Exporting works best when the extra production and marketing integrate seamlessly into your overall farm management&
Russell and Darren Chapman
It started with a vague kind of wondering, not with a turn-on-thelightbulb, eureka sort of moment. Probably, it s how most success stories in farm exporting get started, based on tying a winning concept together with a lot of no-nonsense business thinking.
It was the mid-1970s and Manitoba farmer Russell Chapman wanted to start taking the hay business a bit more seriously. It wasn t a completely new line for the family s operation, just south of the community of Virden. They d always grown hay for a small cow-calf operation that complemented their larger grain operation and they had been selling excess hay since the 1950s.
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Russell had a hunch, though, that they could earn a better dollar by taking the business up a notch.
The question was how to identify, target and gain markets for an agriculture product that was often an afterthought for farms that primarily either grew grain or raised livestock.
The answer was to go door-to-door literally. He soon found himself in a pickup truck bumping up and down farm roads south of the 49th Parallel in the neighbouring state of North Dakota. He was looking for dairy operations that might be interested in buying the farm s hay. He initially didn t have much luck, but says he did garner a bit of valuable market intelligence from the trip.
There wasn t much call for it, but when I got talking to the people there, we found out where the hay was going to from that area, Russell explains.
What those North Dakota farmers told him was the best-developed markets were a bit to the east in Minnesota and also in Wisconsin, known worldwide as The Dairy State. Armed with this information, the farm was able to complete its first sales into the U. S. in the mid 1970s.
Was the whole project ultimately a success? Well, a few years later a younger member of the operation was forcing instructors at the University of Manitoba to reconsider their preconceptions about hay markets. While studying agriculture at the university, he d been called on to complete cost-of-production estimates for a farm management class.
They were telling him There s no way you can sell hay for that much, says Russell with a chuckle. And he was telling them Well, that s how much we re actually getting.
What the Chapmans and other pioneers of the hay export industry had discovered was that in some hay markets such as dairies, quality really counts and if you can find those niches you can make a fair return to your operation.
Late this winter the Russell and nephew Darren Chapman took the time to sit down with Country Guide in their cluttered but functional combined coffee room and office to discuss the ins and outs of the hay business. As the old tomcat greeted the stranger with the tape recorder, they laid out a very practical but sometimes challenging business model that makes the most of their farm s unique assets and complements other facets of their operation.
We have some lighter land that produces pretty good hay (alfalfa or alfalfa-grass) once you get it established, says Darren. And your input costs are not as much.
It s this combination of better returns on poorer land that s led the industry to expand dramatically since its inception, says a forage specialist with the provincial agriculture department.
Glenn Friesen says because the industry is primarily made up of independent operators making private deals, it can be tough to quantify just how big the hay business is in the province. What he does know is that more than 100 growers in the province have signed up to the voluntary Manitoba Hay Listing, an online directory designed to give buyers a opportunity to find Manitoba farmers with hay to sell.
We know that not all of the growers volunteer to go on the list, Friesen says. I ve been doing this for quite a while, and every now and then I ll still hear a new name that I don t know.
Friesen says what export hay growers understand is that quality and service are the keys to this market, so they treat the crop with the respect it deserves.
It s not an input-free crop, particularly when your getting it established, he says. It s also one that you ve got to take a lot of care with when harvesting and storing.
