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How her working ranch
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CONTENTS
JULY 2014
BUSINESS
8
GROW FROM WITHIN
12
OUR SHARE KEEPS FALLING
14
THE WIDE VIEW
20
ON THE JOB
26
WHERE TO NEXT?
30
A NEW FARM THAT BUZZES
34
GUIDE LEGAL — WHEN BUSINESSMEN BECOME DIRECTORS
35
THEIR OWN PATH
38
THE FUTURE OF FUTURES
42
THE GOAL IS GOUDA
45
THE RIGHT TOOL AT THE RIGHT TIME
62
GUIDE LIFE — SET THEM UP FOR SUCCESS
When the big firms go headhunting, they rarely get good value
from their new stars. Here’s why that matters on the farm.
Grain and oilseed prices are dropping, but food prices keep
rising. And, says Gerald Pilger, farmers keep getting blamed!
Just outside Calgary, CL Ranches is winning the consumer
battles that all of agriculture will soon face.
Can agriculture compete for employees against the oilpatch
and other industries? Our Lisa Guenther asks the workers.
Somebody is always trying to sell you on their view
of the future of agriculture. Hmmm… could they be right?
Eight years ago, Dragonfly Farm struggled to get off the ground.
Now it’s working toward $1 million in annual sales.
If your farm is incorporated, are you sure you are
meeting your legal obligations?
For this Quebec startup, farming success started when they
developed their own, unique sense of direction.
Just because you can produce commodities in huge quantities
doesn’t mean that the market infrastructure will fall into place.
64
66
SEE CENTRE
Diversification gets touted as a cure-all, but this successful
value-adding family says it takes grit, more grit, and more grit again.
While our machinery makers eye overseas markets, Germany’s
Lemken is racking up more sales in Canada.
Two things are certain. Life for tomorrow’s farmers will be
a challenge. But you can prepare your kids for success.
EVERY ISSUE
5
This summer, COUNTRY GUIDE signed on as official
media sponsor for the World Congress on Conservation
Agriculture in Winnipeg. With farmers and experts from
33 countries, the insights were amazing and inspiring,
as our team of journalists reports in this special section.
PRODUCTION
48
ALL IN GOOD TIME
52
PRESERVE BLACKLEG RESISTANCE
54
A BETTER WAY TO MILL BARLEY?
56
AGRONOMY RULES
58
IN SEARCH OF A GOOD LABEL
MACHINERY GUIDE
Mid-size tractors evolve with a wave of new engineering.
GUIDE HEALTH
Manage your heart medications for better health.
HANSON ACRES
When the Chinese farmers arrive on tour, they get an eyeful.
For these wheat growers, fungicide means every acre, every year.
Check if blackleg resistance is breaking down on your farm.
Cigi tests mixing wheat with barley to open new health markets.
New in-field strategies open up big yield potential.
Canada needs pesticide labels that work for farmers.
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J U LY 2 0 1 4
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EDITORIAL STAFF
Editor: Tom Button
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Tom Button is editor of Country Guide magazine
The bull is only sleeping
As Country Guide market columnist
Errol Anderson (who returns next month)
always is sure to remind us, commodity
markets trade more on emotion than on
fundamentals.
Markets climb on a combination of
confidence and optimism — and maybe a
touch of greed — and they fall on fear.
The same emotions drive the same
cycles, time and again. They always have,
and they probably always will.
But that isn’t to say that fundamentals
have no role at all.
The truth is, the world’s supply and
demand of grains and oilseeds — and
increasingly its supply and demand of
meat as well — are in precarious balance.
It’s why we’ve been reading so many
headlines that say either that the sky is
falling, or that the sun will shine merrily
down on farmers forever.
In the recent past, I’ve read that within
10 years, the world will safely be able
to idle a chunk of farmland the size of
France. Of course, I’ve also read myriad
reasons why humanity is on its inescapable way to famine.
It’s why this month we sent associate
editor Gord Gilmour out on assignment
to ask whether there is any rationale for
deciding which forecasts we should listen
to. Does anyone really know which forecasters have the best records?
We knew it wasn’t the kind of question
we should expect a definitive answer to,
but sometimes our job is just to ask the
4 country-guide.ca questions anyway and to try to listen for
the interesting insights that bubble to the
surface. Not surprisingly, though, in this
case the answers that Gord got from some
of Canada’s brightest ag economists are
mainly that long-term forecasting simply
doesn’t work in agriculture.
It doesn’t mean that the question
wasn’t worth asking. Read Gord’s story
and you’ll find out why, but it’s related to
the fact that farmers can’t escape having
to predict the future. How else could you
decide when it makes sense to invest, and
when it doesn’t?
So in the context of that story, yes, we
agree it’s reasonable to predict we’re heading into a stretch of $4 corn. But it’s more
reasonable to predict it than to expect it.
With El Niño, and with the prospects
of political strife in critical regions around
the world, and with climate change, and
with burgeoning global populations, and
with the rise of the global middle class,
and with our dependence on ethanol, and
with… Well, you get the picture.
Maybe the bears will retain control
for a year, or for two. Or maybe for only
another month. But the bull will wake up.
Let me know what you think at tom.
[email protected]. But what I think
is that our farmers are well positioned.
Their financial resources and their management capabilities are higher than ever.
They can wait for demand to return, as it
surely will. The world needs its farmers,
and will soon remember why.
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reproduced only with the permission of the editor. Country
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j u ly 2 0 1 4
Machinery
By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor
In an era when everything seems to be getting bigger, equipment manufacturers are
investing heavily in updating and upgrading the middle of the pack. These are tractors
in the 220- to 325-horsepower category, which means they’re big enough to haul and
to load, and to dig into most of the toughest jobs on the farm, yet small enough for
impressive efficiency, ease of operation and manoeuvrability. These tractors get it done,
including some with Tier 4B/Final emissions standards, and the lineup also includes
models with newly expanded interiors, refined engine specs, and an impressive list of
state-of-the-art options. If you haven’t taken a hard look for a year or two, you’ve got
your work cut out for you. But it’s work that will pay off.
John Deere 7R Series 
John Deere has added four new 7R Series models to your mid-size
choices, and all offer high-power density with a high-horsepower rating. Starting with the 230R and its 230-horsepower engine, look for a
hitch-lift capacity of up to 15,200 lbs. and drawbar capacity of up to
10,000 lbs. Plus there’s your choice of CommandQuad, Infinitely Variable Transmission or the new e23 power shift transmission. There’s also
J u ly 2 0 1 4 an integrated front three-point hitch with PTO options, providing more
diversity to attach a mower conditioner or other implements. Add to that
three more models — from the 7250R (250 hp) to the 7270R (270 hp)
and the 7290R (290 hp) — each one designed by Deere to handle the
bulk of your on-farm duties.
www.deere.com
country-guide.ca 5
Massey Ferguson 8700 Series 
Case IH Puma 220 and 240
Introduced earlier this year at the World Ag Expo, Massey Ferguson has brought its 8700 Series tractor to market with big expectations. With five models in all, this new lineup provides what the
company literature describes as unparalleled power and fuel economy, along with some pretty hefty hydraulic capabilities. The Dyna-VT
continuously variable transmission (CVT) synchronizes the engine and
transmission performance for smooth and almost intuitive handling,
and the operator cab has also been redesigned, adding comfort, clear
lines of sight and enhanced cab suspension.
Whether you’re managing livestock and crops, or just crops, Case IH
believes it has a Puma model to suit the demands on your farm. The
new series of Pumas are available with the Tier 4B/final selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system, plus increased operator efficiency and
better visibility. There are six new models in this series, with the 220and 240-hp models delivering a combination of class-leading power
and fuel efficiency, thanks to the 6.7-litre engine. Advanced ergonomics
also mean greater comfort and superior operator efficiency during those
times when more hours in the cab are required.
www.int.masseyferguson.com
www.caseih.com
Fendt 800 and 900 Series 
Two series of tractors with six times the selection: That’s the diversity
that Fendt is promising with its new 800 and 900 Series tractors. In the
800 Series, there are four models — the 822, 824, 826 and 828 ranging from 220 to 280 hp — and three models in the 900 series — the
927 and 930 ranging from 270 to 300 hp. It’s the latest generation in
Fendt’s line of high-horsepower tractors that offer mid-size power yet
greater attention to ease-of-use efficiency. Of course, the
800 and 900 Series also boast Fendt’s VarioGrip system,
giving the operator the option of adjusting front and rear tire
pressures from the cab, together with enhanced operator
comfort and visibility in the cab.
www.fendt.com
6 country-guide.ca J u ly 2 0 1 4
Stand up, be proud
An open letter to Canadian ag
When Greg Stewart retired as FCC President and CEO, he put
his heart into this letter challenging all of us who work in agriculture to
speak positively and tell the real story of ag. Reading it helps explain
why FCC launched Ag More Than Ever, and why we remain so strongly
committed to the cause.
Agriculture More Than Ever
is an industry cause
powered by more than
300 partner organizations
and 450 agvocates committed
to speaking up and speaking
positively for our industry.
Agriculture matters to this country, and there’s absolutely no question
in my mind that the future for Canadian agriculture is bright.
The industry is thriving, family farms are prospering and I see incredible
amounts of optimism, pride and passion across the country. And with
this success comes a responsibility – an obligation to this industry to let
everyone else in on the secret, which is this: even though it’s sometimes
tempting to downplay your success by saying how tough farming is, you
know in your hearts you’d never dream of doing anything else. Deep
down, you’re intensely proud of what you do, and it’s time to quit hiding
how successful this industry really is.
It’s our obligation to make our voices heard about where the industry
is heading because believe me, if agriculture doesn’t take control
of its own destiny, somebody else will. So if you’re benefitting from
ag, you have an obligation to give back by driving the outcome, rather
than waiting to be told what to do by someone who doesn’t fully
understand or appreciate the industry. That means standing up and telling
the truth about Canadian agriculture, because right now, that’s just not
happening enough.
So let’s take a deep breath and say it out loud together: Agriculture
is the best industry in the world. We’re honoured to be part of it. We
can only hope that our children find the same fulfilment from whatever
path they choose in life. We’re incredibly proud of what we do. And yes.
We want the Canadian public to be proud of our success, too.
Short of fulfilling my childhood dream of being a farmer, my career
in agriculture has been the best ride I could have imagined. I can’t help
being excited for the future of this industry.
I’m forever grateful for the opportunity I have had to serve this amazing
industry and the wonderful people in it. Thank you.
I wish you all great success. Stand up and be proud – you’ve earned it.
FCC is a proud partner of this cause.
Greg Stewart
32735 E AMTE_Greg_Exit letter_8.125x10.75.indd 1
AgMoreThanEver.ca
2014-06-27 7:33 AM
REVIEWS
Grow from within
Sometimes, that streak of independence in farmers
is simple bullheadedness. Other times, it’s business
smarts at their sharpest, which is why these three
books are timely reads for farms at the crossroads
By Andrew Allentuck
BOOK REVIEWED
BOUNCE: MOZART, FEDERER, PICASSO, BECKHAM, AND THE SCIENCE OF SUCCESS
By Matthew Syed
(HarperCollins, 2010)
CHASING STARS: THE MYTH OF TALENT AND THE PORTABILITY OF PERFORMANCE
By Boris Groysberg
(Princeton University Press, 2010)
SCALING UP EXCELLENCE: GETTING TO MORE WITHOUT SETTLING FOR LESS
Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao
(Random House, 2014)
hen the big firms go headhunting, and when they poach the
best and brightest players from
their competitors, they rarely get
what they pay for.
The star hires are no longer stars.
They’re mediocre at best, and there
can be a powerful lesson for farmers in
why they underperform.
What does it take to move a business or a farm from average to great?
Or to grow a concept into an enterprise? These are the questions raised
in three contexts by new and newish
books by a former ping-pong champ,
a couple of Stanford University professors and a heavy-hitting professor
of management at Harvard.
Each shows that growth is best
when it comes from within, not
hired from outside. And although
each book casts a different light on
the subject, they add up to a stern
message for farmers as farm size
continues to grow.
Importantly, the advice — including how to anticipate the hurdles that will get in your way, and how to
jump them — are as relevant to farming as they are
to the next big thing in Silicon Valley. The common
point is that success is contextual more than portable.
Their bottom line is that outside experts may
have valuable insights and services, but success is
rooted to where you are and where you have been.
Table tennis champ Matthew Syed, an Oxford
grad and a columnist for the TIMES of London, demonstrates in BOUNCE: MOZART, FEDERER, PICASSO,
8 country-guide.ca
BECKHAM, AND THE SCIENCE OF SUCCESS, that excellence or, in his terms, winning in sport, is a product
of striving. It isn’t the result of isolated genius. It
comes from the development of skills, practice and
relentless focus on the goal.
Mozart, usually thought of as a unique genius,
had 3,500 hours of piano practice by the time he was
six. His father, Leopold, was one of the great music
teachers of his day. The old wisecrack about how to
get to Carnegie Hall — “practice, practice, practice”
— is the paradigm.
“The best way to predict the future is to create
it,” Syed writes. This is glib, but it is the essence of
industrial processes and farming. Reducing the influence of luck and increasing the influence of preparation means the difference between average work and
superior work, horses that run with the pack and
those that are winners. For Syed, that means focusing
on the skills that produce the win. The implicit question of course is: which skills?
CHASING STARS; THE MYTH OF TALENT AND THE
PORTABILITY OF PERFORMANCE by Harvard business
school professor Boris Groysberg focuses on the question of which skills can be taken to new jobs from
old. With 103 pages of appendices, notes and index
to support 339 pages of text, it burrows into the
question of whether excellence at work is portable or
contextual. His guinea pigs are star analysts at Wall
Street investment banks in the period 1988 to 1996.
These are the folks who pore over financial documents and visit factories in order to predict the sales,
profits and share prices of companies they study.
Groysberg’s analysis demonstrates that excellence is
rooted in one workplace — one farm, if you like —
and its tools and co-workers, managerial goals and
company support.
J U LY 2 0 1 4
REVIEWS
In a study of analysts of steel makers,
airlines, etc. Groysberg found that the
probability of an analyst continuing a
winning streak of making right guesses
about profits and, critically, getting more
numbers right than other analysts at
other investment banks was far greater
for those who stayed than for those who
allowed themselves to be poached by
other investments banks.
Top analysts had a positive correlation
of prior-year performance with successiveyear performance if they stayed put. They
had a negative correlation of successiveyear performance with prior-year performance if they moved to another shop.
“Brilliance was not something that an
analyst could pack in a briefcase,” Groysberg writes. “Top of group records appear
to have been embedded in where the analyst worked. Support groups, the influence
of management, managerial style, data
resources, ability to travel, the kinds of
clients with whom analysts interacted were
highly influential on performance.”
Those firms which paid through the
nose for star analysts did not get what
they bargained for. Most of the time,
the poached analysts lost their touch.
In other words, creating a great environment for doing business on the farm
makes a real difference, both for you and
your employees.
Interestingly, Groysberg’s performance drops were worse for men than for
women, who are much better at taking
their track records with them. Groysberg
found women tended to cultivate external
relationships with clients, other colleagues
and sources of information more than
men, and they thought more about the
repercussions of moving.
J U LY 2 0 1 4
There is also the effect of the so-called
“winner’s curse,” the problem that someone who does very well in one year or time
period will be unable to do it again next
time. The problem is exaggerated when
the winner’s price or product rises, e.g.,
a farmer pays too much for land with an
excellent production record, and then finds
that in subsequent time periods, the land is
not so productive or at least not productive enough to recover the premium price.
Finally, there is the underdog effect.
Not only is there some random amount
of rotation of winners from fourth to first
quartile or even from 10th to first decile,
there is also the strong wish of recent followers to be leaders. Groysberg identifies
this in the context of female analysts who,
he speculates, “feel a need to be more
than average, not just to be one of the
group but at the top of the group.”
The last book of our three is both
the flimsiest and, yet, paradoxically, the
most provocative. Authors Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao, both management
gurus at Stanford University, propose
that if firms are careful to cultivate their
talent, they can grow from within. That’s
the theme and message of SCALING UP
EXCELLENCE: GETTING TO MORE WITHOUT SETTLING FOR LESS.
Sutton and Rao set up two polar cases
of how companies sell themselves. They
call those that are immobile “Catholic,”
i.e. one size fits all. Then, those that are
adaptive get called “Buddhist.”
Catholicism is outward looking,
Buddhism looks inward. Catholicism is
supposedly immobile and unadaptive,
while Buddhism is flexible and ready to
embrace new ideas.
We all agree there’s some stereotyping
going on here, but you get the point.
The ideas Sutton and Rao bring up are
provocative. They recall the 1964 murder
of Kitty Genovese in New York when 38
witnesses heard her scream and did nothing. They call this the bystander effect,
when many people take cues from others
who may not react.
In a business context, this relates to
your employees, or your family members,
seeing something that seems to be going
off the rails, and then doing nothing about
it. We’ve all seen it happen. Probably
we’ve seen it happen too many times.
To get past this passivity, a leader
must not let subordinates fear taking
responsibility, or fear being ostracized for
recommending changes. Most of all, they
can’t be afraid that they won’t get any
credit for their good work or good ideas.
Without such a positive environment,
growing from within is all the harder.
Authors of business books read each
other, and not surprisingly, SCALING UP
E XCELLENCE is a summation of some
of what has gone before. Putting aside
cute phrases, the book has a great deal
to offer. It portrays successful firms as
idea mills in which astute managers can
reach down to workers at the barricades
and perhaps up to senior management to
make the enterprise work for customers,
employees and, of course, for the owners.
It can work for farms and ranches as
well as national businesses. And the scalingup model is unavoidable in large enterprises. After all, everyone starts small.
The book is a compilation of anecdotes
in search of rules. One may object that a
case study of a high-tech company may not
work for a shoe manufacturer. Yet the mass
of insights is persuasive. SCALING UP EXCELLENCE is a valuable, provocative read.
Each of these books raises the issue of
motivation. All three also assert that individual excellence comes from within and
is a product of group co-operation. They
agree too that it is group excellence that
supports individual achievement.
This is much the same argument
that Tom Peters made in his IN SEARCH
OF EXCELLENCE, the 1982 book which
spawned a thousand — that’s not an exaggeration — followers and imitators. These
three books follow in his footsteps, but they
are valid, unique in their ways, and solid in
their insights. Read them and think. CG
Andrew Allentuck is a columnist for
GRAINEWS and author of several
books on economics.
country-guide.ca 9
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business
Our share keeps falling
Farmers’ portion of the consumer food dollar is plummeting.
At the very least, it’s something consumers should know
By Gerald Pilger
This gap between what the farmer earns and
what the consumer pays comes even more sharply
into focus if you examine the slice of the food dollar that the farmer receives. South of the border,
the USDA has been tracking this since 1950, and
a September 2013 study entitled, “Farm-to-Food
Price Dynamics,” by Dr. Randy Schnepf, agricultural policy specialist with the U.S. Congressional
Research Service (CRS) concluded, “Since 1950,
the average farm share has been declining as a
share of total consumer food expenditures, falling
from about 41 per cent in 1950 to 15.5 per cent
in 2011.”
It is important to note this 15.5 per cent farm
share is simply the portion of the food dollar that
farmers receive at the farm gate. It has nothing to do
with how much the farmer gets to keep.
The USDA Economic Research Service estimates
that in 2011, only about half of that 15.5 per cent
farm share actually stayed with the farmer, with 7.6
per cent flowing from the farmer to agribusiness to
pay for production expenses.
Since 1950, it should also be noted, consumer
spending on food has jumped immensely. In 1970
U.S. consumers spent $102 billion on food. In 2011,
they spent $1.1 trillion.
Even though consumer spending on food has
increased more than 1,000 per cent over the last 40
years, the share of the retail food dollar that farmers
receive dropped by more than half.
So, while consumers are spending more and
more, the bulk of the added spending by consumers
has been captured by handlers, processors, wholesalers, retailers and food-service providers.
he disconnect between farm commodity and retail food prices is worsening. Throughout 2013, major media
warned consumers of rising food costs,
with BNN on May 16 reporting, “How
much Canadians pay for their food is becoming a
major concern.”
That same day, CBC added its voice, saying,
“Canadian families are planning to cut back on
the amount they spend at the grocery store in the
face of rising food prices, a new report from one
of Canada’s largest banks said Thursday. The RBC
Canadian Consumer Outlook Index showed Canadians are displeased with rising food prices at the
grocery store.”
A month later, on June 27, 2013, Globe and
Mail entered the fray with, “Food prices far outpace consumer price index,” followed on August 5
by the Toronto Sun headline, “Canadian consumers cope with dramatic increase in food prices.”
Then came the fall of 2013, and as everybody on
the farm knows, crop prices began a dramatic drop.
But there was no corresponding drop in food
prices. In fact, spring 2014 headlines continued to
report high food-price inflation.
Canada-U.S. Food Dollar Comparison, Nominal, 1997-2009
Year
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
FARM SHARE OF THE FOOD DOLLAR
CANADA 12.1% 12.3% 13.1% 12.2% 10.6% 9.0%
U.S.
11.4% 13.5% 12.0% 10.1% 10.4% 12.1% 10.5%
17.8% 17.0% 16.2% 15.9% 15.5% 15.3% 15.4% 15.4% 15.3% 14.2% 15.8% 15.8% 14.4%
FARM SHARE OF THE FOOD AND BEVERAGE DOLLAR*
CANADA 9.6%
U.S.
9.8%
10.4% 9.7%
8.4%
7.1%
9.1%
10.7% 9.5%
8.1%
8.3%
9.6%
8.3%
15.1% 14.4% 13.8% 13.5% 13.1% 12.8% 12.9% 13.2% 13.0% 12.6% 13.7% 14.0% 12.8%
*Note: Food and beverage dollar includes soft drinks and alcohol.
Canada-U.S. comparison, farm share of the food dollar,
Nominal, 1997-2009*
Canada’s trade balance in processed food
20.0%
0.0
18.0%
-1.0
16.0%
-2.0
6.0%
4.0%
2.0%
-5.0
-6.0
-6.3 billion
Farm share (Canada)
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
Farm Share (U.S.)
*Note: Food dollar definitions vary between Canada and the U.S. due to data constraints.
12 country-guide.ca 1992
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
1991
-7.0
1990
0.0%
-4.0
2011
8.0%
-3.0
2010
10.0%
2009
Billions of dollars
12.0%
2008
14.0%
Source: The State of Canada’s Processed Food Sector: Trade Balance CAPI • Nov. 2012
J u ly 2 0 1 4
business
The value-adding and marketing
share of U.S. consumer spending on food
rose from $69.2 billion in 1970 to $963
billion in 2011. In 2011, 84.5 per cent of
the money U.S. consumers spent on food
went into transforming agricultural commodities into food products, transporting those products to retail outlets, and
on marketing and sales.
According to Schnepf, the relationship of food prices to commodity prices
is not one to one. Food does not exactly
follow commodity prices. Furthermore,
food prices tend to be sticky. While they
usually go up as commodity prices rise,
often food prices do not fall when commodity prices decline.
Schnepf pointed out biofuels have
been blamed for raising food prices but
he has found the 25 to 30 per cent rise
in corn prices attributed to biofuel only
added about one per cent to food costs.
“Commodity prices are now a small
component of food prices,” he says.
Schnepf also says there are many
other costs that have a much bigger
impact on food pricess, including energy
costs, labour costs, transportation, processing and market competition.
The affluence of consumers
In 2012, while working as an extension agent at Colorado University, Kim
Dillivan wrote a fact sheet entitled,
“Where Does the Money Go? Food
Marketing Margins Explained.”
“Contrary to popular belief,” Dillivan wrote, “commodity-price increases
contribute little to food-price inflation.”
Dillivan attributes much of the
drop in farmers’ share of the food dollar to changing consumer preferences.
“Improved economic conditions, both
in the U.S. and internationally, increase
consumer demand for value-added
food. Instead of buying flour and baking bread, consumers prefer to purchase
ready-to-eat bread. Consumers are
spending more of their food dollar to
buy convenience and save time.”
Dillivan believes the general public
does not realize how small a portion
of their food dollar actually goes to
the farmer. He also thinks the general
public has been misled as to why food
prices increase, so he sees farm-share
data as an opportunity to inform the
public about food pricing, and he suggests producers should use any chance
they get to talk to consumers about
food pricing and farm share.
J u ly 2 0 1 4 Is Canada losing our food-processing industry?
In November 2012, Dr. Douglas Hedley of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute published, “The State of Canada’s Processed Food Sector: Trade Balance.” This paper presents
a number of disturbing trends in the Canadian food-processing industry.
Highlights of the paper include:
“Canada’s net trade in value-added processed food has deteriorated from a deficit of
about $1 billion in 2004 to $6.3 billion in 2011.”
“While Canadian processed food exports stalled over this period, imports rose steadily.”
“Canada’s net trade in processed food with the U.S. and Mexico has been negative for
the past four years, having fallen from a surplus of $2.2 billion in 2004 to a deficit of $1.3
billion in 2011.The trade situation with the rest of the world also deteriorated from a deficit
of $3.2 billion in 2004 to a deficit of $5 billion in 2011.
The entire report is available at www.capi-icpa.ca/pubs.html.
Farm Share in Canada
Instead of tracking farm share as they
do in the U.S., Canada tracks the cost of
a specific basket of food.
“Canada’s tracking of farm share
has been sporadic at best,” says Jessica
Kelly. While a graduate student at the
University of Guelph, she analyzed the
Canadian farm share for her 2014 master’s thesis entitled, “The Farm Share in
Canada from 1997 to 2010: Identifying
Trends in Value Distribution Along the
Agri-Food Supply Chain.”
Kelly found farm share has also
declined in Canada, dropping roughly
0.20 per cent per year.
However, her analysis has also identified two significant differences from U.S.
trends. First, farm share is much more
volatile in Canada.
Second, the farm share that U.S.
farmers receive is consistently higher
than the Canadian farm share, averaging
about 4.2 per cent more between 1997
and 2010.
Part of this can be explained by higher
food imports in Canada, especially fresh
fruits and vegetables, yet Kelly suspects
there are other reasons Canadian farmers
receive a lower percentage of consumer
spending on food than U.S. farmers get,
although her research did not investigate
this difference.
Even so, Kelly says, “Declining farm
share does not necessarily mean farmers
are being treated unfairly.”
Instead, Kelly says declining farm
share reflects the changing dynamics of
our food system. It is an indication of
changing consumer demand for more
processed food products, as well as
increased eating outside the home.
It may also reflect the farmer’s ability
to produce greater volumes of commodities more efficiently, Kelly says, so a falling farm share may actually be a signal
of a strong and efficient food system.
Action needs to be taken
Regardless of whether our declining
farm share is good or bad, farmers and
ranchers should be making consumers
aware of where their food dollars are
actually going.
Understanding farm share gives
producers facts they can use to inform
consumers that food prices are less a
function of commodity prices and more
the result of consumer demand for
highly processed foodstuffs.
Even more important, we as farmers need to be aware of the changing
demands of consumers.
Consumers want to use their food
dollars to purchase not only food, but
also convenience and time savings.
Unless we as producers can either provide the food products that consumers
demand — or partner with processors
and retailers who can provide those
products — we can expect the share
of the consumer spending on food we
receive will continue to decline.
Most of the spending by consumers on
food is captured by value adding rather
than production of raw commodities.
As an industry, agriculture needs to
recognize this fact and expand rather
than contract our food-processing sector.
Unfortunately this is not happening in
Canada (see sidebar).
Producers wanting a better understanding of food pricing and how it
relates to commodity pricing should read
Schnepf’s paper: Farm-to-Food Price
Dynamics. It is available on the web at:
www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40621.pdf. CG
country-guide.ca 13
business
The wide view
A half-hour west of Calgary, CL Ranches is winning
the battles that all of agriculture may soon face
By Angela Lovell
herie Copithorne-Barnes
knows the feeling. Ranching at Jumping Pound,
Alberta, just 30 minutes
west of Calgary, she looks
at today’s agriculture and sees it producing the healthiest, cheapest food the world
has ever known.
But she also looks around her and sees
an agriculture under intense scrutiny from
the beneficiaries of that food, and also
under pressure from the neighbours who
choose to share the space where farmers
need to conduct their business.
She doesn’t have to look far. “We are
next-door neighbours to a million people,” Copithorne-Barnes says. “We have
a highly affluent community that lives
around us because of the oil patch. They
have paid a million dollars plus to live on
their property.”
But, Copithorne-Barnes adds, “They
don’t work or socialize here... and they
get upset when the tires of their Mercedes
Benzes get covered in cow manure.”
Copithorne-Barnes’s great-grandfather,
Richard Copithorne came to Alberta
in 1884 from Cork, Ireland and began
assembling what became the nucleus of
the 28,000 acres that CL Ranches grazes
today. “Most of it is leased and includes
some Crown and First Nations land,”
Copithorne-Barnes says. “We have relationships that have been built over three
generations.”
Yet increasingly, her neighbours are
also three generations from the farm.
Their lack of knowledge of agriculture
and of what ranching is about, and how
it works, is threatening the social licence
that allows producers to do what they do,
says Copithorne-Barnes, who farms with
husband Tim and her 77-year-old father,
Marshall Copithorne.
Continued on page 16
14 country-guide.ca J u ly 2 0 1 4
business
Photography: Lori Loree • Loree Photography
Hemmed in by
suburban sprawl and
squeezed by consumer
and government
pressure, rancher
Cherie CopithorneBarnes focuses on
ways to keep in charge
of her own destiny.
It isn’t easy, but
it’s working.
J u ly 2 0 1 4 country-guide.ca 15
business
Continued from page 14
“My family has been in this community for 130 years. Everybody around me
has been here no more than 30, yet their
opinions are now becoming critical.
“Corporations and politicians are listening to them, and there’s a reason for
that. Corporations have realized, well in
advance of us producers, that it’s important to figure out what our social responsibility is,” Copithorne-Barnes says.
“We as producers have to start catching up on this because it’s not going away
any time soon,” she says. “Happy customers are a result of being happy with
what they see.”
Copithorne-Barnes realizes the future
of her ranching tradition is being affected
by influences that often have nothing to
do with the realities of raising cattle, so
she also knows that the voices of cattle
producers and other farmers must start
being heard above the din.
It’s the reason she is chair of the
Canadian Round Table for Sustainable
Beef, and why she is a strong advocate of
the industry.
Animal welfare issues are a huge
concern for consumers; they are driving changes throughout the livestock
industry. At the producer level, the
revised Code of Practice for the Care
and Handling of Beef Cattle, which was
released by the National Farm Animal
Care Council in August 2013, has new
requirements for the use of pain control
during painful procedures such as castration or dehorning.
At the other end of the chain, A&W
restaurants recently launched its “Better
Beef” campaign claiming that its beef
has no added hormones or steroids, and
McDonald’s Restaurants has announced
it will begin purchasing verified sustainable beef by December 2016.
Copithorne-Barnes has come to
understand first hand the power that
consumers and her neighbours have to
influence how she produces her product.
CL Ranches, in part because it’s so
close to Calgary, gets a lot of requests
for tours. These include requests from
the Canadian Food Inspection Agency
and Canada Beef, as well as from the
farm’s customers, such as Spring Creek
and Sobeys who bring their clients to see
a working cattle ranch.
“One group was from A&W and
what they really wanted to understand
was how to produce hormone-free cat16 country-guide.ca tle,” says Copithorne-Barnes. After the
tour, she asked why they were so interested in hormone free, which the ranch
has been producing for 17 years. “They
said they’d been watching their Twitter
accounts — and enough of their customers were asking for hormone-free beef
that they decided to go that route. You
may or may not agree with what their
final marketing plan was — but all they
were doing was listening to what their
consumers were asking for.”
About a year ago Spring Creek
brought out its Sobeys meat team — or
so she thought — for a tour of the ranch.
An English guy with the entourage asked
endless questions about the welfare of the
animals and videotaped some of Copithorne-Barnes’ answers. “As we toured
the empty feedlot the guy asked me, how
do you feel about putting your cows in
these pens after they have been free and
running around all summer?” she recalls.
“I told him you’re here in July and right
now it’s green and beautiful. Picture
yourself here in January, when it’s -40
and the wind’s blowing. You’d see every
pen filled with calves; they’d have fresh
feed in front of them; they’d be sleeping
on good, clean bedding and there’s lots of
shelter for them.”
Four weeks later she found out the
English guy had been the market development co-ordinator for celebrity chef
Jamie Oliver, sent on a scouting mission
to look at how some of the beef purchased by Sobeys was produced and to
determine if Oliver would allow his name
to be associated with Sobeys meat.
The video of Copithorne-Barnes
explaining how she raised her animals
was already on Sobeys website. “I got a
million-dollar endorsement that I didn’t
ask for,” she says. “But I began to wonder what was going on here, and it didn’t
take me long to realize that Sobeys was
trying to achieve what every retailer
wants. Jamie Oliver has the ability to
satisfy its customers — he has 3.7 million followers right now. What retailer in
their right mind wouldn’t like a guy like
Jamie Oliver promoting them?”
Such experiences made CopithorneBarnes realize how important it is for
farmers to be a part of the conversation about food and how it’s produced.
“Whether you’re in the specialty stream
or the commodity stream, the story that’s
being told can affect all of us,” she says.
“Retailers get this. They’re closer than
ever to their customers… they’re in tune
with this new millennial generation and
they function in the social media realm.
They engage them and educate them in
a way they understand — not by preaching — but by listening to their concerns.
That’s what we have to start doing.”
Nor is it just production methods that
producers need to explain, says Copithorne-Barnes, but also farmers’ social
commitment to the rural communities they
live in, as another incident taught her.
Copithorne-Barnes was shocked by
a local radio report last October that
her lease on 3,500 acres of public lands,
which provided summer grazing for 550
cow-calf pairs, was about to be withdrawn because the Alberta government
was expropriating the land to build a
new ring road around Calgary.
J u ly 2 0 1 4
business
Three weeks and many phone calls
later the province confirmed the story,
but it still wasn’t able to explain exactly
what it would mean for the ranch,
and she is still negotiating a new lease
arrangement. As word spread in the community, however, an open house was held
on the plan, which would impact a lot of
people especially if, as expected, it blocks
the road allowances that the community
wanted to develop as emergency exits in
case of flooding.
“One community member stood up
and said, ‘I can’t believe CL Ranches
would allow this to happen to that lease
without consulting us and telling us, and
if I hear that CL Ranches is going to
get any compensation while my private
land is being devalued, I am going to sue
them and the county and the province,’”
recalls Copithorne-Barnes. “I was completely taken aback. These were people
whose kids go to school with my kids
— they are my friends and neighbours
and they were ready to sue me because
they didn’t understand what was going
on… If I hadn’t gone to that meeting and
explained it, I can’t imagine how it would
have played out.”
It was a useful reminder, says Copithorne-Barnes, that in the absence of
someone telling the true story, rumour
and supposition will often fill up the void.
“The message is that we, as individual
producers, have to get out and tell our stories,” she says. “We might think the public
is not going to come knocking at our door
but the reality is, they are.”
Despite the constant encroachment
of an urban population — or perhaps
because of it — Copithorne-Barnes is one
of the very few of her generation, including her five siblings, who has decided to
stay in the area and ranch. “This ranch
is in my blood,” she admits. “I am one of
those crazy people who will probably die
dead broke fighting for this place, but I
wouldn’t have it any other way.”
She’s not afraid to face challenges,
and CL Ranches has a few unique ones.
Its location, at an elevation that averages around 4,000 feet, means the cost
of keeping cattle is higher than in most
areas. The ranch only averages 90 frostfree days and usually ends up feeding
Continued on page 18
“I spend over 50 per cent
of my time managing the
non-agricultural events
that come up daily,”
Copithorne-Barnes says.
J u ly 2 0 1 4 country-guide.ca 17
BUSINESS
Continued from page 17
cattle for around 5-1/2 months. They
have used genetics — developing what
they call the CL SuperCross Breed — to
help them stay in the game.
“CL has always strived to build the
cow to suit our environment,” says Copithorne-Barnes. “With such a short growing season, we must have cattle that don’t
require high-energy or high-input diets…
Our cows must be able to winter economically, remain fertile and raise a calf
that weans heavy.”
The SuperCross was originally a breed
made up of Hereford, Simmental and
Braunveih, but the cattle began to become
too large and had too high a feed requirement so the ranch brought in a British
breed, Sussex with better forage efficiency.
“The Sussex downsized the cows from
1,400 lbs. back down to 1,250 lbs.,”
explains Copithorne-Barnes. “Genetics
for us is always a continuous journey.
We’ve achieved the appropriate-size cow
again. Now, I’m looking to improve once
again on performance without losing the
fertility and structure.”
The ranch follows a strict and unforgiving cull policy. All open cows and
those in poor condition are sold. In fact,
it was this policy, plus the fact that the
ranch has always been in the bull-breeding business, that led it to supply the
naturally raised, hormone-free market in
the first place.
“We don’t castrate the bull calves
coming off our cows,” says CopithorneBarnes. “The bulls remain on grass until
the snow no longer allows them to perform efficiently, then they’re brought into
the feedlot and we select the top 25 per
cent performing bulls, leaving us with
the bottom 75 per cent that must be castrated and fed out.”
Originally, the ranch fed them as bulls
and sold them into the EU market, but
this ended with the BSE crisis, meaning
18 country-guide.ca
they had to find another avenue to sell
these bulls. “We went down the path of
keeping them hormone free, castrating
them and selling them into the ‘Natural
Markets,’” says Copithorne-Barnes.
Although this has worked well in the
past, with the new Beef Code of Practice it may become a practice that’s less
viable. “We will no longer be able to
castrate these bulls without full pain mitigation starting January 1, 2016, and this
simply adds to the cost of raising natural
beef,” says Copithorne-Barnes. “In my
opinion, as consumers begin to ask for
more natural products, any premiums
we had received in the past will no longer be as readily available as this market
expands, and I worry that it might not
remain viable because of this.”
The challenges seem endless sometimes, admits Copithorne-Barnes. “I
spend over 50 per cent of my time managing the non-agricultural events that
occur daily. For example, I have a road
construction crew parked outside my
front gate about to dig up the only road
I have that doesn’t have a road ban on
it, not to mention 600 cows calving that
have to be fed. It never ends here.”
To survive, the ranch has had to be
resourceful. “Our other, diversified operations simply help pay the bills,” says
Copithorne-Barnes. “We use the natural
resources that are readily available —
space and gravel.”
The ranch is only 35 minutes from
downtown Calgary and the airport,
and offers some panoramic views of
the Rocky Mountains, so it’s not surprising it was discovered by the movie
industry. In 1991, producers for the
Lonesome Dove television series, after
a lot of scouting throughout Alberta,
approached the ranch about building a
movie set on the property.
“They needed a site that was completely
isolated and close to Calgary, because in
those days they would have to send the rolls
of film to the airport for shipment to be
edited,” says Copithorne-Barnes.
The production company built a complete, circa 1850-1930 western townsite and studio set, and produced the TV
series there for six years, after which the
ranch bought it for about 10 cents on the
dollar, built a warehouse to store the set
decorations and props, and began to rent
it out. “Movie companies come in and
rent the location and all infrastructure,
which they build and by contract must
leave,” says Copithorne-Barnes. “All it
takes to attract them is the 180-degree,
unobstructed view of the mountains.”
The other diversification at the ranch
is a gravel business, which takes advantage of a huge gravel resource located
along the banks of the Jumping Pound
Creek that runs some 11 miles through
the property.
Nor does the future for CopithorneBarnes look to be getting any less complicated. “There are so many changes going
on around us here with regards to land
use regulations starting to weigh in, each
day makes you wonder if I am truly in the
ranch business or the real estate holding
business,” she says. “There’s talk of making eight lanes on the Trans-Canada and
four lanes on Highway 22 to the east of us,
and all that does is complicate our operations by making it tough to move around.
We are starting to look at non-agricultural
projects that will not affect the cows… we
know that these changes are inevitable and
therefore instead of fighting change, we
must look at ways of surviving them.”
In part, that’s because CopithorneBarnes like other farmers has the next
generation in mind, although she
admits she struggles with the question
of whether to encourage her children,
Josh, 14 and Courtney, 11 to carry on the
ranch. “Ultimately, I will leave it up to
them,” she says. “If they decide that they
would rather do something else, I would
never hold it against them.” CG
J U LY 2 0 1 4
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business
On the job
Can farmers compete
against the oilfield and
other industries? Our
Lisa Guenther goes
straight to the source
By Lisa Guenther
Jesse Bannerman works
as a farrier, runs cattle
with his brother, and works
on a cousin’s farm. Or he
could get one job in oil.
s farms get bigger, the
challenge of finding workers to cover those extra
acres or to help manage
those larger herds is getting bigger too, especially when agriculture goes head to head up against more
lucrative jobs in other sectors.
Farmers are a bit perplexed, though. I
mean, surely anyone would want the life
that comes with working on a farm, especially compared to the endless hours of an
oil rig, for instance, or to working the midnight shift in a grimy factory or at a job
that makes you sweat out the summer in a
grungy, dark downtown apartment.
Farming offers benefits that other
industries can’t, farmers say, such as a
chance to be close to nature, to work
with a variety of machinery, and to live a
healthy life in the open countryside.
That’s what farmers think.
But what do farm workers think?
Every region in Canada has its own
industries that compete for workers. In
Saskatchewan, it’s the oil and gas sector.
So I went to young people in our area,
and I asked them, do they agree that
farming really offers them a better working environment than the oilpatch?
Even more important, I wanted to
know — once they go to the patch, is
there any chance of getting them back?
Love of the land
I started with Jesse Bannerman who
grew up on a ranch near Livelong, in
northwestern Saskatchewan. These days
the 25-year-old works as a farrier, he runs
115 commercial cattle with his younger
20 country-guide.ca J u ly 2 0 1 4
business
“If you enjoy being outside,
I really recommend it,”
Jesse Bannerman says of his
decision to work in ag
brother, Jake, and he works too on his
second cousin’s mixed farm.
Though he’s obviously a busy young
man, he’s happy to make time to talk
about his experience working in ag and oil.
Earlier in his 20s, Jesse put in several months at Czar Feedyards, south of
Wainwright, Alta.
“One of my passions is working with
cattle. And I got to work with horses every
day, so I really enjoyed that,” Jesse says.
Jesse cites the physicality of agricultural work as a benefit too, and the fact
that he was always learning.
“If you enjoy being outside I really
recommend it,” Jesse adds. “You get to
see lots of scenery. Lots of wildlife, too.”
In other words, Jesse’s thinking and his
experiences are exactly in line with what
many farmers think: there’s no life like it.
Just a few miles down the road, Jesse’s
cousin Chase Bannerman grew up on
a seedstock Hereford operation, doing
everything from haying to showing cattle
through 4-H. Chase, now 20 years old,
also clocked nearly two years at One
Earth Farms, handling cattle.
J u ly 2 0 1 4 Chase counts working with cattle and
machinery as benefits that go along with
farm work.
“There’s not a whole lot of the farm I
don’t enjoy,” says Chase.
And it’s not just the scenery and the
job that pulls workers into agriculture.
The people themselves can be a draw.
“Everyone who’s involved in agriculture is very passionate about what they’re
doing out here,” says 20-year-old Braden
Clarke. Braden grew up on a farm seven
hours from the Bannermans in the Weyburn area, in southeastern Saskatchewan,
and he still calls the area home. In high
school, he worked for a neighbouring
grain farmer and also did oilfield fencing.
Braden says people in agriculture take
pride in their industry. “Everybody has
their neck out on the line, and nobody
really wants to be just putzing along and
have someone out there who doesn’t
want to help them better themselves.”
Robert Ellis packed in a lifetime of
work experience into his 20s. He spent
Continued on page 22
country-guide.ca 21
business
Continued from page 21
several summers working on a farm
while in university and also added Australian farm work to his resumé.
Robert then jumped to the oilpatch,
working as a swabber. Once the pump jacks
have been pulled from oil wells, swabbers
scavenge two or three barrels a time, up to
five times a week. Robert’s boss expanded
the business, and Robert bought in. When
horizontal wells came in, their mineral
rights soared in value, so they sold. And
that is how Robert went farming.
Now 32 years old, he farms 6,000
acres near Elrose, Sask. He has three farm
employees “and it just seems like more
of a family-oriented thing and everybody
kind of gets along and tries to get the
common goal done at the end of the day.”
In the oilfield, by contrast, “it’s almost
like you’re competitive with the next guy
standing beside you,” says Robert.
Farm employees also generally work
close to home, which isn’t the case for people with camp jobs, Robert says. Plus farm
work slows down in the winter, he adds,
and often employees get weekends off.
22 country-guide.ca Somebody’s
going to pay
Nor is a love of agriculture necessarily
enough to keep farm workers on the farm.
The oil industry sends living expenses sky
high, and Chase says farm employers need
to keep up.
Chase knows it’s hard for farmers to
keep workers in areas where they’re competing with the oilpatch. “But I think it
all comes down to money, really,” he says.
“People see opportunities in the oilfield
and the money they can get.”
That’s certainly the case with Chase.
After nearly two years of working with
One Earth Farms, Chase’s uncle offered
him a welding apprentice job, doing tank
maintenance.
“It was too good an opportunity to
pass up,” says Chase.
Chase adds some farmers have side
businesses in the oilfield plowing leases,
building roads, or towing equipment, and
so they employ people for both businesses.
Robert agrees farmers don’t have much
choice when it comes to competing with
the oil industry for wages.
“Down in our area there’s quite a bit
of oil,” says Robert, who adds he pays
what he considers big wages to his farm
employees. “Wages have definitely gone
up a lot for ag workers in the last five
years, and they’re going to continue.”
Robert also suggests giving flexible
hours when the season’s not busy. “And
just trying to be a great boss to work
for I think is a lot of it.”
Jesse Bannerman says he would have
stuck with the feedlot, but he had cattle at his parents’ ranch, which was a
3.5 hour drive each way. He went to
work on the rigs to make some quick
cash, then took a job close to home
with an oilfield service company
for a while.
In his mind, farmers are dealing with
a fraction of the potential workforce.
Whether or not someone is suited
to farm work depends on their goals
and preferences, says Jesse. “If you like
having fancy toys and things you might
want to stick to the oilpatch.”
That’s partly why Braden Clarke
has been roughnecking for the last two
years, and why he’ll be starting a twoJ u ly 2 0 1 4
Photography: mark seabrook
“It was too good
an opportunity
to pass up,”
Chase Bannerman
says to explain
why he jumped to
the oilpatch
business
year petroleum engineering technology
program in Calgary for the fall.
But it’s not just the money that attracted
Braden Clarke to the oilfield. “Nobody in
my family was ever involved in the oilfield.
So for me it was a big venture out. Kind of
something that intrigued me.”
Braden’s crew also gets along, which
is another plus of his current job. “With
the crew I’m working with now, we hang
out outside of our shifts.”
Chase enjoys his job, too, and compares it to working in the shop. “You’re
actually building things. At the end of the
day you can look at what you’ve done
and feel you’ve accomplished something.”
Although Jesse eventually left the oilfield, he enjoyed parts of it, too.
“I just didn’t like it as much as farming, but the biggest thing that I had
trouble with was to get time off when
I needed it just because there’re lots of
guys who were farming more than us at
the time,” says Jesse. “And everybody
takes holidays at the same time. It’s hard
for employers to keep everybody happy,
which is understandable.”
Jesse suggests farmers keep their
employees learning.
“If you’re doing something you
haven’t done before you’re a lot more
interested in it,” Jesse says. “That’s what
I really like.”
the family farm or work for farmers during spring breakup.
Chase hasn’t turned his back on agriculture, either. He still works on the family
farm and is investing in it, too. A goodpaying job speeds him towards his farming
goals, he says.
Jesse points out both industries are vital
to Saskatchewan’s economy. The oilfield
helps keep the small towns going, he says.
And he was able to leverage the dollars he
earned in the patch into his own operation.
“It’s tough not to have a secondary
job, and the oilfield provides a lot of
opportunities,” Jesse says.
Robert’s dream was always to farm,
and the oilfield helped make that dream
happen. He recalls the day, in his early
20s, when his father held an auction
sale, marking the end of the family farm.
“That was almost one of the saddest days of my life, thinking that maybe
you’ll never get a chance to farm on your
own again.”
But then, he got that job in oil and it all
turned around. CG
There’s job satisfaction in oil too,
says Chase Bannerman. “You can
look at what you’ve done and feel
you’ve accomplished something.”
Moving to the
patch and back
The hidden irony is that the farm is
an ideal training ground for the skills
needed by oilpatch. The solid work
ethic that farming nurtures is sought
after too.
Farm work gave Braden the confidence to handle new situations in the
oilpatch, he says. And working on
machinery helped out in the patch, too.
“You go to work on a rig and the
guys are surprised you even know what
the tools are called,” says Braden.
But just because a farm worker
spends time in the oilfield, that doesn’t
mean they’ll become estranged from the
farm.
Braden puts in his shift on the rigs,
comes home, and puts in another shift
on the family farm. And he’s not the only
one on his crew.
“One of the guys I work with,
he’s now working for a farmer during
breakup,” says Braden. He adds it’s common for oil workers to help out either on
J u ly 2 0 1 4 country-guide.ca 23
Addressing a Potential Market Failure
in the Forage and Grasslands Sector
The CFGA recently addressed the House
of Commons Standing Committee on
Agriculture and Agri-Food on the issue
of innovation and competitiveness in
the forage and grasslands sector. One
question from the committee centred
on the issue of various forage legume
inoculant markets that commercial
enterprises no longer support. Producers
relying on forage legumes understand
that it has become a challenge to access
inoculants for forages such as sainfoin,
bird’s-foot trefoil, crown vetch, ladino,
alsike, red and white clovers, as well as
milk vetch. While the CFGA is addressing
this issue through its Research and
Extension Committee, it could take
some time to resolve and may require
an industry-wide solution that includes
input from stakeholders such as the
Canadian Food Inspection Agency,
forage seed companies, as well as
research and extension personnel in the
public and private sector, among others.
Ideally, the CFGA is looking for a solution
that does not burden any one party and
provides the inoculants required for
these specialty forage legumes.
The Committee noted that sometimes
markets fail for various reasons. The
Committee asked the CFGA if there
might be a co-operative model whereby
the organization could take “ownership”
of the products of research into forage
legume inoculants on behalf of its
stakeholders. This is an interesting
proposition — and there are a number
Canadian Forage
& grassland
assoCiation
www.canadianfga.ca
Ph: 780-430-3020
of instances in agriculture where this
type of model has evolved. CFGA will
consider the feasibility of this scenario
within the context of its long-term
strategy.
That strategy will take form as it
gathers information. The Research and
Extension Committee has completed
the framework for a research strategy,
which is just one document the CFGA
will need to construct its comprehensive
strategy for the future. Currently,
however, the CFGA does not have the
capacity to develop all of the reports
required internally, and may have to
contract at least some of these services
from external industry consultants. With
the announcement of Agriculture and
Agri-Food Canada’s (AAFC) Canadian
Agricultural Adaptation Program
(CAAP) (2014-2019), CFGA may be able
to take advantage of a $50.3-million
program that provides non-repayable
contributions for industry-led projects
that help the agriculture, agri-food,
and agri-based products sector adapt
and remain competitive. If the CFGA
were successful in obtaining a CAAP
grant, project costs would be shared
on a 50:50 basis between AAFC and the
CFGA. The CFGA could include its own
funds and/or the funds of its members,
industry supporters and other project
participants.
In addition to the inoculant issue, the
CFGA seeks a more comprehensive
understanding of the workings of the
Canadian forage seed sector. This is
of particular concern given the recent
rescheduling of forage seed to Part III of
the Seeds Act and the limited capacity
to test the performance of new forage
varieties on a national basis. These
issues will not only have an effect on the
80 per cent of Canada’s beef production
and 60 per cent of the dairy cow diet
that are currently dependent on forages,
they will also have implications for
the use of forages in land reclamation,
restoration efforts and biodiversity
initiatives as the availability of cultivated
and native forage seed and inoculant
declines.
The CFGA is actively seeking strategic
partners in the forage and grassland
value chain with a mutual interest in
specific forage and grasslands initiatives.
Partners could include any organization
that is committed to sharing physical
and/or intellectual resources with CFGA
in order to achieve a defined common
objective. The CFGA also recognizes
that there are many individuals across
Canada who appreciate the value of our
forage and grasslands, are supportive
of the CFGA, and may wish to be
involved by becoming Patron Members
of the CFGA. Those with an interest in
becoming more actively involved in
forages and grasslands in conjunction
with the CFGA are encouraged to
contact us through our website at
www.canadianfga.ca.
learn more about how peter farms
smart at nhsmart.com/peterJ
©2014 CNH Industrial America LLC. All rights reserved. New Holland is a trademark registered
in the United States and many other countries, owned by or licensed to CNH Industrial N.V.,
its subsidiaries or affiliates. NHM04148906L
business
Where to next?
Someone is always trying to predict the future of agriculture.
You might even be tempted to believe them… at your peril
By Gord Gilmour, CG Associate Editor
uman beings just can’t stand to
feel that they’re being left in the
dark. There’s something about the
unknown that flat out bothers us.
We go to enormous lengths to try
to see what might be coming next, and we divert a
big pile of our cash and an even bigger pile of our
even scarcer time and attention to following market
reports, listening to experts and going to meetings
and conferences to try to sort out what is coming
down the pipe.
In fact, agriculture is among the worst, ever since
the biblical foretelling long, long ago of seven years
of feast followed by seven years of famine.
It’s only natural in an industry that is so tossed
about by weather — and by the volatile prices that
result — that farmers keep their eyes on the horizon
for any kind of insight.
Increasingly, it’s also good business. With the
resources that are needed to keep farming today, let
alone the big dollars needed in order to expand, who
wouldn’t be looking for a glimmer of the world a
few years down the road?
But, if we turn to corn as a convenient example,
in the last decade alone we’ve been told that a bushel
will always sell for $8, or always for $3, or for
maybe something in between, just as we’ve been told
that land prices have topped out, or that they have
barely begun to rise.
Is the world really going to
run out of food? Or are farmers
going to overproduce their
way into gluts and low prices
all over again? The truth is,
no one really has a clue
26 country-guide.ca We’ve also been assured that the world will run
out of food, only to hear from the next expert that
farmers are more than capable of growing a glut, no
matter how many mouths need filling.
The problem is, each of those predictions has
sounded utterly reasonable, absolutely scientific,
and totally believeable.
The question is, is there a way for farmers to
separate the true from the misguided?
What’s a farmer to do?
The answer might start with looking at just how
old the debate actually is. It might seem like all
today’s talk about global population growth and
the rise of the middle class has come about because
we’re living in a new, unprecedented point in history.
But there’s very little that’s unprecedented about it.
Just barely out of the age of antiquity, Scottish
cleric and political economist Thomas Malthus
coined the Malthusian principle in his 1798 work An
Essay on the Principle of Population. He theorized
that every population will always expand until it
exceeds its ability to feed itself.
Malthus has mostly been proven wrong so far.
Better agricultural practices have continually boosted
our yields to meet the need. But we still believe him,
such as in the early 1970s, when the European thinktank the Club of Rome released its seminal work
Limits to Growth. It tried to put a modern spin on
it, but it was in essence a rehash of Malthus’s central
idea that limited resources would act as a check on
growth. It came at roughly the same time that pop
culture was fixating on the same issue, in books like
Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb.
In other words, there have always been predictions that we’re on the edge of global starvation. And
to date, farmers have always saved the day.
So when agriculture in the 1970s experienced
another of its period price spikes, with demand outstripping supply, many believed the future was here.
In the rear-view mirror, however, the view is different, and predictable. Given a price signal and lots of
encouragement from people like then U.S. agriculture secretary Earl “Fencerow-to-Fencerow” Butz,
farmers made investments and kicked it up another
few notches. As always, high prices solved high
prices, and soon the world was awash in a grain glut.
J u ly 2 0 1 4
business
More recently, history might not
exactly be repeating, but it does seem to
be rhyming. Economic growth in developing countries is building demand for
better food products, and at the same
time the ethanol market is sopping up a
huge portion of the U.S. corn crop. This
has prompted the usual shouts of “it’s
different this time” that usually accompany the boom right before the bust.
But is it different? Maybe. Or maybe
300-bushel corn will kill this dream too.
The point is, we don’t know. So
should we even bother listening to the
next big prediction? Does anyone even
have a sniff as to what the future holds?
The certainty principle
At the University of Manitoba, noted
agriculture economist Brian Oleson, often
gets skeptical when he hears anyone taking a long view with dead certainty.
“None of us really know,” Oleson
said in a recent interview. “If either you
or I, or anyone else for that matter, did,
we’d take a big position in the market,
make a lot of money and retire very rich
to a beach somewhere sunny.”
In big part, the problem with longterm predictions is they’re inevitably
being made by human beings, and most
of us simply haven’t been around long
enough to spot the natural rhythm of
things, making us all too susceptible to
believing what we want to hear — things
like it’s a new era for farming, where the
good times will last forever.
To gain a little insight into the longer
trends, Country Guide was fortunate
enough to talk to someone who’s been
around the block a time or two, with the
tales to tell to prove it. Charles “Red”
Williams is a professor emeritus with the
University of Saskatchewan and a wellknown public speaker and newspaper
columnist on agriculture topics. These
days he’s looking hard at 90, but even
a few seconds of conversation confirms
his formidable mind remains in fighting
trim. Contacted by a smart-aleck young
writer looking for insight into the future,
he chuckled a few seconds and delivered
a crisp assessment.
“Well, I think C ountry G uide is
brave to even take this on, and you’ll do
fine if you just accept one thing — the
Predictions to trust
It looks like $4 corn is here for years to come
Is it folly to believe any prediction? Strangely, our three academics don’t think so,
at least in the relative near term. In fact, they say there’s plenty of writing on the wall, if
you’ll just clear away the clutter and look at what’s important.
So here are predictions from the people who spend a good part of their lives
debunking other people’s forecasts.
Red Williams at the University of Saskatchewan tells us he’s most confident that
technology will race onwards, including farm robots and other autonomous equipment
that will see farmers effectively farming from their offices in many cases.
“I think that’s pretty much a given now,” Williams said. “I think engineers are right
on the verge of putting a lot of things together right now, and enough progress has
been made that you can predict that fairly safely.”
But there are important human factors at play too. Williams for one expects to see
more smart and savvy women take dominant roles in farming and agriculture.
“I remember the first woman who studied agriculture at the University of Saskatchewan, and today they make up about 70 per cent of the students,” Williams said.
“They’re not just doing well, they’re doing very well. The boys are all off digging holes
in Alberta, and the girls are the ones getting an education.”
Brian Oleson says the news might not be welcomed by farmers, but the latest
reports from the USDA and the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute (FAPRI)
at the universities of Iowa and Missouri show that leaner times may be upon us again.
Those reports are calling for corn to stay at the lower end of the range for years to
come, as production meets demand.
“One person I spoke to told me he’d never seen such an abrupt change,” Oleson
said.
Oleson said both reports confirm a growing consensus among agriculture economists that the boom couldn’t run forever. And the numbers and timeline are far from
encouraging for farmers.
“They took corn to around US$4 a bushel, where it stays until about 2022,” Oleson
said. “I agree. I think we are entering an era of $4 corn.”
John Cranfield agreed prices are likely to stay on the lower end of the range for a
while, saying it’s a predictable pattern that the world has seen before, where demand
outstrips supply for a time, sending a price signal to producers and investors.
It’s the archetypal patter. Prices rise, productivity grows for a time, and supply
meets demand, and prices fall.
The historic curve got bounced by the sudden surge in demand coming from
politcally mandated ethanol consumption, but Cranfield and Oleson both say that was
a one-time-only surge.
“In a lot of ways we’ve seen the beginning of the ethanol boom, and the end of it,
because of fracking,” Oleson said, referring to new technology used to release oil from
shale formations.
Cranfield also said he’s expecting the emerging power of consumers to continue
to have a major role in shaping agriculture, through consumer preferences. Love it
or hate it, producers are going to have to grapple with things like consumer attitudes
toward sustainability and animal welfare, whether they’re scientifically justified or not.
But the new consumer age will create opportunities too, Cranfield said. “I also think
there will be changing preferences from consumers and a greater market for things
like functional foods.”
Continued on page 28
J u ly 2 0 1 4 country-guide.ca 27
business
Continued from page 27
second you write it down, you’re going to begin
being wrong,” Williams said.
He explained that his generation didn’t do a
great job of predicting the future, the next didn’t
either, and the current one likely won’t beat anyone
else’s record.
“Going way back, we had no idea what would be
coming over the next 40, 50 or 60 years,” Williams
said. “We just had a glimpse or two, really.”
To give some sense of just how fast things can
change, Williams spoke of his own experience
around the time of the Second World War. Prior to
joining up, he finished one last harvest, as a member
of an old-school threshing crew, running a team of
four horses. Just a couple years later he had a frontrow seat to the D-Day invasion of Normandy, even
to this day one of the most impressive displays of
mechanized warfare ever launched.
“As futures get closer and
closer to maturity, they become
a very good barometer,”
Cranfield says. “Further out
than that, things start getting
really shaky.”
“There were 4,000 ships, many with 16-inch guns
that pounded targets 25 miles inland,” Williams said.
“You watched wave after wave of planes — thousands of them — coming overhead. The British even
assembled, floated over and anchored a movable
harbour just off the coast.”
Returning home, he was still in uniform when he
got a message from his uncle, who farmed on the fertile Regina Plains, calling for help with the harvest.
Still in uniform, he requested leave to help finish.
When he arrived he saw the first sign of the change
that was about to come.
“He had a small combine, and together he and
I finished the harvest,” Williams said. “That was
one of the greatest legacies of the Second World
War — we created the heavy manufacturing capacity to build things like larger tractors and other farm
equipment.”
Likewise the first agriculture chemicals were
things like DDT, developed to protect troops from
malaria, and fertilizer became much more readily
available as high explosive plants were repurposed to
nitrogen fertilizer production.
28 country-guide.ca “God help us, but a war really speeds things up,”
Williams said. “But at least after the war we were
able to turn these things to peaceful purposes — we
really did turn the swords into ploughshares.”
His central point remains strongly held — a
young person leaving college today to go back to the
home farm can’t possibly predict the unpredictable,
or envision just how things will play out any more
than the young man who marched to war in the
early 1940s. Human history is littered with so-called
black swan events that are utterly random, even to
the most informed and involved participants.
“That’s the nature of black swan events — they’re
totally unpredictable, that’s what makes them black
swans,” says Oleson of the U of M.
Practical insight
All this adds up to a real hesitation on the part
of reputable academics to try to peer too far into the
future, preferring to leave that to the self-styled futurists.
John Cranfield, an agriculture economist with
the University of Guelph, puts it this way. He says
there’s a really good track record of accuracy in the
very short term, measured in a few months or a year,
and he convincingly points to futures markets as the
best example of this.
“As futures get closer and closer to maturity, they
become a very good barometer that farmers can use
to take action,” Cranfield said. “Farmers can use
them to determine things like their crop mix, and to
make other economic decisions. But further out than
that, things start getting really shaky.”
Cranfield says medium-term predictions can have
some value, over a time frame of five to 10 years,
but even they should be taken with a grain of salt,
because unpredictable things can happen.
“It’s like a public opinion survey you might see,”
Cranfield said. “Those are usually said to be accurate, on average, plus or minus a few per cent, 19
times out of 20.”
Brian Oleson agrees that such predictions require
caution, but also says the agriculture economics field
has accrued a bit of a track record of success predicting these medium-term trends.
“I think we’ve more-or-less been good,” Oleson
said. “In the early 1970s we said there would be a
period of prosperity, and there was, for about 10
years, until the early 1980s. By about 1982, we were
saying we were headed into a tougher period, which
we did. Beginning in about 2004 and 2005, we
started talking about heading into a better period we
thought would last about 10 years or so.”
But what about those big-picture, headline-grabbing
statements about new paradigms and the like? Here
nobody Country Guide spoke to was willing to plant
a flag in the ground and try to defend their track record.
“When you get out a long ways — 25 years or
even more — I wouldn’t say I have a lot of confidence in those sorts of predictions,” Cranfield said.
“It really is a stab in the dark most times.” CG
J u ly 2 0 1 4
CONGRATULATIONS!
Donald Bertagnolli
Rocky Mountain House,
Alberta
Danean Edgar
Wolseley,
Saskatchewan
The next generation of Canadian
agricultural leaders is growing,
and CABEF is proud to support
them. Congratulations to these six
exceptional students who have won
$2,500 CABEF scholarships. Based
on their applications, the future of the
agriculture industry is in great hands.
Michelle Ross
Grenfell,
Saskatchewan
Stephanie
Dousselaere
Cartwright, Manitoba
Colleen Crunican
Denfield, Ontario
Mario Roy
St-Jules-de-Beauce,
Québec
Six more $2,500 scholarships
will be awarded to grade 12
students in April 2015.
Apply at cabef.org
@CABEFoundation
CABEF is a registered charity (#828593731RR0001).
For more information on all registered charities in Canada under the Income Tax Act, please visit: Canada Revenue Agency www.cra-arc.gc.ca/charities.
business
A new farm
that buzzes
Eight years ago, Dragonfly
Garden Farm struggled to get
off the ground. Now, it’s working
toward $1 million in sales
By Helen Lammers-Helps
hile many dreamers might spend their whole
lives thinking they’d like to farm but never
do it, Cindy and Mike Wilhelm made it
happen. In fact, only seven months after
making the decision to farm, they were the
proud owners of a 70-acre farm near Chatsworth, Ont. that they
named Dragonfly Garden Farm.
Eight years later they have established a successful farm
where they raise pastured beef, pork, chicken, turkeys, ducks
and geese which they market themselves through an on-farm
store and CSA program.
This is no small feat, given that neither Cindy nor Mike had any
farming experience or agricultural education before making the leap.
They did, however, have many transferable skills. Mike is an
auto mechanic, which has been handy for keeping their older
farming equipment running.
Cindy meanwhile has a diploma in marketing, which has
helped her establish a loyal customer base locally and in Toronto.
Other than that, what they didn’t know they figured out how
or learned through self-education and first-hand experience.
“I have a reference book on every type of livestock we have,”
explains Cindy who grew up in the small town of Monkton. “I
came up through the 4-H program where the motto is to learn
by doing.”
Admittedly, this isn’t always an easy way to learn, says Cindy,
who also keeps beehives on the farm. “The bees are painful
teachers,” she says with a chuckle.
It’s the kind of remark that convinces you Cindy is made of
the right stuff for farming.
Early on, the Wilhelms did take a two-day workshop from
the Ecological Farmers of Ontario on soil ecology that was
really valuable, says Cindy. Healthy soil is the foundation of the
farm, she says.
Although they are not certified organic, they follow organic
farming principles, she says. They always planned to farm
organically but the cost of getting certified was too high. They
would have had to pay a fee for each commodity, she explains.
“It would be a paperwork and financial nightmare.”
Instead they encourage their customers to come to the farm
to see for themselves how the animals are raised.
30 country-guide.ca J u ly 2 0 1 4
business
Don’t underestimate the value
of farm marketing, say Cindy
and Mike Wilhelm, who built
a whole farm on that strategy
J u ly 2 0 1 4 “Our customers don’t demand that we be certified
organic,” says Cindy. And since the Wilhelms don’t market
outside of Ontario, it isn’t necessary to be certified organic,
she says. What’s important to her customers is that the animals be pasture raised and treated humanely. Her customers
believe meat from pasture-raised animals is superior to meat
from confined animals, she says.
Two-thirds of the meat they produce is sold through a CSA
(community-supported agriculture) program to clients in cities
within a two-hour drive, including Toronto, Waterloo, London
and Hamilton. CSA members get 20 to 40 pounds of meat
delivered each month between June and November, either
directly to their door or to a common pickup location such as
a health food store (the less expensive option).
Members can also choose from a mix of available meats.
Cindy and Mike are partnering with nine other farms who supply some of the meat such as lamb, bison, and turkey which
they don’t raise themselves.
CSA members pay 50 per cent up front in May and the rest
in August, which helps with the cash flow, adds Cindy.
The Wilhelms are now also offering cheese, eggs and vegetables produced by other farmers as well.
To ensure that partner farms are using acceptable farming
practices, the Wilhelms visit each farm annually, do spot checks
and have the farmers sign a partnership agreement that Cindy
created to cover all the bases of sustainable farming practices.
About 15 per cent of their meat is sold locally through either
their on-farm store or through area stores that specialize in
local food.
After discovering that it was difficult to get access to
organic feed in their area, they became dealers for Homestead
Organics, which accounts for the remaining 10 per cent of
their income.
For marketing, Cindy relies on the website (www.dragonflyfarmstore.ca) and an electronic newsletter that she produces
through the Constant Contact direct email marketing platform.
She has a database of 900 subscribers for her newsletter which
she writes herself.
“The newsletter converts people from prospects to customContinued on page 33
country-guide.ca 31
business
Doorstep delivery, hunter-gatherer style
A
nne Marie Heinrichs is the kind of
consumer who farmers often feel they
just can’t get on the same wavelength
with.
It doesn’t take long to find that out.
Based on her reseach, which included a
television documentary on modern food production, Heinrichs says she felt inspired to
switch to whole organic foods.
Then, only a few weeks after making the
switch, she says, the chronic pain she had
experienced for 25 years disappeared. After
a few more months, she had shed excess
weight and was healthier.
Farmers can cry foul all they want, but
Heinrichs was convinced that this was how
she wanted to feed her family. As a busy
business owner and mother of three, however, she had trouble finding the time to
shop at several different places and to cook
from scratch every night.
That’s what put her on a business path
where perhaps she shares a bit more in
common with most farmers.
Figuring there had to be others who were
facing the same challenges, she launched
Farmers Kitchen Table, a meal delivery service that focuses on healthy, local, sustainable food. The meals are made by a local
chef and are delivered right to the customer’s door two times per week in Kitchener,
Waterloo, Cambridge and Guelph.
Meat and vegetables are sourced from
local farms including Dragonfly Garden
Farm, Rowe Meats and Nith Valley Organics.
To accommodate customers with celiac’s
disease, the autoimmune reaction to eating
gluten found in wheat, barley and rye, Heinrichs partnered with a local bakery, Newton’s
Gluten-free, that specializes in gluten-free
bread, muffins, and desserts.
Many of the meals prepared for Farmers
Kitchen Table are suitable for those following
a Paleo diet, which is based on the concept
of eating only the foods that our huntergatherer ancestors would have eaten. Many
naturopaths and holistic nutritionists recommend this type of diet.
For convenience, the meals can be
ordered online, and the menu changes each
week to add variety and take advantage of
seasonal produce. Some dishes, such as
lamb stew, are available year round.
Items from the weekly menu are delivered fresh while those from the “Always
Available” menu are frozen. Customers who
aren’t going to be home at the time of delivery can leave a cooler out. Some people
have the meals delivered to their workplace
so they can refrigerate them right away
and then take them home with them, says
Heinrichs.
Meals come in three portion sizes: Adult,
Child and Senior. Predetermined portion
sizes prevent people from overeating.
With an eye on sustainability, meals are
delivered in 100 per cent recyclable containers
that can be used in the freezer, oven or microwave. Customers who purchase a monthly
or annual membership can opt to have their
meals delivered in reusable glass dishes.
Members also have access to the company larder which includes gluten-free condiments, preserves and snacks. They also
receive invitations to exclusive members-only
events such as supper clubs.
Heinrichs launched the business last
March with a tasting event at the Walper Hotel
in downtown Kitchener. About 200 people
came out to try the ready-to-eat meals and
meet the chefs, bakers and farmers.
Heinrichs continues to develop the
concept and increase market reach. For
example, she is joining forces with the
Guelph-based Homefield Organics which
delivers organic groceries. “Homefield will
offer some of our frozen dishes on its weekly
list that it sends to its customers so that it
can have our meals delivered as part of its
produce delivery,” explains Heinrichs.
Eventually, she hopes to add a retail location where meals can be picked up.
Sales are growing slowly, which is what
Heinrichs expected. “It’s a new type of concept for people… to try to plan ahead and
trust that the food will be there for their
families!”
For more information,
go to www.FarmersKitchenTable.com.
32 country-guide.ca J u ly 2 0 1 4
business
Theirs is still a small farm, but the
Wilhelms are succeeding in a business
where others never get further than
dreaming. The difference, says Cindy, is
that they know it’s up to them to connect
with their customers.
Photography: David Charlesworth
Continued from page 31
ers,” Cindy says. She developed the website with the help of a graphic designer.
This year they also have a new customer. The Farmers Kitchen Table will
be using Dragonfly Garden Farm meats
for chef-prepared meals delivered direct
to customers’ homes in Kitchener, Waterloo, Guelph and Cambridge. Geared to
those who want local, sustainable food,
the company produces ready-to-eat, gluten-free meals. (see sidebar.)
Cindy’s goal is to eventually have
sales of $1 million from a combination of
their own produce and 20 partner farms.
Small farms need to band together, she
believes. They also need political clout.
Among the obstacles to their growth are
the caps on the number of laying hens
and meat chickens and turkeys they can
keep since they don’t own quota. (They
are limited to 300 meat chickens, 100
laying hens and 50 turkeys.)
This past winter, Cindy invested her
time in developing an e-commerce site
J u ly 2 0 1 4 on the farm store website to market the
wealth of locally made artisanal food
products. She took courses through an
online business development program to
gain the necessary skills. Currently she
has 50 shelf-stable items such as barbecue sauce, jams, jellies, pickles and
relishes in the store pantry. She is hoping
to double that number in the near future.
All of these pantry items have to be
made in a commercial kitchen and must
meet labelling requirements, says Cindy.
The Wilhelms believe the market is
there. But they can’t just wait for the market to come to them. So, while it’s true
that 13 million people live in Ontario, 80
per cent of them are in large cities.
Says Cindy: “I believe we need to
meet them where they are and make it
easy for customers to access these incredible artisan products.”
So far, cash flow has been the biggest challenge of starting the farm, says
Cindy. For the first several years every
dollar they could spare was plowed back
into the farm. Now with eight years
behind them, that’s getting a little easier,
she says, even though they continue to
expand the operation. They are renting
an additional 96 acres and this year they
are adding a walk-in freezer while also
increasing the size of the on-farm store.
Down the road they would also like to
add U-pick blueberries, raspberries and
strawberries.
With their “can-do” attitude, business acumen and ability to seek out
information they need, she and Mike
believe they have laid the foundation
for a successful farm business and made
their dream of farming come true.
In the early years they both had offfarm jobs to keep them afloat. “It was
like working two full-time jobs each,”
she says. Now they both work full time
only on the farm.
The amount of work involved in getting the farm established was also daunting, says Cindy. “I’m glad we did it, but I
wouldn’t want to do it again,” she says,
and then with a gleam in her eye, she
chuckles some more. CG
country-guide.ca 33
Legal
When businessmen become directors
If your farm is incorporated, are you sure
you are meeting your legal obligations?
By Naomi Loewith, lawyer at Lenczner Slaght
hen a business transitions from a sole proprietorship or partnership to a corporation,
the move requires a shift in how decisions
are made. In particular, making decisions
solely as a businessman (or woman, of
course) is different from making decisions as a corporate director, so it is important to know how directors’ decisions will be
judged. In addition, it is helpful to understand the legal standard for assessing a conflict of interest, and to know about one
tool — the oppression remedy — that a court may use to rectify
director misconduct. The guiding principle
The guiding principle for all directors is to act “honestly, in
good faith, and with a view to the best interests of the organization.” This itself can require a shift in thinking: the sole proprietor of a business can make decisions that best serve his own
interests, but a director’s duty is to put the corporation above
himself. So, for example, deferring taxes may benefit the owner
but increase taxes payable by the corporation; approving such
an action could be a breach of the director’s duty.
Where a court is asked to assess a director’s decision, the
judge will defer to the business judgment of the directors, as
long as the decision “lies within a range of reasonable alternatives.” That is, a court will not criticize a decision — even one
that led to a bad outcome — simply because another reasonable
person would have made a different decision. Any decision that
was on the spectrum of appropriate choices in the circumstances is acceptable.
A director’s decision is more likely to be on that spectrum
of reasonable choices where the director can demonstrate due
diligence in making that decision. Directors have a duty to
inform themselves about the issues being decided, actively ask
questions for more information, and consult outside professionals where independent advice is needed. Directors must also be
aware of potential problems that may flow from their decisions,
and be proactive in preventing or mitigating those harms.
In determining the best interests of the corporation, directors
must also consider the impact of their decisions on a range of
the organization’s stakeholders — including investors, employees, suppliers, creditors, customers and members — but ultimately the organization’s interests reign supreme. Recent political events have brought conflict of interest
concerns into public discourse. For a corporate director, a
conflict of interest exists where a director has a “material
interest” in a proposed transaction or decision. Any nontrivial benefit could be a material interest. That interest need
not belong to the director himself — it could extend to family
members or even friends. Where a director believes he has a conflict of interest, he
should disclose the nature of that conflict as soon as possible,
34 country-guide.ca and refrain from participating in deliberations on that topic. To
avoid the perception of pressuring other directors, it is also prudent to leave the room during the discussion. When a director is an owner or employee in addition to being
a director, he will by definition have an interest in many decisions.
Those decisions should be made with advice from outside professionals, whose recommendation, review or blessing can often shield
a decision from attack. Thus, for example, an accountant should
give an opinion about the fairness of proposed salary increases.
Where a director fails to identify and disclose a conflict of interest, that director might be liable to the organization for any profits
made from the transaction. Similarly, the decision at issue might be
overturned, although before doing so a court would assess whether
the transaction was fair and reasonable to the organization.
The oppression remedy
In some cases, people who are unhappy with a director’s
decision can challenge that decision in court. Statutes in most
provinces provide a tool for directors or shareholders to
attack decisions that were “unfairly prejudicial” or taken in
“unfair disregard” of one person’s interests. This “oppression
remedy” is most often invoked for closely held corporations
(especially family companies), but is available for the decisions of any corporation.
Decisions that are vulnerable to a court challenge under
the oppression remedy usually involve conduct that is abusive,
harsh, self-interested or coercive. It may relate both to the substance of the decision, and to the procedure followed in reaching
the decision.
To succeed, a shareholder or director who brings an oppression
action must show that he had a reasonable expectation that a corporation or its directors would behave in a particular way, based
on the relationship between the parties, past practices, promises
made, or other factors.
Where a complainant can demonstrate that corporation
failed to meet his reasonable expectations, which caused him
harm, the court has a wide range of options to help the injured
party. For example, the court can set aside or amend agreements
the corporation has made, compel directors to take certain
steps, or order that a party’s shares be purchased at fair value
by the corporation or another shareholder. The court will take a
broad approach and find the best way to undo the harm caused
by the oppression.
While the oppression remedy can be both extreme and
expensive to pursue, directors should keep all these principles
in mind when making decisions and trying to act in a corporation’s best interests. CG
Naomi Loewith is a litigator at Lenczner Slaght in Toronto.
She regularly advises boards of directors, and has brought and
defended legal actions about corporate decision-making.
J u ly 2 0 1 4
sustainability
special section
At this summer’s World Congress on Conservation Agriculture, Country Guide joined farmers,
agronomists, researchers and policy-makers from 33 countries in Winnipeg to explore the health of the
world’s soil. What we learned was shocking, Daunting, eye-opening… and encouraging.
cAn our farmers
save the soil, and
feed the world?
Page 4
Are america’s days
as ag powerhouse
eroding away?
page 6
why has global
no-till adoption
hit a brick wall?
page 11
Breeding
for Tomorrow
Syngenta commits to delivering sustainable farming solutions
As a world leader in agri-business, Syngenta is keenly aware that farming must be carried out in a
sustainable manner. Agricultural productivity must significantly increase in order to feed a global population.
With the added stress of lost farm land to urbanization, soil erosion taking its toll and water resources under
increasing pressure, Syngenta believes that businesses – not just government – need to play a larger role
in fostering long-term approaches to food security and sustainability.
In 2013, Syngenta launched The Good Growth Plan – six commitments developed to address the global
food security challenge with specific, ambitious and measurable targets. The first of these commitments
is to make crops more efficient, with the goal of increasing average productivity of the world’s major crops
by 20 percent without using more land, water or inputs.
Syngenta advances in breeding
Syngenta believes that breeding advancements are a
fundamental means to achieving this goal and, as such,
focuses much of its research and development investments
in this area. Within Canada specifically, Syngenta has been
progressing the science of cereal crop breeding for more
than 40 years, developing not only new varieties but also
advancing innovative breeding technologies and techniques.
“It is our ambition to transform cereal production worldwide
by creating innovative solutions that set unprecedented
standards for yield, quality and sustainability,” says
Norm Dreger, Head, Cereals North America. “Our record
of technology innovation, investment and involvement,
in combination with future milestones, are compelling
examples of our ability to propel the wheat sector
forward in a sustainable way.”
Specific areas of cereal breeding that have a direct impact
on sustainability include:
Pest-resistant genes
Varieties that have inherent resistance to pests are an
important component of a sustainable Integrated Pest
Management (IPM) approach. Syngenta is currently
focusing its breeding efforts on a number of areas of
genetic pest resistance, including: wheat midge resistance;
resistance to multiple races of rust, including ug99 wheat
stem rust; and Fusarium head blight (FHB) resistance.
Genetic pest resistance provides a strong basis to protect
the crop from pathogens and insects, as well as complements
the use of foliar pesticides, allowing efficient use of active
ingredients during the crop development cycle.
Agronomic enhancements
A major Syngenta sustainability advancement has been the
development of Agrisure Artesian® technology in corn hybrids.
“More than a decade of research, using procedures unique
to Syngenta, produced corn hybrids that convert water
to grain more effectively through the activity of multiple,
naturally occurring genes that influence water use in corn,”
says Darcy Pawlik, Head, Cereals Portfolio, Syngenta North
America. “Hybrids with Artesian technology surpass
traditional drought tolerance in corn by maximizing yield
with available water in good conditions and increasing
the plant’s ability to yield under water stress, thus making
optimal use of available water resources,” he explains.
It is hoped that with further research and development,
this technology might be adapted in other key crops to
assist in water conservation as well as crop preservation
in drought-prone areas across the globe.
Sustainable soybean farming
Soybean breeding has also undergone significant growth in
the last 10 years to accommodate the need for sustainable
farming practices. One such change is the use of new tools
like Marker Assisted Selection (MAS) – now a widely used
technology in Syngenta breeding programs. “MAS helps to
ensure the breeding of varieties that have higher productivity
than those currently on the market, so growers can continue
to produce better-quality and higher-yield soybean crops
with fewer inputs,” says Don McClure, Research Scientist,
Soybeans, Canada. “The breeding efforts of Syngenta also
allow Canadian growers to supply lesser-known markets
that are not supplied by larger countries like the U.S., Brazil
or Argentina. And certain high-quality crops like Identity
Preserved (IP) soybeans are contracted with a premium
to Canadian growers – an additional value that contributes
significantly to the sustainability of the soybean industry
as well as Canadian agriculture in general,” he concludes.
With further agronomic developments on the horizon,
soybean farming will continue to strive for sustainability
into the future.
Integrated solutions
Of course, advances in agronomy are only a small segment
of a larger commitment to sustainability that will revolutionize
the field-to-market cycle. As Syngenta looks toward the
future of sustainable farming, developing integrated plans
for growers that include elements such as agronomic best
practices, new scientific discoveries and proven methods
for indexing and applying the results will strengthen farming
effectiveness. Syngenta believes that these first steps
will lay the groundwork for using precious resources –
land, soil and water – to maximum efficiency. Once that
foundation is in place, growing more with less will ultimately
sustain the world.
The examples mentioned demonstrate the Syngenta
commitment to sustainability. Through breeding innovations
over the past four decades, Syngenta has been successful
in delivering sustainable solutions to growers across
Canada. Recognizing that agri-business plays a vital role
in fostering long-term approaches to food security and
sustainability, Syngenta is devoted to ensuring that its
big picture perspective always has sustainable production
practices as its focus.
Always read and follow label directions. Agrisure Artesian® and the Syngenta logo are registered trademarks of a Syngenta Group Company. © 2014 Syngenta.
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sustainability
C o u n t r y g U I D E s p eci a l s ec t i o n
Why we care
Farmers around the world know our soil is the stuff of life.
Now, all of humanity needs to stop treating it like dirt
By Gord Leathers
Soil conservation,
said Montgomery,
“is one of the
most important
issues that
we face as a
species.”
innipeg was the site of 2014’s
World Congress on Conservation
Agriculture where farmers, agronomists, researchers and policymakers from 33 countries around
the globe met to discuss the world’s soil, as the stories
in this special Country Guide supplement reveal.
In fact, Country Guide, and our farm readers,
feel so strongly about the message, we made the
commitment to become the official sponsors of the
conference.
The quality of life of a projected nine billion people depends absolutely on how seriously we take the
message at the conference, said University of Washington geomorphologist David Montgomery, author
of the book with exactly that title — Dirt.
“As I studied erosional processes around the
world, I came to see that soil is really a strategic
resource that we don’t talk about at a societal level,”
Montgomery said. “Global soil degradation is probably our most underappreciated environmental crisis.
“I want to address the question: why would a
geologist write a book that argues that changing
the way we farm, by adopting things like conservation agriculture on a global level, is one of the most
important issues that we face as a species?”
It’s a serious issue with serious consequences if
we don’t get it right. But amidst the dire warnings
there’s also a sense of optimism. Panels of scientists
in Winnipeg gave new insights into soil and they
spoke of what it is and what it does. A group of
experienced farmers from the American Midwest
shared their stories of cover crops and how they use
them to build their soil and care for their land. Delegates from Africa and India told of new machines
and management techniques aimed at their smallacreage farmers.
All of this underlines the scope of a global problem that is being addressed at the local level.
And everyone knew the stakes. Conservation
agriculture is about the preservation of soil so local
industry may continue feeding a global market.
Many of us see the soil as nothing more than
a mineral matrix that anchors plant roots. It’s an
attitude that Montgomery says must change. He
laughed as he spoke of the time he was a geology
student and his professor said the most interesting
thing about soil was that it had rocks underneath it.
Now he marvels at that same soil.
S-4 country-guide.ca “In the last few decades soils are seen as an
ecosystem and the work that’s gone on in studying symbioses between the microbes, bacteria and
fungi living in the soil and the nutrient transfers into
plants has been amazing,” Montgomery said. “The
things I learned in college about soil and fertility are
increasingly out of date, and the idea that plants are
actually secreting sugars into the soil to feed microorganisms and trade within a whole underground
barter system is something I never learned.”
That barter system brings into play essential
nutrient cycles for every continent’s ecosystems. It’s
no accident that every eulogy ends with the phrase
ashes to ashes and dust to dust. The soil is where the
Earth recycles the bodies of all living things.
It starts with plants as they use photosynthesis to
convert solar energy into chemical energy. Their roots
condition the soil, opening channels for moisture
infiltration while introducing the chemical energy that
nourishes soil biota. Soil biota, in turn, go to work
on the parent material, releasing inorganic elements
like phosphorus and potassium that feed back to the
plants. Then the plants use those nutrients to build
tissue that animals consume, and when those animals
die, they return their nutrients to the soil where the
soil biota breaks their material down into molecules
that plants rebuild into living tissue.
The soil is also the basis for that simplified ecosystem we call agriculture, where we grow specific
plants and animals for our use. While agriculture
is productive it also has the potential to be very
destructive, and history records quite a series of
catastrophes that should serve as warnings, like the
collapse of Mesopotamia, the erosion of Iceland or
the dust-bowl of the North American Great Plains.
“Walter Lowdermilk, 50 years ago wrote that we
have the underlying hazard of civilization. By clearing and cultivating sloping lands we expose them to
accelerated erosion by water or by wind and by doing
this we enter into a regime of self-destructive agriculture,” Montgomery said. “Back in the 1930s Franklin
Delano Roosevelt elaborated on this when he wrote
that a nation that destroys its soils destroys itself.”
Agrarian societies seem to have a lifespan of 500
years, which is about how long it takes to burn out
the soil. The good news is that, if given time, soil will
heal itself and live again. The bad news is that it takes
a lot of time, and we don’t have that luxury anymore.
“We need a different philosophy, a different
J u ly 2 0 1 4
sustainability
C o u n t r y g U I D E s p eci a l s ec t i o n
approach,” said farmer, business magnate and conservationist Howard Buffet. “The day is over where
you can bury your head.”
Conservation agriculture aims to keep our soils
healthy and productive through three simple strategies.
We want to minimize disturbance by reducing or eliminating tillage, keep the soil covered with living plants or
trash, and run rotations of three or more different crops.
In this way conservation agriculture is the environmental cornerstone of sustainable farming. Sustainability takes it the next step into the realm of
our economic and social requirements. People are
important too, and farmers have to make a living off
their land. When they do, they provide the economic
base that maintains their neighbours in the local
towns as well as the surrounding cities.
It’s why conservation agriculture must be more
than just ecological.
“It really has to be a cultural movement,”
claimed Rene Van Acker, associate dean of the
Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph. “I would
argue that there are a number of elements required
to achieve conservation agriculture, such as the
desire to do it, the knowledge needed, political and
market support, opportunities, co-operation and the
technology to make it work.”
Mark Anson farms 20,000 acres in Indiana and Illinois along with his brothers and their sons, altogether
making a board of 10 partners. Although the farm was
profitable, Anson was not happy with the quality of
the soil and, in general, he wasn’t happy with farming.
He discovered cover cropping and planting forage radishes or fall cereals as a way to get roots in the ground
to nourish the soil after harvest and into the winter.
It’s not seen as conventional in North America,
so it took a bit of convincing to get his family to try
it out. It took a great deal of commitment to keep on
going because, as with anything new, there were a
few disasters along with some successes. In the end it
was the desire to make it work that kept them going.
J u ly 2 0 1 4 Cover cropping makes a farming system a lot
more complicated and it takes a great deal of knowledge to do it well. Anson and his family have spent
the last few years learning about their soil and how to
manage it better. It’s paying big dividends to him so
he’s eager to spread the word and expand the knowledge. As more farmers understand the benefits, he
hopes these systems will catch on. Although the principles are universal, however, the devil is in the details
and each region, each soil type, has its quirks.
Regional quirks sometimes require unconventional technology. For example, the North American
and European big-sky, big-iron approach is unsuitable in Africa or India. There the farms are tiny, and
their machinery must reflect, said Brian Sims, an
agricultural engineering consultant to the Food and
Agricultural Organization at the United Nations.
In these places much of the work is done by hand
on very small plots and many of the implements
are still animal drawn. In these cases a small, handsteered two-wheeled tractor is much more suitable,
but it’s not enough. Van Acker’s support component
is just as important.
“It’s very difficult to introduce innovation to
every single user,” Sims said. “It’s much more efficient to train service providers so that they know
exactly how to operate the machinery, they can offer
quality service and they understand the business.”
It’s a private-sector model that provides a great
deal of local support. In addition to training farmers in conservation agriculture and mechanization
there’s an incentive to train local people in finance
and mechanics. This builds the community of small
financiers, machine dealers and mechanics as well
as educators. The farmers are now supporting the
social infrastructure that, in turn, supports them.
These are all things necessary for long-term sustainability, looking to people’s economic and social
needs as well as safeguarding the soil.
Farming has always been a tricky business. It’s
because we grow plants in ways they simply don’t
grow naturally. Disturbed monocultural systems lose
topsoil, hemorrhage nutrients and generally waste
precious potential.
The good news is that we’re looking to nature
and coming up with new ways of thinking and new
ways of farming that can lead to reliable methods of
food, fibre and fuel production while building more
resilient farming systems.
“Mother Nature is a very good manager,” concluded South Dakota State University professor,
Dwayne Beck. “She’s been managing ecosystems
better and longer than anyone else. She harvests the
maximum amount of sunlight, she leaves very few
nutrients and she doesn’t leak.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. government — to cite just
one example — spends five times more on crop
insurance than it spends on research. “Does that
make any sense?” Beck asks. “Lack of commitment
is THE problem.” CG
Said U.S.
president,
Franklin Delano
Roosevelt:
“A nation that
destroys its soil
destroys itself.”
country-guide.ca S-5
sustainability
C o u n t r y g U I D E s p eci a l sec t i o n
Day of reckoning
How long can the U.S. compete in a world where other
countries are working much more effectively at sustainability?
By Richard Kamchen
merican farmers are getting beaten
badly by the likes of Brazil, Argentina and Australia. All those countries are far outpacing the U.S. rate
for adopting conservation farm strategies, says Howard G. Buffett, and he believes a
day of reckoning for the U.S. may come sooner
rather than later.
It won’t be pretty, Buffett told the World Congress on Conservation Agriculture conference in
Winnipeg earlier this summer.
“We have a mindset that has kept us trapped in
thinking like our dad or grandfather,” said the son
of billionaire Warren Buffett.
Besides being son of one of the world’s most
famous business icons, Howard Buffett is a highly
regarded Illinois farmer and an outspoken advocate
for conservation agriculture, and he is a philanthropist in his own right, serving as chairman and
CEO of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.
If U.S. farmers were as sluggish at
adopting electronic technology as they are at
sustainable farming, they’d still be carrying
around those giant cellphones from the
1980s with the long antennas. “We have not
changed our thinking nearly as quickly as we
have changed our adaptation of technology,”
Buffett said
The reluctance to embrace conservation strategies is because some farmers are simply frightened
by the unknown and shudder at the thought of
modifying the way they’ve always done things,
Buffett believes. Also, government policies have
provided incentives not to change.
“In the U.S., we can afford to make mistakes
and our kids don’t go hungry,” Buffett added. “We
can afford to overfertilize and pay the bill and still
get by. We can do things that aren’t perfect and be
a little lazy… That just means we don’t have that
pressure on us.”
By contrast, in regions that lack government
S-6 country-guide.ca safety net supports, farmers are under pressure to
be more creative about how to get the most out of
their operations over the longest period of time.
“In Brazil, they could not afford not to figure
out how to do it in a way that made them the most
money, built their soil faster, and kept it from eroding,” Buffett said. “They’re 85 per cent no till.”
Australia faces constraints too, dealing with a
limited amount of water in a harsh environment, so
that country too has made big progress in adopting
conservation practices.
But that doesn’t mean that the costs aren’t adding up in the U.S. As a result of slow adoption
there, water is getting scarcer, and water quality
issues are getting increasingly common.
Erosion rates during the last decade have also
mirrored and sometimes exceeded those of the dust
bowl, Buffett said.
“How we’ve gotten away with some of what
we’ve gotten away with is amazing to me. Everybody has been talking about hypoxia in the Gulf
of Mexico for 25 years but nobody’s been able to
do anything about it, and all you have to do is look
at a map and you know exactly where it’s coming
from, who’s doing it. And we don’t have to change
our practices!
“If you did that in any other profession,” said
Buffett, “you would never get away with it. Never.”
“We’ve gotten a free ride for a long time.”
Buffett acknowledged numerous U.S. farmers have made changes, and that “farmers have
adopted tens of millions of acres of cover crops.”
Such farmers are finding not only that conservation
farming is working, and that the environment is
better and the water is clearer, but they’re making
more money too.
But many others have not gotten with the program, and they’re potentially at risk from the government coming in heavy handed and telling them
how things will be done in the future, said Buffett.
Too many farmers are blind to the danger, he
said. And of those who can see it, many believe
they will be able to fight it off.
They’re wrong, Buffett said.
“The political landscape is changing in the
United States, and it’s not changing in the favour of
U.S. farmers,” Buffett said. “That will make all of
J u ly 2 0 1 4
sustainability
C o u n t r y g U I D E s p eci a l s ec t i o n
At conferences and from podiums all around the world, Buffett is
preaching the same message. “Change, or be changed.”
those institutions that have helped protect our situation and our rights less powerful and influential.”
So although agriculture has won the big battles
of the past, that’s about to change. When large
urban areas start to raise a fuss about things like
their water, Buffett warned, they’ll get what they
want.
“Numbers always win,” he said. “A city like
Los Angeles for instance has the numbers to defeat
farmers.”
Besides, farmers should also worry about government intervention, given so few of the politicians, bureaucrats and activities trying to influence
agricultural policy actually understand farming.
“You’ve got policy-makers, politicians, bureaucrats and (certain) academics who’ve never had to
grow anything in their life, who have never had to
understand what it means to have Mother Nature
kick your butt,” he said.
Fair or not, however, this is the choice that
J u ly 2 0 1 4 farmers face: either do it yourself or have someone
else tell you how you’re going to do it.
Not all farmers believe they’re facing what
amounts to an ultimatum. “If you’ve gotten away
with it for two or three decades and nothing’s happened to you, you tend to think, ‘At least in my
lifetime, what do I need to worry about it for?’”
Nor is regulation the only threat.
Food processors and retailers are getting more
powerful too, Buffett said. Soon, they’ll demand
that their products are grown sustainably.
“A company like Wal-Mart is going to demand
this, and when they demand this, then the ADMs,
the Cargills the Bunges and the other people in the
world are going to have to figure out how to do
it,” said Buffett. “(Change) may come from regulation, it may come from corporate demand or consumer demand, but it’s coming.
“It will probably come slow enough that we have
time to adapt to it, but you can’t sit still.” CG
country-guide.ca S-7
SUSTAINABILITY
COUNTRY GUIDE SPECIAL SECTION
WHERE’S THE CONSUMER?
The public should have a voice, but there are risks
BY RICHARD KAMCHEN
onsumers are the forgotten
beneficiaries of ag sustainability, and forgetting to
communicate with them can
be one of agriculture’s most
damaging errors, says farmer and philanthropist Howard Buffett.
“Consumers are our shareholders,”
Buffett says. “At the end of the day, they
do count, whether we like it or not.”
Nick Betts, who doubles as co-ordinator both of market development and
also of sustainability for Grain Farmers
of Ontario agrees, but notes that it isn’t a
simple question.
Farmers need to make sure consumers
are knowledgeable about what sustainability means on the farm, Betts told the
recent World Congress on Conservation
Agriculture conference in Winnipeg.
“Just because a consumer wants
something that’s sustainable doesn’t
mean what they want ‘is’ sustainable,”
Betts warned. “It’s important that we
come to grips with what that actually
means. And then we need to effectively
manage the system.”
There can be critical differences in
how farmers and consumers define sustainability, he said. “If we do something
to satisfy the farmers’ definition of sustainability, we’re not going to do the
same for the consumer, and vice versa.”
S-8 country-guide.ca
There’s another concern too.
While Betts believes farmers need to
adopt a consumer-centric approach, he
has found resistance from those producers who don’t want anyone telling them
what to do. Surveys he’s seen reveal they’re
concerned about third-party intervention,
special interest groups, and unrealistic
demands from the uninformed.
“Well, if we want uninformed individuals to be informed, we need to have a
consumer-centric approach to understand
where they’re coming from,” Betts said.
A d o p t i n g a c o n s u m e r- c e n t r i c
approach means better understanding
customer expectations, and Betts believes
farm organizations can play a role here,
while also educating and informing consumers about the sustainable impacts of
their choices.
The upshot is, when customers ask
if what’s being produced is sustainable,
Betts said, the farming industry needs succinct, scientifically proven answers.
“We need to ensure that there’s understanding between the farmer and the
value-chain partners, the special interest
groups, academics, investors,” Betts said.
“We need to communicate effectively and
this in turn will drive those best management practices and make those pillars of
sustainability transparent.”
Too often, environmental groups,
societal groups and farmers butt heads,
even though they essentially want the
same thing — a sustainable future.
The difficulty starts with everyone
being defensive. Betts believes a paradigm shift is needed in how all sides
react and how they deal with each other.
We need that kind of perspective in order
to see the big picture and where the common road lies.
But another one of the big drivers in
sustainability will be economics, because
if something doesn’t make economic
sense, it won’t happen.
“Marketers have to come down
from their 100,000-foot view, and the
farmers need to come up and see where
that common ground is,” Betts said,
“because if it’s not economical for the
farmers, the marketers aren’t going to
get their product.”
Lee Moats, a pulse no-till grower out
of Riceton, Sask., also preferred consumer signals to guide the way, especially
in contrast to the option of sweeping
standardized government regulations.
“I’m a believer that the marketplace ought to drive it more than it is,”
Moats said. “I shudder when I see the
well-meaning bureaucratic standard, but
I really respond to consumer interest —
sometimes misguided, but nonetheless.
“If I get that signal back to my
farm, I’m very interested in responding,” Moats said, although he admits
to a concern about trying to live up to
“somebody’s latest flavour of the month
checkbox system.”
Moats believes organic farmers might
be able to provide some additional clues
to the farming industry about how to
achieve their goals.
Said Moats: “Maybe some of us nonorganic guys should spend a little time on
some organic farms and see what they’re
doing, because they may have a few hints
for us.” CG
J U LY 2 0 1 4
SOIL CONSERVATION
COUNCIL OF CANADA
SOIL CONSERVATION COUNCIL OF CANADA
CONSEIL CANADIEN DE CONSERVATION DES SOLS
The face and voice of soil conservation in Canada
The legacy and vision continues
T
he Soil Conservation Council
of Canada (SCCC) has a rich
history as the face and voice of
soil conservation in Canada. In 1987, as a
follow up to his 1984 Soil at Risk Report,
the late Senator Herb Sparrow founded
Soil Conservation Canada (SCC).
Their focus was soil conservation with
protection from wind and water erosion,
from excessive tillage and from nonagricultural development. Soil Conservation
Week and the Canadian Conservation
Hall of Fame were introduced to bring
attention to the need for soil protection.
All of this continues.
Through time, SCC evolved into The
Soil Conservation ‘Council’ of Canada
(SCCC) to encourage stronger participation
and more interaction by existing soil
conservation groups and other stakeholders.
Following this change, the “Council”
engaged in new activities and challenges.
In its constant search for excellence,
the Council has re-assessed its role, its
operation and its priorities so it can be
most effective in the present time and
circumstances. There will be a shift to
take greater advantage of the Council
structure. A strong emphasis on
collaboration and cooperation by Council
members will be helpful in addressing
issues of common concern. There will
also be new efficiencies and opportunities
as this change unfolds.
As the SCCC moves forward, its
principles and priorities have been
strengthened in many areas as it builds
on new information, new research and
discovery, and addresses soil related issues
in a timely way.
• The advocacy for soil conservation will
remain the central cause but will now
encourage a more active role in issues
related to soil management. These include
soil care, soil health and the affected water,
air, habitat and natural areas.
• The Council emphasizes that soil
conservation is a primary contributor to
sustainable agriculture. History suggests
that without sustainable agriculture we
do not have sustainability on a social,
economic or environmental scale.
• Science is the basis of agricultural
progress, therefore, it is important to
partner in scientific activity.
• Increases in agricultural production
should be the product of practices that
improve soil health and the environment.
PHOTO: DUCKS UNLIMITED CANADA
PHOTO: ONTARIO MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE,
FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS
• Agricultural soil is a limited primary
resource that needs protection for
food production as it is coming under
increasing pressure as population
growth accelerates.
• Sustainable intensification of agricultural
production on existing farmland is
a priority because this reduces the
expansion of agriculture to natural areas.
• The SCCC will provide the much
needed national leadership role as a
catalyst for cooperation and action, a
forum for discussion of critical issues
and a point for information exchange.
• All Canadians have a shared interest in
and should participate in safe-guarding
our soil because the benefits provide
many environmental goods and services
for the public good.
The Council continues to support
the legacy and vision of Senator Sparrow
while moving forward with new ideas,
new vigour and new commitment.
PHOTO: SEED HAWK
www.soilcc.ca
Membership is encouraged for
interested organizations, businesses,
industry, government, researchers
and individuals who wish to support
sustainable management of our agricultural
soils and the related environment. While
farmers and farm groups will be core
participants, society as a whole will benefit
through participation and should play an
active role. Members of the Council can take
pride in their support of an organization
that operates at the front line of the soil
conservation cause. More information on
SCCC and membership is available on the
website: www.soilcc.ca
sustainability
C o u n t r y g U I D E s p eci a l s ec t i o n
Precision sustainability
Precision technology is teaching us some surprising eye-openers
By Richard Kamchen
eriously? Can it really be better to till up
and down some slopes instead of across?
That’s one of the conclusions from early
work with precision agriculture in Australia, where the technology is proving a boon
for field crop productivity.
It turns out that older technologies have blinded
us to much of what’s really going on in our fields.
It also means, says Australian precision agriculture consultant Tim Neale, that while Australian
farmers have notched some big gains in managing
different soil types with no till and with controlledtraffic farming, there are a number of critical issues
to overcome, including soil erosion, waterlogging,
soil acidification and various man-made challenges.
On these issues and many others, precision farming will be part of the solution, Neale believes,
although not always in the way farmers might think.
Neale, who runs PrecisionAgriculture.com.au,
points out to some relatively inexpensive and simple
Yield monitors and precision technology
are showing many yield issues are easier
to fix than anyone believed
S-10 country-guide.ca changes for dealing with water drainage issues. In
one example he cited, a farmer adding a couple strategic subsurface drains was well rewarded.
“His numbers showed that he made $100,000 in
two years from doing that change and it was about a
$5,000 drain,” Neale said.
Soil acidity is another hurdle for Australian
farmers, but instead of just blanketing fields with
lime, Neale said variable-rate lime applications have
proven to save massive amounts of lime simply by
taking advantage of grid-based in-field pH sampling.
Variable-rate nutrients have also been shown to
be big production boosters and cost savers.
In a field test of a variable field with good and
poor soils, chicken litter was spread on one side with
both types of soils and none on the other. A small
rate of chicken litter was applied — only two tonnes
per hectare — but the results were tremendous.
“When we ran the yield monitor over this, the
yield in the poor soils actually matched the yield of
good soils,” said Neale. “That is extremely exciting,
because we’re actually at a point now where we can
reduce the variability of that field considerably just
by adding manures strategically to these poor areas.”
But one-size-fits-all solutions won’t provide the
same results and may even be wasted, given that all
fields are variable.
“Everyone wants to start precision agriculture
with variable rate. I think that’s the last thing you
want to do,” said Neale, who urged producers first
to understand their farm’s issues and think of ways
in which to alleviate them. “In some cases, it might
be a soil-depth issue, so putting more nutrients on is
a complete waste of time.”
The sleeping giant that farmers face, however, is
the person in the mirror. Are farmers creating their
own problems?
Said Neale: “We see all the time in satellite imagery and yield maps these things that people are doing
during their normal activities in the field that are
causing huge variability… That contributes significantly to the variability of cropping systems.”
Neale cited the example of poor fertilizer distribution that was costing the farmer in question $80 an
acre. Fortunately, man-made mistakes are often the
easiest and cheapest to solve.
“Man-made problems represent a large portion
of where we see losses,” said Neale. “But it’s much
easier to fix a problem with something you stuffed
than fixing up a whole soil type.” CG
J u ly 2 0 1 4
sustainability
C o u n t r y g U I D E s p eci a l sec t i o n
The soil shock
Only 7.1 per cent of the world’s arable land is farmed no till
By Ron Friesen
f conservation agriculture is so great, why
aren’t more farmers doing it? It’s a question
that surfaced repeatedly during panel discussions at the recent World Congress on Conservation Agriculture in Winnipeg.
Presenters from countries spanning the alphabet from Australia to Zambia left little doubt that
conservation agriculture is a worldwide movement.
Zero tillage is growing rapidly. In some regions of
Western Canada and Australia the adoption rate is
over 90 per cent. In other regions, other integrated
farming systems are catching on too.
But we aren’t anywhere near a global tipping point.
Speaker after speaker extolled conservation agriculture as a means of maintaining soil quality while
improving productivity. Josef Kienzle, an agricultural
engineer with the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture
Organization, said conservation farming, when done
right, can increase crop yields, decrease production
costs, produce higher profits and result in better livelihoods. As an example, he said reduced tillage can chop
power requirements by 50 per cent, allowing for the use
of smaller, more efficient machines on small holdings.
Yet as Yash Dang, a senior soil scientist with
the Queensland Department of Science in Australia
pointed out, only 7.1 per cent of the world’s arable
land is no till. Even in Australia, the system appears
to have plateaued, and some growers there are starting to talk about going back to tillage.
Such talk is heresy to soil conservationists, but
it’s reality to producers who are confronting not
only herbicide-resistant weeds but also increases in
soil- and stubble-borne diseases.
“Strategic tillage is one of the tools in the tool box,”
Dang said during a panel discussion on sustainability.
The risk of a possible slowdown in conservation agriculture comes at a time when the world
faces a potential crisis in food production. Statistics
presented during the conference showed the global
population is projected to increase from the current
7.2 billion to 9.6 billion by 2050.
Feeding those teeming numbers will require a
60 per cent overall increase in food output, and in
order to meet that target, crop yields must increase
annually by 1.38 per cent globally, and by 1.87 per
cent a year in developing countries.
But, as Kienzle noted, the world’s annual growth
in crop yields is actually slowing. Currently it stands
at 1.5 per cent. In 1960 it was 3.2 per cent. At the
present rate, the annual increase by 2050 will be just
0.8 per cent — far short of the actual requirement.
J u ly 2 0 1 4 Conservation tillage is supposed to save soil,
preserve yields and increase farm profitability.
So why has the global move toward no till
stalled so far short of the goal?
Add to that the vagaries of weather brought on by
climate change — crippling droughts in some regions,
devastating floods in others — and the need for agricultural sustainability becomes even more urgent.
“Conservation agriculture is and always will be
a fundamentally important movement,” said Rene
Van Acker, a University of Guelph plant scientist.
“It is a non-optional movement. It has to happen.”
But, as speakers acknowledged, there are roadblocks on the path toward adopting conservation
agriculture. Constraints range from the lack of
infrastructure and training in developing countries
to human resistance to change, which can happen in
any nation.
“There are a lot of things that are smart things
to do, and a lot of things that are better things to
do that people don’t do. It’s just human behaviour,” Howard Buffett, chairman and CEO of the
Howard G. Buffett Foundation, a private charitable U.S. organization, said at a press conference
during the conference.
“You do something a certain way. You’ve done
it for years that way,” Buffett said in an effort to
identify what he felt was the crucial question. “Why
would you change?”
Continued on page S-12
country-guide.ca S-11
sustainability
C o u n t r y g U I D E s p eci a l s ec t i o n
Continued from page S-11
Above everything else, said Van Acker, the biggest
barrier to adopting sustainable agricultural practices is a
chronic problem with farm income.
He presented statistics during a panel discussion to show
that, while farm cash receipts in Canada have increased over
the decades, realized net farm income has remained relatively flat because of escalating input and operating costs.
Van Acker said farmers need opportunities to pursue
sustainable practices and diverse cropping systems. But the
reality is that, in industrialized countries, farmers are in a costprice squeeze. How can they adopt diverse rotations when
they are under increasing pressure to increase cash flows in
order to stay ahead of rising costs and narrowing margins?
The story is the same the world over, whether you’re
farming thousands of acres in Canada or a single hectare in
Bangladesh, Van Acker said.
“Agriculture is an economic enterprise around the
world,” Van Acker repeated. “Whether you’re a smallholder farmer or a large-scale farmer, you have similar burdens in that respect.”
Van Acker said producers who adopt diversified and
integrated farming systems do so either out of personal
conviction or by capturing opportunities for higher returns
from the marketplace, such as organic agriculture.
Farmers have always responded to the marketplace and
will continue to do so if given a good enough reason, Van
Acker added. The whole zero-tillage movement in Western
Canada was driven by farmers in response to soil erosion
brought on by a series of dry years in the 1970s and 1980s.
The eventual drop in the price of glyphosate when the patent for Roundup ran out encouraged zero till even more.
Van Acker said governments have a role to play in giving producers opportunities to explore new practices. That
requires research funding to provide farmers with a scientific base to pursue sustainability.
Unfortunately, government policies can be counterproductive to conservation agriculture. Many criticize the U.S.
ethanol program because it subsidizes corn production and
encourages intensive cropping, which then contributes to
soil erosion in the Corn Belt.
Jodi DeJong-Highes, a regional extension educator at the
University of Minnesota, agreed government policies, which
tend to favour corn and soybeans, are important factors
affecting conservation agriculture. Another factor is land
ownership. DeJong-Highes said farmers who own the land
may be more inclined to practise good stewardship than
those who rent it and are only interested in getting as much
return out of it as possible.
In the end, the public may decide the future of conservation agriculture. In the United States, public concern about
damage from run-off agricultural chemicals in Chesapeake
Bay and the Gulf of Mexico could result in government regulations on fertilizer use. A growing public interest in how
food is grown and how animals are raised could also extend
to how the land is farmed. That could force farmers to treat
their soil more sustainably.
“At the end of the day,” said Van Acker, “it is the
demands of society that drive our agriculture. CG
S-12 country-guide.ca Saving Iowa
Stronger commodity prices are
threatening many soils. But not
on every farm
By Ron Friesen
he topsoil of one of America’s largest agriculturalproducing states is vanishing at an alarming rate,
with wind and water erosion directly linked to the
cropping practices and to the fencerow-to-fencerow
philosophy that farmers have turned to in order to
cash in on high prices for corn, soybeans and other crops.
Around Iowa’s western and southern edges, soil losses can
exceed 50 tons per acre a year. In the southwestern region
losses average 10 to 20 tons per acre annually.
In the middle of that region, however, there is a 3,100-acre
commercial farm. Its annual soil loss rate is zero.
It’s where Seth Watkins lives with his family on the farm
established by his great-grandfather James Shambaugh in 1846.
Sometimes, Watkins admits, he’s pessimistic when he
looks across the landscape at farms that are suffering severe
erosion, and he wonders about the future of agriculture in
his home state.
“I’ve got a child who’s going to want to farm,” Watkins
said during the recent World Congress on Conservation Agriculture in Winnipeg.
“If she wants to own it, we need to make sure it’s there for
her,” Watkins said.
Fortunately, based on his on-farm experience, he believes
that it’s a realistic goal.
Watkins was part of a plenary panel discussion about regional
perspectives on agricultural conservation in North America.
His views are similar to those contained in a 2011 report
from the Environmental Working Group, a private non-profit
U.S. organization. It says Iowa farms are losing topsoil up to
12 times faster than the U.S. government will admit.
The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service
(NRCS) has estimated soil and water erosion in Iowa averages
5.2 tons per acre of soil a year, slightly higher than the supposedly sustainable annual rate of 5.0 tons.
But the EWG report, titled Losing Ground, found that in
some regions of Iowa as much as 64 tons of soil are lost from
each acre of land every year.
The report raises a grim warning about the misuse of the
Corn Belt’s fertile soil, which took millions of years to accumulate.
“From the dust bowl of the 1930s to the barren moonscapes of today’s Haiti and Madagascar, history is littered with
evidence that what nature has provided, unwise practices and
policies can rapidly squander,” the report says.
The EWG report, based on research by Iowa State University scientists, paints a shocking picture of what’s happening
on Iowa’s farm fields.
J u ly 2 0 1 4
sustainability
C o u n t r y g U I D E s p eci a l s ec t i o n
It says farmland in 440 Iowa townships encompassing over 10 million acres eroded faster in 2007
than the so-called sustainable rate cited by NRCS.
In 220 townships totalling six million acres, the
soil loss was twice the sustainable rate.
The EWG report also says the incentive for farmers to maximize production at the expense of the
land is bolstered in part by government programs.
Those include subsidies for corn required to supply
ethanol plants, four of which are within 60 miles of
Watkins’ farmyard. Other farm policies that encourage farmers to plant crops on fragile land are also
blamed for accelerating the rate of soil loss.
The report says soil loss and run-off are aggravated by “gullies” that reappear during heavy rains
on rolling land where farmers have previously
tilled, channelling run-off water off the field, complete with soil nutrients.
Watkins said the loss of excess nutrients from
farmland is so bad that Iowa today is the secondlargest contributor of nitrogen and the third-largest
contributor of phosphorus to the “dead zone”
in the Gulf of Mexico, where the loss of oxygen
caused by agricultural chemicals kills marine life.
There are other more subtle effects of soil degradation flying under the radar. Watkins said surveys show
a third of the Iowa’s natural plant and animal species
— songbirds, wildflowers and even earthworms —
are classified as “conservation concern” — the first
step on the path to being declared endangered species.
That’s the bad news. Now the good.
Watkins is part of a small but slowly growing
number of Iowa farmers who are forgoing conventional agricultural methods to practise land
J u ly 2 0 1 4 stewardship instead of just aiming for increased
production.
Watkins, his wife Christy and their children
Spenser (12) and Tatum (nine) operate Pin Hook
Farm near Clarinda, Iowa. They own 500 acres
and rent another 2,600 acres.
The family’s conservation methods include minimum tillage, cover crops, wildlife set-asides, riparian buffers, terraces and ponds to retain water on
the landscape. The farm’s 550 beef cows are lateseason calvers — a strategy which Watkins said
conserves fuel. He also practises a form of strip
farming which integrates native prairie grass into
his cropland.
The results are evident in the soil. Watkins says
soil erosion on Pin Hook Farm is zero while precipitation and nutrient retention are higher than on
conventionally cropped farms.
“We find that, if we use each acre to its best use,
it gives the best long-term return.”
But doing this is the easy part. Watkins says it’s
not all that hard to switch a farm to no till and cover
crops. Instead, the hard part is to get other farmers
to undergo a mindset change away from productiondriven farming and toward sustainable ag, he said.
“We have to show them that there are better ways.”
Watkins is a realist. He knows farmers can’t go
back to the horse-and-buggy days of subsistence
living on a 160-acre holding. But, as he considers
the damage that intensive agriculture is doing to
Iowa, Watkins believes taking better care of the soil
is the answer to an improved quality of life.
Said Watkins: “It’s good for my business, it’s
good for my community, it’s good for my state.” CG
Catch-22: The
all-out race to
grow more highprice corn has
damaged Iowa’s
soils, making
its farms more
vulnerable to
drought and
yield loss
country-guide.ca S-13
CANADA’S OPPORTUNITY
TO FEED GROWING
POPULATIONS
As Canadians, we enjoy one of the world’s
most abundant, diverse, safe and affordable food
supplies. Our health, quality of life and longevity
are thanks to a host of factors: modern healthcare, safe and affordable food and water, and our
stability – economically and socially. Much of this
quality of life is owed to advancements in food
production. Livestock production over the last 50
years, has also benefited dramatically as a result
of innovation, technological development and
implementation.
WHAT IS SUSTAINABILITY?
It is often described as having
three interrelated components
T
MEN
IRON
SO
CIA
ECON
OMIC
ENV
THE FACTS
9 BILLION It is estimated that the world’s
population will reach 9 billion by 2050.1
3 BILLION The growing middle class will expand
by 3 billion, mostly living in urban centres.2
60% INCREASE The United Nations Food & Agriculture
Organization predicts a 60% increase in demand for
meat, milk & eggs by 2050.3
L
Critics stress livestock production’s need to
reduce our environmental footprint, and raise
food sustainably. At the same time, we must
optimize animal health and sanitation; disease
detection; animal nutrition; comfort; breeding and
genetics; vaccination; parasite control; animal
housing and productivity. Continued use of
existing and new animal health products in
Canada and around the world are critical
components of this sustainable production.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations (FAO) reports that added farmland
will help produce only 10 percent of the additional
food the planet needs by 2050, and 20 percent
of that food will come from increased cropping
intensity.4 Accordingly, the FAO concludes that
70 percent of the world’s additional food needs
can only be produced with new and existing
agricultural technologies.5
We believe that through the continued
development and use of innovative crop
protection and animal health products and
technologies, a sufficient food supply can be
ensured for a growing population. More food
will be produced using less land, water and
fossil fuels. Natural habitats will be conserved
along with farmland, housing and parkland. Use
of safe, and modern animal health management
tools and practices will continue to contribute to
sustainable agriculture while supporting animal
well-being and food safety.
ANIMAL HEALTH TOOLS HELP PRESERVE NATURAL RESOURCES
With per capita meat consumption rising,
global meat production has already tripled from
the 1970s, and risen by 20% since 2000 alone6.
By improving production efficiencies, for both
crops and animals, less land, feed, water and
fuel are required to produce our food. Animal
health technologies while just one component
of livestock management, provide a cumulative
health effect through disease prevention,
control and treatment. The use of vaccines
and animal pesticides lowers animal stress
attributed to disease and pests. This combined
with improved animal nutrition, comfort, housing
and veterinary care all factor into improved
production outcomes, animal well-being and a
safe and affordable food supply.
MODERN LIVESTOCK MANAGEMENT PRACTICES REDUCE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
HY
PEO
PLE
*Source: For details in regards to the sources used for this advertorial, please contact CAHI at www.cahi-icsa.ca
WE’VE ONLY GOT ONE PLANET.
LET’S USE ITS RESOURCES WISELY!
ALT
HE
Almost one billion households worldwide rely on livestock for their
livelihood.13 With increased urbanization, this number will decrease,
requiring increased outputs from fewer farmers. The time is now to make
choices on how we want to grow, share and consume our food to ensure
it is done in a cost effective and sustainable manner. Sustainable modern
livestock production that incorporates innovation and acceptance of new
technologies, can feed the growing global population.
Choice between organic and conventionally raised food is a luxury
we as Canadians have. However, only through the efficiencies of modern
production practices will we meet our environmental, social and
economic commitment to ensure each of the 9 billion has sufficient
protein in their diet.
Due to innovative animal health techniques,
a baby chick is vaccinated to prevent a
number of diseases and illnesses that have the potential to be devastating
to the bird’s health before it is even hatched. However, the last decade of
change in certain regions to egg production practices demonstrates how
the removal of innovation, changing practices and social pressures have
dropped global hen productivity. For decades, production increased 1¾
eggs/year. Since the late 1990s the productivity trend has reversed due to
disease, changing practices and the removal of innovation. The decrease
is 0.8 eggs per year. To compensate for these losses, demand is being met
by adding hens. On this path, hen numbers will need to double to meet the
anticipated demands in 2050. However, just one more egg per hen per year
helps meet demand and requires 4 billion fewer hens. By using innovation,
not adding hens, we would save 113 million tons of feed; 65 million acres
of land and 74 billion gallons of water.12
LS
The Path Forward…
POULTRY
IMA
Despite a doubling of dairy cow productivity in the
last 50 years, the industry is unable to keep pace
with population growth, with 14% less milk available now per person globally,
than in 1961.9 By embracing modern production tools and technologies,
future demands can be met by increasing outputs per animal. Some estimates
indicate that by using today’s technologies to produce a half a glass more
per cow, dairy farmers could annually save 66 million cows, 747 million
tons of feed and 388 million acres of farmland — the size of Alaska and
618 billion gallons of water — the annual domestic use of Germany,
France and the UK combined.10
In 1959 it took eight pigs — including breeding
stock to produce 1,000 pounds of pork. Today,
it takes just five pigs. And hog farmers today use 78% less land and 41%
less water than they did 50 years ago.11
AN
DAIRY
SWINE
HY
Improvements in the way North American cattle are
raised and fed have significantly reduced this sector’s
impact on the environment. A comparison of cattle production in 1977
and 2011 showed an increase of 13% more total beef from 30% fewer
animals while yielding a reduced carbon footprint of 16%.7 Similarly, through
improved genetics, feed, housing and the use of innovative animal health
technologies (vaccines; hormones; antibiotics and production enhancers
such as beta agonists) one pound of beef raised today (compared with 1977)
uses 19% less feed, 33% less land, 12% less water and 9% less fossil fuels.8
HE
ALT
BEEF
HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT
WE CAN DO IT!
sustainability
C o u n t r y g U I D E s p eci a l s ec t i o n
Sustainability
on the hoof
Across Canada, livestock must
be part of a healthy agriculture
By Richard Kamchen
orages and livestock can not only help
you manage your soil for sustainability,
they can also help you manage the evolution of herbicide-resistant weeds, says
Martin Entz, professor of natural systems
agriculture at the University of Manitoba.
No-till farming has come a long way and has
brought a lot of change to agriculture. But there’s
one big change that it hasn’t made.
In most parts of the country, farming remains predominantly an annual grain-based system.
Now, the resilience of that system is in doubt,
Entz said at the recent World Congress on Conservation Agriculture in Winnipeg.
Weather had been at the top of the list of things
challenging such farms. Drought in the early 2000s
destroyed no-till farms in Montana, and the wet periods in Canada and elsewhere have played havoc on
conservation farms, Entz said.
“When we look at the challenges, we think that
perennial plants would be wonderful,” Entz said.
He points for instance to the farmers in eastern
Manitoba and in the province’s Interlake area who
experience excess water on fragile soils.
They have dealt with those challenges by putting
more ground into alfalfa.
“They grow that because they know they need to
deal with this water there. Planning for the wet conditions, this is a wise move,” Entz said. “The beautiful thing about having the alfalfa seed production is
it mimics the native prairie plants, and that’s never a
bad thing.”
Incorporating perennial forages into grain rotations is very effective in a number of ways, including
providing superior yields, reducing nitrate leaching,
and offering significant weed control and greater
resilience to extreme weather.
But what are you supposed to do with all the
alfalfa if you grow it?
Entz’s answer is straightforward: Feed it to livestock.
“All of these challenges bring us to the topic
of livestock integration. We can’t avoid it. We can
drain that salt land, we can try to tile drain that wetS-16 country-guide.ca land, but things are changing,” said Entz. “We’ve
had the warmest May in the history of the planet
this year and May has been a particularly warm
month for five years now. That means more rain
during planting.”
Entz extolled the virtues of forages for ruminants, saying when livestock eat grasses, “things
with cell walls that are tough, they actually make
better milk, better cheese, better meat.”
So the shift from grains to forages for ruminant
production has not only environmental and agronomic benefits, it has human health benefits too.
“And that to me is exciting and it’s a way of getting people’s attention. And maybe consumers are
going to start demanding this more and more,” Entz
said. “That would be great for the landscape, and I
think it could be good for farmers.”
But do farmers believe this?
“We’re still focusing on expanding soybean production in this province. We think it’s good for agriculture. Well, it may be good for agriculture, but it’s
also good for agriculture to think about producing
food that’s really good for people. And we can do
that using those natural systems.”
Removing perennials has been detrimental to agrology and weed resistance, and removing nutrients from
forages through haying but not returning those nutrients with manure is damaging too. Entz recommended
leaving animals on fields so those soils capture more
nutrients, which will then result in greater yields.
Entz repeated some old wisdom from his German
ancestors, saying that if you want to see how good a
farmer is, go look at his manure pile.
In the West, winter grazing is another good idea,
especially considering the Prairie landscape is frozen
for about five months of the year.
“We accumulate a lot of carbon and then soil
biota stops working because we have no heat. That’s
a problem because sometimes we want to process
that carbon, especially in a conservation agriculture
system,” said Entz. “And the beautiful thing about
livestock is those rumen, they are nice and warm. It’s
why we think of the rumen as portable soil.” CG
J u ly 2 0 1 4
business
Their own path
Like a growing number of operations
across the country, Quebec’s
The Lookout finds success by heading
in a direction all it’s own
By Amy Petherick
rong turns are part of steering any
business to success, as are some
unexpectedly bumpy roads. There
is no such thing as a perfect roadmap, with the upshot that many
young farmers suffer indecision along the way, and
some even abandon their course at times.
All the same, the story of Lookout Holsteins and
Jerseys in North Hatley, Que. doesn’t include any
time spent looking in the rear-view mirror.
Continued on page 36
J u ly 2 0 1 4 country-guide.ca 35
business
Continued from page 35
When they started farming together in
1988, Callum McKinven and Katherine
Beerwort were newlyweds without any
significant worldly possessions. Callum
had grown up on a farm that was well
known within the Jersey-breeding world,
but it had been inherited by his brother.
Katherine came from a large family
that had also experienced great success as Holstein breeders — but that property
also passed into the hands of a brother.
What they did have was a mutual love
for cows and a mutual determination that
the lack of a place to house some cows
wouldn’t slow them down. They searched
and found a farm with some quota that
was available for rent in Donnan, Que.
and started buying young stock.
36 country-guide.ca “We started off with a bang,” Callum fondly recalls. “One year after that
first year that we started, we had the
most all-Canadian nominations for Holsteins in the country.”
They quickly built name recognition for Amlaird, a herd name chosen
to honour Callum’s father’s farm back
in Scotland and everything seemed on
track. But then, four years into a great
start, their lease on the Donnan farm
came up.
The couple found a little place they
could afford to buy not far from Richmond, Que., but it didn’t come with quota.
Buying a dairy barn without quota
is hardly a recommended practice in the
dairy industry. For most farms, it would
be classed as not exactly a bright move.
But the couple had already calculated that
their collective expertise was in producing
great cows, not necessarily milk.
Callum had “the eye,” what his dad
had called his ability to forecast the
potential of a cow based on her looks
and heritage. Already making great
inroads into the cattle-judging world,
the couple developed a business plan that
— unlike most in the dairy sector — had
little to do with staying put.
“A lot of stuff gets done when I’m
judging shows,” Callum explains. “It gets
me to a lot of places and I make a lot of
contacts.” He says he’s judged as many
shows as anyone he knows, and it’s taken
him to 28 different countries so far.
The benefit to the business has been
the vast clientele list he developed in his
travels. Not that this was his conscious
objective. Callum will tell you he was
J u ly 2 0 1 4
Photography: Jessica Goodsell
McKinven and Beerwort had
to choose. Either get creative,
or get out. That’s when they
got creative
business
just appreciating good cattle and sharing
his mutual passion with other breeders,
which naturally led to making friends.
“For example, I might judge a show
and make a cow first in her class or
champion, and after the show, I’d go into
the barn and buy her.” If the asking price
was more than his budget would allow,
but still fair, then he’d call a friend who
would appreciate the animal the way he
did and ask them to partner with him.
Callum says as a result, he moved
quite a few famous cows in and then out
of their little barn, including one World
Dairy Expo winner. And again, the couple seemed to be on a winning path.
It’s hard to believe, then, with so
much going in the young couple’s
favour, this behaviour would lead to the
end of Amlaird.
J u ly 2 0 1 4 Gerald Halbach, a dentist living in
Arizona, had bought a lot of show animals from Callum and Katherine. In
2003, he came to Quebec for a visit.
“Gerald had got the notion of maybe trying to own a place up here, and we just
happened to be driving that afternoon
when this place was just put up for sale,”
recalls Callum.
Located only one kilometre from the
farm where Callum had grown up, the
place that they called The Lookout had
deteriorated. At one time, it had been
a popular spot for family picnics and
“parking,” and the farmer who owned it
used to let Callum collect bottles off the
grounds. But now it was run down.
Callum confided to his dad that he
was saving the money he made to buy
The Lookout someday.
Hearing the story, Halbach asked Callum, “Why don’t we buy this and start
from scratch?”
By 9 a.m. the next morning, the deal
was done. A new prefix was adopted to
reflect the new partnership and to acknowledge the property’s history. “We sold the
other place, bought quota, and started to be
real farmers,” Callum exclaims.
Even with an investor now on board
and the opportunity to secure milk production revenue, the business stayed
true to the couple’s original vision. “I’ve
always figured if you’re going to do something, do what you love,” Callum says.
Unlike the large free-stall barns and
the automatic feeding and milking systems that were being erected around the
same time, the facility built at Lookout
Farms was an old-fashioned tiestall barn
that would only allow for 30 cows to
be milked. They didn’t even install automatic takeoff units — now embraced by
dairy farms across the country — because
Katherine still prefers a more hands-on
approach to udder care.
They also made the unconventional
decision to purchase all the farm’s feed —
hay and grain included — so they could
dedicate all their land to pasture.
“This farm would not survive on just
a milk cheque,” Callum says. “We didn’t
have the machinery and the land area for
the crops, so when I pencilled it all out, it
was better to buy all the feed rather than
rent land and buy machinery.”
Every second year the couple formally
reviews the way they run their business,
but their practice of setting short-term
goals and carefully evaluating how they
spend their time is just as important.
Though he’s home more than he used
to be, Callum still gets around to other
farms four or five times a week. At home,
Katherine and their three daughters care
for 160 head, several of which are highpedigreed heifers bound for big-time show
rings, and there’s a development plan to be
carefully followed for most of them.
Unlike many modern dairy farms
which have diversified over the last five
years, the goal at Lookout is the opposite of the popular “be in and out of the
barn as quick as you can” philosophy.
“I’m not mechanically minded, my love
is working with cows and it’s my wife’s
love as well, so we focus on that because
that’s what we feel will make us money,”
Callum says.
None of this is to say that specializing an operation is the only way to go,
though. Callum assures me that the year
BSE shut down the live cattle sale business, reducing their $2 million in gross
revenue by more than 99 per cent, he was
grateful for a monthly milk cheque.
All three daughters hope to continue
participating in the farm in the future,
though Callum believes the oldest two
are right to pursue careers that allow
them more versatility. He’s pleased
they’re applying the lessons they’ve
learned on the farm in their own ways.
“Whether you’re a farmer or running
a different kind of business, your clientele’s first impression is everything,” Callum says, offering as an example: “We
go the extra step to make sure people are
impressed when they come here, right
down to the Facebook page. My daughter’s really picky about putting good pictures on it.”
It’s just one of many ways customer
experience is emphasized in this family.
To ensure those impressions are lasting,
any one of the family members may offer
full disclosure to a potential buyer on an
animal’s faults, may discourage a purchase which could prove to be a wrong fit
with the buyer, and will likely offer a satisfaction-or-your-money-back guarantee.
Callum says that it has always been a
greater goal for him and his family to be
reputable business people than to make
a quick buck off one-time customers. He
says it may not be a strategy that will
make them rich, but he believes that as
long as they always can have food on the
table, keep the bills paid, and live every
day to the fullest, they’ll be on the road to
success… a road that despite some occasional bumps will have no wrong turns. CG
country-guide.ca 37
business
The future of futures
Will the West ever get realistic cereal futures?
By Lisa Guenther, CG Field Editor
hey used to call Winnipeg the “Chicago
of the North.” In fact, in 1943, wheat
contracts traded on Winnipeg’s Grain
Exchange Building surpassed the wheat
volume in Chicago.
But that lead was short lived. The Second World
War effectively killed wheat futures in Winnipeg,
ushering in the era of the Canadian Wheat Board’s
(CWB) single desk.
Just because you can grow a crop, it turns out,
doesn’t mean that a fast, fair and open way to sell it
will evolve too, even if you can grow a lot of it.
It’s a lesson the West is learning again.
Until a few years ago, futures for feed wheat and
barley, oats, peas and rye were all available through
Winnipeg. But these days, canola is the only active
commodity futures contract north of the 49th.
Today the Winnipeg exchange is known as ICE
Futures Canada, a subsidiary of the Intercontinental
Exchange (ICE). The western Canadian grain industry is in the midst of tumultuous change once again.
Yes, the exchange has a chance to grab hold of
those lost futures markets.
But whether the Winnipeg Exchange rises again is
no simple story.
Blue says a futures market provides farmers with
flexibility and a way to diversify pricing.
“You can sign up and lock in a price in advance
of delivery without having a delivery commitment
and therefore still not have the fears… of having a
production shortfall and therefore having to buy out
of a contract, which a lot of farmers really, really
dislike,” says Blue. If production is wiped out unexpectedly by hail, for example, “you could go back to
your futures position and easily remove the portion
you’re now overpriced with.”
But helping western Canadian farmers hedge risk
isn’t an easy task. Blue is disappointed in the lack of
functioning futures markets for crops north of the 49th
parallel. A few years ago the Winnipeg Exchange had
future contracts for canola, feed barley, feed wheat,
flax, oats, peas, and rye. Today canola is the only crop
that trades with any volume in Winnipeg.
Futures markets to manage risk
An irony of the story is that it is occurring at the
very time that farmers are getting more expert at marketing. Futures trading used to get scoffed at as mere
gambling, but more sophisticated marketing strategies
mean they can reduce risks, not increase them.
“They’re not that complicated,” says Neil Blue.
Blue was farming in the early ’80s when he
noticed strange things happening in the grain markets. Specifically, the same grain, coming from the
same bin, was graded differently from spring to fall.
That phenomenon spurred Blue to learn the ins
and outs of the markets. Paying attention to marketing in the ’80s, “which was a really tough period in
farming, meant the difference in some years between
losing money and breaking even,” says Blue.
Blue still farms in the Vermilion area of northeastern Alberta, though he’s quick to point out his
operation isn’t as large as neighbouring farms. He’s
also worked as a market specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development since 1994, teaching
courses to help farmers get the most bang for their
buck out of the big commercial markets such as
hogs, cattle and major grains.
38 country-guide.ca J u ly 2 0 1 4
Photography: gord gilmour
business
“It’s quite frustrating now when we do these
courses and all we have to talk about are U.S. markets,” says Blue. “It doesn’t encourage farmers to
sign up for accounts, either.”
Farmers can, and some do, use futures contracts
from U.S. exchanges. But the exchange rates complicate those transactions, says Blue.
Blue isn’t the only one who sees problems with a
dearth of western Canadian futures markets.
“The constituents that suffer the most in this type
of environment are the producers because before,
they used to have two sources available in terms of
price discovery,” says Hugh Benham, trader and
owner of Market Mentor.
Trading is in Benham’s blood. His great-grandfather, E.L. Drewry, was one of the first members of
the Winnipeg Exchange. Benham started with the
exchange in 1989, handling commercial accounts.
“It was with a little bit of sadness that the open
outcry came to an end,” says Benham, but he adds
electronic trading allows him to work from anywhere. Benham left the exchange in 2006, and these
days he works from Canmore, Alta.
Benham has worked for several cattle feeders in
Alberta. He also wrote a discussion paper for the
Alberta Cattle Feeders looking at the possibility of
revitalizing Western Barley Futures.
Although five ICE barley contracts traded in early
June, Benham says five contracts of open interest
Could cereal futures
give producers more
control in an industry
where they can’t
control logistics?
don’t add up to price discovery. These days feeders’
and producers’ only option for price discovery is to
look at the cash barley market, he says.
Rough transition
As the CWB’s single desk came to an end, ICE
introduced a suite of wheat products, including a
milling and durum wheat contract, plus a barley
futures contract. But the new futures contracts are
not trading.
The last two years have been difficult ones to
launch a new futures contract, says Brad Vannan,
president and chief operation officer of ICE Futures
Canada. Vannan is a 30-year veteran of the grain
business. Before joining ICE in 2008, he worked as
the vice-president of merchandising and transportation at Agricore United.
Low risk, a stable price, fluid transportation, and
little difference between different classes of wheat
didn’t add up to success for the new ICE contracts in
the first year, Vannan says. The Winnipeg contracts
were designed to differentiate the Canadian market
from other North American markets, he explains.
And grain industry players were busy adapting to
the new marketplace following the single desk’s demise,
Vannan adds. Participating in the new market was more
work than participating in one of the existing markets,
Vannan says, giving commercials and other players little
incentive to pick up the new contracts.
This last year of bin busters and transportation
bottlenecks was no kinder to the Winnipeg futures
contracts. By the time market participants realized
the extent of the logistics pileup, it didn’t matter
where they hedged their grain, says Vannan.
“I could hedge in Kansas City. I could hedge in
Chicago. I could try Winnipeg. But none of them are
really going to work because the transportation system is not functioning correctly,” says Vannan.
The ICE wheat contracts do have supply on their
side, Vannan says. Wheat production is similar to
canola production in Western Canada. “So we felt that
there’s enough depth there to facilitate a contract.”
But a contract also needs a breadth of companies
willing to use it, says Vannan. “And that usually
comes over time. Everybody’s not going to jump in
at the exact same time. You’ll have early adapters
and then if it proves to be successful, it’ll evolve and
more people will join in.”
Drawing people away from incumbent markets is
difficult, Vannan says. Within North America, there are
three wheat contracts, each over 100 years old, each
catering to a specific wheat variety, Vannan points out.
Benham says he thinks there’s interest among
some players in reviving barley futures, “but is there
an incentive for the commercials? Probably not.”
Commercial grain companies can lay off that risk in
Chicago, he says.
But Benham is cautious about laying blame at
the commercials’ feet. They would likely use the
Continued on page 40
J u ly 2 0 1 4 country-guide.ca 39
business
Continued from page 39
contracts if there was more open interest, he says.
Open interest measures the number of outstanding
contracts at the trading day’s close, and is a sign of a
healthy contract.
Commercials and farmers aren’t the only players
needed to make a market successful, says Blue. These
contracts need market makers, or firms that buy,
then immediately sell from their own inventory or
find an offsetting order.
Lots of trading activity also adds up to liquidity,
which marks how easily an asset can be bought or
sold in the market, says Blue. Liquidity makes for a
robust market.
Contract design plays into it, too.
ICE Winnipeg has industry committees to help
review contract rules, Vannan says. And, he adds, the
exchange aims to create relevant, useful contracts. Contracts that favour one side or the other won’t trade.
Although a small percentage of the contracts are
delivered on, “the process behind the delivery goes
to the very core of what makes that futures contract
functional,” says Vannan.
It’s essential to maintain a strong connection
between the futures price and the cash price for grain,
says Vannan, “so that the hedge remains relevant.”
Blue had a few calls from farmers this past winter
wanting to open a sell futures position and deliver
canola against it. A weak basis level makes that
option more attractive, he explains.
But Blue says it’s not economically feasible to
deliver canola on a sell futures position because
delivery locations can levy an administration fee
at their discretion. He’d like to see a way to have
economically feasible delivery against the canola
contracts, or have it cash settled against a three-day
rolling average or some other cash index.
Both Blue and Benham are critical of the barley
contract ICE created when the single desk ended.
Rather than setting the delivery point in Lethbridge,
near Alberta’s feedlots, ICE put them in Saskatchewan.
The problem with a Saskatchewan delivery point,
says Benham is “it doesn’t give you a realistic price
discovery mechanism because of freight back-offs
and the way freight works in Western Canada.”
Part of the challenge in creating a futures contract
is drawing a broad audience, Vannan says. Narrow
contracts don’t help with price discovery because
there’s not enough competition between traders, he
explains. “It’s like going to an auction and only having two people show up.”
And Vannan says the Lethbridge pricing point is
only important in Western Canada. Consolidation in
the grain industry has cut the number of commercials,
which were important middlemen, Vannan says. Feedlot
numbers have also dropped drastically in the last 13
years, and barley acres are about half of what they were.
“If it’s going to work, Canadian barley has to
represent a global price,” says Vannan. “But it
doesn’t in the same way that canola does, unfor40 country-guide.ca tunately, because there are lower-cost suppliers of
barley in the world right now.”
Blue says others have tried to create a feed barley
cash trading market. Producers would sign on to a
cash contract that allowed them to deliver barley at a
later date, he explains.
“Those have struggled also, and I’m not exactly
sure why,” says Blue. He would like to see either a
way to physically deliver against the barley contracts
or have it cash settled against a cash index.
For his part, Benham thinks the cattle industry
needs to secure a reliable feed source or Alberta
could end up exporting feeder cattle instead of finishing them. Possible solutions include developing
higher-yielding barley varieties to boost acreage,
sourcing other feedstuffs, using proprietary software
from AgValue Group, or using marketing products
that would allow feeders to source cash barley.
But Benham thinks the feeder industry may develop
a different feed barley exchange to provide price discovery. Because futures are derived from functioning
cash markets, Benham thinks this is a viable option.
“If you chose to make a market somewhere else,
there’d be nothing to prevent you from doing that,”
says Benham.
The future of futures
ICE’s wheat and barley contracts aren’t functioning right now, but Vannan seems cautiously optimistic about the future.
“But it’s still early days yet. It’s been two crops —
two crops that have come into the marketplace under
considerably different conditions,” says Vannan.
Western Canadian farmers are quick to adopt
crops that provide the highest returns, says Vannan.
Canola is a prime example, where the futures market
supported growth in canola production. The industry’s investment in canola technology and farmers’
quick adaptation to the crop also helped the futures
market function better, he adds.
“So those things go hand in hand. There’s lots of
synergies that come out of that,” says Vannan.
And with recent change in the international
wheat markets comes opportunity, Vannan says.
He cites the Euronext wheat contract, traded in
Paris, as an example. For several years, that contract
didn’t gain volume. But the Black Sea gained prominence as a global grain supplier, making the European contract a better hedge than North American
contracts, Vannan says.
“Now it’s probably the fastest growing and one
of the most important wheat contracts there is,”
says Vannan.
The open wheat market could spell good news for
Canadian wheat contracts, he says. North American
wheat acres are being pushed farther north and west
by corn and soybeans, he adds. Canadian contracts
representing Canadian production will be the natural
benefactors in time, Vannan says.
“That timing might not be right now. But I’ve got
a feeling that it might not be that far away.” CG
J u ly 2 0 1 4
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The goal is
gouda
42 country-guide.ca J u ly 2 0 1 4
business
Adam and Hannie van
Bergeijk got their topquality Gouda cheese
into Sobeys, but only
by overcoming a series
of roadblocks
Photography: David Charlesworth
By Helen Lammers-Helps
wo years after he began
making cheese commercially on his New Hamburg,
Ont. dairy farm, Adam
van Bergeijk admits he is
pleased with their progress. “We’re close
to our targets,” he says.
But van Bergeijk also admits it’s been
a long haul to get to this point.
About 25 per cent of the milk from
their 180-cow Holstein dairy operation
is used to make Gouda-style cheese. The
cheese is sold through a distributor to
250 stores including Sobeys, Loblaws,
Zehrs, Foodland, Farm Boy and Metro,
as well as several specialty shops.
The van Bergeijks also operate a store
at the farm which is open Fridays and
Saturdays.
Making cheese isn’t new for Adam and
his wife, Hannie. They have a long history
of making award-winning Gouda cheese
on their farm in the Netherlands. Both
had trained at the Gouda Cheese Making
School in the city of Gouda in 1981.
When they immigrated to Canada in
1996 with their three teenaged children,
van Bergeijk continued making cheese,
but only for their own personal consumption. Although in the Netherlands it
was common to sell farmstead cheese, the
rules here made that difficult.
That changed, however, when the
Dairy Farmers of Ontario introduced
its Artisan Dairy Program to encourage
small-scale makers of traditional dairy
products, and van Bergeijk saw his
opportunity.
The hardest part was getting the
Continued on page 44
J u ly 2 0 1 4 After surviving red tape,
cost overruns and delays,
the van Bergeijks say
success in value adding
hinges on your skills —
and your resilience
country-guide.ca 43
business
Continued from page 43
cheese plant built, says van Bergeijk. It
took four years, with the red tape proving
a big stumbling block. The Ontario Ag
Ministry approved the plan for the stateof-the-art cheese plant but van Bergeijk
was not able to obtain a federal licence.
“The Canadian Food Inspection
Agency (CFIA) wasn’t interested in working with us,” he says. As a result, he is not
permitted to sell his cheese to other provinces. “The rules are difficult to explain to
the public,” says van Bergeijk, who also
had to satisfy DFO regulations, although
by the end of the project, he was impressed
with the support he got both from DFO
and from Dairy Farmers of Canada.
Getting the building permit approved
at the township level was also a long and
involved process, adds van Bergeijk.
As well, there were unforeseen construction costs that made the project go
over budget, and a big learning curve for
the contractors who weren’t familiar with
the equipment which had been purchased
from the Netherlands.
“It’s all sorted out now,” says van Bergeijk who is happily making cheese three
times a week, about 400 kg at a time.
Fresh milk from the barn goes directly
by pipeline to a 4,000-litre tank in the
cheese plant in a separate building where
it is sampled for quality standards.
“We are the only ones in the province
who use milk directly to make cheese,”
says van Bergeijk. Using warm milk, he
says, keeps more of the flavours.
The van Bergeijks focus on making a
natural cheese from unpasteurized milk
with no additives.
Cheese-making is a combination of
art and science, and for those interested
in the cheese-making process, there is a
detailed slide show on MountainOak’s
website at www.mountainoakcheese.ca.
Since the cheese is made from unpasteurized milk, it must be aged for a minimum of 60 days, and each cheese is given a
unique number so it can be traced — there
are now more than 3,000 cheese wheels in
storage which must be turned daily.
So far the family makes 14 different types of Gouda-style cheese, all sold
under the MountainOak name. There are
four plain cheeses: mild, medium, aged
(aged nine months) and Gold (aged 15
months). There are also several flavoured
cheeses including wild nettle, chili pepper,
black pepper, cumin, Friesian (cumin and
cloves), mustard, fennugreek, pumpkin
seed and black truffle.
“It is very important to get the right
balance of spices,” says van Bergeijk.
“Too much and it will overpower the
taste of the cheese.” He makes small
batches of new flavours which he tries out
on friends and family. He also monitors
how well the different cheeses are selling.
Already the quality of MountainOak
cheese has been recognized with two
awards. The aged Gouda won first place
at the British Empire Cheese Show in Belleville and the Gold cheese won second
place at the Canadian Cheese Awards.
While getting the cheese plant up and
running was the biggest hurdle, marketing has also been a bigger job than
Marketing will take more time, skill and
commitment than you’ll probably estimate
up front, say Hannie and Adam.
44 country-guide.ca expected. It takes a sustained effort to
create awareness of their cheeses and to
have people remember them, explains
Hannie. So far this year they have done
more than 40 demonstrations in grocery
stores and at food events. They have a
team of eight people trained in proper
food-handling procedures to do cheese
demonstrations. To help them manage
the onerous job of marketing, van Bergeijk hired a marketing manager who
works almost full time organizing demonstrations and shipments.
The milk used for cheese making
must first be sold to the milk board.
Then the van Bergeijks buy it back from
the board at a 10 cent per litre premium.
(Van Bergeijk says he hopes to negotiate
a better price in the future.)
Van Bergeijk is also concerned about
the impact of the CETA European trade
deal which will allow more subsidized
European cheese into Canada. While he
says he can compete on quality, he cannot compete on price with subsidized
European cheese.
To that end they are trying to encourage consumers (including other farmers) to support local farmers. “This is a
Dutch-style cheese made from Canadian
milk,” he says.
Van Bergeijk figures if we can make
it here, why should we import it? The
cheese plant creates jobs and contributes
to the local economy.
In a typical week, Adam spends about
75 per cent of his time working in the
cheese side of the operation and about
25 per cent still helping out with the
farm which is managed by his youngest son, Arjo and his wife, Baukje. They
also have three full-time staff, besides
Adam, working in the cheese plant, as
well as two part-time staff who work in
the store along with Baukje and Hannie.
Another son, John, and his wife,
Angela, have a dairy farm just a few
kilometres down the road. A daughter,
Liesbeth, has a dairy farm with her husband, Peter de Boer, near Tillsonburg.
In total, Adam and Hannie have nine
grandchildren.
Developing a value-added business
isn’t for everyone, says Adam. It takes
someone with an adventurous spirit, says
Hannie. And, adds Arjo, “someone who
doesn’t give up.”
Van Bergeijk agrees. “When there is
a roadblock you have to think, how am
I going to manage it so I can get to my
goal?” CG
J u ly 2 0 1 4
BUSINESS
The right tool at the right time
German implement manufacturer Lemken bases its Canadian
growth strategy on providing equipment tailored to local needs
By Scott Garvey, CG Machinery Editor
Implement
manufacturer
Lemken used a
500-year-old
farmyard in
central Germany
as the venue for
its International
Press Day in May.
PHOTOS: SCOTT GARVEY
his time the conversation was
the opposite of what I’m used
to. In the last few years it’s
become common enough to
hear North American machinery
executives talk about how they’re going to
get their share of the huge new markets in
the emerging economies. But in May, I was at
implement manufacturer Lemken’s factory in
Alpen, Germany, and the growth market on
the table there was Canada.
In just nine years, our country has grown to
become Lemken’s fourth-largest export market.
Short-term thinking goes against the grain
at this family-owned firm that has existed
since 1780. Just as John Deere started out
building plows in his own Midwest blacksmith shop, Wilhelmus Lemken did exactly
the same thing on the other side of the Atlan-
tic. Both men founded brands that now have
long-term, global strategies. Both brands also
see superior overall value as their core advantage, and both are strongly associated with
a trademark colour in their home countries,
green for Deere, blue for Lemken.
The comparison is actually kind of striking. “I’m focused on growth, but only on
profitable growth,” says Anthony van der
Ley, Lemken’s CEO. “(Some companies) are
more focused on absolute growth, but not
on the margin. We can get any order if we
drop the price. If I’m interested in the short
term, I can double the sales in three years.
But don’t ask me if the company is going to
exist in 10 years.”
Continued on page 46
Continued on page xx
J U LY 2 0 1 4
country-guide.ca 45
business
Christian Jungmann,
export sales
manager (l) and
Laurent Letzter,
Canadian sales
manager.
Continued from page 45
Despite being unwilling to sacrifice profits for rapid
growth, van der Ley says Lemken has actually achieved
such growth in Canada. In 2013 the company’s sales hit
15.4 million euros (about C$22.9 million), up from nine
million in early 2012. And he is bullish about 2014.
“In Canada this year we are aiming at 18 million
euros, which I think is too low,” van der Ley says.
“I would like to see 25, but we have to be realistic.
If you add our U.S. volume to that, this year would
be 28 million (in North America). There is a huge
market, huge potential.”
For Christian Jungmann, Lemken’s export sales
manager, the key to the Canadian market has been
to provide “the right (tillage) tool at the right time.”
Lemken’s bread-and-butter products are cuttingedge tillage implements.
“Ten or 15 years ago when someone here in Germany talked about Canada, everyone was just thinking about big fields, big structures, big distances,
this kind of thing,” Jungmann says. “No one was
aware the eastern part was completely different.”
After setting up a Canadian subsidiary in Quebec,
where many farms have a lot in common with those
in Europe, an unexpected thing happened. A former
company employee who emigrated to Manitoba called
Jungmann suggesting there was a potential market for
the brand’s tillage tools on the Prairies. After setting
up a field demonstration there and immediately getting five firm orders for implements, executives found
themselves looking for their first Prairie dealer.
46 country-guide.ca “That was a step we had not planned in the
beginning, to be honest,” says Jungmann. “We
thought we’ll go into the East. Then I thought we’ll
go over to B.C. At that stage, 2005, 2006, I had not
thought about the Prairies, because it was known
for no till. So everyone told me no tillage tools can
be sold there. There’s no business. You can stay at
home. Everyone believed that.”
Sales across the Prairies continue to exceed expectations, and now Lemken has 17 dealers with multiple
locations across the region. “The good news was there
was no need for us to visit dealers,” Jungmann says.
“The dealers came to us.”
Building on the method it used to get those first
five Prairie sales, Lemken management believes that
once farmers see what blue machines can do, they’ll be
hooked. So demonstrations — even impromptu ones —
have been a large part of the brand’s marketing efforts.
“To promote the products, we have a lot of demonstration tours going on in the different provinces,”
says Laurent Letzter, Canadian sales manager. “We
rented a tractor in Ontario. For a couple of days I
was driving (between scheduled demos) and we’d see
some dust in the field, see a farmer working. We’d
stop and ask if they’d like us to help them do some
work. They can stay in their cab and see our demonstration guy doing a couple of passes. We’d leave
them a brochure and they keep on working.
“One dealer in Alberta hired four demonstration
people. He said 80 per cent of the demos he’d done
turned into sales,” Letzter says.
The company also emphasizes followup support
J u ly 2 0 1 4
business
and service in its Canadian operation, just as it does
at home in Germany.
“If you do something, you have to deliver the
best service,” explains van der Ley. “Price is important, but it’s not the most important thing. If we had
to sell on (purchase) price we would lose.”
“Product development is very important to Lemken, because we always try to innovate,” adds Letzter. “The foundation of the company is to bring new
innovation to market, not just to increase turnover.
There are over 100 engineers working here (in Alpen)
to develop new products. When you count 1,000
employees that’s 10 per cent who are working on creating new innovation.”
But that innovation is only valuable if it meets
farmers’ needs. What works well in Germany or
France isn’t necessarily useful in Alberta or Ontario.
“The farming systems in North America are different,” acknowledges van der Ley. “First we want
to make sure we understand the market and get
feedback.”
Because of Lemken’s relatively flat management
structure, Letzter can channel Canadian farmer feedback (much of it gleaned from those field demonstrations) directly to engineers at the Alpen factory,
which has resulted in several design changes on units
bound for Canada.
“Most units in Europe have three-point hitches,
but in the West that wasn’t even an option,” Letzter
notes. “We had to do a full line of drawbar units.
And now that we have it, we see opportunity in
other markets.”
J u ly 2 0 1 4 Shortly before taking the stage to give his official
address to farm journalists at Lemken’s International Press Day event in Kassel, Germany (also
in May), van der Ley talked about the growth he
expects in North America. And the numbers he
throws out are ambitious. He backs them up by
estimating future global farm income. Like every
equipment company executive, he knows that farm
income is the real driver behind machinery sales.
“In the next 10 years, we feel the world will have a
tremendous agricultural commodity scarcity,” van der
Ley says. That translates into strong farm incomes.
“If you look at the global implement market,
last year, in 2013, it was a 96 billion (euros) market
worldwide. In the next 10 years it will nearly double.
Why? Because in the developing world, farmers are
purchasing tillage equipment. That is a fantastic
opportunity for Lemken. The market in China will
triple. India will double.”
“We think the biggest growth potential is in
Asia,” van der Ley goes on. “But on the other hand,
if you look to absolute sales volumes, because bigger machines have a higher sales value, then there is
tremendous potential in North America. In China
and India there is big potential, but machines are
very small, so you have to sell a lot of machines for a
decent value.”
So van der Ley believes Lemken will need to stay
flexible to cash in on those opportunities.
“You cannot grow only by increasing your
sales,” van der Ley says. “You have to adapt your
organization.” CG
The brand’s name
displayed at the
entrance to its
Alpen, Germany
factory.
country-guide.ca 47
Production
All in good time
The fungicide question on wheat is settled for
these farmers. It’s every acre, every year…
but always at the right crop stage
By Gord Gilmour, CG Associate Editor
ristjan Hebert knows exactly what his
target is when he is spraying fungicide
on his wheat. “One hundred per cent,”
says the Moosomin, Sask.-area grain
grower, who farms with his father. “Our
goal is to get it all covered at the heading stage.”
“After three years, if the return
on investment is always positive,
we adopt it whole farm.”
— Kristjan Hebert, Moosomin, Sask.
48 country-guide.ca That’s a far cry from just a few years ago, when
the biggest question about fungicide use on cereal
crops was whether it was even worth doing, especially during an era of lower grain prices.
But Hebert has the numbers to back up this strategy, having run on-farm trials early in the adoption
curve to determine how the economics of fungicide
applications on wheat stacked up.
“We always do three years of testing. No numbers
or data are as good as the ones you get from your own
farm,” Hebert says. “After three years, if the return on
investment is always positive, we adopt it whole farm.”
In this case those numbers did add up, and they
have continued to show a payback when he has periodically revisited the question over the years. Basically,
he says, the numbers have never dipped into the red.
So now every wheat crop gets fungicide applications.
“It has always covered at least the cost of the
product and the application,” Hebert says.
Lethbridge, Alta.-area farmer Henk Kamper
echoes Hebert’s sentiments, saying fungicide applications are an important part of their crop protection
strategy, so his family, which farms under the Kamper
Enterprises banner, doesn’t waste a lot of time every
season wondering if they should fill the sprayer.
While they farm in an area with drier conditions,
the Kampers grow under irrigation. This can build disease pressure that might not otherwise exist by creating
the perfect conditions for its development.
“For us the question with fungicide applications
on our wheat isn’t ‘if,’ but ‘when,’” Kamper says.
Back on the Hebert farm, the fungicide mainly
goes down through their ground rig, using double-sided nozzles, a system Hebert says gives the
most consistent results. But when the inevitable time
crunch hits the 8,000-acre operation, the total coverage target remains most important.
“I’d rather do it with our sprayer, but if time
won’t permit that, we have no problem calling in a
plane or helicopter,” Hebert says.
Hebert says that while the aerial results aren’t
as consistent, any application still has a worthwhile
impact on yield and quality. He stresses, however,
that aerial application is a last resort and his much
preferred option is to go in with a ground rig. He
strongly suggests using double-sided nozzles and, if
necessary, slowing down a bit to get proper coverage.
J u ly 2 0 1 4
production
“If you’re going to do a pass, get the best coverage you possibly can,” Hebert says.
Kamper says their operation is similar, and they’re
likewise dedicated to doing the job right, using a system with three main pillars.
At application time it’s mainly a question of using
the right equipment and getting the spray mix right.
Kamper says they use between 15 and 20 gallons of
water an acre, depending on which fungicide they’re
spraying. Less than that will mean incomplete coverage. They also use double-sided nozzles (see photo)
to ensure coverage on both sides of the heads.
“The right nozzles, the right water volume, the
right timing — this is our strategy to get the most out
of our fungicide applications,” Kamper says.
Once the application system has been refined, the
main challenge is hitting a narrow spray window. And
while there’s been some debate over the years about
what the best timing is, that’s increasingly become a
settled question, according to one industry player.
Every fall, after the harvest at Richardson International’s Kelburn research farm, just south of Winnipeg on the banks of the Red River of the North,
Wes Anderson spends a few days pouring over an
Excel spreadsheet of the latest data in his ongoing
fungicide trials.
Anderson, the company’s agronomy manager, has
spent a lot of time over the past few years looking at
optimal fungicide timing on wheat crops. He’s currently
got about 10 years of solid data from farm trials, as
well as anecdotal evidence from the company’s team of
agronomists situated throughout Western Canada.
“We did the first of our trials with what are now
older products — Tilt and Headline,” Anderson says.
“Then we did lots of trials with Folicur, and lately
we’ve been using the newest products, like Prosaro. I
think we’ve got a lot of good data.”
That data is sending a clear message, Anderson
says. Growers looking for the best time to apply
fungicides should be targeting the heading stage
most years, with earlier applications only in the
event of heavy pressure from leaf diseases that could
hit the flag leaf and hamper yield.
“Our Kelburn data shows that four years out of five,
applications at the T-3 (heading) stage give the best economic results,” Anderson says. Partly that’s because of a
mild yield boost, but mainly it’s a question of crop quality, with the heading-stage applications keeping a lid on
fusarium-damaged kernels and DON mycotoxins, and
therefore preventing downgrading.
A representative of one of the leading fungicide
manufacturers agrees this seems to be the consensus that’s emerging.
When Troy Basaraba joined Bayer in 2003, cereal
fungicides were still very much in their infancy.
Folicur was just emerging and the ongoing debate
amongst growers was over whether or not there was
a compelling economic case to be made for the applications on wheat.
“The right nozzles, the right water
volume, the right timing — this is
our strategy to get the most out
of our fungicide applications.”
— Henk Kamper, Lethbridge, Alta.
Double-sided nozzles
are becoming the
design of choice
when these farmers
spray fungicides.
Continued on page 50
J u ly 2 0 1 4 country-guide.ca 49
Production
“Four years out of
five, applications at
the T-3 (heading)
stage give the best
economic results.”
— Wes Anderson,
Richardson International
Continued from page 49
Now, the question has become what’s
the optimal timing for fungicide applications, and Basaraba has been heavily
involved in recent years in a Bayer program that runs strip trials throughout
Western Canada in commercial fields to
compare various fungicide treatments.
“Initially the thinking was you should
protect the flag leaf from leaf diseases at
all costs,” Basaraba says. “We’ve seen that
change over time and evolve to more focus
on protection from fusarium head blight. I
would say that over the past six years or so,
we’ve seen a move from flag-leaf timing to
applying it at heading time.”
There are a number of factors that
have gone into this evolution, Basaraba
says. New products offer multiple modes
of action and better protection from
fusarium. Other farming practices such
as minimum- and zero-till farming systems have changed the environment for
the disease, leaving much more crop residue on the field surface where it can act
as a host to the disease. Then there’s been
the general spread and growth of disease
pressure throughout the region, so that
even parts of the Prairies such as Alberta
where the pressure has been lower are
grappling with this new reality.
50 country-guide.ca “They’ve definitely got it there —
it’s just less than everywhere else,”
Basaraba said.
Basaraba agrees with Anderson, saying timely scouting can help refine the
appropriate application timing in season,
and that it’s always going to be a balancing act between protecting the flag leaf
during times of high pressure from the
leaf disease complex, while at the same
time grappling with the perennial challenge of fusarium.
“Basically it’s Agronomy 101,”
Basaraba says. “You need to keep your
nose in the crop.”
While Basaraba concedes that every
growing season is going to vary, he says
the numbers on his spreadsheets don’t lie,
and the question of what the best fungicide timing is has become a lot closer to
settled in his mind as season after season
of data have accumulated.
“I think it’s quite clear that most seasons, you’ll get better yield protection,
better response and a better return on
investment at heading,” Basaraba says.
Basaraba says typically the portions
treated at head timing have about a half
a bushel more yield. And even more
importantly, they’ve generally got better
grain quality.
Back on the farm, both grain growers
confirm that they’re mainly shooting for
head timing applications these days.
“We apply at head timing with fungicides, and we see that timing as the
best,” Kamper says.
It’s not even necessarily a question of
yield, although there is likely some yield
benefit. For their farm, the key question
is quality. That’s what they’re paid for
and by spraying just at the time of heading and flowering, they protect quality and prevent damaged kernels and
elevated levels of mycotoxins.
Another wrinkle in the operation is
that they include both wheat and grain
corn in their rotation, providing a second
potential host crop for fusarium head
blight. But even without the corn issue,
the farm and others in the area have to
face the simple fact that — like most
other parts of the Prairies — fusarium
has become a fact of life and the disease
is always there, just waiting for the right
conditions to flourish in the crop canopy,
making hitting it with a fungicide at heading a perennial goal of the farm.
Hitting that head-timing window,
however, is easier said than done, because
it’s such a narrow one. Just four or five
days long, for the typical modern commercial-scale grain grower it makes for a
lot of ground to cover, Kamper concedes.
J u ly 2 0 1 4
PRODUCTION
“You can do it if you’re set up for it,” Kamper says. “Keep
scouting, and be ready to move as soon as they head out. Be
ready for it and go at it as hard as you can.”
Producers can also do a few things earlier in the season to
make life a bit easier, such as taking care at seeding time to do
a good job to get even germination and emergence so the entire
field begins heading at the same time, setting up conditions for
a more successful application.
Hebert agrees head timing seems to deliver the best results,
although he admits he’d hit it at flag-leaf stage too — if there
were only enough days to do the work. As it is, they typically
blend a low rate of fungicides and spray them along with weed
control products, hoping to keep the leaf diseases in check until
the head-timing applications.
“This means we’re typically applying our weed control products
a bit toward the later end of the application range,” Hebert says.
It’s all just part of the farm’s central philosophy, which
assumes every crop that goes into the ground has a 100 per cent
chance of remaining healthy and hitting its full yield potential.
“We do everything we can to manage the evironment and
fertility to protect that 100 per cent potential,” Hebert says.
“It really is a bit of a balancing act,” Anderson agrees. “It all
comes down to how bad the leaf disease pressure is earlier in the
season, and if it gets really bad, you can’t always wait for heading.”
In recent years, fusarium head blight has become endemic
in Western Canada. Unlike leaf diseases, which frequently have
to be blown in from farther south, this disease winters here. It’s
always laying in wait, ready for the next time weather conditions line up for a full-blown epidemic. That makes it the more
important of the diseases to manage proactively, and the more
likely candidate to deliver a bigger bang for the buck and effort.
One thing that has become apparent in recent years is that
farmers are taking cereals management much more seriously
than they used to. They’re optimizing their fertility and weed
control packages, and they have increased their use of fungicides and are paying more attention to application timing as
part of that trend.
“We’ve come a long way with wheat,” Anderson says.
“These crops are much more intensively managed than they
used to be just five or 10 years ago.”
Another area where there have been improvements is in the
available fungicides, such as Prosaro, one of the latest offerings.
Initially Anderson says he wasn’t expecting much beyond a little
modest evolution in efficacy, but instead he’s finding it’s delivering a bit more than expected.
“We’re finding it (Prosaro) is delivering longer and better
protection,” Anderson says.
Bayer’s Troy Basaraba agrees the exception to that rule is
when there’s “massive” leaf disease pressure, something like
rust spores blowing in from down south during a spring with
good conditions for the disease’s development.
Under those conditions, Basaraba agrees with Anderson that
earlier applications can have a positive return on investment too. CG
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country-guide.ca 51
Production
Preserve blackleg resistance
Clip canola stems this harvest to check for blackleg in your fields
By Jay Whetter
lackleg has a way of sneaking up on you.
A farm can go for years without any
noticeable problems. But without the
grower knowing, blackleg races within
a field can shift — often in response to
seeding the same genetic resistance source over and
over — and infection starts to show up where it
hadn’t before. Severity starts to creep up, with a rating of 0, then 1, then 2. Then bang!
The next time canola goes on that field, plants
start dying off in big numbers in August and the
grower wonders what’s the matter. By then, yield loss
can be significant.
Fortunately, this is still a fairly rare occurrence
in the current blackleg era on the Canadian Prairies.
However, incidence is increasing. The purpose of this
article is to encourage growers to check canola crops
this fall — ideally a week or two before cutting or
shortly after — to see if blackleg is showing up.
If it isn’t, that’s good. You can use this year as the
year-one benchmark in your new blackleg scouting
program.
“The ultimate goal is to catch blackleg before
it gets serious enough to cause yield loss, and then
take preventive measures to keep levels low, or
make them low again,” says Clint Jurke, agronomy
specialist for the Canola Council of Canada. “It
can be done.”
How to scout
Review what you’re looking for. Many young
growers may not be familiar with blackleg because it
was so long ago that it was a major issue. Throughout the season, blackleg symptoms can include leaf,
pod and stem lesions. Leaf spots are dirty white,
round to irregularly shaped, and usually dotted with
numerous small, black pycnidia. Pycnidia appear as
tiny round specks that may be seen more easily with
the aid of a hand lens. These specks are a distinguishing feature of blackleg.
Basal stem lesions — “cankers” — are associated with serious yield loss. Stem lesions may be up
to several inches in length, and are usually white or
grey with a dark border. Numerous pycnidia form in
the centre of the lesion. Basal stem lesions may also
appear as a general blackening at the base, often producing a gnarled, woody appearance.
“Basal stem infections are what you’re looking
for with the pre-harvest scout — which is the easiest
time to accurately identify blackleg,” Jurke says.
Blackleg Incidence in Prairie Provinces
Stem lesions are dirty white and
usually dotted with numerous
small, black pycnidia — the tiny
dark specks.
Source: Gary Peng, AAFC
Incidence of blackleg across the Prairies has started to increase again, reaching
levels not seen since before resistant varieties saw widespread adoption in the late
1990s. Gaps in the graph indicate years when disease surveys were not conducted.
52 country-guide.ca J u ly 2 0 1 4
production
Step two in blackleg scouting is to get a good set
of garden clippers. Then in the week or two before
harvest, select 20 random plants from a few locations in the field. Pull up each plant and clip the stem
just below ground level. Look for black discolouration of the cross-section. A rating of 0 means no
blackleg stem discolouration. A rating of 5 means
the stem is completely discoloured and blackleg has
killed the plant. A wedge of black that covers 26 to
50 per cent of the cross-section is considered a 2.
“Varieties with a resistance rating for blackleg
should have very low infection levels. If R-rated
varieties are showing damage levels higher than 1 on
average across a field, that means the pathogen population might have shifted or increased substantially
and the variety is no longer resistant to the races in
that field,” Jurke says. “It is time to take action to
prevent major yield losses the next time canola goes
on that field.”
How to manage blackleg
Genetic resistance is the simplest and, for most
fields, the most effective blackleg management tool.
Blackleg has not been an issue at all for most growers since the late 1990s when resistance was first
introduced in a big way.
However, disease surveys show an increase in
blackleg incidence across the Prairies over the past
five years or so, especially in Manitoba and Alberta.
“Tighter canola rotations are likely a factor,” Jurke
says. “We are relying heavily on resistance alone to
manage the disease, and very few are actually scouting for it.”
A key component of integrated pest management
(IPM) of blackleg is to add diversity to the opera-
Blackleg severity is
on a 0-5 scale, with
5 being completely
discoloured and dead.
Use this image as a
guide when clipping
stems before harvest
to scout for blackleg.
If plants from a blackleg-resistant variety
commonly show
ratings of 1 or more,
the blackleg population
in the field may have
shifted to a more
virulent race.
J u ly 2 0 1 4 “The ultimate goal is to catch
blackleg before it gets serious
enough to cause yield loss.”
— Clint Jurke
tion by rotating crops, hybrids and fungicides. “The
most effective management is to extend the canola
rotation on a high-risk field to at least a two-year
break,” Jurke says. “Rotating hybrids and fungicides
could also help — although research is ongoing to
determine the best ways to apply these steps.”
Gary Peng, research scientist at Agriculture and
Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) in Saskatoon, worked
with researchers from University of Manitoba and
from Alberta Innovates on a fungicide assessment
over the past few years. “The research does not
show an economic benefit to fungicides for blackleg
control — except when susceptible crops are grown
under high blackleg pressure,” Peng says.
Other AAFC research in Saskatchewan in the late
2000s found that burning canola residue and tillage
did not reduce incidence rates.
Ongoing science
Researchers with AAFC in Saskatoon and
University of Manitoba are working on ways to
improve our blackleg monitoring. “We want a system where we can quickly identify which pathogen
races are present in a field and across a region, and
then identify canola varieties with effective defence
mechanisms that line up with that group of races,”
says Peng.
“That way, growers can choose hybrids with
resistance to the blackleg pathogen races present in
their fields or region, and also make more informed
decisions when it comes to rotating varieties and
preventing virulent races from becoming dominant,”
Jurke says.
The project needs growers to participate in collecting samples this fall and for the following three
years. If you are interested, please email principal
investigator Dilantha Fernando with the University
of Manitoba at [email protected]. CG
Jay Whetter is communications manager with the
Canola Council of Canada, and editor of the free
C anola W atch agronomy newsletter. Sign up at
www.canolawatch.org and follow @CanolaWatch on
Twitter. To read a summary of Phase 1 of the blackleg identification study, read the C anola Digest
Science Edition 2013 here: www.canolacouncil.org/
canola-digest-past-issues/. Look for study 3.3.
country-guide.ca 53
Production
Health markets
could boost food
barley sales if Cigi's
project succeeds.
A better way to mill barley?
Cigi investigates improved milling of food
barley by blending it with wheat
he milling performance of Canadian
food barley may be improved by blending it with wheat, opening up commercial potential for its use as a healthy
ingredient.
Funded by the Agriculture Funding Consortium,
with food barley varieties supplied by the Alberta
Barley Commission, a one-year project conducted
by Cigi (Canadian International Grains Institute) is
aiming to provide innovative milling techniques and
knowledge that would enhance the competitiveness
of barley and wheat flour in health food and ingredient markets.
Cigi’s milling and analytical services areas are carrying out the milling and analysis on site.
Food barley has a number of beneficial health
properties. Consumption can reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, it can modulate blood glucose levels, and it may offset certain cancers. These benefits
are attributed to beta glucan, phytonutrients, antioxidants, and vitamins contained in barley. Health
Canada approved a health claim in 2012 for foods
containing 1.0 gram of barley beta glucan as a way
to lower cholesterol.
The milling project builds on previous research
Cigi conducted in 2008-09 in which new opportunities for foods made with barley were identified and
54 country-guide.ca developed in partnership with international and
domestic companies. Toward the end of the project,
a U.K. bakery asked Cigi to try blending 15 per cent
barley flour with wheat flour for pan bread, says
Ashok Sarkar, head of milling technology at Cigi.
“Rather than blending flours, it was decided to blend
the grains and mill them together. The initial comilling of barley and wheat was successful but not
pursued further at the time.”
Since hulls need to be removed before milling barley, hulless barley is easier to work with, says Elaine
Sopiwnyk, Cigi director of science and innovation,
who is leading the project. However, the hulless food
barley varieties (especially those that are “waxy”
with lower levels of amylose, a component of starch)
are sticky when milling. This can pose a problem
for millers although waxy starch properties are also
associated with higher levels of beta glucan. Blending
barley with wheat appears to resolve this issue during the milling process.
“Wheat is coarser and more granular, which helps
with sifting and prevents the barley flour from clogging the sifter screen perforations,” Sarkar explains,
adding that the project will use hulless barley ranging
between a normal starch type to fully waxy. “Just
imagine flours sifting through fine fabric — if you
add sand it will keep the screen clean.”
J u ly 2 0 1 4
Photo: CIGI
By Ellen Goodman, Cigi
production
Barley has great health benefits, but it clogs up
flour mills. Now, Cigi may see a solution
In 2005 Sarkar successfully milled Millhouse, the
first registered non-waxy hulless food barley variety
in Canada, at a relatively high extraction rate of about
74.6 per cent. “I said then we could actually someday
pull barley from one bin and wheat from another and
mill them together. But that was just a hypothesis and
nothing was done. Then this request from a bakery
customer happened later so we tried it.”
The current project came about when Cigi’s milling results were presented at a meeting of barley
researchers at the Richardson Centre for Functional
Foods and Nutraceuticals. Sarkar says the Alberta
Barley Commission (ABC) was in attendance and
subsequently recommended that Cigi apply for funding for further work.
“ABC helped review the project proposal and
provided three food barley samples for us to work
with — two tonnes each of CDC McGwire (normal
starch), CDC Rattan (partial waxy), and CDC Fibar
(full waxy),” says Sopiwnyk. “The varieties will be
used to determine what blend of wheat and barley
will provide optimum milling performance and nutrition in the flour as a healthy ingredient which will
help us develop guidelines on milling barley for the
industry. Right now the use of food barley is limited
in North America, but this project has the potential
to increase its use.”
Sopiwnyk recently returned from a Cigi mission
to Japan with other industry representatives to investigate that country’s use of food barley where it is
used in an array of products including barley flour,
beta glucan extract, sochu (liquor), mugicha (barley
tea), miso, pearled barley, and rice extenders. The
group also met with Japanese industry associations
and processors of barley products, many of whom
are current customers of Canadian food barley. CG
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J u ly 2 0 1 4 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.
Agronomy rules
This project aims to raise yields 25 per cent through better agronomy
By Clare Stanfield
heri Strydhorst isn’t doing a lot of fishing this summer. And if her research bears out, you just might be
willing to give it up, too.
An agronomy research scientist with Alberta
Agriculture and Rural Development in Barrhead,
Strydhorst is leading an incredibly complex, multi-layered,
multi-site, multi-crop research project designed to find out the
extent to which an intensive systems approach to crop management can boost yields in wheat, feed barley and peas.
“There hasn’t been a huge amount of work done on
advanced agronomy systems,” says Strydhorst. “There have
been lots of one-off projects on things like multiple fungicide
applications, or the effect of plant growth regulators — and all
of that is valuable research.” But, she adds, there haven’t been
many opportunities to look at what happens when you use all
of these practices together in a systems approach to crop management.
So, what does Strydhorst mean by an advanced agronomy systems approach? Basically, she and her team are stacking multiple
agronomic practices in a field to determine where the synergies
lie and where the cut-off points are in the quest for higher yields.
For example, there are plenty of independent research data
to show that two fungicide applications in wheat can boost
yield. But what if you include a plant growth regulator (PGR)
in that crop and give it a supplemental treatment of liquid
urea ammonium nitrate (UAN)? What about two fungicide
applications and a higher rate of UAN? What about different application timings? How do these practices impact each
other? Would these interactions differ depending on soil zone?
How much is too much, and where is the point of diminishing
returns when it comes to input cost versus increased yield?
If you think that sounds like a lot, brace yourself. “We are
looking at 48 wheat management practices, 64 barley management practices and 15 pea management practices,” says Strydhorst, adding that the three-year study is being conducted at
five sites across Alberta and encompasses irrigated land as well
as thin black, black and grey soils.
In all, Strydhorst and her team are testing about 50 different management systems in wheat and feed barley aimed
at maximizing yields, and 15 management systems in peas
aimed at improving harvestability. Her goal is nothing short
56 country-guide.ca
of increasing wheat and barley yields by 25 per cent while
maintaining peas in the rotation, in an effort to make western
Canadian farms more profitable.
That’s why it’s important to Strydhorst that a portion
of her funding is coming from farmers through the Western
Grains Research Foundation. “The WGRF is a huge contributor to this project,” she says. “The knowledge that farmers are
willing to spend their dollars on this means a lot to me.” She
adds that this funding has helped leverage additional dollars
from the Alberta Crop Industry Development Fund (ACIDF).
Indeed, the importance of this work to growers is evidenced by the fact that Strydhorst’s project has six funding
bodies (including WGRF and ACIDF), the majority of which
are farmer directed (Alberta Wheat Commission, Alberta
Barley Commission, Alberta Pulse Growers Commission and
Alberta Innovates — Bio Solutions).
Optimizing existing technology
The first thing you might notice about Strydhorst’s research
is that canola is nowhere to be found. “There has been so
much work done on canola and malt barley,” she says. “We
need the work in these other crops now, but we are planting
all of our systems into canola stubble because we know that’s
the reality for growers.”
Another reality assumed by the research is that farmers are
getting the basics right before advanced agronomic practices
are overlaid. “We are doing all the basics as they should be
done,” Strydhorst explains. “We’re seeding early, using certified seed, seed treatment, proper seeding rates and depth, early
herbicide applications — this is the control factor. Then we
want to see what happens when we add a fungicide certain
times, in-crop UAN and PGRs.”
Strydhorst believes that farmers already have top-of-theline technology in the form of plant genetics, crop protection
products, fertilizer, even machinery. Her focus is on how
growers can optimize the potential of these things through
advanced agronomy. “I think it’s critical for Canada to be
competitive on an international scale,” she says. “We have the
genetics, but I don’t think we have the agronomy to maximize
those genetics. Or sometimes we buy the new chemical, but
then don’t use it properly.”
J U LY 2 0 1 4
WGRF E
PRODUCTION
At its core, this research is about what is possible in terms
of yield when you do everything right. “Last year, I had a
farmer ask me at a field day if he should cut his wheat fertilizer dollars and put it all into fungicide, since the results of a
dual fungicide application trial looked so good,” says Strydhorst. “But you can’t steal from one pile to feed another. If
you don’t do everything right, then none of it matters.”
In other words, building big yields is about setting a strong
foundation and building on it carefully, brick by brick. “This
is intensive management,” Strydhorst says. “We are looking at
the best growth staging to apply a PGR, or the best timing and
growing conditions to apply UAN. You have to get the basics
right and then ask what you can tweak to build yields.”
The plan is that if growers can consistently achieve wheat
yields of 54 bu./ac. and feed barley yields of over 75 bu./
ac., then these crops become very economically competitive
choices when it comes time to plan rotations.
With the peas, it’s less about yield than about reducing the
pain-in-the-butt factor. “The whole purpose is to get those
things to stand through harvest,” laughs Strydhorst, recalling
a farmer recently telling her it took him five days to harvest a
quarter of peas.
She explains that 2014 is a prep year for the pea work —
basically growing wheat that will be harvested at different
stubble heights and then peas will be inter-row seeded into
that stubble next year. “We will seed CDC Meadows into
14-inch, seven-inch and no-stubble fields,” she says. “We’ll do
inter-row seeding, using stubble as a trellis, then add a PGR
and look at timing and rates. If we can make it more attractive
to grow peas, that would be great.”
Focus on farmers’ needs
All this talk of dual fungicide applications, PGRs and UAN
applications — won’t all this cost too much? Not really, says
Strydhorst. A 30-bu./ac. yield increase in wheat more than offsets the cost of two fungicide applications, for example.
But she cautions this is not simply a checklist of things to
do to get higher yield. It’s about helping farmers farm better by knowing when to push the crop and when to cut their
losses. Is the yield potential there? Are the growing conditions
looking good enough to apply fungicide a second time? “It’s
about knowing your crop and babying it,” says Strydhorst. “It
means you can’t take that fishing trip in June or July.”
And farmers are at the forefront of her thinking, with many
field days, winter meetings and media outreach plans included
as specific project objectives. “If I do this work and farmers
don’t know about it, then I’m wasting my time,” she says with
a laugh. “The more farmers and agronomists we can talk to
about this, the better.”
Strydhorst admits that maybe agronomy research isn’t as
flashy as something really high tech, but the difference that
advanced agronomy can make to farmers’ yields is what gets
her up in the morning. “I want to get farmers excited about
agronomy again.” 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
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Leveraged to
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WGRF Endowment Fund Half-page Ad_final.indd 1
2013-09-12 8:34 AM
Production
Cr op pr otection
In search of a good label
On virtually every pesticide container, it’s written in big, bold
letters, “Read the label and booklet before using.” My guess
is almost no one complies, and with good reason
By Warren Libby, Savvy Farmer
t can be a ridiculous request. Labels have
become virtual novels. The label for the
most widely used pesticide in Canada,
glyphosate, can be over 100 pages long. If
you tank mix glyphosate with another herbicide such as Pardner, add another 59 pages to your
bedtime reading.
Has anyone ever taken the time to read 160
pages of label text before applying their pest control treatment to a single field?
To compound the issue, labels are technical in
nature, written in hard metric, and there is no standard format for how the information is presented.
Growers understandably turn to other sources
for information about their pest control products.
For some, that information may come from their
dealer, for others from an agronomist, and for still
others it may come from a neighbour. But do even
these folks have time to read through hundreds of
labels and stay completely abreast of the new information?
We know that the label contains vital information about rates, timing, pre-harvest intervals, crop
rotation, and restrictions. Get any one of these
parameters wrong and you risk poor control, crop
damage or residues. You may even put your own
safety at risk. Yet between the government’s need
to protect us from all risks, and the manufacturer’s
need to ensure we use their products correctly,
labels have evolved into something that does neither, since they just don’t get read.
Labels have always been a pet peeve of mine.
In addition to their sheer length and difficult language, there are a couple issues that really stand
out as impediments to the proper application of
pesticides. The first is the following statement
found on the vast majority of products:
“Refer to the tank-mix partner label for use
directions, restrictions and precautions.”
In modern weed control we rarely use one pesticide, but rather tank mix two or more products.
Unfortunately many manufacturers make tank
mixing a daunting task by failing to provide full
instructions on their labels. Instead, they take the
approach of demanding farmers find and read the
tank-mix partner label themselves.
58 country-guide.ca I do not want to pick on a single product, since
this is a very common practice in the industry, but
Evito fungicide serves as a good example. Suppose
you have powdery mildew in your durum wheat
and choose Evito to take care of it. The Evito label
states it cannot be used alone but must be tank
mixed with another fungicide, such as Folicur.
Yet the Evito label includes no instructions for
using Folicur except “Refer to the tank-mix partner
label for use directions, restrictions and precautions. When EVITO 480 SC Fungicide is used in
combination with other fungicides, always follow
the most restrictive label restrictions and precautions.” This means growers must find a label for
Folicur and read through that 17-page Folicur
document in order to know how to apply Evito to
their wheat crop. Again, I did not want to focus
on Evito, a very effective fungicide, but it is a good
example of what can be found on literally hundreds of labels.
In defence of pesticide manufacturers, it’s easy
to understand why they are unwilling to include
complete tank-mix partner instructions on their
labels. Pesticide labels are already massive and the
inclusion of full details on each tank-mix partner
would bloat these out of control. Manufacturers
also worry that there could be changes on the label
of the tank-mix partner product, which would
demand that they reflect those changes on their
own product labels. When you have over 40 tankmix partner products listed on your label, as is
the case with a product such as Horizon, a manufacturer could be in a position where it needs to
rewrite its label every few months.
To avoid this responsibility, they simply demand
that we read the label for the tank-mix partner,
effectively shifting the burden onto the farmer.
The second major issue with modern pesticide
labels is that information is not organized in a
standardized industry format but is often scattered
throughout the label, requiring us to read the entire
label if we want to be certain we have all the necessary information.
Labels have evolved over time as more crops,
tank mixes, and application methods are added.
While manufacturers have done a commendable
j u ly 2 0 1 4
production
job of adding new uses to labels, less thought has
been given to how information is organized, making them a Mensa-like exercise to actually figure
out precisely how to apply the product. Again, not
to pick on a single pesticide, I will use the example
of the very popular product Roundup WeatherMAX here. Let’s say you want to use WeatherMAX to control certain weeds in your soybeans.
You would need to wade through that lengthy label
and pull information from the following sections.
Page 14 — Mixing instructions
Page 18 — Buffer zones
Page 19 — Weeds controlled
Page 31 — Surfactant information
Page 37 — Application rates and notes
Page 41 — Tank mixes for soybeans
Page 58 — Aerial application instructions
Page 70 — Broadcast and spot
treatment instructions
Page 71 — Application details and
PHI for tank mixes
Page 77 — Spot treatments in soybeans
Page 80 — Pre-harvest treatments
While Monsanto does a better job than most at
providing information about tank-mix partners, it
still does not provide enough, and demands that
users “Consult the XXX Herbicide label for tank
mixing instructions and use precautions including
instructions on replanting to other crops.” So as
noted above, in addition to reading that 101 page
glyphosate label, you should also be reading the
label for the tank-mix partner.
Manufacturers will continue to add more
crops, pests, and instructions to labels, as they
should. Health Canada will continue to demand
more information be included to protect human
health and the environment, as it should. Both are
doing their jobs, yet that results in labels getting
longer, more challenging to read, and more difficult to follow.
It’s time for the pest control industry, led by the
industry association CropLife Canada, to show some
leadership on this issue. If the industry is genuinely
interested in the proper and safe use of pest control
products, it needs to make it easier for farmers to follow the rules. CG
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j u ly 2 0 1 4 country-guide.ca 59
w e at h e r
w e at h e r
NEAR NORMAL
O
WARMER
THAN
NORMAL
AVERAGE
RAINFALL
cc
a
ra sio
in na
rm
Wa ry
D ls
l
spe
MILDER THAN NORMAL
C
Froool
sty
l
Ch
Sh ang
ow ea
er ble
y
COOLER THAN NORMAL
NEAR-NORMAL TEMPERATURES
AND RAINFALL
Cool
Wet
spells
Variable
Showery
BRITISH COLUMBIA
August 10 to September 13, 2014
Aug. 10-16: Mostly sunny and warm overall apart from scattered shower activity.
Often hot in the interior with sporadic
thundershowers.
Aug. 17-23: A few cooler nights but otherwise seasonable to warm. Sunny overall
other than showers or thundershowers on a
couple of days.
Aug. 24-30: Seasonal to warm in spite of
a few cooler nights. Generally fair aside
from isolated shower or thundershower
activity in a few areas.
Aug. 31-Sept. 6: Frost pockets in some
northern areas and at higher levels. Otherwise seasonal to warm. Fair skies except
for rain on a couple of days.
Sept. 7-13: Fair skies alternate with some
rain. Frost patches inland and at higher
elevations. Seasonal to warm with brisk
winds at times.
ALBERTA
Aug. 10-16: Generally sunny with seasonal to warm temperatures. Showers or
heavier thunderstorms occur on a couple
of days.
Aug. 17-23: Pleasant temperatures most
of the week but with a few cooler nights.
Sunny but expect showers or thunderstorms at times.
Aug. 24-30: Patchy frost at higher elevations and north but otherwise seasonal to
warm temperatures. Showers or rain on a
couple of days.
Aug. 31-Sept. 6: Cooler nights bring a
frost risk to many areas, especially north
and on higher ground. Fair apart from
scattered rain or showers.
60 country-guide.ca Sept. 7-13: Changeable as fair skies and
gusty winds interchange with rain. Variable
temperatures with frost in several areas.
SASKATCHEWAN
Aug. 10-16: Highs crest in the 20s most
days under considerable sunshine. Showers or thundershowers occur on a couple
of days.
Aug. 17-23: Expect a couple of cooler
nights but highs average close to normal.
Sunny with a few passing showers or thunderstorms.
Aug. 24-30: Fair skies and seasonal to
warm but a couple of cooler, blustery days
bring showers and scattered thunderstorms, especially in southeast.
Aug. 31-Sept. 6: Fair overall aside from
scattered shower activity. Frost threatens on
a couple of nights, mainly central and north.
Sept. 7-13: Variable temperatures and
weather. Some lows near zero south. Occasional frost north. Fair skies alternate with rain.
MANITOBA
Aug. 10-16: Seasonal to occasionally cool.
Mostly sunny aside from some shower or
thunderstorm activity on a couple of days.
Aug. 17-23: Sunshine dominates but look
for some showers or thunderstorms on two
or three occasions. Highs often crest in
the 20s but cooler nights.
Aug. 24-30: Sunny skies and near-normal
temperatures on most days but a couple
of cooler, blustery days bring showers and
thundershowers.
Aug. 31-Sept. 6: Pleasant temperatures
under sunshine on many days but some
rain on one or two occasions. Cool nights
with some lows near zero.
Sept. 7-13: Temperatures vary with frost
at several localities, especially central and
north. Fair overall apart from scattered
rain. Windy at times.
August 10 to September 13, 2014
NATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
Summer is expected to linger in British
Columbia well into September as warm and
relatively dry conditions envelop the West.
In contrast, cooler-than-usual weather is
anticipated in central portions of the country stretching from southeast Saskatchewan
to the southern half of Manitoba and much
of northwest Ontario. The cool temperatures
are likely to be accompanied by occasional
wet spells resulting in above-normal rainfall.
Across the rest of Canada warm, dry days
are expected to be offset by cooler, wet outbreaks. As a result, temperatures and rainfall
amounts should average out close to normal
over much of the Prairies as well as most of
Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. Typical
of our climate in Canada, frost will make its
first appearance in September in many parts
of the country. An emerging El Niño is not
likely to bring any significant changes to our
weather pattern before this fall or early winter.
Prepared by meteorologist Larry Romaniuk
of Weatherite Services. Forecasts should
be 80 per cent accurate for your area;
expect variations by a day or two due to
changeable speed of weather systems.
J u ly 2 0 1 4
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life
Set them up
for success
So your son or daughter wants to take over
the farm. How can you help them succeed?
By Helen Lammers-Helps
With more than half of Canada’s farmers over the age of 55, it’s estimated that $50 billion worth of
farmland will change hands in the next 10 to 15 years.
What will it take for the next generation to be successful? How important is education? What skills will be
essential? How can young people best prepare themselves for this new role?
We asked five experts from Canada and the U.S. to weigh in with their thoughts on these critical questions.
Education
There was a time when practical skills and
hard work were enough to be a successful farmer.
With increasing farm size and complexity, those
days are gone.
“There are successful business owners with very
little education, and I believe that is still possible,
but the law of averages says there are very few
really exceptional people out there,” explains Richard Cressman, a farm business management coach
in New Hamburg, Ont.
Gordon Colledge, a farm adviser in Lethbridge,
Alta., agrees. While some children return to the
farm with excellent practical skills such as welding or operating equipment, Colledge says that this
isn’t enough. It’s essential that the successor also
understand the business side of the farm, including
relationship management, resolving conflict with
siblings and in-laws, and being an all-around effective communicator, says Colledge.
“And he or she also needs to have a good grasp
of the farm’s finances,” Colledge says. “If they
wait until they meet with the accountant after the
annual statement it may be too late.”
In a perfect world, Cressman favours a degree
or diploma in business with a minor in communications as the ideal academic preparation for farm62 country-guide.ca ing. With more people involved in the farm, being
a good communicator is more important than ever,
he explains.
“The successful family figures out how to build
communication into the management structure,”
Cressman says.
Dr. David Kohl, a professor at Virginia Tech
University, agrees that communication skills have
become increasingly important for farm owners.
Farmers need to be able to work with staff and
family internally, but also externally with bankers,
regulators, consumers and others.
One of the values of education is learning to be
a good student, says Colledge. Farmers will need to
be lifelong learners so they can keep up to date on
the fast-paced changes coming to agriculture. They
need to be taking advantage of courses and conferences, he says.
Reg Shandro agrees. A mediator in Red Deer,
Alta., Shandro says other professionals are
expected to participate in a minimum of 30 or 40
hours of professional development every year to
stay current. Why not farmers? he asks.
By attending conferences, young farmers can
also develop a network of like-minded peers who
can act as a resource and sounding board, adds
John Anderson, a farm adviser with Collins Barrow
WCM LLP in Kingston, Ont.
J u ly 2 0 1 4
life
Experience
All of the advisers we consulted agree that in an
ideal world, the successor should work away from
the farm for three to five years. While many parents are eager to have the kids show commitment
by working on the home farm, the long-term benefits from the experience and maturity gained while
working away from home are substantial. Certainly
they outweigh the short-term labour benefits of having an extra pair of young hands working at home.
A Cornell University study showed succession
was twice as likely to be successful, and profits
were three to five times higher, when the successor worked away from the farm, says Kohl. “They
need to learn to take orders from someone else,”
he explains. “And parents will have more respect
for them.”
Cressman agrees. “They need that time away in
order for Mom and Dad to stop seeing their son or
daughter as their little girl or boy.”
That time away gives the successor time to
mature and to know if they really want to farm,
adds Shandro. And they can make their mistakes
using someone else’s money, he adds.
If the son or daughter says they want to farm but
there is some doubt, rather than spending money
expanding the operation to accommodate the child,
have them work on another farm to see how they
like it, suggests Shandro. “They can pick up skills
and be mentored… the door is open for them to
come back in five years.”
Some parents worry that if the child works elsewhere they won’t come back. Kohl’s response is to
tell parents to concentrate on building up a really
attractive business so the child wants to come back.
Passion
A passion for farming goes a long way toward making a successful farm manager. It will motivate the
younger generation to develop the necessary skills and fill in any knowledge gaps.
Taking over out of a sense of obligation doesn’t bode well for success. “If the kid only wants to farm out of
a sense of guilt, it may be better to sell to someone else with a new vision,” argues Colledge.
The successor should be coming back to the farm with an offensive rather than defensive mindset, says
Shandro. “If they are retreating to the farm for the lifestyle and because it’s a place of comfort, that’s not
good.” He prefers to see people coming back to the farm because they are excited about the opportunities to
grow the business.
Managing risk
Parents are wise to have an honest discussion
with their offspring to determine their motivation for
taking over the farm. Sometimes the child wants to
work on the farm but is not interested in a management position, says Kohl. A neutral third party can
help identify these situations.
One of the difficulties with the succession process
is that when a son or daughter enters the business
there is no job application process and no evaluation. “Just because someone has the same last name
or DNA doesn’t mean they will be a good manager,”
explains Anderson.
Both the successor and the parents should have
job descriptions and performance reviews, adds Kohl.
Parents often have difficulty evaluating the suitability of their progeny for taking over the farm. He finds
they are often biased, either positively or negatively.
The founder’s ego can also get in the way, says
Shandro. They may overestimate their own abilities
at that age, or the criteria they consider to be important may be outdated. The founder may even feel
threatened by the successor.
A trusted third-party adviser such as a banker or
accountant may be able to make a more objective
evaluation. They can also help resolve differences
when the parents aren’t in agreement, says Kohl.
J u ly 2 0 1 4 One of the most important steps in a succession plan is to assess the skills needed, identify
any skills gaps and make an action plan for filling
those gaps, says Anderson.
One area where kids are often lacking is their
understanding of the farm finances. Parents tend
to look after the farm finances and as a result the
younger generation does not learn what they need to
know, explains Anderson. This is one area where the
parents may need to mentor the successor.
If the younger generation doesn’t have the necessary skills, you can hire these. Anderson gives the
following example. There was a farmer who was ill
with a terminal condition. While his son had been
working in the farm business and was a good reliable
worker, the father did not feel he had the necessary
management skills or aptitude to run the farm business. The solution was to hire a farm manager to
help the son with the decision-making on the farm.
When grooming the next generation, parents would
be wise to avoid spoiling them. There are too many kids
who were given new pickup trucks at 16, laments Shandro. “It’s very difficult to turn this around,” he says.
Farm succession is tricky business. It’s a very different world from when most parents began farming
and there are no cookie-cutter templates. Being well
prepared and maintaining open lines of communication will take some of the risk out of the process. CG
country-guide.ca 63
h e a lt h
A short history of blood thinners
By Marie Berry
f you or anyone you know takes warfarin,
you may feel that you are being treated like a
rat, but not so! Warfarin reduces blood clotting and it also prevents thromboembolism or
blood clots. As well, it reduces the risk for conditions such as strokes caused by atrial fibrillation.
It does the same, but is lethal, for pests including
rats and mice.
Ideally you want your blood to flow through
your circulatory system. When a blood clot forms,
it may “plug” the vessel, resulting in thrombosis, for
example deep vein thrombosis or DVT. These clots
can occur after joint replacement surgery, if you are
bedridden and immobile, or even after a long airplane flight. If the blood clot dislodges from its originating location, it can travel through the circulation
“plugging” other vessels in the lungs, heart or brain.
This is known as an embolism and may cause emergencies such as heart attacks or strokes.
Blood clotting involves a series of reactions within
your body, and much like a domino effect, one reaction or step causes another. Heparin and warfarin
were until recently the two most commonly used
anticoagulants. Both interrupt steps in the coagulation process, much like removing a domino in the
cascade of steps that leads to a clot.
Heparin is available only as an injectable drug
and has a short duration of action. It is ideal for hospital use where its dose can be monitored and dose
changes can be made quickly. Warfarin, available as
oral tablets, is longer acting, and thus it is suitable
for your use at home.
Monitoring is essential with both heparin and
warfarin because you don’t want your blood either
too thin or with too much of a tendency to clot.
With warfarin, regular blood tests are needed and
your dose is adjusted depending on the international
normalizing ratio or INR result.
Too much of an anticoagulant can cause bruising and bleeding, and the antidote, vitamin K, may
be needed. Warfarin is associated with a long list of
potential drug and food interactions, and its effect
can be impacted by drugs that can cause bleeding on
their own, for example the non-steroidal anti-inflam-
matory pain relievers, as well as by other medications that interfere with warfarin’s metabolism in the
liver and foods that have a high vitamin K content.
If you take warfarin, be really aware of what other
drugs and foods you can and cannot take.
To prevent clotting after joint replacement, heparin used to be used for several days to weeks after
surgery until you were mobile enough so that the
risk for clotting had decreased. Heparin required several injections each day, and this led to researchers
developing low molecular weight heparin formulations such as enoxaparin and dalteparin. Although
these still need to be injected, they only need one
injection each day. For the 60,000 Canadians having
joint replacement surgery each year, the once daily
injection has certainly made recovery easier.
Atrial fibrillation is a heartbeat irregularity that
reduces the ability of the heart to pump efficiently.
This in turn allows “pooling” of blood and leads
to an increased risk of clot formation. This type of
arrhythmia is more common than you might think,
affecting over 350,000 Canadians, including eight
per cent of people over 80 years of age.
Symptoms can be mild, for example palpitations,
fainting or chest pain, and they may be attributed
to other causes. Increased age, diabetes, high blood
pressure, other heart diseases, and even increased
alcohol consumption are risk factors. Along with
drugs to modify the heartbeat, warfarin is given
to prevent clots and stroke. Lifelong treatment is
needed along with lifelong blood tests to ensure the
warfarin dose is correct.
Recently new blood thinners have been developed
that, once the correct dose has been determined, do
not need ongoing blood tests, for example rivaroxaban, dabigatran and apixaban. Taken orally, these
drugs are effective and convenient, especially for conditions such as atrial fibrillation, but you still need
to watch for bruising. And, even as you are reading
this, researchers are looking for more effective and
safer anticoagulants!
Marie Berry is a lawyer/pharmacist interested in
health and education.
You probably take water for granted, but as the most common component of your body, you shouldn’t.
Water or H2O is essential for life, but you may not get enough, and of course with the wide variety of types
of water you may be wondering if there is one that is the most suited to overall health. Next issue, we’ll take
a look at what science has learned.
64 country-guide.ca J u ly 2 0 1 4
NOW AVAILABLE
The meeting is longer and more tedious
than usual. A protracted debate about signing officers is followed by a lengthy discussion about the summer meeting. Will it
be potluck or catered? Should we plan for
indoors or outdoors? Do we want to play
some games? A retired school teacher snorts,
“And I drove fast to get here on time!”
The death of a longtime member is reported. A motion to donate
$25 to his favourite museum creates more debate. Lloyd listens
patiently to several speakers before expressing his frustration in vivid
language. “The man was a member of this organization for many
years. He was 103 when he died, but I am damn sure he would have
been gone much earlier if he had attended meetings like this.”
I reflected on how conversation is frequently accentuated with
mild profanities. Is there harm in adding the odd obscenity? Does
cursing cause people to take us more seriously, or is the “reptilian” part of our brain acting up? Profanity can be more than
words. We use expressions, gestures or other social behaviours
to make our point. The rude, vulgar or obscene often captivates
modern culture.
Swearing is an ancient practice. The Third Commandment, delivered to Moses 5,000 years ago, says, “Thou shalt not take the name
of the Lord thy God in vain.” Cursing is more than including culturally or socially unacceptable words in daily conversation. God is
often the object of bad language, an easy target to express dissatisfaction. Cursing crosses a line when used to demean another individual.
Corb Lund, an Alberta country music icon, sings about downto-the-bone emotions. A phrase in his song “Cows Around”
caught my attention.
May you always have cows around
What else you gonna spend that extra money on
What else is gonna get you up hours before dawn
What else is gonna keep you toiling on and on and on
May you always have cows around
C’mon you know that you got too much time on your hands
Not merely enough complication in your plans
You need to invite all the frustration that you can…
May you always have cows around
What else can make the bishop swear like a sailor might?
I can think of more than a few things to make a bishop swear.
But does it do any good? My grandfather operated a ranch in
central Alberta. When things did not go well, he would say, “It is
enough to make a preacher swear.” Yes, I need to hear and respond
to my own sermons.
Mark Zuehlke in his book Scoundrels, Dreamers and Second
Sons tells the story of a man named Majoribanks who ranched in
the interior of British Columbia. Majoribanks used strong language
while loading cattle onto a train for shipping to market. “Majoribanks peppered his commands with a string of obscenities, all issued
at a bellow that carried far on the early-morning air. The Presbyterian
minister, a Mr. Langill, happened along, and, mortified by Majoribanks’ language, strode over to the big man.” “Really, Mr. Majoribanks,” he said, “don’t you think that a man in your position should
be showing a better example to the men in your employment?”
“Hell, man!” exploded Majoribanks. “I’m not teaching a
Sunday school. I’m loading cattle, and I’m giving the boys the best
example I can. And I’ll bet that Noah swore when he was loading
his animals into the ark.”
Suggested Scripture: Psalm 32, James 5:12
Rod Andrews is a retired Anglican bishop. He lives in Saskatoon.
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©2013 Farm Business Communications
country-guide.ca 65
ACRES
By Leeann Minogue
Interpret this!
When the busload of Chinese farmers arrives on tour,
they see more than any of the Hansons had planned
ale’s shift running the swather was
finally over. He’d never been so glad
to see a truck pull into the field.
He was shirtless when he
climbed down from the cab to
switch off with his son Jeff. “I had to strip down
to stand it in there,” Dale said, wiping sweat from
his forehead with his T-shirt before he pulled it
on. “If I was a dog, somebody would report this
to the SPCA.”
This was the second day the Hansons had been
swathing canola with no air conditioning. This was
also the second day the service manager at the dealership had said he could send someone out “tomorrow.” With only one swather and two sections of
ripening canola, the Hansons couldn’t wait. Dale
had been baking in the heat all morning.
Dale’s father Ed had claimed to be too busy to
take a shift in the swather, but he did have time for
an opinion. “I can’t believe all this complaining,”
Ed said. “I remember when the neighbours thought
we were crazy just to pay for a cab.”
“At least you got a breeze without a cab,” Jeff said.
“You could see that breeze, it was so full of
dust,” Ed retorted.
“They make these cabs today so the windows
don’t open. We can throw the door open, but we’re
66 country-guide.ca
basically sitting out in the sun in a glass box. We
should rent out space to grow tomatoes in there.”
Ed looked disgusted. “Lazing around with your
stereos and your drink holders. You kids have no
idea.” Then he smelled Dale. “Ah geez. I don’t know
if I even want you riding back to the yard in my
truck. Hurry up and get in. We should take the combine out and see if that winter wheat is ready to go.”
Jeff carried his cooler up the steps to the cab
and took one last breath of outside air. “Elaine
tried to get me to bring out a roast in a Tupperware container,” he said. “She thought it might
cook faster than in the Crock-Pot.”
Jeff’s wife Elaine had taken her shift in the
sauna of the swather the day before, while her
mother-in-law watched the kids. Now, Elaine was
waiting for her guests to arrive.
Over the past year, Elaine had been spending more
and more time learning about farm policy. She’d
joined a farm group’s working committee, made several trips to Saskatoon and Regina for meetings, and
stayed up after the kids went to bed so she could read
reports and sit in on conference calls. When one of
the board members had phoned earlier in the week to
ask a favour, Elaine agreed right away.
“A busload of Chinese farmers is stopping by
on Tuesday afternoon,” she’d announced that
J U LY 2 0 1 4
acres
morning when most of the Hansons were out in the
shop, looking over the combine. “They’re excited
to see a Prairie harvest.” When another Saskatchewan farmer on the schedule had cancelled, the
Hansons happened to be near the group’s route.
“A busload?” Ed said. “They’ve got so
many people they’re shipping them over by the
busload now?”
“They’re on a learning tour,” Elaine said, more
patiently than might have been expected. “They’re
stopping to see as many Prairie farms as they can.”
Elaine was proud to be included, pleased to have a
chance to show off the Hanson farm and to be part
of an international farm network.
“They’ll spread disease from coast to coast,”
Ed said.
“I checked,” Elaine said. “They’re following
protocol. They’ve even got those disposable plastic
booties.”
“I don’t like it,” Ed said. “What if they learn
something?”
“That’s why they’re coming,” Elaine said.
“Exactly. They’ll go home and grow more
wheat. So they won’t have to buy ours.”
The rest of the Hansons weren’t sure exactly
how to answer that. They knew Ed was being ridiculous, but it was hard to find a flaw in his logic.
“We’re pretty busy, Elaine,” her father-in-law
said. “I’m not sure we have time to be tour guides.”
“They’re bringing their own guide,” Elaine said.
“And an interpreter.”
“Elaine and I talked about this, Dad,” Jeff said.
“We’ll shut down for 10 or 15 minutes so they can
get a good look at the machinery, then we’ll get
back to work. It won’t hurt us to take a break. I’m
kind of looking forward to showing them how we
do things.”
“I’ve heard the rumours in town about how
much farmland is being sold to Chinese buyers,” Ed said. “If one of those guys puts his hand
up, don’t nod. He might be placing a bid on
this place.”
Nobody bothered to reply to this.
“The planners at the Chinese Embassy have been
giving me a lot of information,” Elaine said. “These
people are used to a lot of formal protocol. I told
them we’d do the best we can, but they might have to
take what they get, visiting a grain farm at harvest.”
“No kidding they’ll take what they get,” Ed
said. “I’m not getting all dressed up for a busload
of farmers.”
“You’ll be polite, Dad,” Dale said.
“Don’t worry,” Elaine said. “I’ll warn the interpreter not to translate everything she hears! Their
driver said they’d be here between 2 and 2:30. I’ll
j u ly 2 0 1 4 make sure I’m in the yard to meet them, then I’ll
phone you guys to let you know when we’re coming out to the field.
The bus pulled into the Hansons’ yard at
exactly 2:15.
After she showed them the yard and the
machinery in the sheds, Elaine got on the bus and
guided the driver out to the south winter wheat
field, where she was pleased to see the combine
already stopped next to the grain truck. She wasn’t
as pleased when she heard Ed and Dale cursing.
As Ed used his angriest language to explain how
he’d plugged the feederhouse going through a green
patch, Elaine watched the young interpreter turn
every shade of red, from salmon pink all the way
through to fire hydrant. Elaine hoped the woman
didn’t understand all of the words he was using.
Ed claimed to be too
busy to take a shift in the
swather, but he did have
time to offer an opinion
Elaine was sure things would go better when
they went to see Jeff on the swather. He’d phoned
her earlier to tell her he’d prepared a talk. “I’ve
been repeating it over and over to myself,” he said,
“so I’ll get it right. I’ve been thinking so hard, I
could barely pay attention to the field! Call me
when you’re coming.”
Elaine was so flustered after dealing with Ed,
she forgot to phone Jeff. Luckily, the swather was
at the edge of the field when Jeff saw the bus, so he
pulled over right away.
Once they were off the bus, Elaine faced the
group and had the interpreter translate. “This is
my husband,” she said proudly. “He’s a fourth-generation farmer, keeping up the family tradition.”
Elaine watched the delegates while the translator
spoke, but they just stared, open mouthed. One
man giggled. A woman pointed. Elaine turned to
see Jeff walking toward them, smiling. He’d completely forgotten that while he was practising his
speech in the sweltering cab, he’d stripped right
down to his faded-green boxer shorts. CG
Leeann Minogue is the editor of G rainews , a
playwright and part of a family grain farm in
southeastern Saskatchewan
country-guide.ca 67
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