+PLUS Harness THese seven MegaTrends To drive farM perforMance, pg. 18

People who know Agriculture,
know BDO.
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+PLUS
Harness These seven Megatrends to drive farm performance, pg. 18
CROPS GUIDE  MANAGE YOUR CANOLA FOR RIGHT AMOUNT OF HARVEST LOSS, PG. 44
BIOSECURITY COMES TO CROPS, PG 48 ARE WE LOSING SUSTAINABILITY? PG. 50
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Contents
july/august 2015
BUSINESS
8
used equipment perks up
As sales of new equipment cool, good used machines are holding their value, and in some cases gaining ground.
12 smart farm strategies for giving
New tax laws and innovative financial strategies give you
new ways to make donations with real impact.
14 talking up the job
What’s wrong with letting consumers know just how professional
you have to be to grow their food in Canada today?
18 megatrends versus canada’s farms
Two top economists predict the seven big issues that are going to change your farm in the next five years.
22 an angel of an idea
As Kim Keller is proving, the test today is whether we can
get innovative about how we handle our innovations.
26 His new playbook
What can farmers adapt from Wade Barnes’ trail-blazing success at Farmers Edge?
29 Genuinely in Business
As Canadian lead of Dow AgroSciences, it’s Brad Orr’s job to create growth by making Dow truly a people company.
32 how it plans to beat us
PG. 22 Thought-leaders pack this Country Guide
with outside-the-box perspectives to shape how you
farm and do business, from valuable insights on how
to adapt the strategies of successful ag businesses to
advice on how to structure your farm for success.
Australia reveals its strategy to take over our export markets.
35 three key alIgnments for top farm management
Align your vision, finances and management for more success.
36 back to work
It’s time for tractor engines that are better, not just cleaner.
38 the roads of zambia
We’ve always known the country’s agriculture potential is massive.
Now there are signs it is being opened up.
60
CROPS GUIDE
g
uide life — write your legacy
Memoirs aren’t only for celebrities. Preserve farm history too.
66 Guide HR — ‘is he suffering from the god complex?’
Up to 10 per cent of entrepreneurial farmers are diagnosable.
44 the right amount of harvest loss
Canola’s Jay Whetter finds the best balance for profitability.
48 two steps forward…
Fears grow that we’re starting to slip back on sustainability.
EVERY ISSUE
6MACHINERY GUIDE
Check out these innovations in grain carts and wagons.
63 GUIDE HEALTH
You won’t regret these common-sense steps for sun protection.
64 HANSON ACRES
There are times when a granola bar just isn’t going to cut it.
50 win the right battle
Start defending how you farm with these effective tips.
52 livestock strategy comes to canola
Biosecurity may change our cropping as fast as our livestock.
54 getting better at fungicide application
You’re good now but it might be easy to do a whole lot better.
58 it’s a bliP
Despite acreage jump, barley, oats and flaxseed face big hurdles.
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EDITORIAL STAFF
Editor: Tom Button
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Tom Button is editor of Country Guide magazine
Are they right this time?
You’ll find no shortage of things to disagree with in this Country Guide. If you
don’t, it means we haven’t worked hard
enough.
My sense is that the future of farming
is going to turn out to be just the other
side of incredible. Probably, it’s your sense
of the future too. If it’s too easy to believe,
it isn’t going far enough.
The next time you climb into a new
tractor or combine cab, think how
much of it your father or grandfather
would have dismissed as science fiction.
I keep reminding myself that when I once
asked an older uncle of mine what was
the single biggest advance he’d seen in
his career, his answer came in a flash:
hydraulics.
Now imagine what agriculture will
look like by the time all those new tractors
at the farm show are ready to retire.
There’s a widespread sense that the
evolution of agriculture has slowed down.
The thinking goes that Darwinism is
called the survival of the fittest because life
is tough and only the very best will still
be with us tomorrow. When life is good,
evolution stops.
After a run of reasonable years, farm
balance sheets are generally healthy, and
the likelihood that farms will be pushed to
the brink seems remote.
Does that mean evolution has stopped?
Maybe it only means that evolution has
changed, and that instead of being driven
by threats, today it is being powered by
4 country-guide.ca opportunities and by the farmers who are
seizing them.
If today’s family corporations were
inconceivable a generation ago, how much
more sophisticated will tomorrow’s farms
have to get to be equally incredible to us?
Perhaps the logic is flawed. Perhaps
we can’t take today’s trends and extend
them into the future, but, as just one
example from this issue, consider the case
that economist Brian Oleson makes for
his belief in ‘Megatrends versus Canada’s
Farms’ that what we’re living through isn’t
the birth of mega-farms, it’s the birth of
“dynasty farms.”
I already know that some readers will
be tut-tutting, saying, “We’ve been here
before. Big farms have never lasted.”
To which I say, “Maybe.” Honestly,
I know there have been a lot of smart
farmers in the past, but I have trouble
believing there has ever been a more
sophisticated generation of farmers, or a
generation with better advisers, or better
technology.
For those with the drive to put that
sophistication to full use, drawing on
great advice and the best technology, the
future will be beyond our power to conceive it.
It only makes me ask, What if consumers knew this is the kind of conversation
we’re having? Talk about incredible!
Do let me know what you agree with,
and what you don’t. I’m anxious to know.
Reach me at [email protected].
Lillie Ann Morris
(905) 838-2826
Email: [email protected]
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Vol. 134 No. 9
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The editors and journalists who write, contribute and provide opinions to
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j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
“Now if our margins were increasing as fast as our yields...”
People who know Agriculture, know BDO.
The Agriculture Practice at BDO
Changes throughout the industry have placed an entirely new set of demands on
agricultural businesses, from family farms to national producers. BDO provides a
partner-led, personal approach backed by the experience and resources of our national
Agriculture Practice. We offer accounting, tax, and advisory services on a wide
range of issues, including succession and estate planning, bookkeeping and payroll
assistance, tax compliance, and more.
Assurance | Accounting | Tax | Advisory
www.bdo.ca/agriculture
Machinery
By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor
Harvest is where it all finally comes together. With this instalment of Machinery Guide, we bring you some of the latest
upgrades and innovations in grain carts and wagons. Large or small, how you get your harvest from the combine to the semi is
emerging as one of the key drivers of harvest efficiency, which is why these three manufacturers have put so much thought into
their respective designs. As always, be sure to do your homework. It’s a very competitive sector.
 Bach-Run
A relative newcomer to the grain wagon and cart-carrying scene,
Bach-Run was on site last year at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show. The
brand has four different models of gravity bin grain wagons which
are billed as new, complementing the company’s six heavy-duty,
high-volume grain wagons. The company says its claim to fame is
“Brute Strength” and its designs are based on working with farmers
to meet their needs. With extensions, the gravity bin grain wagons
have four different capacities, from 380 to 480 bushels. The interiors have a powder coating on a sandblasted surface for a durable,
long-lasting finish. Each model also features three tie-in bars on the
inside of the box, plus solid inner seams along with flat valleys that
reduce dead corners. There’s also an easy-climb ladder on the outside, as well as large sight windows.
www.bachrunfarms.com
MK Martin 
Another new arrival to Machinery Guide, MK Martin is showcasing a number of its gravity boxes and grain carts. A Canadian manufacturer, MK Martin offers four models of its Gravity Box, ranging
from 270- to 745-bushel capacities. Whether it’s combined with a
Horst wagon or as box-only model to run on your own wagon, you
get flexibility and durability for any conditions. With the 5000 and
6500 models, there’s an optional divider that splits the Gravity Box
6 country-guide.ca and allows for two separate commodities to be carried at the same
time. Each side also comes with its own door for unloading and
metering. With Grain Carts, there are two models available — the
MK 650 and MK 850 with 650- and 850-bushel capacities respectively and a front folding auger that increases operator visibility while
providing greater reach. The chute on the auger is also equipped
with a hydraulic hood for more precise placement of the grain.
www.mkmartin.ca
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 5
Brandt 
Soil health is integral to crop performance in the field, and
more equipment manufacturers are engineering their tractors,
combines and even grain carts to minimize soil compaction. That’s
led Brandt to unveil its new flotation tire and track systems for
its 1020XR and 1322XR Grain Carts. Enhanced tire and rubber
track technologies have enabled Brandt to add these options to its
product line, with operations possible under a broad range of field
conditions. Improved and highly flexible low sidewall designs allow
for significantly reduced tire pressures, and the new track options
can reduce ground pressures from 66 psi down to 13 psi, an 80
per cent reduction.
www.brandt.ca
Grow informed.
With the new web series: AGGronomyTV
AgCanada.com is proud to present this new informative web video series.
AGGronomyTV is a series of videos that covers today’s top issues related
to soil management and crop production. Video topics include:
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J u l y / a u g u st 2 0 1 5 country-guide.ca 7
business
Used equipment
perks up
By Scott Garvey, CG Machinery Editor
o put it mildly, sales of new farm
equipment were terrible — even worrisome — in January and February,
based on numbers tallied by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers
(AEM). Purchases of four-wheel-drive tractors were
down an astonishing 55 per cent compared to
2014. Worse yet, new combine sales had virtually
collapsed, slipping 60.6 per cent.
Those invested in the equipment industry
couldn’t help but notice.
But the grim picture painted by those early-year
sales reports may not have told the whole story,
according to Jim Wood, vice-president, agriculture,
at Rocky Mountain Equipment, Canada’s largest
CNH equipment retailer. According to Wood, the
winter of 2014 was “a blip. It was an anomaly.
All of a sudden people look at the industry and go,
‘Holy smokes it’s down so much over last year.’
Well that’s because last year was too high compared to the year before.”
“Guess who’s happy?” says Rocky
Mountain’s Jim Wood. “Our used sales
are way up, our new was consistent,
and our inventories are coming down.”
The reason why they were abnormal, however,
may not be what farmers would think. Or at least,
not completely the reason that farmers might suggest, i.e. strong farm incomes.
Instead, the early 2014 numbers got pushed up
due to changes in delivery dates for new equipment based on customer orders, primarily from one
major manufacturer.
“I think the big thing was last year (2014 sales
numbers) gave such a false sense of what was going
on,” Wood says. “In December of 2013 and Janu-
8 country-guide.ca As sales of new equipment
cool, good used machines
are holding their value, and in
some cases gaining ground
ary, February of 2014, that’s when Deere delivered
a lot of product, which it traditionally doesn’t do.
And that really spiked the industry (numbers).”
So a sober look at the data reveals that this year’s
volumes may not be quite as dreadful as first thought,
and Wood confirms that while the overall market for
new farm equipment in Western Canada so far this
year has dropped off significantly, it hasn’t fallen as
badly as those early market reports suggested.
As if to emphasize the point, April sales numbers actually showed a gain over last year, which
has helped correct the market data. The number of
four-wheel-drive tractors sold that month was up,
pegging the overall year-to-date market reduction
at just 22 per cent compared to the same time in
2014. So while that’s still a little painful for dealers
and manufacturers, the market hasn’t really fallen
off a cliff the way the early numbers suggested.
Not all the news is bad. Some new equipment
categories are showing surprising strength. Sales
of rigid-frame tractors above 100 horsepower are
strong, and April sales of these machines beat out
the numbers for April 2014 too, bringing the overall year-to-date sales in this category close to par
with last year. They now only lag by 1.6 per cent,
with much of the demand in the category due to
livestock producers.
“We’ve seen our cattle stuff, loader tractors and
balers, really increase,” notes Wood. “But they
are smaller dollar amounts than what cash crop
(equipment) is.”
That means from a dollar amount perspective,
overall industry sales totals remain much below last
year. And despite an active April, the low U.S. dollar
exchange rate and competition from an ample supply of late-model used machines, most in the industry are willing to bet new equipment sales will likely
finish out the year well below 2014 numbers.
“I think it’s the new normal,” Wood says. “If you
look at it from our side, we’re trying to sell a little
less new, because our used is just that much more
attractive. I can’t see it changing unless someone
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
business
brings on some new technology. It’s hard
to justify a lot of the price increases from
manufacturers, because, let’s face it, a
combine from five years ago will still
go out and do what a new combine will
today. It’s considerably cheaper for (a
farmer) to buy a one-year-old machine
than a new one.”
And that factor has been driving
demand at auction sales.
“The interesting thing on (auction)
prices is, we started the year a little conservative in our own business model,”
says Simon Wallan, Ritchie Bros. vicepresident of agriculture for Western Canada. “Commodity prices dropped a bit
through the last two quarters of 2014.
We thought that would have a negative
effect on the price of (used) equipment.”
But any effect has been limited, and
by mid-April, auction sales across the
West were attracting crowds as large as
last season. And they weren’t made up
of just onlookers. Many took their bidding hands out of their pockets.
“There have been good turnouts,
as good as previous years,” says Kim
Kramer of Saskatchewan-based Kramer
Auction Ltd.
That interest has actually pushed up
prices for some types of equipment.
“When it comes to truck tractors, anything in good condition with a pre-emissions engine is very, very sought after,”
Wallan adds. “It doesn’t matter what sale
you’re at, a farm sale or an industrial one.”
Kramer has noticed the same trend at
his company’s sales, with pre-emissions
engines in any type of machine garnering
a lot of interest.
“In trucks, anything pre-emissions, I
bet they’re up a good, solid 20 per cent,”
Kramer says. “A pre-emissions Kenworth
or Peterbilt, those brands, they’re a really
strong sale. For a tractor, maybe a Tier 2,
without the emissions controls, they’ll bid
way stronger on it. Guys are saying they
can buy an older tractor, as long as it has
the horsepower and the hydraulic power,
it will do the same job as a new one.”
But the kind of frenzy that had driven
demand for used machines at auctions in
past years has evaporated. Buyers now
seem to be taking a more measured, careful
approach. And they know there is currently
a very large selection to choose from, so
there is no need to panic and overpay.
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 The number of registered bidders at auctions this spring held steady with previous seasons, with
demand for many types of used machines staying strong.
Photo: Ritchie Bros.
“Guys this year are more selective,”
observes Kramer. “They’re not pushing the panic button like in previous
years where they’d get in a bidding war
because they were worried they wouldn’t
find another one. One guy told me at
an auction sale yesterday, ‘I’ve bought
so much machinery there’s no sense of
urgency anymore that I need to buy it
today or I won’t find another one. There
are lots available.’”
“I think they’re looking for specific
pieces and they don’t mind travelling longer distances to find them,” adds Wallan.
“They want good pieces, and they’re not
going to overpay for something that’s
tired, below average or worn out.”
Along with the old, tired and worn
out, a couple of other types of equipment
saw lagging demand this spring as well.
Swathers are among them. Their selling
prices are starting to fall, which doesn’t
surprise Wood.
“Now you have canola varieties that
can be straight cut, so you’re going to see
the windrower market drop off,” Wood
explains.
“Seeding equipment is really volatile,” says Kramer. Guys are getting
really selective on that. There is such a
variety out there right now, I think it has
caused the prices to be volatile.”
“It’s a buyer’s market out there for
seeding tools,” confirms Wallan. “Every
farmer out there seems to want something different in a seeding tool, so we
are having trouble finding consistency
when it comes to size and specifications.”
The result of all this is that many
industry players now seem ready to take
a deep breath and acknowledge that the
market for used equipment is staying
relatively stable, despite the previous
concern over the large supply. But the
evolving, more competitive sales environment for new machines means there
may be some realignment happening in
that sector.
Exactly which dealers farmers are
willing to look to for their new equipment may be fluctuating. Wood thinks
the products and services each manufacturer offers may now play a more critical role in swaying farmers’ purchasing
decisions than it ever has.
“If you look at our new sales numbers, they were pretty well flat with last
year, but the industry is down 40 per
cent from last year,” Wood says. “So,
guess who picked up market share? In
our first quarter this year, we’re really,
really, happy. Our used sales are way
up, our new was consistent, and our
inventories are coming down.” CG
country-guide.ca 9
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business
Smart farm
strategies
for giving
By Maggie Van Camp, CG Associate Editor
New tax laws and innovative financial strategies give you
new ways to make donations with real impact
ith fewer
farmers facing an insatiable number
of organizations needing time and money,
the decision of how much to give
to whom is getting tougher.
What do you want your
money to do? How much should
you give and when? What are the
tax benefits?
For many farmers, there’s also
the question of how best to give
to charities through your estate
and succession planning. Additionally, in the last few years
some new ways to save taxes
while giving have been added to
the playbook.
Society’s thinking about giving
has also changed. As fewer families attend church, the younger
generations aren’t being taught
to put something on the plate
Sunday after Sunday. Instead,
they are moving toward more
spontaneous, secular giving. For
example, there’s the phenomenon
of crowdfunding where someone
asks for money online and it goes
viral. In the last few years this
has reaped millions of dollars
that would have historically been
directed to registered charities.
It’s not for lack of tax receipts.
Donations to registered Canadian
charities are eligible for a charitable donation tax credit for indi-
12 country-guide.ca vidual donors or for deduction if
the donor is a corporation.
Over 85,000 charities are registered in Canada, so individuals can give to these charities
directly for specific causes and get
a receipt to claim against income
taxes. To qualify to provide tax
receipts, these charities must follow certain rules, like having a
board of directors and separate
annual CRA filing.
Within this CRA list are charitable foundations, like the Mennonite Foundation of Canada.
Although anyone can set up a
foundation, they must follow
the CRA rules, including separate annual filings and a board of
directors.
Foundations pool the donations, take care of all the
paperwork and administrative
responsibilities, and invest the
funds on the donor’s behalf for a
small fee. For example, the Mennonite Foundation of Canada
charges about one per cent, says
Sherri Grosz, MFC’s stewardship
consultant in Kitchener, Ont.
Another way is to set up your
own family trust and hire a foundation like Gifts Canada to administer it for you. You control the
investment and how it’s donated.
It’s called donor-advised, and you
can change it over the years.
Many foundations have sunset
clauses, and you can set where
your money is to go in stone at
the very beginning.
With pooled foundations, you
can get the receipt right away. Currently, you can donate shares of
a company, equities, ecologically
sensitive lands and cultural property and, if they have increased in
value, any capital gains would be
tax exempt. However, if you sell
those assets and want to give cash,
you have to pay the tax on the
increases in value.
So not only do you get the tax
deduction, you don’t have to pay
the income tax on any increase
in values.
New budget rule
Proposed during this spring’s
federal budget is an exemption
for capital gains tax for charitable gifts of cash proceeds from
disposition of private company
shares and real estate. Previously
this exemption was only available
for when you sold and donated
publicly listed securities, ecologically sensitive land, and certified
cultural property.
Beginning in 2017, this
exemption would include the capital gains when you sell private
assets, like shares and real estate.
In theory you could donate
some of the amount you might
owe for capital gains when you
sell a company. Instead of paying
more to the government, you are
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
business
able to give more to your favourite charity.
Accountant and partner at
Collins Barrow in Elora, Ont.,
Tom Blonde uses the following
example to explain: You sell your
family farm corporation for $3
million to someone outside of the
family. You’ve already used up
your available capital gain exemption and the marginal tax rate is
50 per cent. (If there’s no donation, you’ll only get $2.25 million
net, after the capital gains tax.)
However, if you donate $1
million of the proceeds within
30 days of selling your farm,
you’ll get a charitable credit of
$500,000. You’ll also be taxed on
only $2 million of capital gain,
and $500,000 tax on gain is eliminated by charitable credit. The
final result is that you donate $1
million and receive $2 million net
of capital gains tax. Make sure you talk to your
accountant about how this might
work for you, and please note that
final legislation and assessing practice has not yet been determined.
Before you do anything, MFC’s
Grosz says it’s really important
to take some time to think about
what you want your money to
do instead of randomly giving to
whatever group comes asking.
“What are your hopes and goals
for your donations?” asks Grosz.
Although donors into the Mennonite Foundation of Canada are
of all ages and socio-economic
classes, the majority are older than
50. This group tends to have more
disposable income, understands
the fragility of life as part of the
sandwich generation, and is doing
estate and retirement planning,
says Grosz. Plus they’ve been raised
within the church and are comfortable giving through their church.
MFC gets Great West Life
to invest the pooled funds for
them in one of two ways — one
is higher risk, with 50 per cent
equities, and the other is a more
conservative investment based on
bonds and mortgages. In keeping
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 with their faith’s principles, the
MFC screens out of GWL’s portfolio companies that sell alcohol,
tobacco or gambling. “If you
are preaching against it on Sunday, you shouldn’t invest in it on
Monday,” says Grosz.
Estate planning
and giving
Although there’s no inheritance tax in Canada, when someone dies, their estate has to pay
their income tax and everything
is deemed disposed on the date
of their death. This means everything, even tax-sheltered investments like RRSPs, are sold in the
year of death and the estate has
to pay income taxes.
Living poor and dying rich
does have its tax implications.
Using predetermined charitable
giving to counter this tax bite is
one strategy some farmers are
employing to decrease their taxes
on their relatively large estates.
Grosz suggests getting the help
of an accountant to figure out
if it would be better to have the
tax receipt during life or after to
decrease the tax bill on the estate.
Sometimes it means keeping the
donation until after passing away
so the tax credits can be used
against estate taxes. Other times
it’s better to give while earning
more. Maybe a combination, or
phased-in strategy is best for you.
In the past, MFC has been
willed land but it tends to be
more complicated, and usually
property is liquidated with the
estate, says Grosz.
Grosz says some people make
their favourite foundations or
registered charities the beneficiaries of life insurance policies.
They pay the premiums and get
a tax receipt for those premiums
paid in their lifetime and when
they die, the charity gets the
insurance proceeds.
Sometimes a donor will even
transfer the ownership of a life
insurance policy to the charity
while alive and pay the premiums,
and, if they get a receipt can use
these premiums as a tax deduction.
Keep in mind that if you transfer a policy while you’re alive
but no longer insurable, it may
have significant fair market value
so the donation credit might be
larger. However, you’ll get a much
larger deduction if you buy life
insurance through your farm corporation at lower tax rates.
On death, the life insurance
proceeds are paid out tax free
to the estate through the capital
dividend account, and then the
estate makes the donation and
gets the larger credit.
Sound accounting advice
may help you make major
donations with an affordable
net cost to the farm
First-time donors
For smaller donations, a few
years ago the government added
the First-time Donor’s Super Credit
(FDSC) to entice people to give to
charitable organizations. It supplements the value of the charitable
donations tax credit (CDTC) by
25 per cent on donations made
after March 20, 2013, by a firsttime donor.
If neither you nor your spouse
(or common-law partner) have
claimed and been allowed a charitable donations tax credit for
any year after 2007, you are considered a first-time donor.
This super credit applies to a
gift of money made after March
20, 2013, up to a maximum of
$1,000, in one taxation year
from 2013 to 2017. The claim
for the FDSC can be shared with
a spouse or common-law partner, but the total combined donations claimed must be under that
$1,000 cap. CG
country-guide.ca 13
business
Talking up
the job
By Gord Gilmour, CG Associate Editor
very farmer has one. For Manitoba’s Rolf
Penner, his aha moment came a few years
back, when he suddenly realized just how
hard it is for a farmer to talk to non-farmers about his business.
Penner and a farming friend were on a weekend
getaway with their spouses. Neither wife had a farming background. As the weekend wore on, a little shop
talk was inevitable, and the discussion turned to the
recent wheat harvest and protein levels. Both took
off decent yields, but Penner says his friend got better
protein levels.
“I started to ask him if he’d done anything different, like top dressing some nitrogen,” Penner said.
“Our wives overheard this and they thought it was
the funniest thing they’d ever heard, and started teasing us about it. To us it was a straightforward question; to them it was something strange and funny.”
While a funny bit of jargon that turns into a running gag over the course of the weekend is a pretty mild
example, Penner says it highlights a challenge farmers
Consumers want to
hear from farmers,
says FCC’s Carlson.
“They want to hear us
say, ‘We’ve got this.
You’re in good hands.’”
What’s wrong with letting
consumers know just how
professional you have to
be to grow their food in
Canada today?
are always going to face. How can farmers talk like
the experts they are when they engage with lay people
about what they do and why they do it?
Making the problem even tougher to tackle, says
Penner, is that gets such a rough start because of the
way farmers view themselves.
Joe Farmer, PhD
“A lot of times we think of ourselves as dumb
farmers,” says Penner. “That’s just not so. Think
about the knowledge we have to have to farm, the
technology we use every day. If you really think
about it, we’re likely operating — and speaking —
on the PhD level.”
To Penner, who grows grain and special crops and
raises hogs near Morris, Man., this suggests farmers need to hone their messages for a non-agriculture
audience so they can be ready to stand up and speak.
There’s plenty of consumer interest in farming and
food production these days, he believes, but unless
growers take the time to define themselves, they’ll be
defined by others.
“We have to be ready to talk,” Penner says.
Lyndon Carlson couldn’t agree more. He’s Farm
Credit Canada’s senior vice-president of marketing,
and among other responsibilities, he’s been working very hard the past few years on the “Agriculture
More Than Ever” campaign that aims to arm farmers and others in the business as “agvocates” who
can speak up for agriculture.
Carlson shares Penner’s worry that farmers downplay their own capabilities and contributions.
“It’s a cultural thing,” Carlson says. “There are a
lot of farmers out there who are, by and large, very
modest people. They don’t like to draw attention
to themselves, they just quietly go about their business.”
In many ways, they’re the opposite of today’s narcissistic selfie culture, but that can be a good thing,
Carlson says, because when agriculture can at times
seem threatening or ominous (i.e. “big ag”), farmers are well liked and trusted, something that shows
up year in and year out in public opinion surveys.
Continued on page 16
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business
Continued from page 14
Farmers consistently score near the top, although this
goodwill can’t be taken for granted, Carlson insists.
“We’ve got to protect our social licence,” Carlson says. “People really want to hear from farmers,
they want to hear us say, ‘We’ve got this, you’re in
good hands.’”
That doesn’t mean patronizingly telling consumers not to worry, but neither does it mean taking a
hard line or talking down to them. It means finding a
way to present a message that finds common ground.
One stumbling block, Carlson concedes, is the
highly technical nature of the business — but he
insists these challenges aren’t something that only
agriculture faces.
“Any business is like that,” Carlson says. “I don’t
care if it’s manufacturing, or finance or information
technology, we all develop our own language, filled
with jargon and acronyms.”
Getting past this will be a milestone for agriculture, Carlson says, but it will only happen one
conversation at a time, starting with farmers who are
prepared to work at it.
Dumbing it down
“We say in the business world that you should
write to an eighth-grade level,” Carlson said. “That’s
not to say we want to dumb down or dilute the message — rather that we want it to be clear.”
Having that message at the ready is more important than ever in this age of social media where issues
can go viral overnight. Some think farmers aren’t
well adapted to this new paradigm, but based on his
experience, Carlson insists otherwise.
Look to build trust,
not to win the
debate at all costs,
Penner advises
16 country-guide.ca “I know I’ve been at meetings where I look
around and it’s predominantly late-middle-age farmers, maybe with a few younger ones, and the tweets
about the meeting will start flying,” Carlson says. “I
do think farmers are well equipped to do this.”
Still, he thinks the industry can do a better job of
supporting each other in social media settings. One
individual can’t be out there alone, fighting the good
fight and making their own case for the continued
trust of the general public, he says.
One thing the industry has to understand is that
there’s definitely greater interest in agriculture in
recent years, and that’s unlikely to go away. Everyone wants to know just a bit more about where their
food is coming from, and it’s just a fact of life that
you’re going to end up having conversations about
your job, and that people are actually interested in
hearing about it.
“When you go to the airport and get on a plane,
be it for business or pleasure, and you start talking
to your seatmate, when they ask, ‘What do you do
for a living?’ and you respond, ‘I’m a farmer,’ you’re
starting a conversation, there’s no doubt about that,”
Carlson says. “There’s an intense interest in what
you do as a farmer.”
It’s a double-edged sword, however. On one hand
it doesn’t do anyone in agriculture any good if people
think their food comes from the grocery store. But it
can also mean you’re going to have to defend your
practices at times, and counter a tremendous amount
of misinformation.
“In those cases I think you do have to disagree,
but do it respectfully,” Carlson said. “You’re not
going to get anywhere by being dismissive.”
Create common ground
Instead Carlson suggests taking a tactful
approach that seeks that common ground. In effect,
farmers and the broad public frequently share the
same goals, but differ on their diagnosis of how to
get there. That’s when to bring up the great examples
of farms evolving and adopting new methods very
quickly. “We really do have a lot of good-news stories to share,” Carlson says.
Carlson stresses it’s important not to talk down to
anyone, and Rolf Penner echoes that message, saying
it’s equally important to recognize one’s own limitations. That includes remembering that it’s perfectly
acceptable to say you don’t know something, and
to refuse to speak on a subject you’re not yourself
familiar with.
Tact is also going to be an important part of any
discussion, Penner says, even when some of the statements you encounter are eye-roll inducing.
“I’ve seen people use their superior knowledge
base to bully others in conversations, and I don’t
think that works very well,” Penner says. “If you
make someone feel stupid or embarrassed because
they honestly don’t know something, they’re probably not going to come around to your side, whatever
the issue is.” CG
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business
Megatrends
Canada’s farms
By Maggie Van Camp, CG Associate Editor
G
lobal forces are transforming agriculture
in this country. It barely takes a second
for any farmer to rattle off a list, starting
with world population that the UN says will
jump by another billion over the next decade and
reach 9.6 billion by 2050. Or smartphones that link
us to the world from our tractor cabs. Or GM crops
that are now so mainstream, we wonder whether
we could ever farm without them.
But those are only the start. Sweeping changes
will continue to impact Canadian agriculture.
Why should we care? Because eyeing these
macrotrends as opportunities and threats for your
own business plan is where the big benefits lie.
If you understand how to apply these trends on
a micro-scale specific to your sector or business,
they can be game changers.
Country Guide challenged two of the country’s
top agricultural economics professors to identify megatrends affecting Canadian farmers. Sylvain Charlebois, associate professor in the college
of business and economics at the University of
Guelph has a more modern, future-based view of
patterns and shifts, focused on food and trade.
As the former executive director for planning
and communications for the CWB and professor at
the University of Manitoba, Brian Oleson has ridden the roller-coaster through many major changes
over the years. He knows megatrends have long
cycles, and he has seen how the Canadian grain
industry can be fundamentally impacted by global
political events.
So buckle up. Here are seven megatrends from
Charlebois and Oleson that will shape the future of
Canadian agriculture and your farm.
18 country-guide.ca /
Can your farm
thrive over the
next decade?
Black swan
events
“We have entered a world of complete geopolitical instability,” says Oleson. He points to the
collapse of the Middle East peace, the increasing
number of failed states, and the radical fundamental
religious groups wreaking havoc across the globe.
As the world becomes more connected and more
linked economically, this means more unpredictability in commodity markets. “Farmers should expect
more black swan events,” Oleson says, referring to
the theory developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in
his book, The Black Swan: The Impact Of The
Highly Improbable.
“We cannot even conceive of these black swans,”
Oleson says.
In the last 20 years, we’ve had our share of
earth-shaking, unexpected events, such as the
September 11 attacks or, more recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. North American agriculture has had its own black swans, including the
1998 collapse of the Asian economy, when prices
crashed, or the BSE crisis in 2003 or the current
onslaught of avian influenza.
These mostly unexpected events resulted in a
lot of structural changes to the Canadian livestock
industry. They took some farmers completely out
of the game. Many shut down the livestock portion
of their farms and switched to crops only, and the
change in the sector has been real and permanent.
In short, the hog industry has become an investor-based industrialized commodity.
Cow-calf producers have been better able to
manage this risk, says Oleson. If needed, they can
keep cattle longer on feed or build up their herds,
so they aren’t exposed as much to random events or
market swings. The ones who survived and waited
for better times are now being rewarded with high
feeder and fat cattle prices.
J u l y / augus t 2 0 1 5
business
mega
/ Mega,
DYNASTY farms
The capital-driven farm family has
emerged as the most significant player in
Canadian agriculture.
“The family farm will not disappear,
says Oleson. “They become a dynasty.”
Oleson likens this group to the large
boulders in a barrel. Although there’s more
space between the boulders for the smaller
operators, most of the barrel is filled with
big boulders and they’re getting bigger.
The increase in the investment required
to farm today, such as the large efficient
precision farming equipment and the skyrocketing price of land, mean larger family
farms are able to outbid the smaller, less
established farmers.
Smaller farmers are forced to compete with these large operators for limited
productive assets, including land. Those
large operations simply have more collateral base to buy more land or equipment,
and low interest rates have allowed them
to leverage their assets and outbid any
potential newcomers.
Also, this large capital base means
these farms should be able to survive
through tough times.
Furthermore they can leverage the heritage and success of the people before them.
Of course, there’s always an exception but
it’s becoming more difficult to go from a
pebble to a boulder. “This will continue,”
says Oleson. “The utilization of technology will intensify the consolidation.”
A decade ago, driverless vehicles and
drones seemed science fiction. Now,
robotic field equipment is on the drawing boards, says Oleson. Will that further enhance the power of these large
family farms to expand?
Continued on page 20
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J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 country-guide.ca 19
business
Continued from page 19
/ Supply
management 2.0
Political momentum has favoured trade agreements in the last few years, Charlebois says. Will it
still lean in that direction after October?
The opportunities and threats around those
trade agreements can and will affect your farm
business going forward. “When you are talking
politics, you’ve got to talk about food in that,”
says Charlebois.
“The EU-Canada trade agreement created a
breach in supply management,” says Charlebois.
“The TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) is the biggest
trade deal in history. What’s going to happen with it?”
With Europe recently getting rid of its supply
management system, Canada is the only developed
economy with a quota and tariff system in dairy.
That leaves us in a precarious position, says Charlebois. “I absolutely think there’s a momentum
toward a reform.”
What can we learn from Europe? “We can
be inspired by Europe but it’s a totally different
system,” says Charlebois. “The pricing formula
was different. The tariffs were different. Farmers
couldn’t use the quota as collateral. There was less
fiscal baggage with its system.”
However, the biggest difference was that European farmers had a financial incentive to get rid
of the system, while Canadian dairy and poultry
farmers want supply management. For example, in
Germany, farmers were paying nearly $20 billion a
year in fees to keep their system going.
In contrast, Charlebois says he was basically
shut down during a recent meeting in his home
province of Quebec for even discussing what to do
to transition out of supply management.
Instead of burying out heads or reacting with
fury, we should create a map to protect our supply
management farmers and make changes to enable
more trade, before we don’t have a choice, says
Charlebois.
There are a lot of ways to do this, he says,
but to make the road out of supply management
smoother, farmers need to engage in the discussion
of how, and they need to plan for the transition.
Without preparation, the removal of tariffs
could be catastrophic to some farmers and the
rural economy, especially in Quebec and Ontario.
“The EU quota system was newer, with much less
fiscal baggage,” says Charlebois. “Given that in
Canada, billions (of dollars) in quotas are used as
collateral to support farmers who pay very small
levies compared to those in the EU, a Canadiantailored quota-lifting reform would take more than
15 years to implement, at the very least.”
20 country-guide.ca / Grain
cycles
“Over the years, I’ve learned that there are three
phases to cycles: the up, the maturity and the down
phases,” says Oleson. “These cycles occur once or
twice in your lifetime.”
In Oleson’s lifetime, he experienced the Great Russian Grain Robbery of 1972 to 1982 and what he coins
the Great Ethanol Robbery from 2006 to 2012-13.
Politics was a willing and erratic partner in both
these big grain cycles. The recent price boom was
driven by corn-based ethanol. “In 2008, Obama was
a major supporter of ethanol and won the ethanol
debate in Iowa. In 2012, as energy realities changed, he
was the last person in the world to talk about the end
of corn-based ethanol,” says Oleson. “The end of his
presidency coincides with the end of the cycle.”
Although other factors have played into this grain
price cycle, energy vulnerability and homeland security
created the dynamics by diverting five billion bushels a
year out of traditional markets.
Combined with the rapidly increasing demand from
China, the price of grain shot up with energy. That price
cycle is completely spent now, says Oleson. As long as there
are no additional capital investments, the established corn
ethanol plants will continue to attract four billion to five billion bushels a year. “Corn-based ethanol as a new demand
factor is over,” says Oleson. “It’s actually a damper on
future price increases as supplies can easily be diverted
from fuel to feed and food, if corn prices increase.”
land
/ Sticky
prices
Another shift in mentality that Oleson has witnessed in the last few years is that associated with
farmland. The wealth created in many areas during
this last cycle shifted the thinking around land prices
from productive value to land being some place to
park your money.
“It’s similar to the logic used on gold,” says Oleson.
“Basically, existing farmers, retiring farmers and farmland
investors have all turned farmland into gold with a return.”
Now that we’ve gone from massive profits to
break-even prices, we need to be aware that the current
crop profitability cycle is on the downward slope. This
should be reflected in realistic productive asset values.
“Land prices are historically so sticky,” says Oleson. “They’re now more sticky than ever.”
Land prices are probably not going to swing down
quickly with commodity prices, Oleson predicts. The
large farms will weather the black swan events. They’ll
consolidate and become the mega-farm survivors.
“They’ll survive and thrive by the big price cycles,”
says Oleson. “They will ensure that land prices do not
drop significantly, even with commodity price declines
like we’ve witnessed in the past two years.”
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
business
on
/ Focus
ingredients
Over the last decade, a major shift has occurred in how food
is perceived by the public. Charlebois says this will increase, and
sales will become more attuned to individual buyers instead of
the mass market.
“Demand is increasing for more fragmented food,” Charlebois
says. “Food is becoming more market driven, more fragmented.”
With that, retailers are calling the shots and more are connecting with farmers to create partnerships to supply specific quality products.
“The food supply chain will narrow,”
says Charlebois.
It’s also time for farmer groups and
large farmers to become part of the public debate on how food is being grown
and handled. Livestock processors and
producers need to move toward public
transparency.
Processors and producers need to move
toward this type of engagement. For example, Cargill’s Better Beef slaughterhouse in
Guelph has installed cameras along the line,
and Andrew Campbell on Twitter is doing
a fantastic job representing the industry, says Charlebois.
Squeezed between retail and farmers is a processing industry
dependent on a weak loonie. Having the 80-cent (Canadian) dollar helps, but building an industry on currency is risky, says Charlebois. Instead we need processors to modernize their factories.
Processors need to be innovative and create new food choices.
Since 2007, we’ve lost over 150 food-manufacturing plants in
Canada. That affects farmers. “If there’s a red light in food, it’s
absolutely in manufacturing,” Charlebois says. “Farmers will be
directly affected.”
/ Market
volatility
Although we have been through a decade of incredible market volatility, Sylvain Charlebois at the University of Guelph says
we’ve only seen the beginning.
We’re in for commodity markets bungee jumping with many
more factors tugging on the rope. “Farmers need to become better hedgers,” says Charlebois.
On top of hedging market prices, farmers should also mitigate the risks of swinging currency values
and climate change, Charlebois believes.
One way to hedge against weather is
to buy weather derivatives, which are now
a tradable commodity. Weather derivatives cover low-risk, high-probability
events, whereas weather insurance covers
high-risk, low-probability events. “If you
have a bad crop year you can actually
use derivatives to offset your losses,” says
Charlebois. “It’s not insurance. You buy
them in Chicago.”
His perspective and experiences
have recently been shifted to encompass
Europe. Charlebois is currently a visiting professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria for one
year, with the shockwaves that rippled out of the banking crisis
in Greece as just one example of how the world is increasingly
interconnected.
We should also be aware of the currency wars being played
out in many nations. This past winter foreign exchange markets
jumped into turmoil after the Federal Reserve Bank stopped its
quantitative easing program. Many governments, Charlebois
says, are trying to stimulate their economies and create jobs by
devaluing their currency values. CG
Oleson no longer
talks “big farms.”
Instead, he talks
“dynasties” as
consolidation
ramps up
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insight
An angel
of an idea
dmittedly, it’s hard to say exactly what
makes any innovation a success, or why
farms are such fertile ground for new
ideas. Maybe it’s the opportunity to test
new ideas under real-world conditions.
Or because farmers are so practical, or so resourceful,
or because they know how to persevere.
Or, today, maybe it’s more likely to be the willingness to take a risk, or the determination to find the
right people to help push the idea forward, or the talent for adapting to new ways of doing business.
In fact, Kim Keller will tell you it’s all those traits
together that help explain why her hot new farm app
called Farm At Hand actually got its start in Saskatchewan farm country, a long, long way from the
technology mecca of Silicon Valley.
It’s also why, in her role as Farm At Hand cofounder, Keller is seen as breaking a mould, while she
sees herself drawing on a rich history of farm innovation, but doing it in a way that makes sense for the
21st century.
Through links she builds
to angel investors, Farm
At Hand gets resources for
product development, plus
invaluable business insight
22 country-guide.ca As Kim Keller is proving,
the test today is whether we
can get innovative about how
we handle our innovations
Making it fly
I visit Kim Keller’s family’s farm in late spring.
The farm borders Gronlid, a small hamlet in northeast Saskatchewan where the Kellers have a parklike yard, maintained by Kim’s mother, Deb, who
plants a truckload of flowers every year and eradicates any weeds that dare germinate in the bin
yard. That’s no easy task, given there are about 50
bins in the yard.
Kim also introduces me to her dad, Rick. He
shakes my hand and chats briefly before heading
back to the field. He’s buoyant and relaxed despite
being in the middle of seeding. The weather up to
this point has favoured spring field operations.
Kim takes me on a tour of the 12,000-acre farm,
and I shoot video of her dad and the Keller family’s
two employees doing field work. Kim has flown here
from her home base in Vancouver to run seed and
otherwise support field operations this spring. She
also helps out at harvest by driving the grain cart,
and is at the farm frequently throughout the year.
After filming, we sit down at the Keller family’s
kitchen table. The TV is tuned into CNN, Deb’s favourite news source, so Kim switches it off before we begin.
In the last couple of years, Kim has driven the
3,500-km round trip from Vancouver to Gronlid
about 10 times. She’s also a frequent flyer, jetting to
technology conferences and hitting agricultural trade
shows around North America.
It’s a hectic life, but so is farming, she says. Hers
is just a different type of hectic, and she’s willing to
take it on to make Farm At Hand fly.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
Photography: Photos By Kathryn
By Lisa Guenther, Field Editor
insight
Himanshu Singh through friends. Himanshu had just started a small software
development company in Saskatoon. He
was intrigued by Kim’s thinking about
the lack of farm management apps, and
asked her how her family tracked what
was happening with their bins.
Kim explained they used a big sheet of
paper on the kitchen island. Every time
something changed in the bin yard, her
brother Jeff would erase the old entry
and pencil in the change.
Himanshu’s response was quick.
“There’s got to be an app for this,” he said,
so he and Kim went to work. “We did all of
the research, and there wasn’t,” Kim says.
“That’s how it all started,” and in February,
2012, they decided to build an app.
They didn’t intend to start a business,
however. They simply wanted to create
something for the Keller family farm.
But then, Kim’s family members
quickly threw in their two cents about
what they wanted in a farm management app, and what started as a tool to
track bin yards and grain bags quickly
evolved into a program to track field
records (planting, spraying, harvesting,
and scouting), contracts, contract deliveries and equipment maintenance and
parts’ lists. “So it is farm management,
basically seed to sale,” says Kim.
Light-bulb moment
we have,” Kim says. “There’s nothing I
won’t do to make sure that we make the
most of it.”
The path that led her to becoming an
ag tech entrepreneur was unexpected. It
started in 2011 when Kim realized she
wanted something different than her
career with a Crown corporation. It was
like she woke up one day and wanted to
be a farmer, she explains.
This change was a bit of a surprise for
her. She had done the usual farm chores
while in school, but otherwise wasn’t too
involved. “Growing up, I never wanted to
be a farmer,” she says. Instead, she earned
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 a university degree and got a job, like
many other farm kids who create lives for
themselves in the cities.
Then her parents suggested she come
back to the farm on a trial basis, and it
was while running the grain cart during
harvest that first fall that she had her
spark of inspiration.
“I did everything else on my phone,
but I couldn’t do anything meaningful for
the farm on my phone,” she says. There
were farming games and reference materials, but nothing to do with the business
of farming.
Shortly after that harvest, Kim met
On April 26, 2012, Farm At Hand
made its debut.
“We ended up putting it on the app
store because a couple of friends of mine
and a couple of neighbours wanted to try
it out,” says Kim.
Farm At Hand was, and remains, free
for farmers, and within two months, they
had about 500 downloads.
About three months after releasing the
app, a market consultant gave Kim a call.
All of his farmers were using the app, he
said, and it was saving him a ton of time.
It was a “light-bulb moment,” Kim says.
She and Himanshu saw a business opportunity, and they decided to run with it.
In 2013, Kim and Himanshu had a
chance to attend a technology acceleraContinued on page 24
country-guide.ca 23
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Continued from page 23
tor to grow their business. But there was a catch.
The accelerator was in Vancouver and they’d have to
move there, at least temporarily.
Kim says leaving the farm was difficult. Vancouver wasn’t a place where she’d dreamed of living.
In fact, neither Kim nor Himanshu had even visited
there. But it was an opportunity for Farm At Hand,
she says, “and there was no way that we were going
to say no to opportunity.”
Over the August long weekend of 2013, Kim and
Himanshu packed her truck and drove through the
Prairies and mountains until they reached Vancouver.
They’d rented an apartment, sight unseen, off Craig’s
List, the online classifieds service.
“We slept on air mattresses for three months,”
says Kim.
After they’d completed the accelerator program,
they decided to stay in Vancouver to build their company. Recruiting staff to Vancouver was an easier
sell, especially since Vancouver and Toronto are
Canada’s tech hubs.
And Vancouver has its charms. Being downtown
allows Kim to catch hockey and football games. “I
can go watch the Riders play without having to drive
four hours... I can just walk on over,” she says.
Today Kim and Himanshu have seven staff and the
number of farmers using their app has topped 20,000.
They’ve also captured interest from industry. In
April 2014, they raised over $1.4 million in funding
from angel investors. With that funding, they can
stay true to their pledge to keep offering the app to
farmers for free while they’re also creating a paid
version for agribusiness, which Kim says they plan to
roll out by late 2015 or early 2016.
At this point, 90 per cent of Farm At Hand’s
Farm records when
and where you need
them, even offline!
24 country-guide.ca customers are in the U.S. and Canada — mostly in
Western Canada and through the U.S. Grain Belt,
Kim says, but the company is also gaining customers
in South America, South Africa, the United Kingdom
and Australia.
No matter where they are, all farmers need the same
basic things from the program, Kim says. But each
farmer does things a little differently, creating a unique
need, she adds. To deal with those needs, the Farm At
Hand app allows farmers to create custom activities to
cover tasks that aren’t on the app’s pre-built lists.
Kim and Himanshu have also figured out their
roles within the company. Himanshu is the CEO,
handling business and investor relations. Kim is the
chief operating officer. She works closely with the
development team to build the product, and works
with their head of community, Anastasia Hambali.
Kim essentially heads up everything on the farmer
side of things, she explains.
Finding investors
One benefit of the tech accelerator was that it
gave them a network to bounce ideas off, says Kim.
Those advisers also shared information on making
deals with angel investors — often a make-or-break
step in today’s tech business world.
There’s also a crucial distinction that they had
to learn. Angel investors invest their own money
in early-stage startups with potential. By contrast,
venture capitalists invest money from a pool they’ve
raised from limited partners.
So how does a farmer find angel investors? The
first answer is, “everywhere.” Through their tech
accelerator, Kim and Himanshu entered Farm At
Hand in various pitch competitions, and they pitched
it to investor groups.
But a lot of it came down to networking, which
they started doing before they even joined the tech
accelerator. Their first priority had always been to do
what’s best for the company and farmers, Kim says,
and they talked about their vision for the business
early on. “Our focus has always been to find investors that are going to help us build that vision.”
Himanshu and Kim exchanged equity for financial support from investors (the exact terms are
confidential). While there was back-and-forth negotiation with investors, Kim says it wasn’t anything
like you’d see on TV shows such as “Dragon’s
Den.” There wasn’t anything in the initial offering
that was out of the question, she explains. “We have
a great group of investors.”
Critically, those angel investors also provide more
than cash.
“We gained a ton of insight and advice from our
investors. Many of them are from the agriculture
industry and all of them are successful business
people,” says Kim. In fact, investors from the agriculture industry are also part of the potential market
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
insight
for the paid version of Farm At Hand,
she adds.
And because all of Farm At Hand’s
investors have built successful companies,
they’ve all dealt with the inevitable bumps
in the road, Kim says. “They made it out
the other side, and so can we.”
Farm At Hand deals with those bumps
by providing the best service that they possibly can to their customers and farmers,
Kim says. They make decisions based on
whether it will benefit farmers, she says.
And farmers send them suggestions on
improving the app daily, she adds. Most
of their farmers have a phone number for
Kim, Himanshu or Anastasia, she adds, and
their emails are on the company website.
“We say: ‘We work your hours. So
whatever you need from us, just call,
text, email, whatever works best for
you,’” Kim says.
The Farm At Hand team has also
found itself educating urbanites about
modern agriculture. Some investors didn’t
know that farmers used even basic technology such as smartphones, Kim explains.
To counter those misconceptions, Farm
At Hand launched a technology campaign, dubbed #iamfarmer as a play on the
caveman-like public perception of farming. Farmers posted pictures on Twitter
of everything from hailstorms looming
behind combines to adorable kids. Farm
At Hand also gave out T-shirts showing
farming’s evolution from its very humble
beginnings to now using drones.
The last few years have been quite a
journey for Kim. Asked if she was ever
worried about the risk, she says starting
any business is risky. Being a farmer is
risky, she states. “But you just do it and
you go into it 100 per cent.”
Kim and Himanshu are not only
bringing a new technology to farmers,
but they’re also pioneering a new business
model by giving farmers a free program.
“That’s risky but it’s also incredibly exciting to think that when we succeed, we’re
going to be part of how agriculture is
changing right now.”
So it’s then that I ask her, does she have
any advice for would-be ag entrepreneurs?
Her answer comes quickly. Kim says they
should take every opportunity that they’re
given. There are a million ways you can
say no to an opportunity, she says. But
that opportunity won’t wait forever.
“Even if it doesn’t open the door
you thought it would, it’s going to lead
to four or five others you never even
dreamed of,” Kim says.
Entrepreneurship isn’t an easy road to
follow. There will be times you think you
can’t get up and continue the next day,
Kim says. But you can, she says. “And
you will. And you’ll keep on doing it.
You’ll get knocked down and you’ll just
keep standing back up.” CG
Wondering what cloud
computing is? Or whether
you should sign up for a specific
information management service?
Check out the video interview
with Kim Keller at country-guide.
ca by searching “farm data.”
Or go to www.country-guide.
ca/2015/06/12/moving-yourfarm-data-from-field-to-cloud/.
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insight
His new
playbook
What can
farmers
adapt from
Wade Barnes’
trail-blazing
success at
Farmers
Edge?
By Tom Button,
CG Editor
26 country-guide.ca J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
insight
Photography: victoria anne photography
I
n an agriculture that is struggling to figure out
what its future will look like, Wade Barnes may
at least know how to get there. And, as his
example seems to promise, knowing ‘how’ may
put you on the path to knowing ‘who,’ which in
farming is the question that will eventually answer all
the others.
In Barnes’ world view, the farmer today has the
opportunity to achieve more than ever before. If you
bring the right juice to the game, and if you run with
the right playbook, the possibilities can be incredible,
whether on the farm or in partner businesses.
“I’ve seen things other people haven’t seen yet,” says
Barnes, CEO of Farmers Edge, the Winnipeg-based
variable-rate technology (VRT) startup that now has
190 employees in five countries.
Launched in a Manitoba basement by Barnes and
co-founder Curtis MacKinnon in 2005, Farmers Edge
today has its eye on global leadership in precision-farming technology and management.
But the technology is only half the reason for his
excitement. Barnes has also seen the application of
Silicon Valley’s corporate strategies to the world of
farming, and it has changed his outlook permanently.
Can his playbook work on your farm? Would you
even want it to?
Barnes is convinced that variable-rate technology
and “big data” are revolutionary, not just evolutionary. “This will change everything,” Barnes says.
“This is the next Green Revolution, this is the next
GMO moment.”
His belief is making all the difference for his company, Barnes says, and it can make that much difference for farmers too.
Nothing is more important for young and midcareer farmers to understand, and to engage with, he
says. “Nothing.”
Barnes wants to be understood exactly. He doesn’t
want any of us to hear it wrong, only partly because
it could be so easy to dismiss what he says as the kind
of pie-in-the-sky thinking that agriculture can seem
particularly prone to.
“I was born and bred in the field,” Barnes begins,
talking of his early days on the farm near Pilot Mound,
Man., after which he did a university degree in agriculture and became one of the hundreds of company
agronomists across the West. It was a job he loved.
He was even named a Certified Crop Adviser of the
Year, and he bought fully into it the prevailing ethos.
“If your nose isn’t in the dirt,” he remembers thinking,
“you’re not going to make good recommendations.”
But that was then, not now.
Today, Barnes says with even greater conviction,
“Agriculture is all math.”
When he and MacKinnon got their first taste of
variable-rate technology a decade ago, they immediately saw it as a game changer. Until then, farmers aimed to make the best average decisions, an
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 approach Barnes calls the soil-sample philosophy.
You take cores across the field, but instead of analyzing those cores separately and using them for
localized application rates, you dump them all into
a pail and blend them before sending one sample to
the lab to represent the entire field.
The goal was to fertilize at the best average rate,
the same way you’d spray a fungicide, for example,
picking the best average day for the entire crop.
Barnes admits that he and MacKinnon weren’t the
only ones a bit star struck by VRT’s potential, yet few
others quit their jobs, as he and MacKinnon did, when
their boss refused to charge forward with the new technology as quickly as the duo wanted. And few others set
up business, as MacKinnon and Barnes did in his basement, with no money, little credit except their personal
lines, and almost no income.
Today, Barnes admits too that he and MacKinnon
probably did jump a bit too early, in a way. Results
in those first years were mixed. Technology and science still had to catch up. But the early start meant
the two got in at the ground floor, and it gave them
a chance to immerse themselves in the concept and to
figure out its implications for the farm.
By 2012, when crop data was being successfully paired with localized weather instrumentation,
Barnes was seeing, time and again, that analysts with
remote data access could know more about what
was going on in the field than local scouts, even
though the analysts never left their offices.
However, what set the growth of Farmers Edge into
overdrive was their leadership in understanding of what
precision agriculture will mean for farms as businesses,
not just as production units.
To this day, if you want to see Barnes bristle, tell
him that VRT is a niche sector. “No one in agriculture will think that,” he snaps back.
Barnes sees the technology rewiring how farm business is done. “The farmer is the only person who makes
a huge amount of decisions — million-dollar decisions
— based on gut instinct,” Barnes says. “He’s got a
Continued on page 28
country-guide.ca 27
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Continued from page 27
great gut to do it, but in five years, that will
change. He’ll rely on data generated on
his farm to make decisions. That’s where I
want to see us.”
Farmers will test a new combine on
the farm, generating data about fuel efficiency, harvest speed, field losses and
more to prove to the dealer what the
combine is actually worth. They’ll know
exactly what fertilizer to apply, what seed
to plant, and how to schedule, manage
and monitor complex field operations.
More than that, they will use this
capability to build new partnerships,
Along the way, many of those farmers
may in turn be watching Barnes and Farmers Edge to learn how to turn their opportunities into modern business realities.
What they’ll mainly see is the critical role that they themselves will have
to play.
The higher you go in business, Barnes
will tell them, the more you will be
judged on whether you bring the right
stuff to the table.
Despite all the accountants and all the
technical advisers, at the end of the day if
you want to partner with even the biggest
organizations, you can expect someone in
a boardroom to demand a chance to look
you in the eye and ask, is this someone I
want to do business with?
If anything, Barnes is finding that his
personality and his personal attributes
grow more important as the company
grows and the scale of its partnerships
increases.
Barnes points to two Monsanto
announcements that helped convince
Farmers Edge to get extra serious about
growth. “When Monsanto bought Precision Planters (in 2012), I went, ‘The
world is going to change,’” Barnes says.
“Either we sell right now or we raise
capital and we change the business.”
for acquisition, but Barnes was also making his way to key boardrooms across
Canada and in Silicon Valley, netting a
deal with Kleiner Perkins after about a
year of discussions, and with Mitsui after
nearly two years.
In both, the process was similar, starting with a couple of phone calls and
the exchange of some initial documents,
then followed by extensive due-diligence
analysis, followed up with a series of
personal visits.
“It’s all about that,” Barnes says.
“They’re making a bet on you as the
CEO. That’s what it’s all about.” Such
investors would rather see the company
thrive with its own leadership rather than
bring in a new team, which as a strategy
has a more mixed track record.
So what did they look for? Barnes has
a pretty clear idea. Both Kleiner Perkins
and Mitsui wanted a player with entrepreneurial fire and with vision, and a
leader able to attract and retain great talent. Critically, however, they also wanted
a CEO who was prepared to be tough as
well, and a leader who can make change,
including in himself.
Barnes thinks the timing is great for
farmers to expand into this new era. Not
only is the field open, he says, but Can-
“This will change everything,” Barnes
says. “This is the next Green Revolution,
this is the next GMO moment.”
bypassing elevators and dealing directly
with end-users, providing a General Mills
for instance, a superior combination of
genetics, climate and soil to grow its oats,
together with data transparency so it can
know exactly how many tonnes of what
quality it will get, and when it will get it.
Nor is that a dream, Barnes says. In fact,
the biggest gap isn’t technological. The big
gap is in the farms that are ready to make
those deals come together.
Barnes is convinced it’s a temporary
gap that is already being bridged by innovative farmers around the world, and their
success with data-based input decisions
and data-based marketing initiatives is
going to help fuel the growth of Farmers
Edge over the next five years, making it a
key player in five core markets — Canada,
the U.S., Australia, Eastern Europe, and
Brazil, which Barnes refers to as the Saudi
Arabia of agriculture.
28 country-guide.ca The decision was to raise capital,
and Farmers Edge bolstered its board
of directors, bringing in key resources
including Brian Heywood with his solid
background in that arena.
Then in 2013 Monsanto paid $1 billion for Climate Corp., a startup founded
by Google employees David Friedberg
and Siraj Khaliq that had an income
stream of roughly $30 million. Again, the
message was to get big or get out.
More than that, the message was also
to get big by forming the right partnerships with investors who would open up
new market opportunities.
“This is the side of it that a lot of
people don’t realize,” Barnes says. “Raising capital is really hard. It’s much more
difficult than anybody can ever imagine… not just raising capital, but raising
the right capital.”
Soon, Farmers Edge was being studied
ada has a good supply of smart ag graduates who can make great employees for
employers who can create the exciting,
challenging jobs that they want.
But also make sure you monitor your
own performance, he advises. Every business goes through periods of stress, and
it is in those times that employees and
investors want a sense of structure, and
a sense that the company knows how to
get the job done.
“The entrepreneurial excitement is
infectious, but if you don’t adapt, your
people will get frustrated,” Barnes says,
adding, “I’m a farm kid, I have no MBA
or business training, but I know that if
you believe in something, you have to
change, grow and adapt. You have to
keep the entrepreneurial, renegade spirit,
but bring in structure and focus.
“If they see I’m changing, that’s infectious too.” CG
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
insight
Genuinely
in business
OK, so it’s a cliché that business
means people working with people.
It’s also how you create success.
Just ask Dow’s Brad Orr
By Tom Button, CG Editor
O
f all the global ag input
suppliers, Dow AgroSciences has arguably
changed the most, transitioning from a company
whose Canadian presence was dominated by Treflan, a herbicide that nobody
sprays today, into a diversified operation
with a strong national presence and significant market share in crop protection,
plant genetics, traits and more.
There’s just as good a case for arguing, however, that Dow has also changed
the least. It’s still differentiated from
its major competitors in the same way,
based on its culture.
Growers know it intuitively. To
them, Dow feels different, and a trip to
its head office in Indianapolis confirms
it. Compared to Monsanto, it isn’t as
preppy, or as upwardly mobile as Syn-
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 genta, or as European as BASF or intellectual as Bayer.
Actually, it could be hard to know
exactly what word to use to describe
Dow, except, of course, for the fact that
Dow has already come up with it.
“Genuine,” says Brad Orr, just finishing his first year as head of Dow’s Canadian business.
In fact, Dow has a small handful of
such words — also including collaborative, resourceful and responsible — that
it routinely tests itself on, including via
feedback from growers.
“Building the culture of an organization, and its performance on individual
projects, are related,” Orr explains.
But there’s even more to it than that.
Crucially, Orr says, culture influences your
relationship with your customers, and how
you anticipate and satisfy their needs.
For farmers looking at whether they
might import high-level, Dow-based
thinking to drive their own businesses
over the next five years, this may even be
where to start.
Of course, the rule of thumb is the
same for agribusiness as it is for farming,
with 80 per cent of your effort needing
to go into getting the best, most efficiently produced crop to market. With
global sales of roughly C$9 billlion and
with 9,000 employees worldwide, Dow
AgroSciences understandably puts most
of its hours into ensuring that its pipeline
is full.
Now that the company has diversified
into everything from Nexera canola to
the new Dow Seeds, and from crop protection to the Enlist trait that makes corn
Continued on page 30
country-guide.ca 29
insight
Continued from page 29
30 country-guide.ca “Open, honest conversation about what you are and what you aren’t is the beginning,” Orr says. “It makes for great collaboration.”
Orr, raised as a Manitoba farm boy, but
now with 26 years with Dow, starting
as a summer student while in university
and followed with postings in Manitoba,
Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
“Mother Nature humbles us. Every
time you find a solution, you have to
look for a new solution.”
That’s not to say, however, that
“relationship marketing” doesn’t work. In
fact, it’s that kind of thinking that helped
drive Dow’s recent genetics announcement
in Ontario, where for the past five years it
has sold corn and soybean seed through
the two predecessor brands it had acquired
— Mycogen and Hyland.
Now, all its sales will be through a combined Dow Seeds, partly because combining
the two seed lists will result in one, more
competitive catalogue with a larger research
team behind it, but also because combining
the sales lists will increase the new brand’s
ability to have agronomists and other sales
support on its customers’ farms.
The decision leaves the U.S. as the
only Dow market selling genetics under
different brands, and it marks a strategy
to raise Dow’s genetics sales in Canada.
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
Photography: anne de haas
and soybeans tolerant to the Enlist Duo
combination of glyphosate and 2,4-D
choline, plus other product lines including nitrogen stabilizers such as N-Serve,
this has become an exceedingly multidisciplinary task.
From a people-management perspective, it is also a challenge. Not only does
Dow need experts on hand in all those
different fields, but each segment also
demands a share of the finite management, marketing and sales resources that
Dow can muster on any given day.
It’s much the same, Orr agrees, as for
farmers who diversify and now must not
only pay attention to their grains and
oilseeds, but somehow find the hours to
monitor a specialty crop as well.
The business argument is clear. Dow
has aggressive growth targets with the goal,
within five years, of becoming recognized
as a top-tier Canadian input company in a
market where farmers have a wide choice
of competitively priced technologies, and
where they will only buy the best.
One route would be to sweeten its loyalty benefits, using marketing programs
that increasingly reward farmers to up
their Dow purchases.
It’s called a share-of-wallet approach,
tied in to the thinking that it’s cheaper
to grow sales with an existing customer
than to go out and get a new farmer on
your list.
All companies consider it, and Orr
concedes Dow does too. “We all have
our lists of cutomers we want to acquire,
those who are loyal, those who have
slipped.”
But Orr doubts how far that thinking can go. Attractive as it might seem, it
would put the company at odds with its
customer base, which prizes its independence and its ability to retain choice.
Instead, says Orr, the path forward is
to focus more on its portfolio. “You have
to give yourself the right to ask for the
sale,” Orr says.
Increasingly, that means not specializing only in crop protection, or only in
traits or genetics.
In a market where customers will only
buy the best technology, and where none
of the sciences can be expected to always
produce the best solution, the necessary
choice is to aim for world-class capability
in all three, despite the additional people
demands it creates.
“This is a humbling business,” says
insight
“Having two brands was slowing us down,” Orr says. In the corn
market, where Dekalb and DuPontPioneer have a combined 80 per cent
market share, and where Mycogen
and Hyland have a combined eight per
cent, Orr is promising that Dow will
grow its sales aggressively and become
“the clear alternative within five years.
There will be three large companies…
we can get there.”
That strength in Eastern Canada,
combined with the company’s leadership in cereal herbicides in the West, plus
its market share with Nexera and the
growth of its traits sales, will then support growth across segments and enable
the company to focus even more on relationships with its grower customers.
It’s a plan based on hard numbers and
a goal that Orr articulates for staff and,
increasingly, for customers. “Five years
from now, Dow AgroSciences will be
viewed as a leader in introducing innovation,” Orr says. “We will be seen as a toptier company.”
Because Dow is convinced that it
will take excellence in multiple disciplines to achieve that, Orr knows that
tough decisions lie ahead, forcing him
to choose which resources go to which
initiatives.
“It’s a good problem to have,” Orr
says, adding, “You always have to evaluate what’s core to your business, and
what will create success by creating the
most customer success.”
It also means there’s another pipeline
that Orr is carefully monitoring. It’s the
flow of new employees into the organization, and the growth of those already there.
Increasingly, that’s a multi-generational workforce, with the same opportunities and challenges that farmers see
in their own operations. It takes careful thought to create an environment
where the different generations can work
together despite differences in work
styles, expectations and personal goals.
Increasingly too, it’s a workforce with
more gender balance. Women make up
half of Dow’s western regional sales force,
and Orr says that’s only a beginning. The
clear evidence, he says, is that fostering
that kind of diversity leads to better decisions.
Again, the parallels with the farm
come to mind. Orr’s team continually
evaluates not only the progress but the
aspirations of its people. As on more
farms, it also finds ways of keeping the
channels of communications open, so
individuals have a clear role in defining
their own development plans.
“It’s an ongoing dialogue,” Orr says,
and the company uses tactics ranging
from internships to temporary assignments at its Indianapolis headquarters to
work on specific assignments.
Hitting these HR targets is as vital as
any other business numbers.
Overall, though, it’s part of a core
belief that human relationships can be
optimized for success, whether those are
relationships with customers, partners or
staff. As a leader, Orr says, he needs to
recognize what he can control, and what
he can’t. “If you try to control things you
can’t control, that’s not very genuine.” CG
(With files from Amy Petherick)
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J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 country-guide.ca 31
Business
How it plans to beat us
Here’s a must read from Down Under for coming out on top
By Gerald Pilger
ou have to admit that for an economic study, this one has a great
title: “The Puck Stops Here!: Canada
challenges Australia’s grain supply
chains.” The new study is by the Australian Export Grains Innovation Center (AEGIC),
and it looks into Western Canada’s export grain
supply chain.
In fact, it looks at our grain system in such a
comprehensive way that Australian farmers who
read the report may emerge with a better understanding of our strengths and weaknesses than
many Canadian farmers have, which should both
embarrass and worry us.
This report is a testament to the fact that Australia’s grain industry is working hard to grow
into the global go-to supplier of wheat and coarse
grains, likely at the expense of Canadian farmers.
Australia recognizes that the health of its agricultural industry does not start with the seeding of
a crop. Nor does it end with the dumping of grain
into an elevator pit. It understands that marketing
isn’t only about the price that farmers receive for
their production. It’s about a lot more as well.
It’s also a sign that Australia realizes that in
order to be competitive in the global grains market,
it needs to know its competitors’ supply chain systems as well as it knows its own.
Knowing your competitor is a fundamental
business strategy across many industries. For example, Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon says,
“We watch our competitors, learn from them, see
what they are doing for customers, and copy those
things as much as we can.”
In the same way, Richard Branson, founder of
the Virgin Group, once tweeted, “Strike the right
balance between respecting your rivals and focusing on how you can beat them, and you’ll have a
winning formula.”
This is the strategy Australia is using to increase
the efficiency and competitiveness of its grain supply chain. By analyzing Canada’s system, it plans to
learn from our mistakes in order to avoid making
those same costly errors. Second, it will identify
what is working well in the Canadian grain supply chain and highlight which practices are most
appreciated by our customers. Then it can build
similar features into its system.
The goal is for Australia to become more efficient
and competitive in order to capture new markets,
some of which are currently Canadian customers.
32 country-guide.ca So what did the report reveal? Australia’s and
Canada’s Prairies are relatively similar not only in
their acreage, crops grown and production practices, but also in their need to find export markets
for a large portion of the production.
However, there are major differences in how
each country handles and markets its production,
and it is largely because of those differences that
it costs Canadian growers $20.50/tonne more to
move grain from field to ship than it costs Australian growers.
Distance to port is a major disadvantage for
western Canadian grain growers. Prairie growers
must transport their production 1,300 to 1,800
km to reach tidewater compared to the 100 to 400
km for Australian growers. But even though we are
moving grain about six times farther, the average
cost of this movement is $49 per tonne in Canada
versus $28 per tonne in Australia.
The reason is that rail rates are almost five times
higher in Australia than in Canada ($0.14NTK versus $0.03NTK). While we decry the rail service for
grain in Canada, our regulations, efficiencies, and
multi-use rail lines keep our rail costs much lower
than Australian rail lines, which are almost totally
dependent on grain movement.
However, we have serious rail issues too. Australian researchers who visited Canada last winter were told of the problems Canada has had
with grain movement by rail, as well as about
the abandonment of branch lines and about our
increasing highway costs as more grain is moved
longer distances by road.
There is also a difference in the degree to
which farmers rely on rail. In Canada, Prairie
farmers have very limited options for bypassing their rail system, while in Australia half of
the grain moves by road from farm gate to port
terminals.
Our port terminals are not designed to receive
grain by truck even if we were willing to move
grain by road.
Because of the lower costs of Canadian rail
movement of grain, the key recommendation of
the Australian report is to improve the flow and
efficiency of grain to port in Australia. The report
calls for Australia to develop a new, clear, concise
plan for least-cost grain movement to port. According to the report, that plan should encourage private as well as private/public investment to boost
grain movement from farm to port.
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
Business
Farm versus off-farm storage
Canadian grain-marketing specialists talk of the value of on-farm storage
and the opportunities to capture higher
prices by storing grain on farm. Rarely
do we hear of the added costs to the
Canadian grain supply system of onfarm storage, but those costs are identified in the Australian report.
According to the report, it costs Canada’s grain system $17.70/per tonne for
our on-farm grain storage of the entire
crop. Correspondingly, on-farm storage
costs in Australia are only $5/tonne for
a system where farmers store as little
as 20 per cent of their crop on farm.
(In areas where there is strong local or
domestic demand, farmers store up to 80
per cent. Areas which export more store
very little.)
The Australian system has an additional cost of $3.90/tonne for the
upcountry warehouse storage which
Canadian farmers do not incur, but still
our storage costs are double the cost of
Australian farmers.
Australian farmers, by being able
to move grain into upcountry storage
at harvest, also do not have to worry
about the risks associated with storing
grain on farm. Those risks are assumed
by the warehouse and/or grain trader.
The Australian storage system also
offers individual producers access to
many more buyers. Instead of being
limited to selling to the few companies which are within trucking distance
from farm gate to local facility, as is
the case in Canada, once Australian
farmers move the grain into upcountry
warehouse storage, it is available for
electronic purchase by any grain trader,
so farmers can sell at any time to any
buyer. This gives them the benefits of
holding grain for later sale, but without
the risks and additional costs of having to store the physical commodity on
their own farm.
The farmer, grain merchant, and
buyer also benefit by having the grain
in commercial storage and available for
immediate shipment instead of having
to co-ordinate the movement of grain
from farm to ship after a sale is made,
as happens in Canada.
In other words, Australia has
adopted a true PUSH system whereas
Canada relies on a PULL system in the
grain supply chain.
Based on its storage comparisons,
the report recommends a rationalization of some of the receiving and storage facilities to increase efficiency and
further reduce the cost of the Australian
grain supply chain. However, the report
makes it clear that the end result of any
rationalization must be that “… grain
farmers are the net beneficiaries.”
Owning the Chain
While Canadian farmers and governments continue to divest themselves
of grain-handling assets (pools, CWB,
inland terminals, etc.), the co-operative model of infrastructure ownership
and supply chain management remains
strong in Australia. CBH, the dominant player in the grain supply chain
Continued on page 34
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Business
Continued from page 33
in Western Australia is a farmer-owned
co-operative with equity in receiving
warehouses, port terminals, locomotives
and rolling stock.
The Australians think their approach
is right. Because we have sold the infrastructure in the grain supply chain, the
report states, “The ownership structure
of the Canadian export grain supply
chains limits the proportion of the system from which the farmer can derive
direct economic benefit.”
Then the report continues: “… Lack
of equity in other sectors of the grain
supply chain typically weakens the bargaining strength of farmers, especially
those located in a region only served by
one rail operator and with only one or
two nearby receival sites owned by large
grain companies.
“This limited market power of the
Canadian farmer could also limit their
capacity to capture the significant benefits that will result from ongoing climatic
change and improved production technolo-
gies such as new inputs, crops, and varieties. Much of the benefit from increased
grain production in Canada will be
extracted before and after the farm gate.”
What Canada is doing right
Besides identifying problems and
higher costs within the Canadian system, the report points to areas where
we have an advantage, and it urges Australia farmers and governments to adopt
or adapt these practices.
The Australian contingent was
impressed with the work and reporting
of the Grain Monitor. Its report suggests setting up a grain-monitoring program similar to ours which could lead
to better policy formulation.
As well, the report encourages
Australia to strengthen relationships
in export markets by creating its own
version of the Canadian International
Grains Institute (Cigi).
Plus, the report also notes that Canada has both higher productivity and
higher productivity trends. The report
calls for increased research by farmers,
industry and government to cost effectively boost production.
Interestingly, the report calls for a
focus of this research to address climate
change and the risks of declining production due to warmer and drier conditions, whereas in Canada many farmers
still doubt that climate change is real.
It is important to realize that Australia, in spite of the lower productivity
and a corresponding lower efficiency of
infrastructure usage, is able to deliver
grains into the critical Asian market at
a lower cost than we can from Canada.
Instead of sitting back and waiting for
sales, AEGIC, Australian farmers, and
their governments are actively seeking
to increase both productivity and the
efficiency of their grain supply chain.
Canadian farmers must take note.
A good place to start may be for all
Canadian farmers to read this report
and look at our system as seen through
a major competitor’s eyes. It is available online via www.aegic.org.au or by
following the links on the AEGIC home
page (www.aegic.org.au). CG
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34 country-guide.ca J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
A M E - ma n a g eme n t
Three key alignments
for top farm management
By Terry Betker
hen the planets align, life on the
farm can be very rewarding, like
when your weather is perfect at
the same time that there are production shortfalls in other parts
of the world and you can price into market highs.
There are other alignments, however, that are
much more within your control when you are
managing your farm business, including business
direction, financial performance and management
structure.
In a way, these factors have impacted farm business performance for decades, but as farms grow in
size and complexity, it is increasingly important that
we understand them better, and that we monitor them
as the farm business moves through its life cycle.
Business direction
This alignment consideration is really about strategic direction. Farms and farm families should have
written vision statements that provide longer-term
direction. A vision is the foundation of your future:
what you want your farm business to become.
Technically, a vision statement should be a little
cloudy and grand. Practically (which I find most farm
families prefer) it should describe where you see your
farm business five years from now. It is not set in
stone. The vision will evolve over time as situations
and circumstances change. It represents the direction
of the business or where the business is headed. It
becomes the road map — the “you can’t get there if
you don’t know where you’re headed” reality.
Financial performance
All businesses, including your farm, are tracking
somewhere financially. They have an existing financial direction. For most farmers, this is a reactive
function meaning that the financial position in the
future — say five years from now — will be an outcome of what will happen over that time frame.
The preferred approach is to define what you
want, or need, your financial position to be. Then
determine what can and needs to be done to achieve
it. Think of it as creating your financial vision. It
should include financial targets and investment
guidelines. How do you know if you are tracking
to where you want to be financially if you haven’t
defined the goal?
Logically, there should be a significant degree of
alignment between a business vision and a financial
vision. I find myself in discussions with farm families
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 where there sometimes is a disconnect between their
ideas of where they want their farm to be in the future
and their ability to get there financially. Having a
dream and then realizing after a time that you can’t
afford it can be discouraging. It’s like setting out on a
trip and partway along the journey, finding out that
you don’t have enough gas. It can cause frustration,
add stress and result in hard feelings. Alternatively,
financial clarity can have a positive impact on the business and family.
Management Structure
Your farm’s management structure becomes more
complex as your business grows, especially if there
are intergenerational transitions. The basic management functions on a farm are the same, but what’s
involved in attending to those functions has changed
and is changing. For many farms, this is a new reality.
Simply stated, what does the management structure of your farm need to look like five years from
now so the farm’s management will be appropriately
aligned with your financial and business vision? Putting some structure around the management functions on a farm can yield powerful results, but it
doesn’t have to be a complex exercise.
Start by drawing an organizational chart that
best represents how your business is currently being
managed. Determine who has responsibility for operations, marketing, financial and human resource
management. Next, define what the tasks are in each
of those management areas.
Then, repeat the process for what you think will
be required from a management structure perspective
five years from now, both in terms of the tasks and
the responsibilities in order to define what your management structure should look like in the future. The
process then is to begin to work towards it.
Three key alignments are required:
• Creating your business and family vision.
• Putting definition around your farm’s financial future.
• Developing a management structure that reflects
the current reality and future requirements.
Once completed, you’ll be able to monitor the
alignment and make the adjustments that will be
required to keep them aligned. CG
Terry Betker is a farm management consultant
based in Winnipeg, Man. He can be reached at
204-782-8200 or [email protected]. He
is an instructor with Agri-Food Management Excellence’s CTEAM program.
country-guide.ca 35
business
BACK to WorK
Now that we’ve met the Tier 4
Final emissions standards, can
we finally get back to designing
better diesel engines?
By Scott Garvey, CG Machinery Editor
Off-road diesel
engines now
produce low enough
levels of NoX and
particulate matter
to meet Tier 4
Final emissions
standards.
Photo: John Deere
t last, we’ve crossed the finish line.
January 1, 2014 marked the implementation date for the very last level
of phased-in emission reductions for
off-road diesel engines above 175
horsepower, as called for in joint standards issued
by the U.S. and the European Union.
The last set of regulations — called Tier 4 Final
in the U.S. — has taken enormous engineering
effort, and it has affected machinery far beyond the
U.S. and Europe, including the lion’s share of farm
machinery available in Canada.
The question is: Can we declare victory now?
Can we switch the industry’s focus back to delivering more productivity for famers?
The answer is: Maybe, but it turns out we might
not have heard the last of emissions cuts for offroad diesels after all.
The jury is apparently still out on whether or
not there will be more to come. There is talk in the
industry (albeit still just talk) of resetting allowable limits or at least harmonizing them across all
OECD countries. This time, though, the debate
around emissions has expanded beyond parts-permillion objectives, and it is evolving into a broader,
all-encompassing discussion.
“Generally speaking, in the U.S. we’ve spent
the last decade in the off-road space focusing on
virtually eliminating emissions of nitrous oxides
and particulates,” says Allen Schaeffer, executive
director of the U.S.-based organization Diesel Technology Forum, which represents many major diesel
engine manufacturers.
“We’re sort of at a major milestone point,”
Schaeffer says. “Industry has invested billions of dollars and a decade to get to near zero for the criteria
pollutants, which has been the focus for so long. It’s
36 country-guide.ca been like one person dominating the discussion at a
dinner. And that has been the discussion for the last
10 years. But other people want to talk now. They
want to talk about C02, efficiency, performance
benefits. And they want to talk about bigger issues,
maybe global harmonization of emissions standards.”
When you look at the powered farm equipment
on the market in 2015, some manufacturers who
previously used only in-house engines prior to last
January are now using a select few from other
brands to fill gaps in their own lineup.
Executives will usually concede the real reason
behind that was the difficulty in getting all their
own engines to meet the T4F implementation deadline on time.
The large number of uses and applications for
engines in the off-road sector is a key factor behind
that difficulty.
“The uniformity you have in the on-road world
is dramatic compared to the off-road world,” says
Schaeffer. Class 8 trucks, for example, have a typical range of horsepower and duty cycles, driving
at steady speeds and loads, so there can be a lot
of standardization. By contrast, Schaeffer says, the
number of engines and the diversity of applications
in the off-road sector is “mind boggling.”
It’s a difference that has made the job hugely
more complex for off-road machines. “Today in
the highway truck world, all the Class 8 trucks
from every single manufacturer use SCR and a
particulate filter,” Schaeffer says. “In the off-road
space, you need a spreadsheet and a matrix to figure out who’s using what.”
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
business
Plus, some of the emission control technologies
have negatively impacted fuel efficiency.
“There has been a lot of lost productivity and
lost fuel efficiency,” Schaeffer says. “They lost the
performance benefits that consumers would have
got if industry hadn’t been pursuing such aggressive emissions levels. I think that more than ever,
today, manufacturers want to focus on restoring
those benefits.”
In other words, manufacturers want to get
those gains back.
“What you’re seeing now in the U.S. are manufacturers that have those platforms out in the marketplace looking for ways to improve productivity
and reduce fuel consumption,” Schaeffer says. “All
of that is good news for operators.”
But if new rounds of emissions reductions are
imposed on manufacturers, it’s possible they might
jeopardize or at least delay those efforts to regain
lost productivity.
Industry also points out that, with NoX and
particulate emissions already near zero, there will
be diminishing returns associated with the high
cost of engineering further cuts.
Of all the gains in emissions reduction during
the last 10 years, industry insiders say, the biggest
jump came at the beginning of the program with
the move from unregulated to Tier 2.
“That gets you half of the way to where you
are today,” says Schaeffer. “The other steps, Tier
3 and 4, brought you the rest of the way, but as
you get close to near-zero emissions anything else
that happens is very expensive with much smaller
returns.
“We’re down now into the zone we like to call
near zero,” Schaeffer says. “There’s not a lot of
additional chopping that can be done.”
In fact, pursuing alternative paths may be more
practical. “There are other things happening now
that influence manufacturers’ thinking on this,”
Schaeffer says. “One of the best examples of those
is hybridization. Five or 10 years ago, the thought
of using electric motors on off-road machines was
not common practice. Now if you look today,
there is a range of equipment, like the Cat D7E
and others, that have some kind of hybrid component. Not from an emissions perspective, but
because they want to deliver more productivity
and fuel efficiency.”
But it’s concepts like that which add another
dimension to today’s emissions discussions. If
additional regulation becomes the chosen route,
could performance-enhancing features like hybridization figure into overall emissions numbers?
Would any of those systems come into play when
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 selecting which engines are certified or required
to comply? And which becomes more important,
further emissions level reductions or overall lower
fuel consumption?
In the end, is there really a difference? Farmers
and other end-users might think so.
One other way to achieve lower overall emissions is to simply get more of the newer engines
into service. In both the on- and off-highway segments, there are still plenty of old diesels at work
using less efficient emissions reduction systems or
none at all.
“To deliver the benefits of these clean-air technologies, they (new engines) have got to make it to
the marketplace,” agrees Schaeffer.
“I don’t think standards
are going away, but they
won’t have the same
front-seat influence in
the next decade.”
In the end, governments might not have to
move at all to make that happen. Societal pressures might become the real driving force. For
example, some construction contracts in the U.S.
now come with strings attached. Only contractors
using low-emissions equipment are entitled to bid
on them.
With large restaurant chains already demanding
certain production practices from producers who
supply their beef and produce, could the use of
low-emissions farm equipment eventually become
one of those conditions?
“Climate may help push that along a little bit,”
adds Schaeffer. “If we find ourselves with a global
attention to climate, you could see a lot of unconventional influences that could drive us to use
cleaner technology.”
Even so, Schaeffer is optimistic that a lot was
learned in the past decade. “I don’t think standards are going away, but they won’t have the
same front-seat influence in the next decade that
they’ve had in the last.” CG
Allen Schaeffer is
executive director
of Diesel Technology
Forum, an
industry-supported
organization.
country-guide.ca 37
business
The roads of
Zambia
By Maggie Van Camp, CG Associate Editor
We’ve always known the
country’s agriculture potential
is massive. Now there are
signs it is being opened up
Associate editor Maggie Van Camp travelled to Zambia through an International Federation of
Agricultural Journalists investigation into the country’s challenges and opportunities. One farm was ultramodern and 74,000 acres, she reports. Others struggle with basic subsistence. The future may need both.
riving to Nsongwe, Zambia from tourist-rich Livingstone is a tooth-rattling,
30-minute adventure through a savannah of parched grass and scrub trees.
Occasionally we see a clearing and
a mud hut with its thatched roof, an open firepit,
chickens, and brightly dressed women and children.
Colin Eves drives the jeep over the rough winding
red dirt road. He’s a partner in The SilvaGro Partnership, one of the largest forest seedling producers in
Western Canada, and he also runs a not-for-profit
charity in rural Zambia.
In 2007, after the tragic death of their teenage
son, he and his wife, Sandra, went to Zimbabwe to
help a medical team treat displaced people after a
flood. Soon after, the couple started the charity called
the SAM project, for Sustainability through Agriculture and Micro-enterprises (www.thesamproject.ca).
It’s a not-for-profit, non-political and secular charity
that aims to help the HIV/AIDs-ravaged population,
improving its standard of living and providing education and medicine.
38 country-guide.ca Eves and I are on our way to see the goat-breeding project his charity has helped create. In Zambia,
goats are mostly left to forage through the villages
and along the roadsides. Eves and the local chairman of this project, the successful emerging farmer
and village head Teddy Neube, set up a goat-breeding co-operative of five members to improve genetics, piggy-backed with some husbandry training.
They imported three big Boer billy goats from
South Africa and added them to a small rapidly growing herd of about 65 to cross with females, housed in
little barns on stilts. The F1 offspring of bigger, hardier
hybrid nannies will be bred back to another Boer male.
Over the 18 months so far, the goat-breeding cooperative has already established three of its planned
five goat farms, says Eves.
Along the road to the village, we meet a donkey cart
hauling jerry cans full of water to the farmyard at the
top of a hill that has no well. Hardly anyone out here
has their own well. Every day, the farmer hauls water
a few miles from the community well that the Rotary
Club drilled.
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
business
Canadian Colin Eves
felt called to help
a country with one
million poor farmers
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 The World Bank’s report, Recent Economic Developments and the State of
Basic Human Opportunities for Children,
has urged more investment targeted at the
region’s lagging rural areas, particularly
in infrastructure services such as drinking water, sanitation and electricity. Basic
opportunities for children still remain a
challenge. The same report says the largest barrier is for those born in rural areas,
and for those who are female.
At the bottom of yet another bumpy
hill, two small children flag Eves down
for a ride. He recognizes them as children of a friend from the village and
he offers to drop them off at the well.
Beaming, they hop in the back. Their
English so far consists of, “I am fine,
and how are you?” but by the time they
finish school (public education only goes
to Grade 7), they’ll be as fluent in English as the majority of the population.
Beaming, the girl places her hand against
mine, filling only my palm.
“I guess I came here to help them hold
on to their children a little longer,” says
Eves. “People are like comets, they come
into our lives and we remember their light.”
Running through this heart-wrenching
story is money and greed — government
spending, foreign investment, NGO (nongovernment organization) and mission
projects. The problem with many wellmeaning NGOs and government agencies is that individuals take advantage of
systems. “Some are gamed by the bureaucrats running the NGOs,” says Eves.
“Sometimes corrupted funds are channelled to the wrong places so they don’t
make it to the villages.”
As we drive by a cluster of huts, Eves
points out an empty corncrib made of sticks
about two feet off the ground. The maize
crop this year was poor because of ill-timed
rains, and Eves says folks will be relying on
the government to give them their allotted
two 50-pound bags of maize cobs to last
them through until the next crop.
Maize is the staple here and is made
into a sticky mash so it can be hand rolled
in balls and dipped in stews and vegetables. After years of subsidies to grow
maize, Zambia is starting to shift to more
diversified crops and diet. “The composition of the food basket is maize, maize and
more maize,” says Given Lubinda, minister of agriculture and livestock. “We are
trying to improve, not only food security
but also overall nutrition.”
Build it big
Big thinking and big opportunities
can create big operations in Zambia.
But don’t forget to budget for rifles
From the main highway it takes at
least half an hour to traverse the washboard roads and cut across the fields that
are fenced with electrified barbed wire,
with armed guards stationed at the gates.
Dust flies up, and our vehicles are
going only slightly faster than the many
bicycles along the way. At one point,
baboons and monkeys noisily scatter,
climbing up the overhead trees.
At the end of our journey is the
impressive 74,000-acre Zambezi Ranching and Cropping Ltd. The farm’s numbers are staggering: 380,000 broilers 6.4
times a year; 8,000 beef cows and calves;
a $1.5-million piggery producing gilts; and
320 acres of tobacco with a processing
unit. Along with the huge expanse of dryland pastures, there’s also 2,500 acres of
open-pollinated seed maize, 2,500 acres of
soybeans, 500 acres of Irish potatoes (they
are a new crop in Zambia) and 1,400 acres
of wheat under pivot irrigation that lets
them rotate two to three crops a year.
Zambezi Ranching and Cropping Ltd.
is a joint venture formed by Graham Rae
with Ed Fleming from the U.K. and Francis Grogen, originally from Ireland but
who now also owns Zambia’s largest beef
feedlot and slaughterhouse, Zambeef.
Rae arrived from Zimbabwe in
2001, bringing his equipment, formidable energy and expertise to Zambia
after pro-government militants, led by
veterans of the 1970s liberation war,
began invading white-owned farms in
the former Rhodesia.
Recently, Zimbabwe’s President
Robert Mugabe signed a law giving the
remaining 2,900 white farmers 45 days to
wind up their operations and another 45
days, expiring at midnight on August 8,
to move off their land and make way for
black settlers. Compared to Zimbabwe,
Zambia feels like a land of opportunity
for Rae. “I’m a farmer, my grandfather
was a farmer, my father was a farmer,”
says Rae. “I can’t sleep in the city.”
In 2001, the partnership’s 20,000
Continued on page 40
country-guide.ca 39
business
Graham Rae manages 74,000 acres of crops
in a land often without passable roads
Continued from page 39
hectares were sitting bare and undeveloped — no wells, no electricity, no
fences, no houses, no buildings. After a
decade of cheap, abundant labour and
modern farming technology, however,
now it’s swarming with capitalism.
Today only 38 per cent of the African
population has access to electricity, and
the penetration rate for the Internet is
under 10 per cent. In Zambia electricity
is prepaid. In the city, tokens are sold in
kiosks at the side of the road.
In the 14 years Rae has been here,
the secondary road to the farm has been
graded only once, and he has never seen
any government improvements to the
roads. That might be about to change.
40 country-guide.ca Yamfwa Mukanga, Zambian minister of
transport, works, supply and communications says the government is hoping
to create private/public partnerships to
improve feeder roads. This could work
well for the large commercial farms, like
Rae’s, with their own fleet of equipment.
As the crow flies, Zambezi Ranching
and Cropping Ltd. is only 20 km from
Zambia’s capital Lusaka, and theft is a
big problem. Rae even buys feed instead
of milling it himself so he knows exactly
what’s coming over his weigh scales at the
gate. “It’s like a takeout shop,” he says.
Every night, 16 to 22 armed guards
protect cattle and property. Rae spends
$15,000 a month on security and says
Zimbabwe was even more malicious and
random. Every night, shots are fired,
and a few weeks before my visit a cattle
poacher was killed. Sometimes, though,
his guards come under fire too. “We are
about 15:1 here,” says Rae pragmatically
talking about the ratio of human deaths
almost as if they’re production risks. “It’s
like the Wild West here.”
The farm employs 1,800 people who
are supplied with housing and free medical. Residents of the local village also use
the sparse but clean medical centre on the
farm for a minimum fee. Mostly they’re
provided with HIV medication.
In the 1980s AIDS basically wiped out
the middle class of many villages in Zambia, crippling society and the economy.
Today, 75 per cent of Africa’s population
is under the age of 25, and although testing is limited, in many villages the majority of adults is HIV positive.
In Zambia, the average farm worker
earns US$100 to $150 a month. Last
year the government introduced legislation to raise the minimum wage to 33
kwacha a day, equivalent to US$6/day.
“A loyal, healthy community is essential,” says Rae.
Continued on page 42
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
CONGRATULATIONS!
Kayleen Holman
Ariane Bergeron
Julie French
Christopher Manchur
Middle Musquodoboit, NS
St-Samuel, QC
Caledon, ON
Gilbert Plains, MB
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.
Morgan Heidecker
Kyle Wheeler
Middle Lake, SK
Strathmore, AB
Six more $2,500 scholarships
will be awarded to grade 12
students in April 2016.
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
Moving beyond
sustenance
In Zambia you not only need
resources, you need swagger
At points, the road to Francis Moomga’s 28-cow dairy is barely passable by
vehicle. And this is the dry season.
Even so, the milk from this handmilked herd is delivered daily by ox and
cart to a co-operative’s collective milk
coolers. The Magoye Smallholders Dairy
Farmers Co-operative has 225 active
farmers supplying 2,700 litres of milk a
day. Twice a day, the members deliver the
milk to the collection site from up to 20
km away, mostly by bicycle.
Many small-holding farmers deliver
food to markets by bicycling or walking
with their wares piled on their heads or in a
wheelbarrow. Some emerging farmers have
dirt bikes, small cars and trucks. Most of
the marketing is done by the men, while the
production labour often falls to the women.
Studies have shown that poor road,
rail and port facilities add 30 to 40 per
cent to the costs of goods traded among
African countries.
Beyond the few major highways in
this country, the roads are bone-jarringly
poor. Only a quarter of Africa’s road
network is paved. The newly elected
Zambian government is in the process
of building 8,000 kms of major throughways and it is establishing private/public
partnerships for secondary roads, according to Transport Minister Mukanga.
The harsh reality is that change and
construction are excruciatingly slow here,
yet so needed. For example, a bridge is
being constructed to Botswana, a major
trading partner and route to South Africa.
Although construction has started, it will
be at least a couple of years before this
small bridge is complete. Currently the
ferry takes transport trucks across the
river one at a time, with a four- or fiveday wait to cross.
Zambia fell into poverty after international copper prices declined in the
1970s. The socialist regime at the time
tried but failed to prop up the country’s
economy. The railroad through Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe), stopped
construction and it still remains 1,000
km short of the port.
Along this railway line, terminal
42 country-guide.ca concrete elevators that were built in the
1960s still sit underutilized. They’re big
white-elephant reminders of how building infrastructure doesn’t solve anything
if it’s not well thought through, done
with integrity, maintained and secure.
The other reality is that building infrastructure to stimulate economic growth
only works if it’s complete and if it complements an overall economic plan for the
country. In any country, business growth
needs a heavy dose of entrepreneurial
willpower. But in Africa, it seems, you
also need swagger, passion and grit.
ZAMBIA, A COUNTRY OF CONTRASTS
Clockwise from top left: Small farms have no
wells and farmers spend hours a day hauling
water for their families and to livestock; huge
elevators sit idle because the roads connecting
them to coastal ports have never been built;
as part of its 74,000-acre operation, Zambezi
Ranching and Cropping Ltd. grows 350 acres
with its own processing plant, based on labour
at $6 per day; a typical corncrib, built of sticks
and kept a couple of feet off the ground; a sign
of hope, entrepreneurial farmer Teddy Neube is
working to integrate improved goat genetics.
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
business
Zambian
opportunity
Zambia wants to open up 10
farms… 250,000 acres each
The contrasts in Africa vibrate. Red
dust savannahs give way to green rivers
streaming with life; mud-hut poverty
subsists in the midst of copious natural
resources; shoppers haggle at markets
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 packed with vegetables while just a few
miles away, the hungry wait in lines at
desert refugee camps.
More than half of the 10 most
unequal countries in the world are in
Africa, according to the Gini Coefficient
Index, a standard measure of income
equality, and that includes Zambia, a
place where the disparity in income, production and infrastructure is as wide
or wider in agriculture than it is in any
other sector.
Food is paramount and precious.
One-fifth of Zambia’s GDP and 85 per
cent of its jobs are generated by food,
fish and forestry. Yet, most farmers are
living below the poverty line, only one
dry season away from starvation. The
vast majority of the over one million
farmers in Zambia is self-sustaining on
less than a couple of acres, and many are
female. The most common farm equipment is the short hoe.
In contrast, commercial-scale farms
have technology that meets or surpasses
North American norms. Near Zambia’s capital of Lusaka, AGCO, GSI and
Bayer have collaborated on an impressive research and demonstration farm to
showcase both large and small mechanization, pivot irrigation, storage technology, and crop diversity. AGCO’s senior
vice-president and general manager for
Europe, Africa and Middle East, Rob
Smith, projects his company’s annual
sales in this continent will quadruple in
about five years to $1 billion.
Everyone seems to agree that the
potential is huge. Currently, only 14
per cent of Zambia’s arable land is
under cultivation, and the country has
access to 40 per cent of the continent’s
groundwater.
Now, money is coming into the country to help turn that opportunity into
reality.
Zambia is on the cusp of great change
with its stable, pro-investment government.
“The agriculture sector plays a critical role
in the country’s economy. Agriculture could
stimulate job creation and enhance rural
resilience and break the chain of rural poverty,” says Given Lubinda, minister of agriculture and livestock.
The government goal is to bring 2.5
million acres of land under cultivation in
the next 10 years. At the official opening of AGCO’s Future Farm in May,
Lubinda announced that 11 parcels, each
with 250,000 acres of undeveloped land
are being opened up to co-venture with
investors. Germans already control one.
The state owns 20 per cent of the
land but chieftains control the remaining
80 per cent, called traditional land, distributing leases as they see fit.
In 1995, the Land Act allowed for
traditional land to convert to state land
with private leaseholds. About 10 per
cent of land held under traditional tenure has been privatized. It’s a sign of
progress, but the process is slow and
bureaucratic. Without title, there’s limited collateral to improve or expand, and
little incentive for outside investment. CG
country-guide.ca 43
CropsGuide
By Jay Whetter
the right amount
of harvest loss
Here’s how to find that optimum balance between
harvest efficiency and lower field losses
ombines can easily throw more than
a couple of bushels per acre of canola
without drawing any notice from the
operator. Yet that hidden loss can add
up. Two bushels per acre tossed with
the chaff amounts to $3,200 per 160 acres (based
on the round number of $10 per bushel of canola)
and it also contributes to the volunteer seed bank at
a volume equal to 20 times the typical seeding rate.
“Losses will vary machine to machine, field to
field, afternoon to evening, and there will be times
when losses are much higher than two bushels per
acre,” says Angela Brackenreed, agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada. “Getting to
know how these losses vary and being able to recognize high loss situations does require some work
with a drop pan, but it can provide a pretty strong
return on that time.”
Agronomy consultant Jim Bessel spoke about harvest loss management at the outdoor agronomy fest
canolaPALOOZA in Alberta in June. He compares
the time spent measuring combine losses to the time
Jim Bessel
demonstrates
how to use a
one-foot-square
stick pan.
44 country-guide.ca spent taking soil samples. “A soil test provides growers with a baseline to make soil fertility adjustments
so they can get the most economic impact from the
nutrients they’re applying,” Bessel says. “Harvest
loss measurements provide that baseline for combine
adjustments.”
The drop pan is like the soil test probe for combine loss evaluation. It’s an essential tool because
electronic loss monitors are not accurate enough.
They give you a vague idea whether losses are going
up, but can’t say how many bushels per acre are
thrown over.
“Time spent with the drop pan will give you a
better idea what the loss monitors are telling you,”
Brackenreed agrees.
Growers have three drop pan options. First is a
deep-sided drop pan on a stick that the user holds
under the back end of the combine. Deep sides will
limit seed bounce out of the pan. Second is a wider
pan the user tosses under the combine as it goes by.
Third is a wide pan that attaches to the belly of the
combine and releases with a switch.
How to sample for
harvest loss
Step 1. Disengage the chaff spreader and straw
chopper and move them out of the way so straw,
chaff and thrown-over seeds drop straight down over
the pan. This is important for accurate calculations.
Step 2. Position the pan. When using the pan
on a stick, move the pan into position upside down
so it doesn’t gather any losses ahead of time. Walk
behind and to the side of the rear wheels and position the pan in front of the chaff and straw discharge
area. Once the pan is in position, quickly flip it over
and stop walking. Stand still until the combine has
passed over the pan. This procedure provides the
same result as throwing the pan, but the handle provides more precision when it comes to placement.
Step 3. Remove the straw and chaff and preserve
only the seed. A screen works. Another method is to
put the collected sample in the bottom of a five-gallon
pail and use a blower or old hair dryer to blow out the
lighter chaff and straw, leaving the seed behind.
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
canola management
Jim Bessel, agronomy consultant and former CCC agronomy specialist, spoke about harvest loss management at
canolaPALOOZA, an outdoor agronomy event hosted by the Canola Council of Canada and Alberta Canola Producers
Commission at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada centre in Lacombe, Alberta in June. Photo: Earl Greenhough
How much loss
it too much?
“Each farm will have a different concept of how
much loss is too much,” Brackenreed says. “Loss of
half a bushel to one bushel per acre is considered an
ideal balance between putting more in the tank and
getting harvest done in a timely and efficient manner.”
If losses are 2.0 bu./ac. or higher, slowing the
combine ground speed may be the key to reducing
those losses. See the sidebar next page for 10 ways
to reduce combine losses, but growers may find
that slowing the combine ground speed is an effective step.
Bessel says that growers may discover that slowing
from four m.p.h. down to three m.p.h., for example,
puts an extra 1.0 bu./ac. in the grain tank. While this
would increase revenue from each quarter by $1,600,
he says it also means two to three more hours to
combine that quarter. There is a risk trade-off.
If growers can’t take that kind of time, Bessel
encourages them to pencil out the cost of running
a second combine so canola can be harvested at the
slower ground speed and still get each quarter harvested in two to three fewer hours. If the combine
is a rental and if it means an overall more timely
harvest, this saved time creates economic value in
addition to the saved bushel per acre, he says.
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 “The approach to combine loss management
comes down to the grower’s perception of risk,”
Brackenreed says. Is combining slower a higher
risk than throwing over a bushel or two? Is buying
another combine riskier financially than taking it
slow with one unit? “Either way, the decision has
to start with a true picture of combine losses and
the cost they represent,” she says. “Measure how
much the combine is throwing over.”
Bessel says measure first, then calculate, then
adjust. “These need to be followed in sequence,
otherwise you’re not accomplishing anything.” CG
Jay Whetter is communications manager for the
Canola Council of Canada. For more on this topic,
search for “harvest loss” at www.canolawatch.
org. While at the site, why not sign up for the free
weekly agronomy newsletter from the CCC? Growers may also be interested in the Harvest Loss
Calculator available through Saskatchewan Soil
Conservation Association at www.ssca.ca.
Turn to next page for more of
Jay’s best tips on how to get on
top of canola harvest losses
country-guide.ca 45
CropsGuide
6. Don’t assume canola
separates easily.
Unthreshed pods in the
chaff mean the combine is
underthreshing. Increase
cylinder or rotor speed,
narrow the concave
setting, add concave
blanks, or slow down.
7. Know the combine.
Rotaries work best with
a narrow windrow, like
a ribbon. Conventional
walker combines work
best with a wider swath
that creates an even mat
over the full width of the
cylinder and walkers.
8. Feed canola as uniformly
as possible into the
combine. Take time ahead
of harvest to smooth
out bunches left by the
swather. Losses as these
big bunches move through
the combine can be huge.
9. Travel at speeds
that match a level of
acceptable loss. It may
take just a small decrease
in speed — say 0.2 or
0.3 m.p.h. — to provide
a significant reduction in
losses. The loss curve
tends to remain fairly
flat until ground speed
reaches a critical point
when combine capacity
is taxed, then the loss
curve can rise steeply.
10. Acknowledge that losses
can vary from field to field
and morning to afternoon
to evening. With practice,
growers will recognize
conditions that increase
or reduce losses and
make adjustments
throughout the day.
(Note: Jay compiled this list largely based on input
from Les Hill with PAMI in Humboldt, Sask.)
46 country-guide.ca Step 1. Measure the seed in the pan by weight. Find a small
scale that can measure in increments of 0.1 of a gram.
Step 2. Calculate based on one square foot. If the pan is
two square feet, for example, divide the weight or volume by
two to get the total for one square foot.
Step 3. Determine the concentration factor (CF) for the
combine. This is a ratio of header cut width (swather or combine) and combine discharge width — a factor necessary to calculate losses per acre. For example, if the header is 30 feet and
the discharge width is five feet, then the CF is “6.” See Table 1.
Step 4. Plug these numbers into Table 2 to get losses in
pounds per acre. If the cleaned sample weighs 6.2 grams per
square foot and the combine CF is 6, the loss works out to 100
pounds per acre — or two bushels per acre.
Table 1: Common ratios of width cut to width of discharge
(Concentration factor)
Width of cut (ft.)
1. C
heck for leaks. Losses
do not always come out
the back end. Before
making any adjustment to
cylinder speed, concave
spacing, fan speed or
sieve spacing, check for
holes and cracks on the
pickup, feederhouse,
elevator, shoe seals,
separator covers and
the grain tank.
2. Start by setting the
combine according to
the operators’ manual
recommendations for
canola. Use a drop pan
to check for losses. If
losses are too high,
adjust one variable at a
time and check losses
between each adjustment.
3. Adjust fan speed to the
point where seed is just
beginning to blow over.
4. Open chaffer and sieve
settings as wide as
you can tolerate.
5. Avoid overthreshing.
Straw pulverized into
small pieces that drop
down to the sieves
will reduce airflow and
separation — and
increase losses. Cracked
seed is another sign of
overthreshing. Consider
lowering the cylinder
speed or widening the
concave setting. This
adjustment may also
make it possible to
drive faster and keep
losses constant.
How to calculate loss per acre
Width of discharge from rear of combine (ft.)
CF
3
4
5
6
(X)
12
16
20
24
4
15
20
25
30
5
18
24
30
36
6
21
28
35
42
7
24
32
40
48
8
27
36
45
54
9
30
40
50
60
10
A combine’s concentration factor (CF) is the width of cut divided
by the discharge width. Source: PAMI
Table 2: Weighing method — all crops
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Loss
lb./ac.
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1.0
10
Cut width compared to windrow dropped behind combine (Concentration Factor=CF)
CF
Loss collected behind
combine in 1. square foot
grams/ft.2
10
ways to reduce
combine losses
0.6
0.8
0.9
1.1
1.2
1.4
1.6
15
1.0
1.3
1.6
1.8
2.1
2.3
2.6
25
2.1
2.6
3.1
3.6
4.2
4.7
5.2
50
3.1
3.9
4.7
5.5
6.2
7.0
7.8
75
4.2
5.2
6.2
7.3
8.3
9.4
10.4
100
5.2
6.5
7.8
9.1
10.4
11.7
13.0
125
6.2
7.8
9.4
10.9
12.5
14.1
15.6
150
7.3
9.1
10.9
12.8
14.6
16.4
18.2
175
8.3
10.4
12.5
14.6
16.7
18.7
20.8
200
For bigger collection pans multiply the values in the grey zone by the number of ft.2 in the collection.
Calculations are based upon 0.010413 grams/ft.2 over each ft.2 in an acre = 1 lb./ac.
To calculate loss, cross-reference the combine’s concentration
factor with the loss (in grams) collected per square foot of
drop pan area to come up with a loss in lb./ac. One bushel of
canola typically weighs around 50 pounds. Source: PAMI
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
Coast-to-coast oportunities for
the Canadian forage industry
By Cedric J. MacLeod Executive director,
Canadian Forage and Grassland Association, [email protected]
The Canadian forage industry is much like
forage itself — rich in diversity, ripe with
potential, and challenged by countless
decisions on where to focus our inputs.
As the growing season kicks in to high
gear, I'm reminded of how many returnon-investment decisions we make
throughout the year as forage producers.
Do we keep back heifers or sell a few
cows? Should I reseed winterkilled acres
or overseed pastures? Plant annual
forages, bale and sell or graze it off?
There isn't always a clear correct option
— each call comes down to the financial
opportunity or risk-management
choice of each decision. Each day
involves a series of important decisions
that, ultimately, help us achieve our
long-term strategies and goals.
I initiated a rotational grazing system
at my home farm in the summer of
1996, the first summer I returned
home from a four-year tenure at the
Nova Scotia Agricultural College.
In that year, the productivity of our
pastures for five cow-calf pairs was
doubled, and I was convinced that this was
the change our farm needed. This change
in management, while small in the grand
scheme of the Canadian beef industry,
was substantial in my own small sphere
of influence. Similarly, small changes to
an industry that encompasses 34 million
acres of tame forage and 36 million acres
of native pasture, can add up quite quickly.
CANADIAN FORAGE
& GRASSLAND
ASSOCIATION
www.canadianfga.ca
Ph: 506-260-0872
I have been fortunate to travel across
Canada, speaking and interacting
with ranchers and dairy operators
from the interior of B.C., to the Alberta
foothills, to the grey wooded zones of
Saskatchewan, Manitoba's Interlake,
grass and crop producers throughout
Ontario and Quebec, and of course in my
home base of the Atlantic provinces. I've
provided technical agronomy support
to some of the highest producing beef
and dairy operators in these regions,
and have learned first-hand just
how incredibly diverse the Canadian
forage production industry can be.
opportunity to highlight the important role
of forages in the Canadian agri-ecosystem.
Change can be scary. It's embracing the
unknown and, possibly, opening ourselves
up to new challenges. It's a difficult concept
that causes many to become nervous even
when just discussing options for change.
From my years working with young farmer
organizations across Canada discussing
advanced farm management systems
and farm business continuance planning,
I tend now to focus on the concept of
evolution instead of change, as it implies
a more logical movement forward, a
more-comforting slow and steady pace,
whereas change invokes a feeling of
option A stops now, and option B begins.
Coast to coast, the challenges and
opportunities facing the forage industry
vary considerably. It is our job to focus
and prioritize which challenges get
tackled first, and which opportunities
are first on the list to leverage.
Evolution in the goals we generate for
our grass stands, and how we go about
achieving these goals has accelerated over
the past five years. Recognition of the value
of high-quality forages in our livestock
rations has created an exciting new
I am excited to have the opportunity to
take on the challenge that is the Canadian
Forage and Grasslands Association, and for
the opportunity to work towards leveraging
the Canadian grass advantage opportunity.
When you tally it up: highly productive
and fertile soils, a refreshed and
invigorated industry boasting new
entrants in every province, a robust
beef and dairy complex and a growing
export opportunity in North America and
abroad — how could I not be excited?
I look forward to working closely with
our national and provincial partners to
assess where we are, where we need to
be, and how we get there. Developing
a structured approach to evolution of
the Canadian Forage and Grasslands
Association is my goal, and I look forward
to working with you towards it.
Save the Date for the 2015 CFGA
Annual General Meeting on
November 18-19th in Saskatoon, SK.
Canadian Forage in the International Year of Soils
– Capture the Intensity .
More information available at:
http://www.canadianfga.ca/
CropsGuide
By Richard Kamchen
two steps
forward…
Farmers have made great strides toward sustainability,
but there are fears that we’re starting to slip back
ave we become more sustainable?”
asks Martin Entz, professor of natural systems agriculture at the University of Manitoba. “In some ways
we’ve moved forward a long way, but
there’s also some things we’ve moved backwards on.”
Farmers have scored big wins in erosion control,
the rate of organic matter loss, water use efficiency,
weed management, yields, and economic efficiency,
says Entz. Those gains are backed up, for instance,
by research from Pulse Canada, which compiled
data from 1981 to 2011 showing improvements in a
range of areas in Western Canada and Ontario.
But amid the scores of initiatives across the country
that are aimed at boosting agriculture’s sustainability
and to minimize its environmental impact, Entz is
challenging farmers to take a critical look at how far
they’ve come, and how far they have yet to go.
That starts with the recognition that the change in
Canada’s farms is real, and it is as positive as can be
seen from those Pulse Canada numbers. “We’re just
finishing a fertilizer use survey as part of this effort,
and some of the information that we’re gathering
from that is that growers are applying good practices
when it comes to placement and timing of fertilizer,”
says Denis Trémorin, Pulse Canada’s director of
sustainability. “A lot of people have moved to singlepass systems in the western provinces. So everything
is going down with the seed, and that makes things
more efficient.”
But Entz says energy efficiency is an area where
little headway has been made.
“We’re using a lot of energy to produce the crops
that we are, with fossil fuel energy in the form of
fertilizers,” Entz says. “And we’re not producing our
crops much more (energy) efficiently than we were in
the past. Maybe less efficient.”
Nicole MacKellar, Grain Farmers of Ontario’s
market development manager, says improvements
are evident in spraying applications thanks to GPS
and auto steer systems.
“Those are two very big components that
we’ve really seen become adopted quite heavily in
Ontario,” MacKellar says. “GPS not only allows you
to plant straighter, but for a spraying application,
we have very precise information so there’s not any
overlap. We can be very precise when we’re spraying
around ditches or creeks.”
48 country-guide.ca Have GMOs turned the tide?
John Oliver adds Roundup has totally changed agriculture for the better on the sustainability side because
farmers are no longer running over their fields multiple
times, burning fuel and wearing out machinery.
But Entz says GMO technology has been less
than a boon to sustainability.
No till was already practised before GM crops,
although Entz concedes the ability to use glyphosate
on certain crops made it easier to reduce tillage.
“The herbicide-tolerant crops really, they just
bought us some time with weeds, because now we
see resistance building to glyphosate. So the GM
crops are becoming much more ordinary in terms of
their weed benefits,” Entz says.
Oliver, however, argues in favour of GMOs, especially the potential they might offer in the future.
“There’s no way we’re going to feed the world
without being able to place the traits that allow us to
get by on much less water for plant rearing. There’s
just no way,” Oliver says.
Oliver also argues Western Canada’s cropping
system is among the most sustainable in the world,
in no small part because the crop mix has changed so
much and eliminated the wheat/fallow rotation.
Entz agrees that crop diversity has increased in
some areas, but argues GM technology has promoted more monoculture.
Also, even if you take into account more pulses
and soybeans, canola and wheat remain the dominant crops by a long shot.
Falling diversity
“We do see on the Prairies now the level of crop
diversity has dropped in the last 10 or 15 years,”
Entz says, noting production of crops like barley
and rye has fallen. “We want to diversify our crops,
and it remains a challenge. And I don’t know if the
investment is so weighted toward very, very few
crops that they’re getting all the attention in terms of
breeding and management systems that it becomes
harder to compete with them.”
Another area of farming that hasn’t improved is
in water drainage, Entz argues. Loss of wetlands in
particular has become problematic for lakes, and it’s
cost farmers a lot of money to deal with the excess
water that runs off their landscape.
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
sustainability
Martin Entz sees
opportunity for
grain and livestock
producers to work
together on a
more sustainable
combination
of annual and
perennial crops.
MacKellar notes GFO has been actively
involved in looking at voluntary solutions that
the Ontario agriculture industry can implement.
The group is trying to address water quality issues
through its involvement in the 4R Nutrient Stewardship program, which looks at farmers applying
their nutrients at the right rate and source at the
right time and place.
“We drink and utilize that same water that the
general consumer does. So what as an Ontario agriculture industry can we be doing proactively to
address that situation?” MacKellar asks. “We really
feel that 4R Nutrient Stewardship provides us that
voluntary tool that farmers could utilize.”
Perennials and livestock
“Ontario’s gone in many ways way backwards,”
says Entz, who argues that the province’s agriculture
sector’s sustainability was weakened when many of
its pastures were replaced by corn and soybeans.
“We’ve really abandoned a lot of our perennial
pasture approaches and gone to straight grains,”
Entz explains. “And once you’re in the straight grain
farming system, then you have all the water quality
problems, you have the energy problems, you have
the herbicide-resistance problems.”
The Canadian Prairies never bought into perennial pastures at the same degree Ontario did at one
time. But perhaps it’s time they did. Entz points out
that many farmers already grow crops intended for
livestock consumption anyway, and that perennials
would allow animals to harvest those plants themselves through grazing.
Whether a farmer was to graze his own livestock
or a neighbour’s, the market would be the same —
feeding ruminents for human consumption.
“Because we’re so involved in the livestock busiJ u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 “On the Prairies now the level of crop diversity
has dropped in the last 10 to 15 years...
— Martin Entz
we want to diversify.”
ness in Western Canada — so much of what we
produce goes for livestock feed — I think that that
would allow us to change our farming systems, at
least in some places, and not really change what
we’re feeding,” says Entz. “We’re still going to produce seven million beef animals every year on the
Prairies. Can we organize our farming systems to
serve that a bit differently? I know it’s a big challenge, but I think we should at least be thinking of
these things.”
There are already numerous farmers in Western
Canada who’ve got breeding stock for grass finishing. And there are farmers who are grazing almost
year long and calving in the spring. The beauty of
the latter is it allows a farmer to take his animal into
a second summer of grazing and sell it fat.
Entz calls the livestock sector the “low-hanging
fruit” of sustainability. With perennials in the system,
the land’s drainage improves and can better handle
heavy rains.”
That ability to handle excess moisture could
prove a crucial trait, Entz believes. “One thing we
know with climate change is, as the temperature
goes up, the atmosphere holds more water, which
means when it rains it’s going to rain harder. We’re
already seeing a lot of farmers struggling with excess
soil water. And we know that when you have perennials in your system, it’s not nearly as susceptible to
that problem.” CG
country-guide.ca 49
CropsGuide
By Richard Kamchen
win the right battle
Not only is the food we eat bad for us, but the practices that
produced it are unsound too. Or so goes the message that too
many consumers get too often from our mainstream media
he science is clear. “If you look at Western Canada and you look at a four-year
crop rotation that starts anchored by
a pulse crop at the front end, I believe
that’s one of the most sustainable farming systems in the world,” says John Oliver, president of Maple Leaf Bio-Concepts.
Many of the loudest, harshest voices on farm
sustainability, however, are from would-be “experts”
who focus on so-called Frankenstein foods and Monsanto in particular, drowning out the messages coming from growers.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve sat with
people who have no connection to agriculture other
than they get three meals a day, and they’ve got an
opinion about Monsanto,” Oliver laments.
Oliver says the arguments he makes about the
advantages of glyphosate and how many fewer
passes over fields it’s meant — and the positive
impact this makes from a carbon point of view —
too often fall on deaf ears.
Nicole MacKellar, manager of market development with the Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO) calls
the bad light shed on agriculture unfortunate.
“Can we develop a tool that enables our
industry to respond to market demands for
sustainability information?” — Denis Trémorin
“We care greatly about our environment,”
MacKellar says. “One of the things that we’ve realized as we’ve gone through this sustainability work
is we do have a lot of great things we’re doing, here
in Ontario and across Canada. But we haven’t done
a great job of sharing that story.”
Denis Trémorin, director of sustainability with
Pulse Canada, acknowledges the heightened consumer scrutiny into the food they buy.
“There’s a shift going on in terms of a new marketplace demand for sustainable products. And some
of this is information coming down to the field and
farm level,” says Trémorin.
“We understand sustainability has become a
large topic,” adds MacKellar. “Almost every day
we’re hearing about a new program being put in
place or a new company coming out and making
50 country-guide.ca these public declarations about wanting to source
sustainable raw ingredients.”
GFO, along with a group of companies and growers’ associations, has joined Pulse Canada in the
Canadian Field Print Initiative, with the objective of
replicating the success of the U.S. Field to Market
program.
“Can we develop a tool that enables our industry
to respond to market demands for sustainability information at the farm level, and can we make this as easy
as possible and as low cost to our supply chain,” were
the principles behind the initiative, Trémorin says.
Taking a page from the U.S., a homegrown calculator has been developed that allows growers to determine the sustainability of their production practices.
Basic input information includes farm location, type
of equipment and duration of field operations. Based
on that data, the calculator provides performance measures on land use efficiency, soil erosion risk, energy
use, climate impact, and soil carbon release.
“The calculator itself is an Excel-based tool
where growers can input their crop information,”
Trémorin says. “We’re specifically focusing right
now on fuel use and fertilizer. We go practice by
practice in the field. It’s not too onerous a process.”
Fertilizers are farmers’ most costly input and
they’re what Trémorin sees driving the calculator’s
value. “If you’re more efficient with your greenhouse gas emissions, it means you’re more efficient
with your fuel use or your fertilizer use. So these are
the types of outputs we want to share with growers
in a workshop setting.”
A survey Pulse Canada conducted showed over
60 per cent of Prairie farmers were applying the same
rate of fertilizer on all their canola and wheat fields.
With a background in soil science, Trémorin realizes
that may not be the optimum approach.
“There are a lot of questions whether precision
agriculture is the way to go, but I think one solid
effort is, can we at least get precision down to a field
scale so you’re applying the right rate of fertilizer
to the right field?… I think there’s some refinement
there that’s going to help drive more profitability on
the farm.”
General Mills is very much invested in the U.S.
calculator and its equivalent in Canada. “It wants to
apply this to its oats supply chain in Canada and use
it as a verification tool to prove that the oats it’s buying from Canada, which is its only oats supply chain
in North America, are sustainable,” Trémorin says.
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
sustainability
> Empty Pesticide Container Recycling Program
There are many
reasons to rinse.
While there may be opportunities to apply the sustainability
calculator to niche markets where customers will pay extra,
Trémorin indicates that proving one’s system of production is
sustainable will be a coming requirement.
“Often the food industry is saying this is an expectation we
Only rinsed containers can be recycled
#
have of the supply chain and we’re not going to be paying for
it,” Trémorin says.
Besides making the calculator as easy for the supply chain
Helps keep collection sites clean
#
to apply, the initiative is also seeking existing data to leverage, importing it into the calculator to make the process even
less onerous.
Use all the chemicals you purchase
#
Field testing has provided the initiative 150,000 acres of
data from 500 fields from about 35 farmers.
“We’re expanding the work into Ontario this year. And
Keeps collection sites safe for workers
#
we want to do five regional pilots this year so that would be a
minimum of 100 growers we want to participate this year. We
can probably get more than that,” says Trémorin.
Maintain your farm’s good reputation
#
Field to Market is targeting 20 per cent of U.S. commodity crop acres — equivalent to 50 million acres — in its supply
chain sustainability program by 2020. The Canadian initiative,
however, hasn’t gone so far as to peg how many acres it wants
in its database yet.
For more information or to find a collection
The Canadian program has Growing Forward 2 funding
site near you visit cleanfarms.ca
until the end of 2017 at least, Trémorin says. By then, they
hope to have developed a web-enabled tool that any grower can
access for free.
Now, take your empty fertilizer
“Because once you’ve built this thing, I think the industry
containers along for the ride!
associations can keep it alive,” Trémorin says, adding they would
be interested in ensuring they own the data and that it doesn’t fall
into hands that don’t have farmers’ best interests in mind.
Trait Stewardship Responsibilities
Notice to Farmers
To further spread the message that farmers are conscious of10901A-CFM-5Reasons-QRTPage-CountryGuide.indd
1
4/2/14 11:59 AM
the environment and that their methods are sustainable, GFO is
Monsanto Company is a member of Excellence Through Stewardship® (ETS). Monsanto products
are commercialized in accordance with ETS Product Launch Stewardship Guidance, and in compliance with
also working through the national, multi-stakeholder Canadian
Monsanto’s Policy for Commercialization of Biotechnology-Derived Plant Products in Commodity Crops.
Roundtable for Sustainable Crops.
Commercialized products have been approved for import into key export markets with functioning regulatory
“What we are working on right now is a large communisystems. Any crop or material produced from this product can only be exported to, or used, processed or sold
in countries where all necessary regulatory approvals have been granted. It is a violation of national and
cation piece which will include a website and brochure that
international law to move material containing biotech traits across boundaries into nations where import is not
will highlight some of this information, not only to our cuspermitted. Growers should talk to their grain handler or product purchaser to confirm their buying position for
this product. Excellence Through Stewardship® is a registered trademark of Excellence Through Stewardship.
tomers who are purchasing our grain, but also to the general
consumers as well,” MacKellar says. Highlights will include
ALWAYS READ AND FOLLOW PESTICIDE LABEL DIRECTIONS. Roundup Ready® crops contain genes that
information about crop rotation, environmental farm plans,
confer tolerance to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup® brand agricultural herbicides. Roundup®
brand
agricultural herbicides will kill crops that are not tolerant to glyphosate. Acceleron® seed treatment
precision agriculture technology and nutrient management
technology for canola contains the active ingredients difenoconazole, metalaxyl (M and S isomers), fludioxonil
plans. “Through this roundtable, all of us can share those best
and thiamethoxam. Acceleron® seed treatment technology for canola plus Vibrance® is a combination of
two separate individually-registered products, which together contain the active ingredients difenoconazole,
practices that we’re doing within each of our provinces and
metalaxyl (M and S isomers), fludioxonil, thiamethoxam, and sedaxane. Acceleron® seed treatment technology
develop that consistent communication message.”
for corn (fungicides and insecticide) is a combination of four separate individually-registered products, which
together contain the active ingredients metalaxyl, trifloxystrobin, ipconazole, and clothianidin. Acceleron®
The roundtable also allows its members to identify the areas
seed treatment technology for corn (fungicides only) is a combination of three separate individually-registered
that need improvement and implement programs that are going
products, which together contain the active ingredients metalaxyl, trifloxystrobin and ipconazole. Acceleron®
to be the least cumbersome on farmers.
seed treatment technology for corn with Poncho®/VoTivo™ (fungicides, insecticide and nematicide) is a
combination of five separate individually-registered products, which together contain the active ingredients
“What we want to do is develop effective resource tools that
metalaxyl, trifloxystrobin, ipconazole, clothianidin and Bacillus firmus strain I-1582. Acceleron® seed treatment
will allow our farmers to meet these new mandates retailers are
technology for soybeans (fungicides and insecticide) is a combination of four separate individually registered
products, which together contain the active ingredients fluxapyroxad, pyraclostrobin, metalaxyl and imidacloprid.
asking for, but at the same time not be a larger burden to our
Acceleron® seed treatment technology for soybeans (fungicides only) is a combination of three separate
farm operations,” MacKellar says.
individually registered products, which together contain the active ingredients fluxapyroxad, pyraclostrobin and
metalaxyl. Acceleron and Design®, Acceleron®, DEKALB and Design®, DEKALB®, Genuity and Design®, Genuity®,
GFO is also actively involved in a number of other sustainJumpStart®, RIB Complete and Design®, RIB Complete®, Roundup Ready 2 Technology and Design®, Roundup
ability programs, including the Sustainable Agricultural InitiaReady 2 Yield®, Roundup Ready®, Roundup Transorb®, Roundup WeatherMAX®, Roundup®, SmartStax and
tive, the Roundtable on Responsible Soy, and the 4R Nutrient
Design®, SmartStax®, Transorb®, VT Double PRO®, and VT Triple PRO® are registered trademarks of Monsanto
Technology LLC, Used under license. Vibrance® and Fortenza® are registered trademarks of a Syngenta group
Stewardship Strategy.
company. LibertyLink® and the Water Droplet Design are trademarks of Bayer. Used under license. Herculex® is
“Definitely there’s maybe some areas we could improve
a registered trademark of Dow AgroSciences LLC. Used under license. Poncho® and Votivo™ are trademarks of
Bayer. Used under license. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
on, but I think for us here in Ontario and the rest of Canada,
because we have a lot of infrastructure in place and programs
that allow us to be sustainable, we are ahead of some of our
competitors who maybe don’t have quite as sophisticated an
infrastructure put in place for it,” MacKellar says. CG
1
2
3
4
5
No excuse not to!
{
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 country-guide.ca 51
CropsGuide
By Gord Leathers
livestock strategy
comes to canola
Canola and soybean farmers are just beginning to see
the wave of biosecurity that could sweep them the
way it swept Canada’s hog and poultry sectors
hen Manitoba agronomist Terry
Buss goes out on a call from the
Beausejour office, he takes a big
trunk full of plastic boot covers
in the back of the pickup. There
are disinfectants in the trunk too, and other cleaning supplies as well, and he uses them all.
Buss has adopted a brand new form of field
biosecurity designed to fight the spread of pathogens, so when he’s done his call, his boot covers
will get tossed and he will carefully clean his tools
before he heads to the next field on his next call.
Buss introduced the system at last winter’s Manitoba Agronomists’ Conference where he was recognized as what you might call the provincial poster
boy for biosecurity, and he made some important
observations.
“I’ve noticed two things,” Buss said. “One is
that the term biosecurity turns people off because
they immediately think of extreme stuff like
hazmat suits. Getting people to realize that that’s
not what we’re really talking about is important.
“The term biosecurity turns people off
because they immediately think of extreme
— Terry Buss
stuff like hazmat suits.”
And the other side of it is the ‘it’s not going to happen to me’ mentality. People figure these pathogens
aren’t coming to their area, but when they do, then
they’ll deal with it.”
Besides, biosecurity also has that unsettling feeling of somehow being linked to bioterrorism. Yet
its origins are actually agricultural, with a focus on
keeping potential pests and pathogens from multiplying and spreading.
Livestock producers deal with it already. It’s part
of their routine vocabulary, and their hygiene protocols for chickens and hogs are proving at keeping
diseases out or isolating them within one herd.
Sometimes in the livestock sector, biosecurity
52 country-guide.ca even ramps up to the international level, as it did
in the early 2000s with the outbreak of foot-andmouth disease in the U.K. Travellers from Great
Britain found themselves walking through trays of
disinfectant at the airport to keep them from inadvertently spreading the virus to other countries.
Now, crop farmers here are starting to deal with
biosecurity, and the reason is clubroot, a disease of
the brassica crops that include cruciferous vegetables
and canola. Market gardeners in Ontario and Quebec
were already familiar with clubroot but in the mid1990s it started appearing in Alberta canola fields.
“I work in the county of Leduc, and I’ve been
dealing with this since I started my company in
2007,” says Paul Muyres, agronomist with Solid
Ground Solutions. “I operate all through Leduc,
Wetaskiwin and Ponoka, and I have to manage my
biosecurity based on the fact that clubroot is present in that entire area.”
Clubroot presents some intriguing problems.
First, we’re not quite sure what it is. Plasmodiaphora brassicae shows characteristics of three distinct types of organisms, including fungi, amoeba
and slime moulds, but it doesn’t quite fit into any
of those categories.
In the field, a brassica plant would first contact
clubroot in its dormant form, an extremely tough
resting spore with a potential life of 20 years. If one
of these spores touches a brassica root hair, the seeping compounds unique to the plant signal the spore
to “wake up.”
This is where the action starts. That tough little
spore germinates into a zoospore equipped with two
tiny flagella that act like a boat’s propeller, moving it through the film of soil water in search of the
root hair that activated it. If the zoospore finds the
root hair, it penetrates and infects it and forms a
body called a plasmodium that produces and releases
more zoospores. These secondary zoospores infect the
whole root, so the plant now has a full-blown case of
clubroot. The root swells and can no longer absorb
water or nutrients. The plant weakens and may die.
Oddly enough, clubroot’s main strength as a
survivor is also its weakness. That ultra-tough spore
can’t move, so it’s locked in the soil until it’s woken
by a suitable root hair. Although it becomes mobile
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
biosecurity
when it germinates, it’s highly vulnerable
in its short-lived zoospore state, and it’s
very limited in how far it can move.
Agriculture really gave clubroot legs.
We work the soil with large machinery, which means infected soil clings in
clumps to the bottom of tractors and
cultivators as well as the tires. As that
machine moves into the next field, the
infected dirt falls off and the spores
are introduced. The machine becomes
a vector.
Since chemical control for clubroot
in canola isn’t feasible, the best way to
deal with it is to keep clubroot where it
is and to prevent it getting any further.
But that means we need to be able, as a
first step, to find it and identify it.
“There’s a line called the county line
between Wetaskiwin and Leduc and for
two years there was no clubroot in the
county of Wetaskiwin because nobody
was looking for it,” Muyres says. “I
found it in 2007 but I couldn’t say anything because the farmers there didn’t
want us to acknowledge that.”
Denial is merely human, and bad news
often trips the reflex to “shoot, shovel
and shut up.” Having said that, it’s really
important to confirm the presence of a
nasty disease like clubroot and make
absolutely certain it’s there before going
off half cocked. In the larger picture it’s
equally important to take a proactive
approach by developing ways to contain
it, manage it and keep it from spreading.
This is really what biosecurity is about.
“Trouble comes on an exponential
curve, a mathematical curve that changes
very little and very little and then suddenly it takes off,” Buss says. “That’s
when my phone rings and that’s when it’s
really, really expensive to fix. We need to
keep everything back down at the beginning of that curve and that’s a very, very
hard thing to get people to understand.”
“We were faced with a problem that
we really didn’t have a handle on, so it was
kind of the-sky-is-falling scenario,” agrees
Muyres. “When I first started, I had an
80-gallon slip tank in my truck and a pressure washer and I had to wash my vehicle
all the time, so I was probably washing my
truck three hours a day. “I thought, ‘this is
ridiculous, I can’t be doing this,’ and that’s
when we came up with a checklist and
started going through it.”
Buss says the Manitoba government
went through something very similar
but had the luxury of a later start, so it
could look at what other people were
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 Get used to seeing more agronomists with more disinfecting gear. The trend is growing.
doing and what seems reasonable to do.
Then they developed protocols, starting with the assumption that every field
you go into could have a transmissible
problem. From there they came up with
a group of procedures that they use all
the time on all farms.
“It’s meant using booties, it’s meant
procuring and modifying equipment
that’s reasonable to clean,” Buss says.
“It’s meant looking at alternatives to
make it work quickly. We’ve got some
basic paperwork that we’ve put together,
some sheets where we get signatures
from growers depending on what we’re
doing, some reporting sheets that we fill
out, I do mine on my smartphone digitally every time I go into a field so I’ve
instituted some record-keeping.”
All fields that Buss works in are noted
and recorded into a database so they’ll be
monitored for clubroot and anything else
that shows up in the checklist. Although
clubroot has certainly brought biosecurity into agronomy, it’s not the only issue
we deal with. That checklist has to take
the holistic approach to agronomy. The
farmer or agronomist who focuses on
clubroot may miss something else that’s
also important, such as soybean cyst
nematode, one of the potential pests that
keeps Buss up at night.
“These days I spend most of my time
working on soybeans,” Buss says. “There’s
a lot of surveying going on down south
of us, and the rivers flow our way. I think
when we get it (i.e. the nematode) we’re
really going to get it because soybeans are
such an important crop for us, really the
bedrock of all of our crop planning.”
So this is how Buss thinks ahead
and how he’s proposing a proactive
approach about monitoring and management. We have to look at how these
things can get into our fields and then
keep looking for them. We have to
think of all possible vectors, even the
unlikely ones.
Joe Sierens, a farmer and seed dealer
also promotes awareness and education, and not just among farmers and
agronomists, but anyone who might put
something in your field. Knowledge and
vigilance have to be the cornerstones of
biosecurity.
“I had my own experience. A dealership wanted me to change the colour of
my tractor and he brought me a quad
track to drive,” Sierens says. “So I get in
there and I look and I see 700 hours and
that’s a lot of hours on a demo tractor.
I asked where this tractor came from,
and he said Alberta. I asked, ‘have you
ever heard of clubroot?’ and he says, ‘no,
what is that?’”
“We need to educate our sales people and machinery sales forces,” Sierens
says, “especially in big companies across
Western Canada that move equipment
on a truck.” CG
country-guide.ca 53
CropsGuide
By Clare Stanfield, for WGRF
Getting better at
fungicide application
You may be doing a good spraying job now,
but new WGRF research shows it might be
relatively easy to do a whole lot better
set of new sprayer nozzles can cost $500
to $1,000, while a new sprayer can clock
in at $400,000. “But almost the entire
probability of application success depends
on the nozzle,” says Tom Wolf, co-owner
of Agrimetrix Research and Training in Saskatoon.
He’s not saying that farmers shouldn’t invest in
a new sprayer if they really need one. But when it
comes to your investment in fungicides, understanding how to get the best performance out of today’s
nozzles is where the bigger return lies.
Wolf is a specialist in spray technology and has
done extensive work in herbicide application efficacy. As he turns his attention to fungicide application, he says the questions are the same, such as what
is the optimal droplet size, angle of spray, water
volumes, boom height and travel speed. But the challenge is quite different.
“Weeds are small and on the ground,” says Wolf
of the early-season spray timing. “There’s not much
canopy, so there’s not much of a problem reaching
weeds. But with fungicides, the canopy can be up
to four or five feet high, and disease can occur anywhere within it.” Not to mention that it also occurs
on variously oriented plant parts — stem, leaf or
head — which presents its own challenges.
The trouble is that while farmers are increasing their
use of fungicides, the best practice knowledge pool for
successful application looks more like a puddle.
So, with funding from the WGRF and Saskatchewan’s Agriculture Development Fund, Wolf, along
with colleagues Randy Kutcher and Bruce Gossen,
has designed a three-year study to identify the key
variables farmers need to focus on to get the best
fungicide spray coverage and, by extension, the
best disease control out of the spray equipment
they have now, or will buy in the future. (Funding support is also being provided from nozzle
manufacturers Wilger Industries, TeeJet Hypro and
Greenleaf Technologies.)
Which makes a bigger
difference in spray
success, nozzle
direction, nozzle
spacing, or nozzle
height? Wolf’s research
is finding some
unexpected answers
54 country-guide.ca J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 5
WGRF
Straws tell the tale
The first order of business for Wolf
and his team was to test various nozzle
types and application practices in controlled lab conditions to see how adjusting various factors might affect canopy
penetration and spray deposition.
“We designed the experiment to
isolate particular application factors,
like travel speeds, water volumes, spray
pressures and nozzle type, and configurations, such as leading and trailing fan
positions,” says Wolf.
The experiments were conducted
over the summer and fall of 2014 in a
track room capable of carrying a multinozzle boom at speeds up to 16 km/h.
Wolf’s team created broadleaf and
grass crop canopies, then placed plastic
drinking straws into the top, middle
and bottom third of each canopy to act
as spray deposition targets.
“The straws are the approximate
dimensions of field targets, like a flag
leaf or wheat head,” says Wolf, add-
ing that they were positioned horizontally and vertically so they would
mimic an actual field target even more
closely. Drinking straw targets were
also set just outside the plant canopies
as a check.
Researchers then sprayed the canopies, using various nozzle configurations and application techniques,
with a liquid that contained a fluorescent tracer dye and a non-ionic
surfactant. “We introduced some variability by slightly altering the location
of the straws, such as making sure they
weren’t under the same leaf for every
test,” says Wolf.
After each pass, the straws were
individually washed in an ethanol
solution to remove all spray liquid for
measurement. The amount of spray
deposited on each in-canopy straw
was expressed as a percentage of what
was deposited on the out-of-canopy
straw checks.
WGRF is a farmer-funded and
directed non-profit organization
investing in agricultural research
that benefits producers in Western Canada. For over 30 years the
WGRF board has given producers a
voice in agricultural research funding decisions. WGRF manages an
Endowment Fund and the wheat and
barley variety development checkoff funds, investing over $14 million
annually into variety development
and field crop research. WGRF
brings the research spending power
of all farmers in Western Canada
together, maximizing the returns
they see from crop research.
Continued on page 56
A hopper full of
best-in-class technology.
Through Western Grains Research Foundation, producers
have helped fund research and development for more than
200 varieties of wheat and barley. You most likely recognize
more than a few of them, and you’ve probably had some
success growing several of them too. Western Grains Research
Foundation is a producer-funded and producer-directed
organization. Working together, we produce some of the
world’s finest and most technologically advanced grains.
@westerngrains
westerngrains.com
CropsGuide
WGRF
Coverage trials in
the lab are now
being validated with
tests on commercial
farms. Early results
are surprising.
Continued from page 55
Surprises and
confirmations
Results are preliminary, but a few things already
stand out to Wolf. “A big belief is that spray pressure
forces droplets further into the canopy,” he says. “It
turns out that spray pressure is not that important a
factor.” This is mainly because the higher the pressure,
the finer the droplets and the less able they are to push
through the air pressure they encounter when they
leave the nozzle.
Similarly, you’d think that narrower nozzle spacings and slower travel speeds would improve a spray
application, but Wolf’s lab study calls both ideas into
question. He found that canopy penetration and spray
deposition were not improved when nozzles were 25
cm apart, compared to 50 cm apart. “Travel speed has
a role to play,” says Wolf, but slow isn’t always better.
“With fusarium head blight, we found that a faster
speed with the right spray angle was more effective.”
Other intuitive theories were confirmed by the
study, however. For example, Wolf found that higher
water volumes tended to increase product penetration into broadleaf canopies, but didn’t make much
of a difference in cereal canopies, and backwardangled sprays were better at getting into the midcanopy of cereal crops than forward-angled ones.
The lab experiments also show that the benefit
of forward-angled sprays is pretty specific to vertical targets at the top of a cereal canopy, and that the
twin-fan nozzles that produce this kind of spray work
best at low boom heights. “If you’re going to be using
twin angle fan nozzles for fusarium head blight, make
sure the spray is coarse and the booms are low,” says
Wolf. “If the boom is 30 inches or more above the
canopy, it’s not worth going with angled nozzles.
“If you want to be really precise with the spray
angle, you have to be even lower,” Wolf says, noting
the study showed that spray retention on the vertical straws improved by about 30 per cent when the
56 country-guide.ca boom was placed 20 inches above the canopy, compared to 30 inches. “You’d see further improvements
at 15 inches, but there comes a point when you just
can’t go any lower.”
Practical advice
for the field
The lab work is interesting but is it translatable
to the field? That’s what Wolf is about to find out
via test on actual farms this summer.
“We are dealing with collaborators who will conduct commercial-scale trials,” Wolf says. “It’ll be a
real reality check to see if what we see in the lab will
work in the field.”
The bugaboo of successful fungicide application is
that so many variables are in play. Wolf understands
that and says that even though this research aims to
examine a multitude of factors, his goal by the end of
the study is to identify the ones that can really make
a difference to a grower’s success or failure.
“The demands on a farmer’s resources are
huge,” Wolf says. “I would like to keep it as simple
as I reasonably can — we’re going to evaluate 10
to 20 variables, but we may recommend only two
or three that really count.”
Wolf says the goal of the research is much bigger
than coming up with a narrow list of dos and don’ts for
fungicide application. Because sprayer and nozzle technology is constantly changing, he thinks it’s more useful
if farmers understand the principles of good canopy
penetration and spray deposition so that they can apply
that knowledge now and in future too.
“As scientists, we seek principles as opposed to
direct answers,” says Wolf. “We want to know how
things work, not just what things work best. A much
better service is provided if, when an untested product comes out, we can predict what it is likely to do.
“Farmers have a huge investment in maintaining
yield and quality,” Wolf says. “I want to give them
as much information as I can to help them maximize
that potential.” CG
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 5
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CropsGuide
By Richard Kamchen
it’s a blip
Acreage may be up in barley, oats and flaxseed, but that doesn’t
mean there’s a long-term resurgence of interest in those crops
he trend to lower acreages of barley, oats and flaxseed in recent years has largely reflected the increased
profitability in alternative grains and oilseeds, and canola in particular. As Western Canada’s darling,
canola production crested at nearly 18 million tonnes in 2013, and even more is being called for with
the Canola Council of Canada’s 2025 target of 26 million.
“Growers look at net returns and then they pay attention to agronomic issues,” says Randy Strychar,
president of OatInformation.com. “Net returns dictate what they want to put in the ground, and that by a landslide has
been canola over the last five to seven years.”
Pulse and soybean production has also been on the rise for similar reasons.
But with softening returns and price prospects of canola and wheat during the spring, farmers reported
greater keenness to plant barley, oats and flaxseed. Statistics Canada got a lot of media attention in April when
it estimated barley- and oats-seeded areas would rise, respectively, 10.2 per cent and 30.3 per cent up from their
final acres a year ago. Together, StatsCan saw those crops accounting for nearly 1.5 million additional acres versus 2014, and the agency also predicted flaxseed area would also rise 4.8 per cent to over 1.6 million acres.
If, however, those figures are compared to farmers’ seeding intentions of March 2014, the changes are far
less dramatic. For barley, intended acres were only about three per cent higher than the intended acres from the
same time a year ago. So just where is the West’s interest in these crops heading?
BARLEY
Patrick Rowan, senior manager of Canadian barley
operations with Bari-Canada, a division of AnheuserBusch, was watching the spring numbers too, expecting
2015 acreage to end up as high as projected — 6.48
million — if not higher. With prices at $5 a bushel or
higher in mid-May, malt barley looked to offer a decent
return for those who want to contract it.
“Most of the farmers we deal with are at 80 bushels to 100 bushels an acre, (and) at $400 to $500 gross
an acre, you’re doing not too badly,” Rowan says.
It’s definitely a reversal in barley’s fortunes.
Excess moisture and flooded acres last year contributed to driving 2014 Prairie barley acres and production down to their lowest levels since the 1960s. It
was a long way off from 1989 to 1998, when annual
Canadian barley production averaged 12.74 million
tonnes, with a peak of 15 million in 1996.
Through the farm income crisis of the early 2000s,
Prairie farmers opted for low-cost crops, but much has
changed since then. The grain industry has consolidated, and transparent price discovery disappeared. ICE
Futures Canada delisted its western barley contract, and
the open market in barley futures that replaced it has
generated little to no volume.
“This is a problem when farmers are looking for
true price discovery, especially when deciding on
what crops to plant,” says Jim Beusekom, president
of Market Place Commodities. “It is a problem from
our perspective on how to manage price risk on barley purchased or sold for future delivery.” Meanwhile, feed barley demand has declined.
Alberta cattle numbers declined drastically after the
2003 BSE crisis. Hog numbers fell as well, especially
58 country-guide.ca between 2007 and 2012 when pork prices were
extremely low.
Feed acres took a further hit with the elimination of
the former Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly and the
amount of barley produced for malt versus feed grew.
But the outlook for both feed and malt barley is
now on the upswing. The livestock industry is growing again, Beusekom says, and the low Canadian dollar keeps Canadian grain competitive.
The malt industry too is looking more attractive.
“Certainly there’s a demand for it,” says Rowan.
“In Canada, you have the malt houses in Western
Canada and a couple in Eastern Canada, they come
very close to malting close to a million tonnes, especially with the advent of the craft breweries along the
West Coast of Canada. And the U.S. craft breweries
are mushrooming everywhere.”
Exports have improved as well, and Saudi Arabia,
which recently bought a stake in the CWB, has publicly stated its desire to import more of its feed needs.
“Canada is one of the countries that has exportable stocks of barley and should be able to compete
with that,” says Beusekom. China too is a notable
buyer, of both feed and malt barley.
An additional plus is better-yielding barley varieties, which boost farmers’ margins, making the crop
more competitive with others.
“When they can get higher-yielding and betterquality varieties, it helps return the bottom line to
producers,” Beusekom says.
Nevertheless, he believes it’s unlikely that barley
production will return to what it’d been in the late
’90s and early 2000s: “Other commodities would
have to lose those acres for barley to do it, and I
can’t see that happening right away.”
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
crop outlook
OATS
FLAXSEED
For oat acres to top out at 3.65 million this year represents a
huge 30 per cent bump from last year’s weather-diminished crop,
and even a 14 per cent jump from March 2014’s intentions.
“My thought is that the oats acres probably will not be as big as
the Stats Canada early indication,” says Chris Ferris, senior grains
analyst with Informa Economics. Between the start of March to the first week of May, nearby
Chicago oat futures dropped from US$2.99/bu. to around $2.36/bu.
That’s a dramatic decline from $3.80/bu. in September. And following StatsCan’s seeding forecast, prices fell C$0.30/bu. in a week.
OatInformation.com’s Strychar notes the trade was expecting
only a five to 10 per cent increase from last year’s final acres. He
too believes 2015 oats plantings won’t end up as high as StatsCan
reported.
“On average, Stats Canada overstates the March number by
about six per cent, so you’ve got to assume it’s probably around
a 24 per cent increase.”
But it’s still more, which Strychar thinks is a reflection of oats’
lower input costs, plus depressed returns for competing crops.
“Given the low prices for all crops in general but particularly
canola, it wasn’t that enticing to a lot of farmers,” says Strychar.
Strychar projects 2015-16 ending stocks at around 600,000
tonnes, halfway between the record low and the average.
“It’s not bullish, it’s not bearish,” Strychar says. “But to get
that 600,000, you’ve got to get the 24 per cent increase, average
yields and average abandonment and near-normal quality in the
crop. There’s a lot of factors.”
Strychar doesn’t anticipate long-term growth in Western
Canada’s oat acreage, especially because of declining feed usage,
including the equine market.
“The problem with the feed market is they shifted, in the late
’90s and early 2000s, into a least-cost formulation pelletized
feed,” Strychar says. “They just simply look at the cheapest feed
ingredient that meets the nutritional profile and put it in there.
And I can tell you it hasn’t been oats. It’s been corn, barley and
other local feed ingredients.”
Oats’ struggle in the feed market threatens to turn it into a
contracted crop, Strychar warns: “We’re not a hair’s breadth
away from that.” Feed markets at some point could drop to levels where oats are mainly grown for millers, he believes. In that
scenario, many farmers might just stop growing them.
Says Strychar: “I think it’s the same reason why farmers don’t
grow barley. If it doesn’t make malt, what do you do with it?…
(Oats will) become a special crop, no different than a lentil or
a pea. It will become a specialized contracted crop without the
feed market.”
The decision by Grain Millers Inc. to stop accepting oats
treated with glyphosate as of the 2015 harvest adds another
wrinkle to future oats plantings. Nobody can say for sure if
some farmers will simply stop growing oats or will just carry on
using glyphosate without admitting it.
“We also don’t know if the other food companies are going
to follow suit, particularly General Mills and Quaker Oats,”
says Strychar. “If (they) follow suit, then I think it becomes a
bigger issue. If Grain Millers stands there alone, I really don’t
know how this plays out. A grain company that has to take in
oats that ships to all three of those companies, what do they do?
Do they IP (identity preserve) it? Do they have to test it? Do they
test each load? Do they have a protocol testing? I don’t know.”
The flax market has recovered from the Triffid disaster that
nearly levelled it. In 2009, Canada seeded 1.7 million acres to
flaxseed, but during harvest, its biggest customer halted imports
of Canadian flaxseed after finding traces of Triffid, a banned
GM variety. Europe had accounted for two-thirds of Canada’s
flax exports, and without it, future acreage in Canada would
plummet. By 2011-12, the EU represented a mere six per cent of
Canadian flax exports and domestic acreage wasn’t even half of
what it’d been.
In the EU’s absence, however, China emerged as a major
buyer. Its help filling the hole left by the EU was a gift, says Jonathon Driedger, senior market analyst with FarmLink Marketing
Solutions. From 2009 for a period of about five years, Chinese
buying ranged from 150,000 to 195,000 tonnes.
Combined with greater demand from the U.S., those two
countries have taken around 70 per cent of Canadian flax
exports in recent years. That’s allowed acreage to recover, and
with intended acres of 1.63 million in 2015, flax plantings
have returned to pre-Triffid levels.
Chuck Penner, president of LeftField Commodity Research,
thinks Statistics Canada’s estimate is actually on the low side,
with acreage between 1.7 million and 1.8 million.
Also supportive is improved European demand, which has
topped 20 per cent of Canada’s flax exports in recent years.
Yet if flaxseed area has any chance of ever equalling or
exceeding the 1995 peak of 2.18 million acres, China would
need to become an even bigger buyer. “With China’s continued economic growth and its desire
to diversify the variety of oilseeds it imports, it has become
Canada’s most important customer. If Chinese demand continues
to grow, flaxseed area could continue to rise,” says Agriculture
Canada oilseed analyst Chris Beckman.
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 With weak feed demand, oats could be
on the verge of becoming a contract
crop, Strychar believes. “We’re not a
hair’s breadth away from it.”
But that’s far from a safe bet.
Penner predicts over half of Canadian flax exports will go to
China this year and agrees Chinese demand will drive any acreage expansion.
“Its purchases of flax have gone up year over year over year…
It’s certainly possible we could put in two million acres of flax in
coming years and the Chinese market could absorb it. But to predict Chinese demand is always a little dicey,” Penner says.
With its rail link to China, Kazakhstan could stymie Canadian efforts to market more flax to China.
Nevertheless, flaxseed is a good fit in many rotations across
Western Canada, given its resistance to diseases and weeds common to other crops, Beckman notes. “Saskatchewan is the major flaxseed-growing province in
Canada, and most of any increase in area is expected to occur
there,” he adds. “This is partly due to the better fit of the flaxseed crop to the climate than, for example, soybeans.” CG
country-guide.ca 59
life
Write your legacy
Writing a memoir isn’t only for celebrities. It’s a
perfect way to preserve farm history too
By Helen Lammers-Helps
t’s called learning by experience. Most of us
get to a point where we regret that we didn’t
ask our parents and grandparents more
questions about their families and about
what life was like when they were young. So
now, we are determined to write our own stories
as a legacy to our children and grandchildren, so
they won’t be left wishing they had likewise asked
us more.
The question is, how do you actually get those
stories down in print.
It’s a question that Elizabeth Johnston, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal is used to
hearing, because she also teaches life-story writing
at a seniors’ community centre in Montreal.
Perhaps the best start, she says, isn’t to pick up
a pen.
Instead, agrees Sid Tafler, author of the memoir, Us and Them, and an instructor for a memoir writing class at the Metchosin Summer Arts
Institute on Vancouver Island, begin by thinking
more clearly about exactly why you want to write.
Writing can do a lot more for you than simply
recording your memories, he points out. Many
people write for the sense of accomplishment, for
example, or for self-expression.
And while it may not be the initial motivation,
some people find writing their life story to be very
therapeutic, says Claudia Cornwall, author of the
memoir, L etter F rom V ienna , who teaches an
online course in memoir writing at Simon Fraser
University in Vancouver. “I’ve seen people come
to grips with a difficult past by writing about it,”
Cornwall says. “It helps you to sort things out, to
get it clearer in your own mind.”
Even if your past isn’t as difficult as that, however, you will find yourself asking questions that
you may not have asked before, and you will likely
end up with a new set of deeper, more relevant perspectives on the past and present.
Of course, other writers have their eyes on
glory. They want their memoir to be the next bestseller like Frank McCourt’s, Angela’s Ashes.
Whether you are writing for yourself, your family or the public, Tafler encourages his students to
ask themselves: “What is my story?” He says you
need to focus on the narrative that you are going to
60 country-guide.ca shape your story around and leave out the other 99
per cent of the things you did.
But what should that focus be? Ironically, you
will probably have to start writing in order to figure that out. Themes commonly emerge after you
start, Tafler says. “Sometimes the story isn’t the
one you thought it was.”
Like a fairy tale, a memoir generally follows
a classic pattern, continues Tafler. It has a beginning which is the problem, the middle which is the
struggle, and the ending which is the resolution.
Feeling overwhelmed is one of the biggest
roadblocks for those who want to document their
story, but there are many ways to make the project
more manageable, such as breaking it into chunks.
Remember, Johnston recommends, that you are
writing a memoir, not an autobiography. An autobiography is the story of your entire life up to this
point. A memoir is a slice of it.
Sometimes a lack of confidence keeps people from
writing their life story. Johnston recommends writing
the story without worrying about spelling or grammar. “Turn your internal editor off while you write
your first draft,” she says. “You can always get help
with grammar and spelling later if you need to.”
If your audience is your family, you don’t have
to be a great writer, adds Cornwall. “They will
appreciate having it no matter what.”
However, Tafler adds that if you want people
to read it, you owe it to yourself and to them to do
the best job you can. He assures his students they
will get better with practice, so the best way to get
better is to “just do it.”
Perhaps you should be prepared to do multiple
revisions, adds Cornwall. Even really good writers
revise their work several times, she says. Read it
out loud, or get someone else to read it. He or she
can point out where things are unclear, she says.
And while it’s important to be as honest and
truthful as you can be, it’s important to remember
a memoir is somewhere between fiction and nonfiction, says Tafler. “You are recreating a story
and recreating dialogue. It’s also your story, told
from your own perspective.” Someone else might
remember things differently or assign a different meaning to the events. But be cautious when
writing about other people’s flaws, says Cornwall.
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
life
If what you are writing about others
could be perceived as negative, it can
cause hard feelings, she says.
Tafler adds that it’s important to
include your own flaws, the things
you’re ashamed of. “That’s part of the
story,” he says.
Cornwall likes to start by gathering
documents or other objects that will
serve as inspiration. A diary, a letter, a
photograph, a passport, a ticket stub
or a piece of music can serve as springboards for telling your story.
Creating a timeline can be another
way to jump-start your memory and
help you organize your story. Where do
you want to start your story? When you
finished school? When you got married?
Bought your first farm?
Also explore the senses to add detail.
What colour was that dress? How did it
feel? How did things smell?
Then approach your motivations.
How did you feel? What prompted the
decisions you made?
Making a list is another way to generate ideas and get unstuck. Some of
the lists you could make include: people who have influenced you, turning
points in your life, moments when you
were afraid, happiest moments, world
events that impacted you, places you
have travelled, childhood events that
stand out in your memory, character
traits you have inherited from family
members, regrets, funniest things that
happened to you, what are you most
proud of, or lessons learned.
If you’re still having trouble making progress on your memoir, both
Johnston and Cornwall suggest joining
a class. Having weekly deadlines will
help keep you on track, says Cornwall.
Participating in a class helps you keep
up the momentum, and you will find
you get inspired by what others in the
class say and do, adds Johnston. Check
your local community college, university, community arts group, library or
community centres for courses.
If you’d like to document more of
your family history, you’re not limited to writing. You could use a voice
recorder or video recorder to record
you telling the story. Or you can use
software such as Dragon Dictation to
convert your voice to text.
Annotated recipes can tell a story
too. For instance, you can share Aunt
Mary’s famous recipe for apple pie
along with a description of Aunt Mary.
An annotated photo album is also a
good way to document family and farm
history. Add captions to explain old
photos: who is in the photo, where and
when was the photo taken and what
are they doing. Too often people inherit
photographs but they don’t know who
or what they are of, says Cornwall.
There are many resources available
to help you record your story and farm
history. There’s no time like the present
to create a legacy that your family will
treasure. Remember, our experts say,
you are the only one who can tell your
story. CG
resources
Books that help
These books will help you get
organized and structure your memoir.
Inventing the Truth: The art and craft
of memoir by William Zinsser
How to Write your Life Story:
The complete guide to creating
a personal memoir by Karen Ulrich
Your Life as Story by Tristine Rainer
Courses
Metchosin International Summer
School of the Arts, Victoria, B.C.
The Memoir: The Story Only
You Can Tell.
http://www.missa.ca/product/thememoir-the-story-only-you-can-tell/
Conestoga College,
Kitchener, Ont. Write Your Life Story.
http://www.conestogac.on.ca/continuingeducation/courses/groupcourselist.
jsp?CatalogCode=C12_H4750
Online Course, Simon Fraser University,
How to Write a Family Memoir.
https://www.sfu.ca/continuing-studies/
courses/cpw/how-to-write-a-familymemoir.html
- Jen C., Ontario, 2014 AWC Delegate
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“If it weren’t for the messages from some of the leaders I connected with, I wouldn’t have
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WESTIN HARBOUR CASTLE, TORONTO, OCT 5 & 6, 2015
J uly / au g ust 2 0 1 5 country-guide.ca 61
Advancing Women Conference East / Country Guide 7” x 3.357” / Ontario Quote
w e at h e r
NEAR NORMAL
COOLER THAN NORMAL
S
fro ept
st .
WARMER AND
DRIER THAN
NORMAL
MILDER THAN NORMAL
**
COOLER THAN NORMAL
Cool
Rainy
AVERAGE RAIN
SOME SNOW
NEAR-NORMAL TEMPERATURES
AND RAINFALL
Warm
ted
Isola ers
show
Scattered
showers /
t/storms
**
Sh Co
sp ow ol
el ery
ls
le
Variab nal
o
occasi
rain
BRITISH COLUMBIA
August 9 to September 12, 2015
Aug. 9-15: Generally settled under sunshine on most days with highs in the 20s,
few 30s Interior. Sporadic shower or thundershower activity.
Aug. 16-22: Mainly sunny and warm on
many days this week. A couple of hotter,
more humid days trigger showers or thundershowers.
Aug. 23-29: Apart from a few cooler
nights, look for seasonable to warm temperatures. Sunny but with isolated showers and spotty thundershowers.
Aug. 30-Sept. 5: Highs generally crest
in the 20s except teens on the coast and
north. Fair skies apart from passing showers on a couple of days.
Sept. 6-12: Some lows dip to near zero at
higher levels and north, otherwise expect
seasonable to warm temperatures. Scattered rain or showers.
ALBERTA
Aug. 9-15: Seasonable to hot temperatures under sunny skies on many days
aside from spotty showers or thunderstorms, chance heavy in a few localities.
Aug. 16-22: Mostly sunny and warm
under sunshine but a couple of hotter days
set off thunderstorms, possibly heavy in
places.
Aug. 23-29: Sunny and quite dry as showers and thunderstorms are widely separated. Lows dip to single digits but with
comfortable daytime temperatures.
Aug. 30-Sept. 5: Lows fall to near zero
at higher elevations, otherwise pleasant
temperatures by day. Sunny with isolated
showers or thundershowers.
Sept. 6-12: Brisk winds at times with frost
likely at many localities this week. Fair
62 country-guide.ca overall apart from scattered rain or showers on a couple of days.
SASKATCHEWAN
Aug. 9-15: Seasonable to occasionally hot
temperatures dominate under sunny skies.
Isolated thunderstorm activity, possibly
heavy in a few localities.
Aug. 16-22: Sunny skies this week aside
from passing showers or thunderstorms on
a couple of days. Some cooler nights but
seasonable to warm by day.
Aug. 23-29: Sunshine dominates on many
days but with a few cool nights. Some
lows fall to near zero north and central.
Sporadic showers or thunderstorms.
Aug. 30-Sept. 5: Comfortable temperatures but with a couple of cool nights and
a frost threat in many areas. Otherwise
mostly fair with patchy showers or rain.
Sept. 6-12: Frost likely in several regions
on at least two nights as temperatures
vary from warm to cool. Blustery at times.
Scattered rain on a couple of days.
MANITOBA
Aug. 9-15: Sunny skies dominate the
week with seasonable and at times hot
temperatures. Scattered thunderstorm
activity, chance heavy in a few localities.
Aug. 16-22: Sunshine dominates with
seasonable to warm temperatures but a
couple of cooler days set off scattered
showers or thunderstorms.
Aug. 23-29: Expect a few cooler nights
but highs climb into the 20s on most
days. Sunny apart from a few showers or
thunderstorms on a couple of occasions.
Aug. 30-Sept. 5: Lows dip to single digits
on a few nights with a frost threat in some
areas. Otherwise seasonable with scattered
showers.
Sept. 6-12: Brisk winds bring variable
temperatures. Frost in several areas this
week. Mostly sunny but with scattered rain
on two or three days.
August 9 to September 12, 2015
NATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
Warm and relatively dry weather is
expected to linger over British Columbia
and the western Prairies in this late-summer period. These summer-like conditions
will spread across the eastern Prairies
from time to time. Otherwise look for
changeable weather ranging from isolated heavy thunderstorms in August to
frost and rain in September. Changeable
weather is also anticipated in Ontario,
Quebec and the Atlantic provinces where
temperatures and rainfall will both average close to longtime normal values. In
spite of periods of fine, settled conditions in Atlantic Canada, there also exists
a slight threat of unsettled weather in
far-eastern areas due to passing tropical
storms or hurricanes.
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 / A U G U S T 2 0 1 5
h e a lt h
Smart sun exposure
By Marie Berry
eing outdoors is part of day-to-day life
in the summer, but you need to be smart
about your sun exposure. You may experience nothing more than a tan, but more
serious skin effects can occur such as sunburn, sun-aged skin, and even skin cancer.
Skin cancer is the most common of all cancers
in Canada, but it is the most easily prevented and
treated. About 800,000 new cases are seen each year
and with the exception of malignant melanoma, skin
cancer has a cure rate of about 95 per cent!
It is repeated exposure to the ultraviolet or UV
portion of the sun’s rays that causes both sunburn
and skin cancer. Two components of UV light, namely
UVA and UVB, cause most problems, and people with
fairer skin and light complexions are most at risk.
These individuals don’t have as much melanin, a skin
pigment which filters out the sun’s rays.
In addition to sunshine, tanning beds can be a
source of exposure, and if you used a tanning bed
before age 30 your risk of skin damage is 75 per cent
higher than someone who didn’t.
Some medications can cause phototoxic reactions (that is, an increased risk for skin symptoms
with sun exposure). Antibiotics including tetracycline, sulfonamides and ciprofloxacin; diuretics
including hydrocholorothiazide and furosemide;
non-steroidal anti-inflammatory pain relievers
including ibuprofen and naproxen; oral acne medications such as isotretionoin; and even acne skin
creams containing tretinoin are linked to sun sensitivity. If you take any medication on a regular
basis, check with your pharmacist about needing
extra care for sun exposure.
Prevention is preferred to treatment for both
sunburn and skin cancer. Stay out of direct sunlight,
especially when it is the strongest between 11 a.m.
and 4 p.m., and remember the reflected sunlight off
surfaces such as white paint, water, and sand. Cover
up with a hat, long sleeves and long pants. Most
important, also wear a sunscreen regularly.
Sunscreens absorb, reflect, or scatter the UV light
before it can damage your skin. Para-aminobenzoic
acid or PABA, cinnaminic acid derivatives, and
benzophenones are commonly used ingredients. The
fine print on the label will list the active ingredients,
but remember to choose one that protects you from
both UVA and UVB light. Sunscreens are labelled
with numbers indicating their sun protection. These
are their SPF numbers and they are based on the tendency to burn and the ability to tan. The higher the
number, the more protection the product offers. The
Canadian Dermatology Association recommends
choosing a sunscreen with an SPF of at least 30.
Unfortunately, some people choose a sunscreen
with a very high SPF and apply it only once, even
though they remain outdoors in direct sunlight
for long periods of time. You should always apply
sunscreen about an hour before going outdoors to
enable it to soak into your skin. You also need to
reapply it every three to four hours, regardless of
the SPF value. If you are swimming or sweating, it
will wash off and you will need to reapply it even
more often. And, don’t forget the tops of your feet,
you ears, lips, and the back or your neck.
Regular checks of your skin will enable you to
identify any lesions that may be early signs of skin
cancer. The acronym ABCD will help you. Any
lesion that is Asymmetrical, has irregular Borders,
Colour variation, or a Diameter greater than six
millimetres should be examined more closely for possible skin cancer. Checking about once a month is a
good habit to get into. Use a mirror for skin areas
like your back that can be difficult to see.
Staying out of the sun may be impossible if you
work outdoors, and after a long, cold winter you
may want to enjoy summer sunlight, but remember
to be smart about your sun exposure. Cover up, and
use sunscreens properly. That’s the key!
Marie Berry is a lawyer/pharmacist interested in
health and education.
Next month, we will explore iron, the topic originally intended for this issue. If you have ever been told your
“blood is low,” you will have been amazed at the number of available options. Choosing one can be difficult
and confusing! Our next column will help you decide which is right for you.
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 country-guide.ca 63
acres
Who ordered the parade?
By Leeann Minogue
“You OK?” Jeff asked his dad. “You look kind of pale.”
ale parked the sprayer beside the dugout at the west end of the Hansons’
yard to fill. Before he got started, he
walked to the house to refill his water
bottle and hunt for a snack. With
Donna away camping — for the second time already
this summer, Dale grumbled to himself — he wasn’t
sure the quality of the snacks in the kitchen would be
worth the trip across the yard.
When he came out of the house to get back to
work, Dale saw his son Jeff already getting started.
Then his father Ed, just arrived from town, drove his
truck up near the dugout and parked.
“Hey Dad,” Jeff said. “Maybe you want to wait
around here a few minutes before you start spraying
again. I’ve got an agrologist from the seed company
coming out to take a look at that canola south of the
house.”
“What? Why?” Dale asked, unwrapping his
store-bought granola bar. This was far from his top
choice for a snack. He was wondering if he was
going to have to learn to bake.
“We’ve got a real bad patch out there,” Jeff said.
“Pretty big spot where nothing came up. Right by
the road. And worse yet, right by where that new
seed rep, Allison, put her sign in the ground.”
Ed was annoyed. “If I’d planted that field, everybody would just figure the old guy missed a spot
with the seeder,” he complained.
Jeff ignored his grandfather. Dale had seeded
that field, and Jeff had never known his father to
screw up like this. And if Dale had missed a spot
that big, in that location, surely he would have said
something.
“I looked online,” Jeff told Dale. “I found a
Grainews article that says wireworm damage can
sometimes look like a seeder miss. I’m going to make
some bait balls.”
“Bait balls?” Ed snorted and headed for his truck.
“You want to attract more of them?”
64 country-guide.ca “It’s a way to count them, Grandpa. If we’ve got
a problem, we need to know how big it is.”
“You kids think you have the answers to everything. Right on your phones. I’m going to make
myself a coffee.” Ever since Ed’s new girlfriend had
brought over a one-cup coffee maker and a year’s
supply of mochaccino, Ed had been drinking enough
coffee to make himself a little dizzy almost every day.
“You mind finishing this, Dad?” Jeff asked Dale,
who hadn’t said a word. “I’ve got some things to do
before the agrologist gets here.”
“Sure,” Dale said.
“You OK? You look kind of pale.”
“Nope. I’m good.” Dale said.
“So, you’ll wait until they come?”
“They?” Dale asked.
“Allison. The agrologist. A couple of corporate
bigwigs who happen to be in the area.”
“Great,” Dale said.
“So you’ll wait?” Jeff said.
“You know head office guys. They’ll be late. I can
likely finish that east quarter before they get here.”
“OK,” Jeff said. “Grandpa and I’ll run your truck
out to the field so you can get back here quick when
you see them.”
“Yup.”
“You’re sure you’re OK?”
“I’m fine.” Dale finished filling, then climbed into
the cab.
He had been fine before Jeff came along. In fact,
everything had been going so well for the past few
weeks, he’d forgotten all about what happened in
that field south of the house.
Dale had been trying to get over his broken ankle.
He’d kept working, even with the pain. He didn’t
need the neighbours thinking he was too old to get
back to work after an injury. After he’d stopped to
load more seed right near a power pole, the field had
been a little wetter than he had expected. While he
was trying to skirt by the pole, Ralph came by on the
j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
road with the grader, waving. Dale’s phone rang. An alarm
went off in the cab. And Dale banged his sore ankle on the
steering column. When the smoke cleared, Dale realized he’d
forgotten to turn the fan back on after he filled. He’d travelled 30 feet with no seed going into the ground.
He’d considered going back to fix the problem, but he
didn’t want to rut up the field worse than it already was.
And, if he tried his luck in that spot again, he might get the
tractor stuck.
Of course he’d meant to tell Jeff. And Ed. Even the seed
rep. But the day it happened, Dale was still in pain. All he
wanted to do was crawl into bed as soon as he got out of the
cab. The next day it rained, and he hadn’t even seen Jeff or
Ed. By Day 3, too much time had passed. It would have just
been embarrassing to bring it up. And he should have told
Allison. But he hadn’t been home the day she’d stopped in
to pound her sign into the ground, and he couldn’t imagine
phoning her up and explaining why she should drive back
out and pull the sign out again.
But now what?
It would be a pretty lucky coincidence if Jeff’s bait balls
actually lured in a wireworm in that particular spot.
Dale picked bits of quinoa seed out of his teeth while he
sprayed the field and kept an eye out for trucks in the farm
driveway. “What kind of granola bars is Donna buying, anyway?” he grumbled to himself. “Is the whole world against me?”
Then he saw them. Not one, but two corporate trucks
pulled into the yard. Dale kept spraying while Jeff came out
of the shop to greet them, then got into his truck with Ed to
lead the way to the problem area.
Dale reluctantly drove his sprayer to the edge of the field
where Jeff had parked his truck. As he drove near the canola
field, he counted seven people dressed in matching corporate
shirts, huddled around the seed sign with Jeff and Ed. Ralph
had been going by on the grader, again, and stopped to see
what all the fuss was about. Jim Callum had slowed his truck
to a stop by the side of the grid road to see what was going
on in the Hansons’ field.
Dale’s stomach churned. “Damn granola bar. Of course
Donna’s away camping, just when I need a decent snack.”
What was he going to tell these guys? How could he
explain why he hadn’t said anything? Lying wouldn’t work.
Three of the corporate guys were already kneeling in the dirt,
digging around for ungerminated seeds.
Would Jeff ever let him seed anything again? How much
fun would Ralph and Jim Callum have, telling all the neighbours how badly Dale had screwed up?
Dale slowed down to pull into the closest approach.
Ralph waved. Dale scraped another quinoa seed out of a
back molar. He saw Allison kneel down to join her co-workers in their futile search for seeds.
Dale shook his head. Then he hit the gas and drove right
on by, looking the other way. He fiddled with the display on
the dash and made a call on his hands-free phone. “Donna,
you still at the lake? Where’s your campsite, anyway?”
Leeann Minogue is the editor of Grainews, a playwright and
part of a family grain farm in southeastern Saskatchewan.
j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 “I don’t want any of those CCF power
poles on my farm.” We are getting a double dose of politics in Saskatchewan. The
looming federal election generates enough
volatility to spark the air in some coffee
shops. A provincial election will follow.
Political stories permeated an educational
morning for museum guides a few weeks
ago. The subject was rural electrification. In a 1952 provincial election campaign, the CCF party led by Tommy Douglas
promised to hook 28,000 farms to power, a huge expansion. Art
worked on an installation crew that encountered a farmer who
had been a dedicated Liberal all his life. He refused to allow a
power line with “those CCF poles” on his property.
Prior to a provincial grid, some farmers tried wind chargers
and light plants. These proved unreliable. Some villages operated a generator to serve their residents. In other towns, enterprising individuals set up generators and charged the users.
My father arrived in Delburne, Alta. in 1937 to work in the
bank. My mother worked in the post office. My father paid
the generator operator to keep the power on for an extra hour
on Saturday night when he was courting my mother.
The introduction of electricity constituted an enormous
change for farm women. An electric range eliminated the dust,
grease and dirt created by coal, gas, oil or wood-burning stoves.
No coal and wood to be carried and no ashes to be removed.
In 1939 Canadian General Electric published a booklet
describing what electricity would mean for farm women. “The
number of steps taken by a woman in doing the household
work equals and sometimes exceeds that of the man on the
farm,” it suggested. “There are no tractors in the farmhouse.”
Our group leader read an excerpt from the September 1953
edition of Country Guide. Editor H.S. Fry wrote that “… farming, more than almost any other business one can think of, is
a partnership between the farmer and his wife. The lady of the
farmhouse customarily does much more than ‘keep house’ for
her family. The garden and poultry are often, if not generally, the
responsibility of the farm wife, to say nothing of the dairy.” Fry
continues: “Making the housework easier is one way of achieving an intangible kind of profit from electricity, which could
become very real if it prevents sickness, saves doctor and hospital
bills and makes rest and recreation easier to secure.”
Father Matthew Michel of the Catholic parish of Annaheim, Sask. recognized the benefits of electrification but there
was considerable resistance. Father Matthew called on every
farm family to discuss the pros and cons. When the work
began, he donned coveralls to help erect power poles and
string wire through dusty attics. “I was out there in my coveralls day after day. Every morning and in the evening I recited
my breviary, then attended to parish matters.”
Electricity fascinates humans. The writer of the Psalms
describes God thundering in the heavens and flashing forth
lightning. Jesus speaks about lightning flashing and lighting up
the sky from one side to the other. The writer of the Book of
Revelation recounts an event where “there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.” For
me, summer lightning storms demonstrate the awesomeness of
nature and the mystery of God.
Suggested Scripture: Ephesians 5:8-14, Luke 17:20-30
Rod Andrews is a retired Anglican bishop. He lives in Saskatoon.
country-guide.ca 65
HR
‘Is he suffering from the god complex?’
By Pierrette Desrosiers, psychologist and coach
e is always right,” says Matthew, age
25. “We always have to do things his
way. Not even my mother can voice
any kind of opinion. I’ve had enough.”
When I met Matthew’s father, his
initial comment was, “You will see right away that
my son and my wife have problems.”
At that point, I was the best psychologist and
coach. However, when I started to say that maybe he
was part of a problematic dynamic, and when I challenged him and asked him what he could improve,
he immediately classified me as incompetent.
Unquestionably, I was dealing with a real narcissist. A narcissist lives most of his life in a world of
fantasy. His behaviour is grandiose. He needs to be
admired and often is not well liked.
Narcissism has also been called the god complex.
As a joke, I often tell my audience that someone suffers from the god complex when he wakes up and says,
“OK God, you can go back and rest, I am awake now.”
A god complex is an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability,
privilege, or infallibility. Such a person will usually
refuse to admit and may even deny the possibility of
their error or failure, even in the face of complex or
evident problems or impossible tasks. Most of the
time, they regard their personal opinions as unquestionably correct, rejecting even the brightest advice.
To be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder
(NPD), a person must meet five or more of the following
criteria. A narcissist:
• Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g. he
expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements);
• Is overwhelmed by fantasies of unlimited success,
power, splendour, beauty or ideal love;
• Thinks he is “special” and can only be recognized
or understood by special individuals;
• Has a very strong sense of entitlement, (e.g. unreasonable expectations of automatic compliance with
his or her expectations);
• Has an excessive need to be admired;
• Thinks he is “owed”;
• Exploits others in his interpersonal relationships;
• Frequently envies others and thinks others envy him;
• Is arrogant and haughty in his attitude and behaviour.
Narcissists come in all shapes, sizes, and degrees.
Certainly, we all have a certain level of narcissism. In
fact, a degree of narcissism is healthy and useful for
success. The problem occurs when the level of narcissism is too high.
Why does a high level of narcissism put the longterm success of the business at risk?
66 country-guide.ca • Any relationship involving two or more people
requires empathy, listening to the needs and expectations of the others (something that is almost nonexistent with a narcissist);
• He doesn’t listen to others, take their advice or
accept criticism (because he is perfect!);
• He crushes, manipulates and uses others (which
wears down the relationship);
• His need for prestige, success and power are so
strong, he will sometimes make decisions that are
completely illogical (i.e. disproportionate purchases
or investments);
• He creates a climate of terror, despair or apathy
among his colleagues;
• In the long run, others will abandon him (family, partners, employees) because he is impossible to live with.
Narcissism is a mental health disorder, and narcissists can be found just about everywhere (they’re about
one per cent of the population). One per cent may not
sound like a big deal but for the higher-ups in hierarchies
(CEOs, professional leaders, bosses), the numbers could
reach up to 10 per cent for the full disorder. Even more
business leaders have important traits of “the god syndrome.” It’s likely that the disorder could explain many
poor results in business (bad decisions, turnover, burnout,
and bankruptcy). Many authors have looked at the failure of big companies through the lens of narcissism.
Is there a cure?
This is a disorder that requires very prolonged
treatment, and even then, there is very little improvement. Strong narcissists rarely seek help unless they
have lost everything. Otherwise, why would they
seek help? After all, they are convinced that the
problem is with others and that they are God.
What can you do if you live with or are associated with a narcissist?
Unfortunately, living with a narcissist is like dying
a little every day. It means accepting the put-downs
and being at his service your whole life. The only
way to protect yourself is to respect yourself, to set
limits, and to assert yourself despite the potential
consequences.
If you live with, are associated with, or work for
a narcissist, you have to think about survival. Professional help can help. CG
Pierrette Desrosiers, MPS, CRHA is a work psychologist, professional speaker, coach and author
who specializes in the agricultural industry. She
comes from a family of farmers and she and her
husband have farmed for more than 25 years
( www.pierrettedesrosiers.com ). Contact her at
[email protected].
J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5
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[email protected]
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15-07-03 3:47 PM
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