ rights to hybrid
varieties. If you use protected parental lines to produce a hybrid for commercialization, you have to
get authorization from the breeder who holds the
rights to those lines.
“If the breeder can prove that I used his variety and derived something that’s identical to it,
then I have to have their permission to sell it,”
Townsend says.
One of the criticisms aimed at UPOV 91 is that
extending breeders’ rights will limit farmers’ ability to save seed from crops they have grown. “This
upsets thousands of years of normal agricultural
practice, whereby farmers always saved seed for
their next crop,” says Terry Boehm, NFU past president and member of the organization’s seed and
trade committee.
But CSTA and the government both insist
UPOV 91 contains clear provisions for a “farmer’s
exemption” to save, condition and reproduce seed.
Offering, selling and stocking for sale, as well as
exporting and importing, still require the breeder’s
authorization.
It’s that last provision which concerns Doug
Chorney, president of Keystone Agricultural Produc-
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
“It opens another door for us to be able
to show very clearly
that we’re open for
investment.”
— Patty Townsend, CSTA
ers, Manitoba’s general farm organization. He worries end-users may be disinclined to purchase grain
from a farmer unless it was planted with certified
seed, despite the farmers’ exemption provision.
“When you go to sell your grain, they won’t buy
it if you’ve saved it from farm-grown seed. They’ll
only buy it if you have purchased certified seed at
the beginning of the season to grow that crop,” says
Chorney, who farms near Selkirk, Man. “If we see a
pattern where end-users stipulate varieties must be
from purchased certified seed, the farm-saved seed
provision isn’t as much value as the government
purports it to be.”
It will take a long time before the effects of
UPOV 91 are felt even after the current legislation is
amended and regulations are written, says Richard
Gray, professor of bioresource policy and economics at the University of Saskatchewan. For example,
Australia began introducing plant breeders’ rights
and end-point royalties in 1994. Gray says it took
the Australians 16 years to generate enough revenue
to support a breeding program.
Today, however, Australia has gone from not
having enough royalties to fund the system to having a surplus which could be paid back to shareholders. It’s important to structure Canada’s system
to encourage research without giving someone an
unexpected windfall, Gray says. “If the government thinks this is a solution and says, OK, now Ag
Canada can get out of breeding, I think they’ll be in
big trouble.”
Gray suggests farmers could control their own
destiny by implementing more producer-funded
research programs with checkoffs. He admits the
cost to producers would be high, but says growers
would be less beholden to companies for expensive
seed, as is the case now with canola.
“Farmers have to decide,” Gray says. “Are they
going to try to get skin in the game now and take
some control, or are they just going to wait for the
government to let this hand play out?” CG
country-guide.ca 49
Production
Learning curve
Precision agriculture is still in the middle of the adoption
phase, despite recent advances in technology
By Richard Kamchen
armers have dabbled with forms of precision agriculture before the term even
existed.
If you think of precision agriculture
as treating smaller tracts of land differently, instead of using a one-size-fits-all management style for the whole, then it’s been practised
since time out of mind, when growers spread
manure on a specific area like a hilltop or sliced
deeper into the earth in certain areas than others.
The concept of more modern precision agriculture came with the advent of better information
management systems and mapping solutions such
as GPS and GIS. But despite their great promise,
they’re still in their evolutionary phase, as farmers
and agronomic advisers learn the ins and outs of
these new systems.
“Agronomy has lagged
behind the technology.”
— Ty Faechner, Agricultural Research
and Extension Council of Alberta
It brings to mind the adoption curve of another
recent agricultural revolution — zero till. It too
was once the preserve of tinkerers and dreamers.
That is, until they worked the kinks out while at
the same time low prices forced many to look for
newer and better ways to produce their crops.
“I think the big driver with zero till was the
drop in the price of glyphosate,” says farmer and
University of Saskatchewan engineering professor
Ross Welford. “Once the economics made sense, it
just took off.”
Probably three-quarters of prairie farmers by
now have gone to minimum or no till, says Rick
Atkins, manager of Alberta Agriculture’s Technology and Innovation Branch.
“From a cost-per-acre point of view, it’s very
cost-effective, and that’s been the primary driver
going from conventional seeding equipment to air
seeders and air drills. You don’t have to work the
land or prep the land as much to seed into it,”
Atkins points out.
When farmers can see the profitability of an
50 country-guide.ca emerging technology, they’re willing to invest in it
and try it. For example, Alberta producers devote
$700 million to $800 million in technology and
equipment each year to capture the edge they feel
they need to be competitive, Atkins says.
If anything, good times have helped spur farmers to embrace precision agriculture, for the simple
reason it pays for the equipment, Atkins says.
Farms also tend to grow along with greater returns,
creating the need for more and larger equipment to
handle the extra acres.
“And quite often now when you’re upgrading,
there’s a lot of these newer technologies incorporated right into the machines right from the factory,” adds Welford.
But while growers are more inclined to invest in
equipment when they’ve got the funds, it’s tighter
prices that encourage them to more actively investigate what they need to gain an edge, says Ty Faechner, executive director of the Agricultural Research
and Extension Council of Alberta.
While variable rate technology (VRT) is becoming more mainstream, Faechner doesn’t believe
more than 25 per cent of Prairie producers are
using it. And it may be lower than that, even
though two-thirds to three-quarters of farmers possess VRT-capable equipment, he says.
“Agronomy has lagged behind the technology,”
explains Faechner. “More recently, the agronomy
side is starting to catch up, but we still have quite a
ways to go, quite frankly.”
Welford sees different levels of the adoption
of precision agriculture in Western Canada, starting with guidance and auto steer, to mapping and
information gathering.
“I think why there was such a rapid uptake
of GPS for auto steer was just because of the
improved efficiencies and being able to reduce
overlap and driver fatigue,” says Welford.
“I’m not sure you can buy an air seeder or air
drill these days without GPS on it,” says Atkins.
“And the guidance system has definitely saved
producers a lot of money in reduction of overlap,
making sure there’s no skips, and optimizing the
amount of seed and fertilizer you would want on a
given field.”
Variable rate applications of nutrients, seeds,
Continued on page 52
february 4, 2014
We know the value of
cool weather germination.
We have to. It’s Canada.
Creating a seed treatment that can withstand this country’s
unpredictable elements was no accident. Like you and your operation,
Insure™ Cereal was built in Canada. Of course increased emergence
in cool germination conditions is just one of this innovative seed
treatment’s advantages. It also delivers more emerged seedlings, a
more consistent plant stand, increased root biomass and larger shoot
systems. They’re all part of the unique benefits* we call AgCelence®.
And Insure Cereal is the only cereal seed treatment that has them.
For details, visit agsolutions.ca/insure or call AgSolutions® Customer
Care at 1-877-371-BASF (2273).
*AgCelence benefits refer to products that contain the active ingredient pyraclostrobin.
Always read and follow label directions.
AgSolutions is a registered trade-mark of BASF Corporation; AgCelence is a registered trade-mark, and INSURE is a trade-mark of BASF SE,
all used with permission by BASF Canada Inc. INSURE CEREAL should be used in a preventative disease control program. © 2014 BASF Canada Inc.
110200812_Insure_CG_CGW_v2.indd 1
2014-01-03 9:50 AM
Production
Continued from page 50
and/or fungicides are the next step on the adoption
curve, according to Welford. He believes the trend
isn’t necessarily economically driven as it’s not always
easy to see a dramatic return on the investment.
“Sometimes there seems to be other things,
such as evenness of maturity, reduced lodging,
etc., that you can’t really put a dollar value on,
but seems to be a selling (point for) a lot of producers,” says Welford.
Determining the ideal prescription maps is complex, as consultants’ opinions can vary depending on their philosophies and the size of their
soil sample zones. On his farm, Welford has been
working with different agronomy consultants for
about three years. He feels justified in spending
$10 to $15 an acre, partly because it’s a learning
experience, but also because he’s getting agronomy
expertise he doesn’t himself possess.
“It’s still got a long ways to go
before we’ve got the magic recipe
for every location or every type of
soil and the crops you’re seeding.”
— Rick Atkins, Technology and
Innovation Branch, Alberta Agriculture
“There are a number of crop consultants across
the Prairies who are working with farmers to develop
prescription maps based on yield maps, soil sampling,
etc., but it’s still got a long ways to go before we’ve
got the magic recipe for every location or every type
of soil and the crops you’re seeding,” says Atkins.
Another VRT challenge is the growing size of
the equipment itself. Atkins has been involved with
air seeders since 1979 and helped with their development over the years. Over a 15-year period, he
witnessed dramatic improvements in uniformity.
But that was based on 40- to 45-foot equipment,
which has since grown to 65, 80 and 100 feet.
“There is a concern that we may have lost some
ground as far as some of our distribution uniformity, which would negate anything you’d want to
ever do with variable rate technology,” says Atkins,
calling the accurate placement of seed and fertilizer
“a real challenge… So if you had the ideal prescription map and a really wide air seeder, I’m not so
sure you could do it now. That’s an emerging issue
that we need to get a handle on.
“I think we’ve got a ways to go in terms of just
getting the variable rate on a solid foundation and
the majority of producers working with that on
their farms,” says Faechner. “It’s almost like we’re
52 country-guide.ca trying to figure out how we adapt and adopt the
technology to our conditions in Western Canada.”
Some are taking matters into their own hands.
As the newer equipment comes out and the technology is just sitting in the cabs, farmers feel compelled to try it out.
“And there’s ways to use it without spending
$10, $15, $20 (an acre) on a consultant, because
an individual farmer probably knows his land better than anyone else, and could do some very basic
things as a way to get started to use that technology without requiring a consultant,” says Welford.
There remains the problem, however, of
whether growers know how to use the technology
to their best advantage, Welford says. “I know
students in my class — a lot of them are fairly
large farmers — and they talk about having all this
equipment, but not really using it to its maximum
potential.”
You don’t need to be an engineer to make it
work, Atkins assures growers. Dealerships are
offering decent technical support, using a model of
offering one or two experts to serve a region that
contains, say, four or five dealerships.
But spurring adoption growth will still depend
on more concrete economic proof: “Companies
will make the claim you pay us so many dollars an
acre and we guarantee you’ll get that money back.
But I think until there’s more success at them being
able to show that, it’s going to be the early adopters that’ll keep trying it,” says Welford.
Welford adds there’s still a need for improved
technology to sense what’s needed in the fields.
Some innovators are using reflectance technology
to determine nitrogen requirements as the crop is
growing, trying to apply what the crop needs at that
time rather than guessing based on the soil.
It’s on-the-go soil and crop sensing and variable
rate application based on that up-to-the-minute
data that’s the next stage of precision agriculture
adoption, Welford says.
But while he sees the opportunities, Faechner
doesn’t think Western Canada is at that point to
adopt it in large numbers yet, since much of the
research has been done in the U.S. and Europe, not
the Canadian Prairies.
“I know a lot of time, especially nowadays, it
seems like the innovative producers are leading the
charge on quite a bit of this, and the research and
agronomics follow along after,” Faechner says.
A culmination of events has led up to this, not
the least of which are reduced levels in agronomic
research in Western Canada that have come with the
loss of government programs, investment and staff.
That’s created a paradigm shift, a subtle one that’s
occurred over the last five to seven years, but one
that will get accelerated in the gutting of government resources.
Says Faechner: “(Farmers) have become much more
of a player in helping solve some of these issues and
concerns than has been the case in the past.” CG
february 4, 2014
production
Field Notes
Can plants think?
Author and noted food critic
Michael Pollan (Omnivore’s Dilemma)
reports in a recent issue of The New
Y orker magazine that scientists are
slowly beginning to re-evaluate whether
plants can “think.”
That’s not to say what they’re proposing is an update of the quack science
of the 1970s that saw green thumbs
around the world talking to their plants
and playing them Mozart.
Instead, said the magazine said in a
recent news release, Pollan investigates
the field of plant neurobiology and the
evidence for plant intelligence.
Pollan spoke to a “loose, interdisciplinary group of scientists working
on plant intelligence,” the magazine
said, none of whom claim that plants
have brains, possess “telekinetic powers,” or “feel emotions.” Rather, in the
scientists’ view, intelligence in plants
may resemble that exhibited in insect
colonies.
One of the scientists Pollan spoke
with is Stefano Mancuso, an Italian
plant physiologist described by Pollan
as “the poet-philosopher of the movement.” At the International LaboraFEBRUARY 4, 2014
“Plants can learn,
remember and
feel,” says Pollan.
Does that mean
they’re intelligent?
tory of Plant Neurobiology, outside of
Florence, Italy, Mancuso and a handful
of collaborators are working on experiments to measure plants’ reactions
to air pollution, their ability to be
“taught” to ignore shadows, and their
chemical emissions — or, in Mancuso’s
words, their “chemical vocabulary.”
Pollan writes, “The central issue
dividing the plant neurobiologists from
their critics would appear to be this:
Do capabilities such as intelligence,
pain perception, learning and memory
require their existence of a brain, as the
critics contend, or can they be detached
from the neurological moorings?”
The full article is available online:
www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/
12/23/131223fa_fact_pollan.
Chopstick irrigation
Internationally, the agriculture industry spends a lot of time thinking about
how to feed China, and about how the
booming Chinese market is expected
to create a lot of prosperity for North
America’s farmers in coming years.
Often overlooked, however, is how
China and other developing countries
are beginning to make their own agronomic advances so they can at least
partially feed themselves.
A recent story by the U.S. public
broadcaster Public Radio International
tells the tale of businessman turned
inventor Zhu Jun, who had the idea
for a breakthrough in irrigation technology after dipping his chopsticks in a
bowl of water.
“I found if I put the chopsticks
in water, and took them out, there
was a little water going up between
the chopsticks,” he told PRI. “And
if I hold the chopsticks higher, the
water goes higher. And I realized,
that’s actually the capillary force that
I learned in the textbooks in primary
school. And maybe that is a good way
for irrigation.”
Capillary action refers to molecular
attraction that’s so strong it can defy
gravity, pulling water upward with no
outside power source. In this case it’s
the roots of the plants themselves that
do the pulling, stopping when the plants
have drunk their fill.
The source of the water is a pipe that
runs along a foot or deeper in the soil.
The pipe gets narrower until it’s like a
thin straw a with tiny shower head, with
little white threads running out of it. It’s
from these threads that the plants drink.
The system is similar to, but more
efficient than, drip irrigation systems. The
inventor says the key difference is under
his new capillary action system, there’s a
more or less constant flow of water, making plugged pipes much less likely.
Chinese agronomists who have
worked on the system say it’s a dramatic change from some of the most
common irrigation systems in that
country, which involve surface watering and raised beds.
Researchers also report less fungal
disease and lower overall input use.
Zhu says his system saves 70 per
cent or more water compared to surface irrigation in China, and 30 to 50
per cent compared to drip irrigation.
country-guide.ca 53
Production
More plants
mean more profit
Cutting seed costs can have a ripple effect through the whole
canola season, and will often reduce overall profits
By Jay Whetter
anola yields across Western Canada
averaged around 40 bu./ac. in 2013.
This is very good — the best ever. But
we know that some growers regularly
get 50 bu./ac., and often much higher.
Some canola growers are to the point now where
40 bu./ac. is a disappointing yield.
This is proof that the genetic potential of canola
is much higher than 40 bu./ac. One way to capture more of this potential is to establish a strong
Figure 1. uniform stands yield more,
especially at lower plant densities
Seed yield (kg/ha)
3,000
High-yielding sites
2,500
2,000
1,500
Uniform
Low- to average-yielding sites
1,000
Non-uniform
500
0
20
40
60
80
100
Plant density (plants m2)
120
Recent research led by Yantai Gan with AAFC in Swift
Current, Sask., found that canola yield increased with more
plants and with a more uniform stand.
Figure 2. Not enough plants
Crop density (per sq. ft.)
Per cent of surveyed fields
>19
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
2000
MB 7.1 to 19
2001
MB
5.1 to 7
2002
MB
2003
MB
4 to 5
<4
2010
MB
2012
MB
Julie Leeson with AAFC in Saskatoon surveyed canola
fields in Alberta in 2010 and Saskatchewan in 2012
and found that too many were at or below the bare
minimum five plants per square foot needed to reach
yield potential. Manitoba results from earlier surveys
are included for comparison.
54 country-guide.ca and competitive crop with enough plants to use the
water, nutrient and light resources available.
That means seven to 10 plants per square foot.
That’s the target canola growers want to achieve
every year on every acre — and ideally on every
square foot. Scientific evidence supports this.
In 2009, Steve Shirtliffe, professor and researcher
with the University of Saskatchewan, scanned the
results from 35 canola studies, and found that canola
growers seeking to maximize returns should target populations greater than five plants per square
foot. “Plant populations lower than this will almost
always have yield loss,” Shirtliffe says.
The Canola Council of Canada recommends seven
to 10 plants to reduce the risk of missing out on yield
potential, providing some measure of security in case
plants are lost to insects, disease or other factors.
A recent Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
(AAFC) study emphasizes the importance of a uniform stand. Yantai Gan, a research scientist with
AAFC in Swift Current, Sask., found that stands
with a consistent number of plants per square foot
across the whole field yielded significantly better
than fields with variable plant densities, based on
stands of fewer than 60-80 per square metre (six to
eight per square foot). (See Figure 1.) The same study
also supported Shirtliffe’s meta-analysis results, concluding that as plant populations climbed from 20
per square metre (two per square foot) up to 100 per
square metre, yield also increased. (See Figure 1.)
Yet many growers are not achieving these stand
numbers. While Gan was doing his work, Julia Leeson with AAFC in Saskatoon did plant counts in
canola fields in Alberta in 2010 and Saskatchewan
in 2012. More than 40 per cent of surveyed canola
fields in Alberta and more than 50 per cent in Saskatchewan had overall stand densities at or below
the threshold considered the minimum for canola to
reach its yield potential. (See Figure 2.)
Leeson also talked to the growers and found that
many used a seeding rate of five lb./ac. This suggests
that the current standard seeding rate of five lb./ac. is
often not enough to achieve the necessary stand.
“We know canola is a “plastic” crop that can
compensate for thin or uneven establishment, to
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
production
“This investment will
more than pay for
itself in higher yield,
higher quality, and
lower input costs over
the long term.”
— Autumn Barnes
Canola Council of Canada agronomy specialist Autumn
Barnes says canola profitability increases when the crop
gets off to a good start. That includes an ideal stand of
seven to 10 plants per square foot.
some extent,” says Autumn Barnes, agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada. “But why
treat a high value crop that way? Canola pays the
bills on a lot of farms, and it pays a lot more bills
when it gets off to a good start.”
Higher yield is not the only profit-making factor. A uniform canola crop with at least seven
plants per square foot can also reduce crop protection costs and improve quality.
Weed control is hugely important to canola profitability. Elwin Smith with AAFC in Lethbridge performed a financial analysis on an earlier AAFC study
that ranked the most important inputs for canola
yield. Weed management stood out as key. A summary of Smith’s study said that in a barley-canola
rotation, the primary input that influenced yield was
weed control. When weeds are left uncontrolled, the
addition of higher genetics, a higher seeding rate and
nitrogen fertilizer had no impact on net return.
“Herbicide tolerance is a highly useful tool that
has bailed out the yield potential for many thin
canola crops, but a thicker stand can reduce weed
control costs and potentially extend the life of those
HT traits,” Barnes says. Thin stands are not competitive, and second herbicide applications are often
needed to get canola established and ahead of the
weeds, she adds. “These extra applications also
increase the risk of selecting for weeds that are not
controlled as well by HT products, or for weed populations that could be resistant to those products.”
A dense crop could also reduce the need for insecticide sprays if it means, for example, less damage per
plant by a fixed number of flea beetles. As long as overall leaf area loss is under the 25 per cent action threshold, on average, a flea beetle spray is not economically
viable. With more plants, flea beetle losses are less likely
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
to reach this overall 25 per cent average. Fewer acres
sprayed with insecticide will also strengthen the population of beneficial insects, which can further increase
long-term sustainability and profitability.
Finally, canola crops with more plants per square
foot also tend to mature earlier and more evenly,
which reduces the risk of quality losses (green seed
specifically) at harvest.
“Canola growers have many reasons to strive
for a plant population of seven to 10 plants per
square foot, but we understand that this does require
an investment as well,” Barnes says. “It means a
higher seeding rate or taking more time at seeding
to improve seed placement. It may require both of
these. But we think this investment will more than
pay for itself with higher yield, higher quality and
lower input costs over the long term.”
An overall average of 50 bu./ac., or more, is certainly within the genetic potential of canola. Acrossthe-board improvement in plant population and
stand establishment is one key step in achieving that
next threshold. CG
Jay Whetter is communications manager with the
Canola Council of Canada, and editor of the free
Canola Watch agronomy newsletter. Sign up at
www.canolawatch.org. To read summaries of the
Gan, Leeson and Smith studies mentioned in this
article, see the Canola Digest Science Edition 2013
here: www.canolacouncil.org/canola-digest-pastissues/.
Keys to a good
canola stand
1. Set a target plant density of seven to 10 plants
per square foot to give you the most consistent
chance of hitting 100 per cent yield potential.
2. A ssess and record plant emergence. This will
tell you how good you are at hitting your target
density.
3. S eed slowly enough to get consistent shallow
placement of seed, and good separation of seed
and fertilizer.
country-guide.ca 55
PRODUCTION
Western Grains Research Foundation (WGRF) is a farmer-funded and directed non-profit organization investing
primarily in wheat and barley variety development for the benefit of western Canadian producers. Through investments of more than $57 million, WGRF has assisted in the development and release of more than 100 new wheat
and barley varieties over the past decade and a half, many of which are today seeded to large portions of the
cropland in Western Canada. WGRF also invests in research on other western Canadian crops through the endowment fund. In fact, since 1981 the WGRF endowment fund has supported a wealth of innovation across Western
Canada, providing over $26 million in funding for over 230 diverse research projects.
Bigger bang theory
WGRF partners with other stakeholders on funding model
By Clare Stanfield
bout this time last year, the Western
Grains Research Foundation (WGRF)
announced $3.5 million in new project funding with more to come. Well,
true to its word, more has come.
“Research investments by the endowment fund
will grow to nearly $7.5 million a year by 2015,”
says Garth Patterson, executive director of the
WGRF.
But who gets funded? From the researcher side,
applying for funds can be a hodgepodge of forms,
departments and agencies. So, since 2012, the
WGRF has collaborated with Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives (MAFRI), the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture (SMA) and the
Alberta Agriculture Funding Consortium (AFC) to
review more than 400 letters of intent and almost
150 full crop research proposals.
“This process
makes better use
of everyone’s
expertise and time.”
— Garth Patterson, WGRF
“Rather than do a separate WGRF direct call
for proposals, this process makes better use of
everyone’s expertise and time,” says Patterson,
adding that the WGRF is the only producer-led
organization that sees all these proposals.
56 country-guide.ca
That collaboration has led to the WGRF
approving more than 80 new research projects that
show potential to improve the profitability and sustainability of farmers in Western Canada, money
for which will come out of the endowment fund.
The endowment fund is aimed at crop research
projects that will benefit all producers through
improved agricultural systems, technology and
agronomic practices.
“That is very important to us because this kind
of research benefits all producers in all crops,
including minor crops,” says Patterson. “So when
we look at, say, harvest management techniques, or
better grain storage systems, that knowledge helps
all growers.”
A bigger bang for the buck
Co-funding partnerships are key for the WGRF.
That $3.5 million announced last year, for instance,
was part of a co-funding partnership between the
WGRF and the Agriculture Development Fund
(ADF) in Saskatchewan, and went to support 25
crop-related research projects.
“In 2013, we conducted an informal survey of
Canadian producer groups from coast to coast and
found that these organizations expected to invest
$32.4 million in research by the end of that same
year,” says Patterson.
“These organizations are more than willing to
collaborate with other funders, like us, government and private industry, so that they can do the
research their membership wants,” Patterson says,
adding that the capacity to do good agronomic
research must be supported if Canadian producers
are to stay at the forefront of global markets
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
WGRF E
PRODUCTION
WGRF is also providing $100,000 to assess
agronomy research capacity in Western Canada.
“We and other producer-led commodity groups
have started the discussion to ensure we develop
and maintain that capacity in Western Canada,”
says Patterson. “And producers have a big role to
play in leading the effort to find solutions.”
Investing in future researchers
The WGRF endowment fund is contributing to
the future of agriculture in another way, too.
“In 2011, WGRF started putting $100,000
per year into graduate scholarships, on a rotating
basis, at the University of Manitoba, the University
of Alberta and the University of Saskatchewan,”
says Patterson. The scholarship money is open to
students working in some aspect of crop research,
and the receiving institutions can choose to fund
one PhD student ($33,000 per year for three years),
or two master’s degree students ($25,000 per year
for two years).
Most recently, in 2013, the U of S took the lat-
“This kind of research
benefits all producers
of all crops, including
minor crops.”
ter route, funding Colleen Redlick, who is working
on an integrated weed management strategy for
lentil producers struggling with herbicide-resistant
weeds, and Andrea De Roo, who is looking into
the biological attributes of six distinct cleaver populations in Canada and how those characteristics
influence the weeds’ competitiveness.
Says Patterson: “Investing in today’s agricultural
students can only strengthen our research competitiveness tomorrow.” CG
Cultivating Growth
Increasing Endowment Fund expenditures for the
benefit of western Canadian crop producers
$15 million
in new funding to crop
research over four years
More than
100
new projects
Research
priorities
identified by
producers
Leveraged to
$30 million
by co-funding
New research
funding examples:
Weed Management
Blackleg & Clubroot in Canola
Improving Oat Nutrition
Pulse Disease Management
Graduate Student Scholarships
Fusarium Resistance in Cereals
WGRF is committed to utilizing the Endowment Fund for the benefit of western
Canadian crop producers by managing and investing the fund in order to
provide future long-term benefits to producers. To find out more, visit us online.
www.westerngrains.com
WGRF Endowment Fund Half-page Ad_final.indd 1
2013-09-12 8:34 AM
Production
Cr op pr otection
The cheque is in the mail
Company loyalty programs are too complicated,
driving up the cost of crop protection products
and getting in the way of good decision-making
By Warren Libby, Savvy Farmer
just received a somewhat unexpected cheque
in the mail for $500. It was a government
rebate for replacing my furnace. I had forgotten that it was even coming, and while I’m not
one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I began
to wonder what was behind that cheque.
Apparently the government thought that it would
be a good environmental initiative to encourage me
to replace my old inefficient furnace. But wait a minute. My furnace was a relatively new high-efficient
type when its heat exchanger cracked prematurely.
So my furnace was “red-tagged,” meaning it had to
be replaced within 90 days or my gas supply would
be shut off. I really had no choice but to replace that
furnace, rebate or no rebate. And since that rebate
was not tied to the purchase of any particular brand,
it did not sway my choice of brands in any way.
Seemed like a waste.
Then I began to wonder what it cost the government to give me that unnecessary rebate. I can only
image the bureaucracy required to develop the program, advertise it in newspapers, on radio, in direct
mail and on their website. And what about all those
fine folks who process the rebate forms, negotiate
complaints with applicants, and finally cut cheques?
Plus there are accountants, auditors, and product
managers who prepare reports back to the government to tell them what a fine job they did to replace
my furnace so that it no longer pollutes our planet.
Then I realized that this was my money that they
were taking credit for rebating back to me.
Sound familiar? How many pesticide rebate
cheques did you recently receive and wonder exactly
what they were for? Of course you remember reading somewhere last spring that if you bought a certain company’s six products in a certain quantity by
a certain date you would get a rebate. And if you
combined that with the purchase of a certain seed
variety, the rebate would be doubled. But if you are
like me, reading these program rules is like reading
the contract at Avis car rental. It is virtually impossible to figure out exactly what your rebate will
eventually be or the net cost of the products you
just bought. Well I have a secret to share. You’re not
alone. Many of the sponsoring companies gave up
trying years ago and now hire outside firms to collect
your purchases and figure out your rebate at the end
of the growing season. The unfortunate part is that
58 country-guide.ca when you buy your spring pesticides you never know
exactly what they are going to cost until you get that
rebate cheque at the end of the year. Even then, you
might not be able to figure it out.
If you are like most farmers, while you love getting those somewhat unexpected cheques in the fall,
you really don’t understand why the chemical companies do this. You see the millions of dollars spent
on advertising and administration of these programs
to send you a rebate, and shake your head wondering why they don’t just reduce the price in the first
place. Wouldn’t that be simpler?
Let me take you back about 15 years to when the
rebates got rolling. That was the peak of the crop
protection chemical industry and patents on the
really popular products were about to expire. Based
on experience elsewhere in the world, companies
feared that the Canadian market would be flooded
with generic equivalents of their products, but at
much lower prices. To make this even more concerning, the government loosened the registration rules
making it much easier and faster for a generic to gain
a registration and start marketing in Canada. Therefore, to thwart the pending generic threat, rather
than simply dropping prices and taking a big hit on
profits, they turned to selective rebates which were
far less costly than across-the-board price decreases.
These started modestly with a few products where
there was an immediate concern about generics. Then
the company marketers learned they could “bundle” less popular products with top-selling brands
to “encourage” growers to maximize the number of
brands purchased from one company. This further
evolved to include just about every product in the
company portfolio as well as seeds, and rebates were
in full swing. Rebates have become big business with
some quite substantial savings per acre.
Personally I don’t like rebates. In my opinion they
detract from the professionalism of our industry. I
believe rebates complicate the decision-making process and encourage growers and retailers to consider
products they perhaps shouldn’t. I also believe they
add to the cost of pesticides. After all, that advertising and the administration is not free, and the best
rebates tend to be on the most expensive products.
Finally, since most rebate programs are so complicated that not even the sponsoring companies can
figure them out until the season is finished; they have
february 4, 2014
production
little impact on the final decision. I also
dislike rebates since they force farmers to
give up too much of their private information, a very valuable asset they often
underestimate. When you sign up for
most rebate programs, you must agree to
allow the sponsoring company to collect
and use your data. Call me paranoid, but
giving up this data to a foreign or undisclosed company seems a bit reckless.
So what are the chances rebates will
end? It’s unlikely to happen any time
soon. Change requires dissatisfaction and
right now there is little dissatisfaction
within the big chemical companies. Agriculture is robust, as are pesticide sales.
For them, rebates are just a cost of doing
business, and if eliminated, they would
have to reduce prices across the board.
There would also be no easy way to bundle popular products with less popular
ones, or with seeds, making marketing
more complicated.
Rebates will continue to be a reality
until one of three events happen. The first
would be a major downturn in agriculture which would force chemical companies to really tighten their belts. Faced
with a need to reduce expenses, most will
choose to give the boot to marketing programs like rebates before they fire staff or
reduce research. The second event would
be an increased tendency by farmers to
choose products that are net priced without rebates. There are already several companies that currently offer this option. The
third possibility would be if one of the
major pesticide companies had the courage
to show true industry leadership by eliminating rebates with the expectation that
others would follow. But I don’t see any of
these events happening any time soon.
So put this magazine down right now,
and check the mailbox. There could be a
chemical rebate cheque there with your
name on it! CG
Warren Libby is president of Savvy
Farmer, a web-based service for
farmers and crop protection dealers.
He previously held leadership positions
in several crop protection companies
and is the former chairman of
CropLife Canada.
Do you have a crop protection issue
you’d like Warren to write about?
Send any suggestions to:
[email protected].
february 4, 2014
Coming to a farm near you:
On-farm seed treatment
By CG staff
T
he Canadian division of Bayer CropScience and a Winnipeg-based grain
handling manufacturer are hoping one of your next equipment purchases
will be a more accurate seed treater for your farm.
Ag Growth, the equipment manufacturer, announced their plans in late 2013
and recently launched the product. They call the system STORM (Seed Treatment
Optimized Rate Metering).
Development of Storm followed meetings between Calgary-based Bayer and
growers and retailers at seed treatment application seminars in 2011, at which
the company reported hearing what it calls overwhelming concern from growers
about their ability to effectively treat seed.
In a media release, Bayer credited one of its Saskatoon-based staff, Danick
Bardi, with “developing the framework for a tool that would deliver
precision seed treatment application
in a convenient, efficient and integrated system.”
The Storm, they said, is meant
to be “easier and more convenient
to use than any applicator currently
on the market.” The unit can be
connected directly to a seed bin,
with seed treated during the transfer
process to another truck or bin.
The Storm, produced by AGI subsidiary Westfield Industries at Rosenort,
Man., places a seed treater in-line with a “specifically designed” Westfield TFX2
100-41 auger, which the company said “allows you to finally treat your seed with
absolute accuracy.”
Westfield, on its website, says the Storm’s metering conveyor measures seed
rate to a margin of error of plus or minus two per cent, and the programming
automatically adjusts the unit’s peristaltic pumps to match treatment flow for optimal coverage.
Westfield also describes the unit as suitable for a wide variety of seed types
including wheat, barley, oats, peas and lentils, adding that it automatically compensates for differences in seed density and seed type.
According to the companies, by inputting the density of the seed being
treated, the system calculates the mass flow rate of grain and automatically
applies the correct amount of treatment, removing the uncertainty and waste
associated with most applicators.
The Storm, which runs off a 32.5-hp Kohler motor, is listed with a handling
capacity of up to 30 bushels per minute, with application capacity of up to 600 ml
per 100 kg for its current tip configuration.
The unit also comes pre-programmed to handle Bayer CropScience seed
treatment products but can store “additional custom recipes.”
“We are confident that the safety of the closed treater, the metering and accuracy of application will remove growers’ frustrations and uncertainty when treating
seeds and will result in a significantly positive impact on their crops,” Paul Brisebois, vice-president of marketing at Winnipeg-based AGI, said in the media release.
The Storm unit is
said to work with a
range of seed types,
including cereals,
peas and lentils
country-guide.ca 59
PRODUCTION
FA C T C H E C K
WHEAT BELLY
THE bestseller that says wheat is bad
for you is, well, bad for you
By Gord Leathers
he story goes that there was a travelling salesman covering his territory in
southern Saskatchewan just after the
Second World War. He came out of
the general store in a town somewhere
west of Midale, nodded to the two old boys who
were playing checkers on the front porch, and then
got into his car.
About two miles out of town the engine quit,
so he got out and opened up the hood and while
he was looking inside, an unexpected voice drifted
in. It told him, “It’s probably your carburetor.”
Startled, the salesman looked toward the road,
but he was alone. On the ditch side, over the fence
stood a white horse with his nose pointed toward
the engine. The horse looked at him and repeated,
“Like I say buddy, it’s probably your carburetor.”
The salesman leaped in panic and sprinted all
the way back to town where he ran right down the
main drag and stopped in front of the store where
the two old boys were still playing checkers.
“You won’t believe this!” he panted. “My car
stalled about two miles out of town and some
old white horse told me it was probably my carburetor!”
The two old boys looked at him, looked at each
other, and then started to roar with laughter in the
way that only locals can at an uninformed outsider.
“That old white horse,” one of them guffawed.
“He don’t know nothin’ about carburetors.”
And so it goes. If an old white horse tells
you it’s your carburetor, you’d probably go to a
mechanic for a second opinion. On the other hand,
if a medical doctor writes a book based on the
notion that eating wheat is dangerous, it becomes a
NEW YORK TIMES bestseller.
WHEAT BELLY, by Dr. William Davis, was published in 2011 and according to the flap inside the
jacket: “North Americans have steadily and inexorably become heavier, less healthy and more prone
to diabetes than ever before. Cardiologist William
60 country-guide.ca
Davis came to the disturbing conclusion that it is
not fat, not sugar and not our sedentary lifestyle
that is causing an obesity epidemic — it is wheat.”
Imagine that! Conventional wisdom had us
believing that it was increased caloric intake (eating too much) along with decreased energy output
(exercising too little). All this time it has been wheat,
the principal ingredient of bread — the Staff of Life.
So far, Davis’s book has sold 300,000 copies, so
someone’s buying it and, by extension, someone’s
buying his premise. If you visit his website you
can find all kinds of testimonials from people who
cut wheat out of their diets and lost significant
amounts of weight. That would seem obvious. If
you stop eating cookies, cakes, pies and any manner of fast food, your calorie counts go down, and
your weight goes down too. It just happens that a
lot of high-calorie confections contain wheat.
You’ll also find quite a library of videos from
interviews done on the talk show circuit, plus
another page of testimonials about the efficacy of
removing wheat from the menu. I wonder about
the ones who don’t eat wheat and don’t lose
weight. You don’t hear from those.
Another thing you might find on his website is
a hissing email from one of his disciples aimed at
Julie Jones of the American Association of Cereal
Chemists. Jones is on the faculty of food science
and nutrition at the University of Minnesota and
she actually does know what she’s talking about
when she speaks of wheat.
Jones was good enough to read his book, but
impolite enough to write an article slamming it
for the journal CEREAL FOODS WORLD. It took her
about 10 pages to lay waste to WHEAT BELLY… in
fairly plain language.
She starts with the weight loss claims.
“In his patient population he recounts numerous occurrences of rapid weight loss simply by
elimination of wheat from the diet,” Jones writes.
“Rapid weight loss often occurs to any weight loss
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
FA C T C H E C K
diet in the short run. Studies and testimonials of
weight loss abound, especially when the diets are
low in carbohydrates. They do not result in greater
weight loss over time and result in more dropouts
than other diet types that are more balanced and
do not eliminate entire food groups.”
“Oh yeah?!” replies the doctor. Modern dwarf
varieties of wheat are genetically very different
from previous strains of wheat. There are proteins
in there that don’t show up in either parent.
Jones responds: “Plants can only express proteins they have the DNA code to produce. Creating
a unique protein requires a mutation of the DNA
or RNA. Environmental conditions can cause or
inhibit the expression of certain proteins but it cannot code for proteins that are not in the genome.
Hybridization of wheat does not create unique
proteins.”
The doctor rises and asserts that when wheat
is digested it breaks down into “peptides” that act
as exorphins and interact with opioid receptors,
modulating food absorption and stimulating appetite. The more you eat, the more you want to eat.
But the chemist points out that a lot of other food
proteins do that too. It’s not unique to wheat —
the doses are very low and they might be important
to our physiology anyway. More study is needed.
I got a copy of Davis’s book and managed to get
through the first three chapters. Chapter 3 talked
about the strange new genetics of the plant and I
smelled something funny.
During my years as an ag writer, I’ve talked to
a lot of wheat breeders and I’m certainly aware of
how different bread wheat is from its wild ancestor.
The same is true of any crop species.
When I got to the fourth chapter I read the
opening sentence: “Addiction. Withdrawal. Delusions. Hallucinations. I’m not describing mental
illness or a scene from “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.” I’m talking about this food you invite
into your kitchen, share with your friends and
dunk into your coffee.”
PRODUCTION
So modern bread wheat causes delusions and
hallucinations? I closed the book, opened it again,
and that bit about delusions and hallucinations was
still there. How can anyone believe that a cereal
grain that we’ve been eating for thousands of years
suddenly makes you obese within the last three
decades and causes delusions and hallucinations?
He certainly does state what seems obvious
when he says the proliferation of wheat products parallels the increase in waist size. But Jones
replies, “Although the association may be true, this
is an example of the misuse of correlations to imply
causation. Many correlations can be made. Increasing waist size is associated with increased use of
chewing gum, increased sales of running shoes and
the proliferation of high-fat ice creams as well as
any number of other products.”
The really important point that Jones makes
later in the passage is about the big jump in average calorie intake between 1985 and 2000 without
a corresponding increase in the level of physical
activity. She cites this as a prime reason for the
increasing North American waistline, although it’s
still something we don’t want to talk about. It’s
easier to find one villain to blame so we tack it on
wheat and not the recliner.
What it comes down to is William Davis makes
all the cardinal mistakes any scientific author can
make. He starts with a faulty premise. He manages
to misinterpret reams of studies, and then weaves
them together into a weird pathology of symptoms
that very few, if any of us, actually show. And we
believe him, and ruthlessly criticize Julie Jones
because she knows what she’s talking about. Only
in ignorance is there truth.
I disagree. If an old white horse tells you that
wheat is the cause of all your problems, don’t buy
his book until you consult a cereal chemist. That old
white horse don’t know nothin’ about carbohydrates.
Jones’ article may be found at: http://www.
aaccnet.org/publications/plexus/cfw/pastissues/2012/
OpenDocuments/CFW-57-4-0177.pdf. CG
Canada’s #1 Pesticide... INFORMATION
Learn more by visiting
www.savvyfarmer.com
•
•
•
•
•
•
Every registered treatment for every crop
Labels plus Canada’s best label search tool
Over 2,000 weed, insect & disease photos
Quick search for generics brand
Tools to manage resistance, PHI, residuals
Information updated weekly
“small investment...big savings”
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
country-guide.ca 61
Production
Keeping bees
Neonicotinoid pesticides are under the spotlight
following bee kills — but it’s not all doom and gloom
he southern Ontario spring of 2012
was an early one, and corn growers
got busy as soon as they could get their
planters out into the fields.
Beekeepers got their troops mobilized early too, but high hopes for a good season
quickly evaporated as the body count started piling
up around the hives. It turned out the culprit may
have been the insecticide from the corn seed.
“It’s seeded with a neonicotinoid — either thiamethoxam or clothianidin,” explains Dr. Maria
Trainer with the industry group Croplife Canada.
“When the Pesticide Management Review Agency
and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food
investigated, they confirmed that those residues were
found in about 70 per cent of the dead bee samples
and their conclusion was the bees were exposed to
dust that was released during the planting of the seed
through the planter.”
There’s been a lot written in the popular press
about neonicotinoid pesticides along with their potential effect on honeybees, and the news sounds grim.
The Europeans suspended the use of neonicotinoids
and there’s a lot of pressure from various environmental lobbies to do the same thing here. What doesn’t
show up in the popular press is how long farmers have
The real question is: Can we
use the chemistry better?
been using neonicotinoids without major bee kills.
Neonicotinoids were first used in Canada back in
the late 1990s with the registration of imidacloprid,
and farmers across the country have used them on
a wide variety of crops including soybean, corn and
canola. They work by blocking an enzyme that regulates the transmission of impulses over the bridge
between two nerve cells. With impulses jumping the
gap completely unchecked, the insect goes into convulsions and burns out.
Neonicotinoid chemistry is tuned so that insects
are quite sensitive to it but mammals, such as wildlife,
livestock and us are, much less so. Although it can be
applied as a foliar spray, it’s often put on the seed as a
coating, which has a number of advantages.
“They’re safer for the user because they’re applied
off-site at a controlled facility, so you’re not having
to get your arms into the planting equipment and get
62 country-guide.ca exposed to those chemistries,” Trainer says. “They’re
better for the environment because the amount of
insecticide used in a seed treatment is significantly
less, about one per cent of what you would use in a
broadcast application.”
Seed treatment also helps to zero in on target species,
such as flea beetles in canola or rootworm in corn, making the application much safer when done according to
the label instructions. The spring bee kill in 2012 wasn’t
a typical event and shouldn’t have happened.
“In 2012 we had an exceptionally warm spring,”
Trainer says. “Flowering weeds were up early so the bees
were out foraging in areas where they wouldn’t normally be foraging, adjacent to fields during planting.”
The seed is coated with a number of different
treatments such as fungicides, insecticides and a
lubricant to make planting easier on both seed and
machine. It’s the lubricant, or fluency agent, that
actually caused the trouble in an air seeder. The combination of talcum and graphite doesn’t stick to the
seed as well as it might, so when planting corn, there
may be a cloud of insecticidal dust that drifts off the
seeder. It was this dust that seems to have produced
the bee body count.
There’s no doubt that enough exposure to an
insecticide is going to kill bees, but to maintain yields
we’re stuck using chemistry. Farmers understand that
there’s no trade-off here, we need bees as much as we
need insecticide, not only for the honey they produce
but also for the pollination they provide. It’s an old
relationship that a full 70 per cent of the world’s top
100 food and fibre crops still remember from their
wild past. One of every three mouthfuls any of us eat
comes courtesy of an insect pollinating a plant.
The real question is: can we use the chemistry better? Can we develop products and management practices to keep the bees away from the seed
treatments so we can have both? The first answer
revolves around new coatings that keep the insecticide on the seed where it’s needed rather than in the
air where it’s hazardous.
The company that marketed the original talcum/
graphite fluency agents, Bayer CropScience, is working on the next generation of seed coatings. Bayer
began using a polyethylene wax treatment and has
run field trials in both Canada and the United States.
Feedback from farmers has been very good, and early
results show the lubricant performs at equal or even
better levels than the older mix, while significantly
decreasing the amount of dust generated.
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
Photography: Gord leathers
By Gord Leathers
production
The PMRA is making the new fluency mixture
mandatory for the 2014 growing season and this is
the first of their four new requirements. Another is to
open the channels between beekeepers and farmers
and get them talking to each other. Beekeepers need
to know when farmers are planting or engaging in
any kind of action that may put bees at risk. Farmers
need to know where the hives are and what kind of
range foraging bees have. Both need to be aware of
what the weather conditions are because this often
dictates what both farmers and beekeepers do.
The third is labelling the products with updated
seed tags so that farmers know what they’re buying
and have a good set of instructions. For the longer
term, CropLife Canada and the PMRA have developed a set of best management practices for the use
of treated seed. The risk is greatly diminished if bees
and insecticides don’t mix.
If farmers can simply minimize the amount of
dust generated during seeding that should go a long
way to minimize bee mortality and still keep an
effective insecticide on the roster.
In the short term, be aware of where hives are
located and consider the weather conditions during
seeding. Make sure planting equipment is in good
working order and that treated seed is handled properly to minimize the amount of dust. Excess dust
within the bags should stay there instead of being
shaken into seeding equipment and the bags should
be properly disposed of.
In the longer term the seed companies will develop
better coatings that increase the efficacy of their
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
product while reducing the amount of dust generated.
Equipment manufacturers are working on seeders.
One of the problems there is the air exhaust that
vents too high. Reworking the exhaust systems so
that they vent close to the ground is a solution for the
long term, and retrofits that redirect the air exhaust
downward is in the works for older machinery.
“PMRA has investigated and according to the
interim report they’ve released their conclusion that
direct exposure due to dust during planting was an
issue and this needs to be addressed ahead of next
year’s growing season,” Trainer says. “In response to
what happened, both the PMRA and EPA have put the
three main neonicotinoids under re-evaluation and have
released a pollinator risk assessment framework that is
now guiding internal pollinator risk assessment.”
The spring of 2012 may have had unusual consequences because of that early warming but it was typical of many mishaps. A small change in circumstances
can bring about a disaster of sorts but there is a silver
lining. We know more about the behaviour of those
seed coatings and we’ve been able to improve on them.
We know more about the equipment we use and how
we can make it better. We know enough to refine the
procedures and we can make the products work better.
“We are very supportive of that approach and for
Canadian agriculture we think it’s very important
that the transparency and predictability of the regulatory system remain intact,” Trainer says. “We also
support ongoing research into the various factors
that affect pollinator health of which insecticides one
of the factors. CG
country-guide.ca 63
TOOLMAN
It’s a very different marketing year
By Errol Anderson
ommodity markets never guarantee
that prices will remain above your cost
of production. That is a cruel reality.
It’s also a point that should never be
overlooked. Rallies must be harvested,
even months ahead of the actual crop.
Pre-pricing grain at profitable levels is a great
antidote for a high-risk market. It also helps manage
those fall cash flow needs.
A key to new-crop marketing is to begin gradually. Weather, insects and disease can derail your
yield goals and quality. As a rule of thumb, don’t forward price more than 30 per cent of your expected
harvest before the seed drill hits the field, or more
than 50 per cent ahead of the combine.
To increase your success at locking in profitable
prices, the marketing calendar needs to be turned
ahead a few months. For example, let’s say you do
lock in half of your new-crop 2013-14 grain production profitably by the time the combine needs to be
greased. In theory, you would still have half your
grain production yet to be marketed over the next
few months. But once harvest is complete, it’s already
time to start looking toward your 2014-15 crop.
Searching for solid pricing opportunities never
ceases, whether it’s for the current crop year or the next.
It’s time to start hunting for new-crop
profits in what is going to be a very
different and difficult marketing year
Marketers who continually scout for new-crop
grain profits reduce their risk of being forced to price
grain for cash flow reasons. Cash flow selling has a
nasty side to it. It can push your grain price return
into the bottom third of average yearly prices.
A variety of pricing tools can be used as part of
your forward pricing program. The goal is to capture
profits as they appear. Here are some suggested steps
to take when considering how to pre-price new-crop
grains and oilseeds in the weeks ahead.
This year, western Canadian cash grain bids are
punctuated by excessively weak basis levels. Normally,
we would suggest signing deferred delivery contracts
as a first step since there is no need to provide upfront
margin money. But this year a first step may be to sell
or short the new-crop futures or purchase put options
with your commodity broker. This strategy buys time
to allow fall basis levels to narrow and normalize.
As well, the futures market has been offering “full
carry,” meaning it is paying you to store your grain.
64 country-guide.ca This is another incentive to hedge or sell the deferred
futures months. You pocket the carry.
Once basis levels improve (narrow), then it is time
to convert your short hedges into a deferred delivery
contract (DDC). This is a different year due to the
excessive supply of grain and limited delivery opportunities. Remember, when you sign DDC contracts
you are committing to delivery. Inability to provide
grain or proper quality to meet contract requirements could produce financial hardship after harvest.
Grain company payout penalties take a toll.
Use DDCs up to your personal grain production
comfort level. Discuss with your buyer what the
potential discounts would be for off-grade grain. You
just never know when weather may hit. Grain marketers may pre-price 10 to 50 per cent of expected
production using these forward cash contracts.
Let’s say you’ve now reached your comfort level
signing cash DDC contracts. Then dry weather
ignites new-crop bids. That means it’s time to scale
in and add more “put options” to your pricing portfolio. Put options are essentially price insurance policies. “Puts” guard against price spills.
If a summer weather scare develops, gradually
scale in puts as the futures price spirals. The advantages of this marketing tool are twofold. Put options
never commit growers to grain delivery. And there is
no risk of margin call. Also in a weather scare, the
futures generally run far higher than the actual cash
market. These are key advantages to put options.
Marketers can aggressively add put options to their
risk management portfolio without excessive delivery
or financial risk. Up to 100 per cent of your expected
production could be topped up with this tool.
But here’s a caution on selling futures as a protective
price hedge. Market volatility and margin call risk are
highest during the growing season. If using futures as a
part of your pre-pricing program, be prepared for margin calls. They are the inevitable.
Consider planting protective “buy stops” above
chart resistance to avoid taking a nasty futures loss
should weather drive grain prices higher. Ask your
commodity broker to help.
This is a tough marketing year. Marketing skills
can’t be emphasized enough. Forward pricing using
cash contracts, scaling in put options and selling or
shorting futures as a protective hedge will lock in
profits. They will go a long way toward stabilizing
your farm’s balance sheet. CG
Errol Anderson is author of “ProMarket Wire,” a
daily risk management report and a registered commodity hedge broker in Calgary. He can be reached
at 403-275-5555, email: [email protected].
Febuary 4, 2o14
Always read and follow label directions. INFERNO and the INFERNO DUO logo are trademarks of Arysta LifeScience North America, LLC. Arysta LifeScience and
the Arysta LifeScience logo are registered trademarks of Arysta LifeScience Corporation. All other products mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective
companies. ©2014 Arysta LifeScience North America, LLC. INF-020
Tough broadleaves and flushing grassy weeds have met their match. No burndown product is more ruthless against problem
weeds in spring wheat than new INFERNO™ DUO. Two active ingredients working together with glyphosate get hard-to-kill
weeds like dandelion, hawk’s beard, foxtail barley and Roundup Ready® canola, while giving you longer lasting residual control
of grassy weeds like green foxtail and up to two weeks for wild oats. INFERNO DUO. It takes burndown to the next level.
BRING THIS AD TO LIFE!
HOLD YOUR TABLET / MOBILE DEVICE OVER THIS AD
AND WATCH INFERNO DUO DESTROY WEEDS LIVE!
DOWNLOAD THE APP AT infernoduoalive.ca
INF-031 Inferno Duo AR Ad_Country Guide.indd 1
1/8/2014 10:10 AM
LIFE
A place for women
Yes, many women are making progress on the farm.
But not enough women, and not fast enough
By Helen Lammers-Helps
omen may have been the first
farmers, but it has been a long
trek to climb to the top in today’s
agriculture. Finally, however,
women are making progress.
Census data show between 10 and 20 per cent of
farms are operated by women. Plus, on many more
farms, women are key players taking on the marketing, accounting, human resources, herd management, and other essential roles.
Advances in technology mean there’s less need
for brute strength in farming, and the trend towards
larger farm operations is opening up more opportunities for women to take on leadership positions.
But that doesn’t mean the battle has been won.
Too often, women still aren’t able to work to their
full potential on the farm, says farm family coach
Elaine Froese of Boissevan, Man. As someone who
works closely with farm families, Froese sees daughters overlooked as potential successors solely because
of their gender. She has also seen cases where women
are actively involved in farm operations but their
opinions aren’t valued, and she sees daughters-in-law
who have no voice except through their husbands.
“And if the husband is passive, then they don’t
have a voice at all,” says Froese, who quickly adds
66 country-guide.ca
her core belief: “Everyone involved in the farm should
have a voice at the table and work collaboratively.”
Success in farming requires making the best use
of farm resources, Froese says, and that includes the
human resource, regardless of gender.
Every farmer might agree this is true, yet too
often we behave counterproductively without even
being aware of the messages we’re sending. For
example, the language we use is important, says Lew
Bayer, a trainer with the Civility Experts. “Language
in the workplace needs to be respectful,” Bayer
says. That means not referring to grown women as
“girls,” “gals,” “skirts,” or “little ladies” or making disparaging comments about women being “too
emotional.”
Bayer recommends following the 4E Philosophy:
“Everyone gets Exactly the same respect in Every
situation Every time.”
This also means avoiding disrespectful non-verbal
signals. These include dismissive gestures such as
eye rolling, holding up your hand in a “full-stop”
motion or using a condescending tone of voice.
TURNING THE TABLES
For women who don’t feel they are getting
equal respect, Bayer recommends learning how to
assert yourself without being aggressive. Doing
nothing is not the solution, she says. “Silence is
considered permission.”
Women who want to be taken seriously can
sometimes be their own worst enemies, Bayer
explains. “If you want to be taken seriously, don’t
take brownies to the office or offer to head up the
decorating committee.”
Also insist on opportunities to upgrade your
skills. This past December, 240 women travelled
to Chicago for the third Executive Women in Agriculture conference. The No. 1 thing those women
wanted was more information on risk management,
says conference organizer, Jeanne Bernick.
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
LIFE
To that degree, it was the same as any general
farm conference. But their second choice was different. It was for more information on professional
development, particularly leadership skills. “They
want to have their voices heard,” explains Bernick.
Not surprisingly, these women are also interested
in work-life balance issues, like dealing with aging
parents and childcare.
Conference attendance has been growing and
Bernick says another conference is planned for 2014.
More and more women are taking on key decisionmaking roles in agriculture, she says. For example,
50 per cent of Iowa farmland is owned by women.
More women are returning to the farm in management roles, she adds, or are continuing to operate the
farms after their husbands have died.
YOUR RIGHT TO BE THERE
In addition to coaching, Froese farms with her
husband. She admits she has found herself as the
only woman at an agricultural meeting on occasion.
“Women need to make it inclusive in their head,” she
advises. “Don’t let others’ expectations keep you out.”
To help build their confidence as leaders, Froese
recommends women take leadership courses, get
involved in organizations like Toast Masters or take
positions on boards.
Since most women must take on the majority of
childcare and housework duties, finding time to be a
full contributor to the farm can be a challenge, says
Froese. Consider hiring out some of the domestic
work, she recommends. Your input on the farm may
prove many times more valuable than what you
might pay for such help.
Yes, pregnancy and maternity leaves can be an
issue on the farm, but having your own business
can also create opportunities for balancing work
and family, suggests Rhonda Driediger, owner of
Driediger Farms, a 160-acre fruit farm in Langley,
B.C. “You may be able to have more control of your
hours,” Driediger says.
In addition to growing her own raspberries and
blueberries, Driediger also buys from other local
growers for her instant-freeze processing plant.
Farmers from some cultural backgrounds don’t
want to deal with her because she is a woman, but
that doesn’t bother Driediger, who says she picks
who she buys from and looks for reputable farmers
so she can build long-term relationships.
Driediger spent several years in project management with an engineering firm before returning
to the family farm and eventually taking it over
completely. She sits on several boards including
the Raspberry Council and she is chair of the B.C.
Ag Council. She highly recommends women get
involved in industry boards.
“Industry involvement is key to being a good
manager,” Driediger says. “You meet colleagues…
get a different perspective and get ideas you can use
in your own farm business,” she says. “And it helps
you learn to speak up and get your point across.”
One way to shorten the learning curve to success is to find a mentor, adds Simi Valley, California life coach, author and motivational speaker,
Mary Morrissey. Morrissey will be speaking at the
Advancing Women in Agriculture conference in
Calgary in late April.
Mentors are those who are a few steps up the
ladder, but who reach down to help you, Morrissey
says. “You still have to take the steps but they
understand what you need to do.”
To find a good mentor, Morrissey says you need
to figure out what area of your life you really want
to bring change to. “Then look for people in your
industry who have achieved in that area in a practical, measurable way. Be really specific about the
result you want,” she advises.
We all benefit when everyone is able to work
to their full potential, using all of their skills and
strengths, these women say. By developing their
leadership skills, women can ensure their voices
are heard. CG
Advancing Women in Agriculture conference
Looking to develop leadership skills? The Advancing Women in Agriculture conference is sheduled for Calgary, Alta.
on April 28 and 29, 2014.
The program features sessions on leadership, communication, money management, networking, work-life balance
and mentoring.
For more information, check out the conference website at www.advancingwomenconference.ca.
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
country-guide.ca 67
h e a lt h
The beat goes on
(with heart drugs)
By Marie Berry
t one time if you had a heart condition such as high blood pressure, high
cholesterol, or even heartbeat irregularities, you certainly were not considered
healthy. If you had experienced a heart
attack or stroke, your outlook was considered grim.
Today, however, there are drugs to prevent and manage many such conditions, so you may now have the
ability to treat and even prevent heart diseases.
Unlike most medical conditions, heart conditions
have few if any symptoms and you often dismiss
them as not getting a good night’s sleep, or even
muscle strains or aches. High blood pressure and
high cholesterol are considered silent killers because
anywhere from half to a third of all people don’t even
know that their blood pressure or cholesterol are
high. It is important to have regular checkups and to
know your risk factors.
Whenever you are prescribed a new drug, ask
whether it replaces another or if it is in addition to others
you are already taking.
When you see your health-care professionals or are
admitted to hospital, your medication may change.
Duplication of medication can occur and naturally you
want to avoid this. You may obtain a new medication
which is meant to replace one of your previous ones,
or alternatively a new medication may be meant to be
added to your existing regime.
Heart drugs can be classified into groups, and these
drugs have common endings, for example -pril for blood
pressure lowering ACE inhibitors, -statin for cholesterol
lowering drugs, and -olol for beta blockers used to relax
blood vessels.
Some heart drugs, most notably water tablets and
alpha blockers, can produce a drop in your blood pressure, especially when you get up from a lying or sitting
position. You may not like the feeling of lightheadedness,
and your risk for falls can increase. With time your body
may compensate for the effect, but if you are still bothered, shake your legs before rising, get out of bed or up
from a chair more slowly, or even flex your calf muscles.
Skid-proof shoes or slippers as well as arms on a chair or
bed rails will also help.
One significant interaction for heart medication is
with grapefruit, both juice and the fruit. With grapefruit,
the metabolism of some drugs like statin cholesterollowering drugs and calcium channel blockers is reduced,
which means more of the active drug is left in your body.
The result is too high a dose. Avoiding grapefruit is usually recommended. Choosing another juice is ideal.
Many non-prescription remedies can cause problems
with heart conditions, resulting in reduced effectiveness
of your medications. Decongestants found in many
cough and cold products increase blood pressure, which
means you will need to read the fine print on packaging
in order to identify the ingredients. Ideally they should
be avoided. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such
as ibuprofen and naproxen cause fluid retention, meaning your kidneys must work harder. Acetaminophen is a
suitable alternative for aches and pain.
Heart medication regimes can be complicated, but if
you take your medication as recommended you will have
improved heart health. If you need to take numerous
tablets or take them many times each day, ask if there
are options that may simplify your routine. Combination
tablets which contain two active ingredients or longacting tablets may mean fewer tablets. Compliance packaging which organizes your medication may also help.
Of course medication is important, but don’t
forget the non-drug recommendations you may be
given, such as weight loss, increased physical activity, and a low-fat, high-fibre diet.
If you are struggling with your heart medications, don’t just give up. It is important to take the
drugs in order to keep your blood pressure or cholesterol levels down.
If you experience a side-effect, tell your health-care
providers. They will be able to suggest an alternative
that will work for you.
You only have one cardiovascular system, so you
want to maintain it, just as you would the engine of
your car. Prescribed heart medications can help. Use
them wisely.
Marie Berry is a lawyer/pharmacist interested in health
and education.
Everyone is at risk for osteoporosis, men as well as women, but it is often considered a woman’s disease.
Unfortunately, it is early in life that bone mass is built, which means that later in life when osteoporosis is
diagnosed, building bone mass and preventing breaks can be difficult. Several new osteoporosis drugs are
available, and you may have seen them advertised in magazines and on television. Next issue, we will look at
some of these newer agents, but in the meantime, check to see that you have enough calcium in your diet!
68 country-guide.ca FEBRUARY 4, 2014
NOW AVAILABLE
“What will you say when you meet
Nelson Mandela?” It was September
1998. Mr. Mandela was in Toronto for
a gathering of schoolchildren at what
was then called the Sky Dome. The event
would launch the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund Canada.
I was in Toronto for meetings on the
University of Toronto campus. I met Gordon Beardy, an Anglican bishop, in the hotel lobby. Gordon had been chief of his
First Nation in northern Ontario before his election as a bishop.
He was leading a group of Aboriginal people who had been
selected to meet Mr. Mandela before the children’s event.
Gordon and I chatted over a cup of tea. I put the question.
“What will you say when you meet Mr. Mandela?” He smiled
and said he would think it over.
Next morning the First Nations delegation invited me to walk
with them to the Sky Dome. As we drew closer, I became aware of
a huge movement of people, mostly children, heading in the same
direction. They were coming out of the subway, descending from
buses and walking briskly. There was a feeling of determination
and great expectancy everywhere. When we reached the venue, I
said goodbye to my friends and turned back toward the university.
For 20 minutes I walked against the flow of the crowd. It
was an astonishing experience. Thousands of children were
making their way to see Mandela and to hear what he had to
say. They were orderly and excited. Not one child was hurried
along by a teacher or chaperon. They knew what the day was
about. I wondered if there was another 80-year-old person,
anywhere in the world, who could enthrall 40,000 or 50,000
children with their presence and their words.
Mandela loved children. He told the children at the Sky
Dome: “You have made me feel like a young man again with my
batteries recharged. The greatest joy has been to discover that
there are so many children in this country who care about other
children around the world.”
Back at the hotel I posed the question to Gordon again.
“What did you say?” He chuckled with typical Aboriginal
humour and replied, “I said, ‘Welcome, Mr. Mandela, to Canada’s biggest sweat lodge.’”
Mandela proved that a good idea, a right idea, cannot be
silenced by putting a person in prison. CBC television journalist Barbara Frum interviewed him two days after his release
from prison. She asked: “In your mind, in your darkest hours,
did you think of yourself as Job or Moses?” Job was the biblical figure who asked, “Why me?” while Moses led his people
from slavery to freedom. Mandela replied, “It is not proper to
think in those terms. That is for others to decide.” He went on
to express his hope that all children, black and white, and all
people, would live together in harmony and equality.
During the mourning period in South Africa, a nine-year-old girl
brought flowers and a card to a memorial. A Canadian reporter
asked her what she knew about Mr. Mandela. She replied, “He was
a good man. He made everyone in our country equal.”
“No one is born hating another person because of the colour
of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People learn to hate,
and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love
comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
— Nelson Mandela
Suggested Scripture: Isaiah 11:1-9, Matthew 5:43-48
Rod Andrews is a retired Anglican bishop. He lives in Saskatoon.
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
INTRODUCING
MOBILE
OVER 30,000
FULLY
SEARCHABLE
AG EQUIPMENT
LISTINGS IN
THE PALM OF
YOUR HAND!!
Now you can find the ag
equipment you’re looking
for quickly and immediately
on your iPhone or Android
Device. (BlackBerry coming soon)
1
SEARCH
Define your search criteria by
your choice of parameters.
3
FIND
Get more details and photos of
your found equipment
2
BROWSE
Scroll through your search
results instantly.
4
CONTACT
Email or phone the seller
directly – save search results!
WHY WAIT AND MISS A DEAL!?
Start your search now! Scan the code below to download the app
Or visit agdealermobile.com for download details.
©2013 Farm Business Communications
country-guide.ca 69
ACRES
Leeann Minogue is the editor of GRAINEWS, a playwright,
and part of a family grain farm in southeastern Saskatchewan
Up in the air
With his parents on a plane to the Caribbean, Jeff gets
stuck on the ground... quite a bit of ground
eff hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since his parents left for Cuba.
“I decided not to bother getting a cell
plan,” Jeff’s father, Dale had told Jeff on the
way to the airport on Tuesday morning. “If
there’s an emergency, call the resort. Or email.”
“It’s January in Saskatchewan, Dad,” Jeff had
said. “Nothing’s going to happen that you’ll want to
know about.”
But 10 minutes after Dale and Donna walked
through airport security, Jeff’s cell rang.
“The Jacobsons decided not to rent those two
sections of land five miles south of your place anymore,” said Greg Mallory on the other end of the
line. “Are you and your dad interested?”
The Hansons hadn’t been actively looking for
more land to rent. But this was good land. Good
soil, and the Jacobsons had looked after it well. Jeff
wouldn’t have expected the Jacobsons to give it up.
“Guess you didn’t hear. Fred’s got cancer,” Greg
said.
70 country-guide.ca
“That’s too bad,” Jeff said. “But I’m glad you
thought of us. Look, my dad’s off on vacation. Can I
get back to you in a week?”
“I’ve already got another offer,” Greg said.
“Fred’s cousin wants to farm it. Said he’d pay 28
bucks an acre. I told him I’d get back to him by
Friday noon, one way or the other. But I thought I’d
give you guys a chance to match that first.”
“OK, Jeff said. “I’ll talk it over with Dad.”
“Keep in mind,” Greg said, “I’m looking for a
long-term deal — whether it’s you or Jacobson’s
cousin. I don’t want to have to look for someone
new every two years. And I’d like to keep both sections together.”
“Makes sense,” Jeff told him. “We’ll get back to
you by Friday morning at the latest.”
That was easier said than done.
Once he started trying to get hold of Dale in
Cuba, Jeff was embarrassed to find himself agreeing
with what his grandfather Ed had said when Dale
and Donna had first booked their trip.
FEBRUARY 4, 2014
acres
“Cuba?” Ed asked. “Why would anyone take
a vacation in Cuba? Do you know how many
Cubans have risked their lives to get away off of
that island?”
Jeff wasn’t as concerned about Cuba’s history
and politics as he was about its lack of Wi-Fi. Jeff
sent emails, but Dale wasn’t getting them.
On Wednesday morning, Jeff’s mother Donna had
emailed from her own account. “Resort rustic, but
beautiful. Internet SLOW on lobby computer. Your
dad gave up. I likely won’t check again. Off to beach.”
Jeff tried and tried to phone the resort on
Wednesday night. But every time he got through,
someone shouted at him in Spanish over a crackly
phone line.
On Thursday, Jeff considered contacting the
Cuban government, and asking the police to track
down his father and force Dale to turn on his cellphone for 10 minutes. Damn the cost.
But then Jeff pulled himself together. He could
make this decision.
It was good land. In a great place. If someone
else rented it, it might be decades before it came
back on the market.
It was a fair price. Lower than some of the neighbours were locked into. Maybe not as low as the
market might go if grain prices kept falling. But fair
for now.
Jeff wanted to grow the farm. With two kids of
his own already, he wanted to make sure he was set
up for a strong future. But were the Hansons in a
position to expand this much right now?
Two more sections to seed, spray and harvest
would put a lot of pressure on the Hanson family.
With their farm in the middle of the Bakken oilfield,
they already had trouble finding and keeping farm
help. The weather had pushed seeding late in 2013
— if that happened again and the Hansons had two
more sections to seed, could they even do it? Jeff
supposed they could think about buying another
seeder. But even if it made financial sense, who
would run it and keep it filled?
Jeff’s mother was trying to become less involved
in the farm, if anything, and his grandfather wasn’t
getting any younger. Maybe this wasn’t the best time
to make the Hanson farm almost 25 per cent bigger.
Two or three years ago this would have been a
no-brainer. But canola prices were falling every day,
and there was nothing but gloom in the outlooks.
A few good years had driven up input costs. High
prices for seed and chemical and low prices for
wheat and canola might make this a money-losing
prospect. Was it too big a risk?
Jeff asked his grandfather.
“Interesting opportunity,” Ed said. “But I’ve got
to go. Wednesday is fish fry at the rec centre, and
I’m in charge of the tartar sauce.” Everyone had
february 4, 2014
been surprised when Ed had announced in early
January that he was buying a motorhome and heading for Yuma. Ed had never shown much interest
in leaving the farm before, but now he’d suddenly
settled right in to a new life. It was as if he’d been
born in a trailer park.
“Let me know what you decide,” Ed said. “And
keep an eye out at the post office. I mailed you some
pictures of the desert sunset.”
“Sounds good. Watch for fish bones,” Jeff said,
hanging up.
Just minutes after Dale and
Donna went through airport
security, Jeff’s cellphone rang
Jeff’s wife Elaine was optimistic. “Prices are low
now. They’ve been low before. We need to take a
long-term view,” she’d said. They’d looked at the
numbers together. With good weather and a little
luck, it could work.
On Friday morning, Jeff had made the call.
“We’ll take it.”
Buyer’s remorse set in as soon as he hung up.
“Dad can’t even leave the farm for 10 minutes
and I’m acting like a poker player in Vegas,” he told
Elaine. “Three generations, and I’m going to be the
one who loses this place.”
The week dragged. While Jeff was driving his son
to preschool, he rehearsed different ways to tell his
father about the deal. While he was filling in for the
skip at his curling league, he ran cost-of-production
numbers through his head until his rink was down
eight nothing. His eyes were bloodshot.
Finally it was Tuesday. Jeff went to the airport
alone to pick up his parents.
He pulled up to the door so they wouldn’t have
to walk far in their summer coats.
“What’s new on the farm?” Dale asked, as soon
as he got the door shut.
Jeff decided to do it quickly. Like pulling off a
bandaid. “Greg Mallory phoned,” Jeff started, then
took a deep breath and broke the news. He stared
straight ahead, scared to look over at his father.
“I figured you’d do that,” Dale said.
“What?” Jeff almost jumped out of his seat.
“Greg called me while we were waiting at the
gate last week. I told him to call you. I knew you’d
do the right thing.”
“But prices are falling! We don’t have enough
help! What if we have another flood? Or more
hail?”
“We’ll figure it out,” Dale said. “Now tell us
what the grandkids have been up to.” CG
country-guide.ca 71
At Case IH, we understand that better yields start with better growing environments. That’s why
all of our equipment, like our new Ecolo-Tiger® 875 Disk Ripper, is agronomically designed to
help you get the most out of every seed and every acre it grows on. The Ecolo-Tiger 875 is
engineered to size tough harvest residues, fracture root-limiting compaction and leave fields
level. With better rooting and seedbed environments, plant stands can utilize more nutrients,
water and sunlight, helping to create better yields. The world of farming is changing. Will you
be ready? Learn more at caseih.com.
BE READY.
©2014 CNH America LLC. All rights reserved. Case IH is a registered trademark of CNH America LLC. www.caseih.com
ECOLO-TIGER 875
Tiger Point