“Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.” It’s a quote that Weyburn, Sask. farmer Jake Leguee borrows from American management consultant Peter Drucker to describe how a leadership training program he enrolled in this year has helped him become better both as a leader and as a manager on his farm.

Leguee is the third generation on Leguee Farms, a 14,500-acre grain and oilseed farm in the southeastern part of the province, where he farms with his parents, his older sister, a brother-in-law, plus full-time and seasonal employees.

A married father of two young sons, he began farming in 2010 after earning his agronomy degree at the University of Saskatchewan. Schooling, plus lifelong experience on the farm taught him how to manage a farm business. Yet Leguee felt he could be a better leader and he could do more to focus the farm and the entire farm team.

“There’s a lot of people on the farm and there’s a lot of relationship dynamics that we have to try and work through, and family is challenging in that way,” Leguee says. “What we were still struggling with was managing everybody’s expectations, how we expect things to be done, the goals we have… and trying to achieve that alignment.”

That’s when a new leadership training program caught his attention. The new National Farm Leadership Program (NFLP) launched in 2019 to help farmers identify where they can improve their effectiveness as leaders both in their personal and professional lives.

Leguee was one of 10 participants to sign on in January 2020. He did so after having a conversation with LeaderShift Inc.’s chief leadership officer Kelly Dobson, with whom Farm Management Canada has partnered to deliver the program. LeaderShift Inc. is a leader development and coaching firm dedicated to serving small and medium-sized businesses with an agricultural sector focus.

The NFLP sounded like it was something he would benefit from, and like it would fill a gap in his own education. Which it did, Leguee says of the 11-week online course that included ongoing monthly group coaching and one-on-one personal coaching the rest of the year.

“There’s not a lot of courses where you can learn about leadership,” he says, adding this course also had a unique approach for delivery.

“It wasn’t a course where you go into a structured classroom environment or where you’re learning big-picture leadership development. It’s much more about personal development and becoming the best version of yourself.”

The program was created because interpersonal relations are paramount for succeeding in both business and in life, says Heather Watson, Farm Management Canada’s executive director.

The words “leadership” and “management” are often used interchangeably, but slight nuances exist between the two, as per the Drucker quote, says Watson.

By focusing on your leadership, you can ensure you’re putting your energy and resources in the right areas.

“Eventually a challenge comes along that seems to defy resolution. It might be emerging, or a long-standing problem, but it’s not going away. It’s uncomfortable, frustrating, costly, and putting your relationships and even your farm at risk,” Watson says.

“All the advice in the world doesn’t change the fact it’s up to you.”

The main outcomes of the NFLP program are to understand how your own way of leading can be strengthened for better results and improving awareness of yourself and your situation — and what may be preventing you from achieving more, said Watson.

“We teach practical tools and techniques that help improve critical performance areas such as strategic thinking, navigating complex issues, handling emotional or difficult people — including yourself — developing others and developing your resiliency.”

Each participant designs their own practice to create a personal vision and to set goals to support their development as they go through the program. The followup, which helps each individual measure and mark their own progress, makes this a “development program,” compared to a content-focused program.

“Many content-focused programs end just when participants are starting to think about how they might apply what they have heard,” Watson says.

“We find the most impactful programs are those that use your personal data, link you to a network of others going through, or who have gone through, similar situations, and provide a mechanism for implementing a plan.”

Feedback provided to FMC from participants says this aspect of the program has proved especially valuable, providing them with a means to practice what they’ve learned — and keep practicing. (See “Course Content and Timeline” below.)

The value of being an effective leader cannot be overstated. And what makes an effective leader is well understood and can be measured and benchmarked, not unlike a soil test or financial reports.

Studies have shown that it accounts for 37 per cent of business performance, with the top 25 per cent of assessed leaders typically running businesses that produce three and a half times the profits of the bottom 25 per cent of leaders.

In other words, even modest increases in leadership effectiveness will have a payback many times the cost of investing to improve it.

“I’ve been saying that leader effectiveness will be as important going forward as financial literacy was in the ’80s and ’90s,” says LeaderShift Inc.’s Dobson.

“Not everyone sees it yet, but it’s already here, and those who are preparing will be in the best position to adapt to the challenges and opportunities that come their way.”

Participants who shared feedback with Farm Management Canada after taking part had high praise for the program, saying it benefited them both professionally and personally. Some indicated it has made them not only better people to work with, but improved their marriages and family life. Others said this helped identify unhealthy work habits which had been affecting not only themselves but their team, peers and family, and to swap these for better ones, and to make health and wellness a priority. Other feedback was that the program boosted self-awareness, helped lessen fear of conflict, enabled them to have more open conversations and improved their ability to respond to situations more appropriately.

Leguee said the program has made him feel more capable of communicating what he wants the farm to accomplish and to feel more confident making decisions and in how he interacts with everyone on the farm. It has added structure to managing the farm and the farm team and he has more mental resiliency and deals with stress better.

“The way that I would say that I’ve changed is that I’m more balanced and I’m more present in the moment,” Leguee says. “The thing that’s really changed for me is how I talk to and help the people around me on the farm. It’s been a game changer in the way that I manage the farm.”

Course content and timeline

What to expect if you enrol in the 2021 National Farm Leadership Program

The main program takes place from January to April, followed by monthly group coaching sessions and one-on-one coaching for the remainder of the calendar year.

Starting in January, participants gain access to the LeaderLab, which is accessible 24/7, to take in lessons and stay connected with fellow participants.

Participants can expect to spend around four hours/week dedicated to the lessons and exercises. A crucial part of the online learning component is the discussion forum where participants are challenged to reflect on their learning using real life examples and practice key exercises within their unique situations, reporting back to the group on the results. This allows participants to quickly apply what they learn to their current circumstance. Fellow participants and program coaches provide commentary, feedback and advice for consideration, learning from one another’s experiences. While the majority of the learning is asynchronous, the group gathers together a number of times via Zoom to connect and reflect, guided by the program coaches.

In the beginning weeks, participants also undergo a leadership assessment to determine their leadership style and opportunities for improvement compared to an international database of leaders. The assessment provides the necessary baseline to identify opportunities for growth and improvement and is used in the development of each participant’s personal development plan.

A three-day residency takes place in the seventh week of the course. The residency is an opportunity to put into practice the lessons from the LeaderLab with fellow participants. There are no lectures, no videos, no PowerPoints, just opportunities to practice strengthening leadership effectiveness and create a personal development plan in a safe space.

Following the 11-week program, the coaching provided keeps participants connected and reporting on their progress for the remainder of the year.

What is the program schedule?

• January 25, 2021 — Online Learning Community begins
• March 9-11 — Three-day residency, Victoria, B.C.
• March 16 to April 10 — Online Learning Community continues
• April to December — Unlimited individual and monthly group coaching

How much does the program cost?

$8,400 which includes 24/7 access to the LeaderLab, a personal leadership assessment, the 11-week online course, the three-day residency (including accommodation and meals) and the monthly group coaching and one-on-one personal coaching for the remainder of the year. The NLFP is eligible for up to $2,500 cost-share funding for farmers in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, P.E.I. and Yukon Territory. Farmers should make inquiries with their provincial or territorial Ministry of Agriculture for eligibility requirements.

– This article was originally published in the November 2020 issue of Country Guide.

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Every farmer gains deep perspective and a wealth of insight during their career. It’s knowledge that comes from personal experience, family and advice from trusted advisors. And, of course, farmers are also adept at learning from each other.

This latter takes place over the fence, but it is also structured, with a long history of farm visits, crop bulletins and so much more being offered by commodity groups and local associations, co-ops and clubs.

But as times change, you can’t always get what you need on a crop tour. Today, farmers are looking to hone their business management skills, which aren’t as easy to check out as a new barn. And they’re looking for unbiased sources of business advice and information, which are also harder to find.

It’s why there’s a new type of farmer-led group emerging in Canadian agriculture — the peer advisory group.

It’s no secret Terry Betker, Manitoba-based CEO of Backswath Management, is a big believer. After helping put peer advisory groups together and run them, he’s in demand as a speaker talking about how farmers can organize, structure and operate these groups.

He’s also been sharing what participants tell him about how joining their group has added value to their farm business and helps them run their farms better.

What he hears is that farmers find peer groups are an invaluable source of expertise, and they learn of other’s experiences and gain insights they can use to make better decisions. Peer groups also give these farmers a sort of panel that they can take their ideas to, or seek advice on specific questions.

Peer advisory groups have been commonplace in business generally, yet less so in agriculture, at least until now.

The drive now is coming mainly from farmers who are looking to position their farms for the future, and who want to elevate their financial performance, Betker says. As their farms become both increasingly sophisticated internally, and face ever more complex externalities, they’re hungry for insight.

At the same time, it’s more difficult than ever for them to find third-party sources of information for the specific questions they’re trying to answer.

“But generally, it’s because farmers are more pro­actively looking at managing their businesses,” Betker says.

Those forming peer groups are looking to their peers as trusted sources who understand farming, he says.

“They want to have a network or group of other farmers that they can learn from,” Betker says. “They look to that interaction, to present the challenges and opportunities they’re encountering, and hear what other farmers have to say about it.”

It’s impossible to pinpoint precisely how many now operate because peer groups can and do come in many different forms. And there is no right or wrong way to organize one, of course, although Betker finds added value in those that are formally organized, meet regularly and agree to a structure that is facilitated by someone external to the group.

The first step

Getting a group together takes some time, and the first meeting can actually be the most difficult to arrange.

But how it looks is entirely up to those putting it together, including deciding on what an optimum number is. Some groups are quite small; others have multiple members, says Betker.

The actual membership is also a decision to make as a group. In the groups Backswath Management facilitates, some come looking for peer group interaction with a similar age peer group, while others prefer a mix of ages. “The peer groups that I’ve had personal experience with have had men and women, younger families and more mature families, mothers and fathers and daughters and sons, partners, brothers, cousins — a broad demographic,” he says.

Once a group of people has been assembled — and it can be across any geographic distance of the group’s choosing — these groups then solidify their purpose and clearly define their mission, vision and goals. This is where the group agrees on what topics members want to focus on. Some peer advisory groups focus on single issues such as succession. Others choose a broad scope.

Confidentiality

Formally organized peer advisory groups also take the critically important step of ensuring confidentiality to build trust and ensure that what is talked about in the group will not be shared beyond the group. There are ground rules that everyone needs to agree to, and one is that you’re not going to break confidentiality, says Betker.

Again, this requires laying down ground rules that you’ve agreed to not to talk about one another’s business outside the group, and the expectation of the group is that no one break those rules. This is about group management and setting down the rules and processes for it, he says.

The most successful peer advisory groups are those made up of people who share a mindset that they’re going to benefit from peer interaction.

To get maximum benefit from one, you’re someone who accepts you don’t have all the answers, and you’re willing to talk about the mistakes you’ve made, he says. Essentially, you have to be willing to open up and show your vulnerable side, says Betker. What you can expect back from like-minded people in the group is that you will not be criticized or judged. When you’re talking about a new strategy or plan you can expect to have questions asked of you, but again, not in a judgmental or critical way, he says.

That’s where you learn from the group, and where those in your group can learn from you.

These groups aren’t “feel good forums,” either, however.

The value farmers say they get from them is when others ask questions about how you manage your business.

“I think the benefit really increases when we can drill down into ‘why are you doing that?’” he says. “You shouldn’t have everyone just telling everyone else what a great job they’re doing. You should expect that someone will provide critical insight or ask probing questions about the business.”

“But, again, they shouldn’t be asked in a judgmental form, where anyone would feel chastised for something they did or didn’t do,” he adds.

Contribute equally

A key role an external facilitator plays is keeping the group on track and ensuring everyone has equal input to discussions. Groups don’t work when some do all the talking and others don’t or can’t contribute.

“Every member should be expected to come and make a contribution to the meeting and everyone should be able to expect to take something away from the meeting,” says Betker. A group with those not contributing don’t benefit from that member, he says.

“The group is not going to thrive.”

Is it for you?

Peer groups don’t work for everyone, of course. And one hesitation Betker does hear is that farmers aren’t sure who their “peers” actually are. Besides, peer groups benefit from multiple perspectives.

“If you had everyone that’s exactly the same I don’t think you’d benefit from the group,” he says.

Generally, what it boils down to is not so much about what kind of farm business you have, but how you prioritize management of the business, says Betker. “It’s got less to do with size or how sophisticated the business is. It’s got more to do with how they think about their business and the management of it.”

Usually a group has cohered by a third meeting, he says.

“It takes three meetings before I get the sense that the relationships and the trust really starts to become entrenched in the group,” he says. At that point, the discussions deepen.

Having an agenda is critical. It’s a diverse range of topics for the more broadly focused peer advisory groups. Production issues, cost control measures, compensation of farm staff and time management are frequent discussion topics.

“There’s lots of discussions around land and rent and buy strategies,” says Betker. Benchmarking of financial performance, wages, agronomy and professional fees are also common meeting topics.

“All benchmarking does is create context, how someone else does it if it works for you,” he says. “They compare amongst themselves how they manage different parts of their business.”

As trust builds, group members will also talk over personal challenges.

As for what participants ultimately get from participating, the feedback he’s heard is that they improve their business management.

“We’ve had enough experience over a long enough period of time to draw the observation that through peer group interaction they have absolutely advanced their management practices,” Betker says. “Everybody is going to take what’s significant to them, given where they’re at and apply it.”

– This article was originally published in the February 18, 2020 issue of Country Guide.

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Last year she was among the first responders to farms in the flooded Fraser Valley, and she’s also been on the scene of numerous farm accidents, including fatalities.

“These incidents are gut wrenching,” she says.

Today, though, Harris also owns a farm, and it’s she and wife Cathy Van-Martin also a career firefighter who wonder: Could the next tragedy hit even closer?

Harris and Van-Martin and their three kids, along with Harris’s sister and brother in-law, who also have three children, plus Harris’s mother all live and farm together on the multi-generational farm near Abbotsford, an hour east of Vancouver, that they launched in 2017 with help from the BC Egg New Producer Program.

The decision to farm sprang from wanting their children to experience farm life, says Harris. They all have good off-farm jobs, but the farm is where they wanted their kids, who range in ages from seven to 25 years old, to grow up and experience all that farm life has to offer. 

“And we absolutely hope that our children take over the farm some day,” she adds.

What these two families also want is for the farm to be the safest possible workplace both for themselves and those children. That was important from day one, especially with Harris and Van-Martin having spent their careers rescuing people in so many different kinds of unsafe situations — and knowing how things can go horribly wrong in an instant.

Most accidents she’s seen on farms were preventable, says Harris.

“It’s been interesting to be a fire fighter in an agricultural community and be exposed to farm accidents over the years of varying degree, from some sort of minor injury to some fatalities, and then all of sudden be a farmer,” she says. “You replay those accidents in your head and how many of them were preventable. Often it has to do with kids and having them milling about.”

Their own certainly are. Their kids love the farm, as do extended family members who visit and want to be involved in some way with it.

With that in mind, Harris and Van-Martin and the other couple have established the same safe work standards on their small farm that much larger commercial farms must adhere to under provincial occupational health and safety regulations.

“Our intentions are to meet all those safety standards,” says Harris. “We implement them here even though no one is coming in to inspect us. We feel it’s very important for ourselves.”

To do that, they developed a detailed safety plan for the farm after a thorough assessment of the risks they could proactively identify on the farm. They looked for hazards like rod conveyor systems and places where grates have been removed to facilitate speedier manure release from the barn. They set up standard operating procedures too, and rules for everyone to follow. 

The youngsters know they are never to play at certain locations of the farm, and there is a list for everyone to abide by that responds to defined hazards. For instance, no one disables safety locks on hydraulics and everyone wears a respirator inside the free-run barn, where the hens tend to kick up a lot of dust, and much more.

Their safety plan also benefited from Van-Martin’s training in disaster emergency management. She created an emergency plan for the farm, with detailed “what to do if” guides and checklists.

“Flooding, fires, medical emergencies, bird health emergencies. We’ve got backup plans for all of this,” says Harris. “Numbers to call for anything that could impact the animals or people here … we have it all in one place.”

Perhaps most importantly, though, they are all 100 per cent committed to creating this safe work environment. No one person is specifically assigned to ensuring it’s maintained, says Harris. They all know what’s expected and they work together to meet those expectations.

“We have a team farming technique here, partially because we all have full-time jobs off the farm,” she says. “We are able to manage it with a community mentality, and (by) relying on each other.”

Harris would never call herself a safety expert, nor would any of the rest of their farm team. But together they have become safety advocates. Harris has taken that role even further by joining AgSafe BC on its board of directors. Farm safety will always be “something we think is extremely important,” she promises.

A safer grain farm

Near Enchant, across the border from the Harris farm and a couple of hours southeast of Calgary, Stamp Seeds is a very different family-owned farm, also with a strong culture of safety.

The family has been working the land here since 1978 when the farm was founded by Richard and Marian Stamp. Today the family operates as a pedigreed seed farm with their three sons Greg, Nathan and Matthew, each now married with a family of their own.

It’s a large, sophisticated operation on 7,000 acres with two dozen staff, comprising 16 full-time staff plus about eight seasonal.

Safety has always been important on their family’s farm, says Nathan Stamp, the farm’s operations and agronomy manager.

“My mom was always a big advocate for safety on the farm,” he says. “It was always something we grew up with.”

Today Stamp Seeds is very much a “farm of families” and it has become all that much more important that they focus on safe work procedures.

“When I came back to the farm we were doing a lot of the work ourselves, but as we got larger, we hired more people,” Stamp says. “I was always worried about what could happen, and thinking about where the areas were on the farm that we could improve as far as keeping people safe.”

By then, safe work practices had become second nature to him, something that was reinforced when he attended the University of Lethbridge and then when he became a certified crop advisor, which saw him go to numerous conferences and events where safe work was a frequent topic. As a summer student he worked for Dow Agrosciences, where safety was also integrated into the company’s day-to-day culture. 

Stamp then brought that awareness back to the farm and began thinking about what more they could do to improve the work environment on the farm to reduce the risk of anyone getting injured.

“If I was uncomfortable doing a job on our farm, I didn’t want anyone else to feel unsafe doing it,” he says.

As a seed retail and certified chemical handling facility in Alberta, Stamp Seeds is required to meet provincial rules and regulations. They are audited annually to ensure the job sites have all the necessary safety measures in place, such as eye-wash stations, fire extinguishers and onsite emergency plans. They also ensure all their full-time employees receive first aid training and certification.

But having a safety culture on a farm goes beyond strictly following rules. Stamp Seeds was recognized during the 2020 Agricultural Safety Week campaign as a farm going the extra mile in its efforts to foster one. 

Stamp says although everyone has a role to play, he tends to take the lead on the farm’s safety file. He’s the one ensuring that safe workplace procedures are gone over at the regular meetings their staff attend, and that those procedures are regularly reviewed. He will also see that any farm safety matters are raised at any other farm meetings.

Staff are always encouraged to speak up about any concerns they have such as near misses, or if they see a hazard that needs some attention, he says.

“We have everyone attend and go over near misses, or things that have happened since the last meeting, or items that could be improved, such as some kind of safety feature that could be improved,” he says.

This regular course of continuous reminder and check-in has value, says Stamp.

“It’s about trying to integrate a mindset,” he says. “You have to make it a priority … The big thing is being hands-on. You can’t go over it once and then expect a month later it’s going to stay with someone.”

This all ramps up when their extra staff join the team in the spring, too. Then there is safety training and orientation to co-ordinate. 

It was this growing ethos of safety that prompted the Stamps to also introduce a health benefits plan for their workers. His spouse Christine did the legwork to get that introduced. This health plan was about taking regard for their workers another step further, he says. 

“It comes back to the health of your employees, mentally and physically,” he says. They want a team that gets enough rest, has enough time off and isn’t pushed to overwork. Now, the implementation of their health plan provides access to funds to help their staff and families take care of themselves so they can do their jobs better.

“We’d never had a benefit package or a health plan, but we thought if we want to make this a place where people want to work and make a career out of it, we should offer items that other larger companies might have that appeal to employees.”

Adding it up

Are the kinds of safety measures that Krista Harris and Cathy Van-Martin in B.C. and Stamp Seeds in Alberta have committed to typical of how Canada’s farms are improving safety on their farms? 

Experts on organizational behaviour, farm safety and workplace leadership would obviously like to say they are. And, certainly, there are signs of improvement. Statistics show that on-farm deaths and serious injuries from machine and animal-related mishaps are declining. 

Better engineering has helped, says Dean Anderson, strategic advisor for agriculture with Workplace Safety and Prevention Services in Ontario, one of North America’s largest occupational health and safety organizations. 

“Go back 30 years. How many tractors had a cab? Think of early equipment and how well-guarded chains and gears and belts used to be. Equipment is a lot safer,” he says. 

Plus, there has been a huge investment in farm safety education by a wide range of farm-related organizations, and there’s much more awareness about the importance of safety. 

However, there can still be big differences between farms. 

A 2020 Farm Credit Canada survey done for the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association found most farmers are confident they do their jobs safely, but most also say their rules are unwritten. Written plans are less common. 

Notably, the 1,200-farm survey found that a near miss didn’t necessarily change how a farmer does their work. Most farmers — 72 per cent — told the survey they’d had a close call. In fact, one in four had had something go amiss that very year.

Those numbers may hardly come as a surprise. Risk-taking behaviour is par for the course in agriculture. 

Yet, the message farm safety teams and industry advocates keep hammering home is that most injuries are predictable and therefore preventable, as long as everyone on the farm team knows what to watch for. 

There’s still plenty of pushback on regulating occupational health and safety standards on farms, even as farms generally remain less regulated than other industries. But there is a shift in mindset taking place too.

A new generation taking the helm has a different idea how farm work should get done, says Anderson. That’s because they’ve been coached throughout their lives about living and working in a safer environment, and it’s often part of their agricultural education. Often, too, they’ve worked in other industries where occupational health and safety is paramount. 

These farmers see a safety program as an integral part of overall farm business planning and risk management. They also see safety as good for business. Obviously an injury can have severe business and financial consequences. Employees expect to work in safe workplaces.

“Good business people are thinking more about this,” Anderson says. “It’s getting there. The larger farms are there. That’s what I’ve seen in the last 20 years. It’s becoming part of the business plan and part of your risk management.”

However, no safety plan on the farm is worth anything if you aren’t actually following it yourself and if you don’t have a commitment to implementing it, says Anderson. 

His best advice for anyone daunted by that, or even unconvinced that they need to organize a safer work space, is to tackle concerns one matter at a time. As the farm owner, you know what the key risks are and you know what you can do to reduce them, too. 

“Bite off your safety program in chunks,” Anderson says. “Get rid of the big risks first, then keep working down the list.”

Morag Marjerison, a farm safety consultant with Keystone Agricultural Producers in Manitoba, has worked with hundreds of farmers over her career. 

A formal safety plan is still relatively uncommon, she says. “But I have worked with farms of different sizes in terms of numbers of people, and there’s farms I know that have tried to formalize it.”

Approaches vary, she says. Some have one person designated to oversee a plan’s implementation, although she’s observed it can be a big job for one person. 

Other farms establish a safety committee which, in Manitoba at least, is required by occupational health and safety legislation once the farm reaches a certain size. 

“Here in Manitoba, if you have five or more workers around, you have to have one of the workers designated as a safety representative. If you have 20 or more you have to have a safety committee, made up of both managers or supervisor people plus employees,” Marjerison says. “When you get that big, it kind of fits naturally with forming these safety committees anyway.”

The challenge comes with smaller farms and farmers who don’t see a need to plan or change what they’ve been doing because “they’ve done it that way for years and nothing happened,” she says. 

Her advice to them echoes Anderson’s.

“Make a start somewhere, anywhere,” Marjerison says. “Even if it’s just having a five-minute meeting with everyone on the farm asking ‘Has anyone seen anything on the farm we need to fix?’ Just try and start to make it a conversation. Then you can start to make small changes.”

Every farm thinks they’re safe, she says. Then, one day, too many discover they never were.

The post Making the farm less dangerous, step by step appeared first on Country Guide.

In 2010, the fifth-generation Saskatchewan farmer and his spouse and business partner, Barb Stefanyshyn-Cote, gave up conventional grain farming. Instead, they opted to establish Black Fox Farm and Distillery, where today they produce top-quality whisky, gin and other spirits.

The pair have earned wide recognition and international awards, both for their whisky and for their tourist attraction on the outskirts of Saskatoon. 

Country Guide featured the business in a full-length feature in a 2018 issue, where Cote and Stefanyshyn-Cote described their journey and how they built a business transforming not only grains, but also small fruits, vegetables, and even cut flowers into higher-value products. 

Cote, though, has been on a different kind of journey lately. He has just returned from Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia and Tasmania, and from travels across Canada pursuing a Nuffield scholarship to meet business owners on the same sort of path that he’s on — building successful businesses in value-added production.

His report, An Exploration of Internal and External Forces Influencing Small Agri-Value Businesses has just been released on Nuffield Canada’s website, and it’s a deep dive into his title topic.

Every entrepreneur faces challenges and complexities as they embark on building a value-added enterprise, says Cote. For starters, they must figure out the right kind of model and management approaches for the business, and they also have to prepare themselves for working in a highly regulated and challenging business environment.

Cote had grappled with those challenges himself. Now he wanted to know, what are the ingredients that enable value-added companies to grow and succeed?

“This report is not meant to be a business guide popular in airport stands, but a journey of where I was in my business, and what I have learned during my Nuffield travels that pertained either directly, or indirectly to it,” Cote wrote in the report. 

“As I started thinking a bit deeper on what may be causing us pain in our business, I thought examining other small value-added processors would reveal how they were becoming successful and growing. I also felt there could be other issues in the whole value-added enterprise that I was missing. Through Nuffield, I could interview disparate businesses from craft breweries to cheesemakers from all areas of the world and gain insight into transforming a fledgling value-added company into a successful enterprise.”

The former Saskatchewan grain grower prepared a series of interview questions to take with him on his visits both to vertically integrated companies that produce their own raw ingredients and transform them into consumer-ready products, and to companies that source their ingredients from the regular supply chain. 

In Kozaki, Japan, he met with sake producers who spoke of how their brand value was derived from deployment of centuries-old methods making the traditional fermented rice alcoholic beverage. As Cote would later write in his report, their customers enjoyed the same product as their parents and grandparents, and the tradition associated with it was key to their brand. 

“Another interesting model that I saw was a state-of-the-art production facility, but with the extra value-added component of allowing customers to bring rice from their own farms and create their own sake in a traditional method,” he said. 

“This allowed the company to create value from the traditional niche, while at the same time reaping the rewards of innovation in the processing facility.”

Cote also visited wine, beer and other spirits producers who were leveraging vertical integration to produce unique ingredients, which could then be transformed into traditional products, although another approach was to create value in the craft brewing sector by continually innovating and creating new recipes and flavours. 

His report details the strategic advantages as well as the drawbacks of each approach.

Using vertical integration to control and curate a supply chain, for example, is a form of intellectual property, whereby the process and resulting product could be regarded as trade secrets, or have sufficient inherent barriers that other companies cannot replicate it. It’s a defensive strategy that can often be adapted by agri-value processors in order to protect a market that they build.

The value of your value-added

“If you look at really successful companies,” Cote says, “what they do is try something that no one else can replicate, or can’t do so easily. Then, in the marketplace, they can command a premium for it, and hence profitability is that much better.”

Likewise, the cheese producers, sweet potato growers, commercial cut flower growers and other value-added companies he visited described similar efforts to really stand out in the market. 

In Tasmania, a dairy farm turned cheese-maker had clearly defined their own unique product value by being wholly transparent about their farm practices, informing and engaging their customer “from farm to fridge.” They were intentional about building a feeling of trust into their brand, Cote says, and it was an excellent example of how a business had identified the brand value from their customers’ point of view. 

This cheese producer was especially helpful in nailing down one of fundamentals that sets an agri-value business on course — finding and clearly communicating “the value of your value-added.”

“We came down to it being you have to figure out ‘what is the value of what you’re doing,’” Cote says. 

Too many times, those who start up a value-added enterprise don’t identify that value clearly enough, and wind up back in the world of commodity production once more. Marketing cheese as “comes from the farm,” or even more ubiquitously, “from cows” is less impactful than saying it comes from “the world’s happiest cows.”

This means one of the barriers to growth — which is true in all smaller businesses and not just value-added agriculture — is finding the right message about your product that will allow your customer to truly understand the value you bring to the market.

That may sound simple enough. Still, many businesses fall at this first hurdle.

Growth and profitability

About halfway through his report Cote cites the old adage “you would never plant a tree without the expectation that it was going to grow.”

Growth is an essential part of every business’s life cycle, he writes, whether you’re developing any sort of new company in agriculture or any other sector. 

Obviously, growing it to the point where the business is profitable is key to the success, too.

This, though, is also where new companies may falter. Why do so few producers who have great ideas for agri-value businesesses actually pursue them, and even fewer transition them into profitable enterprises?

One reason is very basic, Cote says. They discover that producing something of higher value doesn’t automatically mean profitability. There are all sorts of reasons this can happen, but one is that the entrepreneur hasn’t planned to grow or to scale up the business.

“We see it all the time,” Cote says. “People don’t plan on growing.”

The producers he met during his Nuffield travels, however, had recognized the need for efficiencies of scale. The value they were adding to the commodities they processed therefore had to be tangible in the consumer’s eyes or else they would not be able to extract the premium they needed to be financially stable.

Their idea couldn’t compete on a low-cost basis, so the innovation had to to justify their investment in equipment and marketing. 

“Everything within your business has to be scalable if you want to grow,” Cote says. Or, to put it with a sharp end on it. Adopting practices that aren’t scalable is counterproductive.

“You still won’t be profitable because either you won’t have big enough economies of scale or you won’t have access to resources that someone else has, and you’ll keep on the treadmill of always working on really thin margins,” Cote explains. 

High-volume businesses can thrive in a low-margin environment, of course. But those aren’t the kinds of markets that value-add farmers can produce to or protect. 

Internal and external forces

There’s a wealth of other insights to be found in Cote’s detailed report, which, as it says in its title, distinguishes both internal and also external forces that influence these farm value-added businesses. 

Internally, a lot boils down to clarity of purpose and to the leadership of the entrepreneur, says Cote. Every successful value-added business owner he talked to agreed: these are the two crucial factors that will either restrict or promote growth in new companies.

There’s another vital learning from the farmers who have succeeded at value-adding too, Cote adds. “Although external influences tend to cause the most frustration within a business, internal factors are more important as the business has an opportunity to improve their systems and management to create opportunities from within. 

“The trait that separated the (businesses) that were successful and those that were not, was the ability to think through the process of getting bigger and being successful.”

But that doesn’t mean you can ignore external factors. Cote devotes a considerable section of his report to them, and especially to the policy environments within which business operates. Many businesses struggle with regulation, for example, and will expend considerable time and money ensuring they comply with the rules.

“Where governments can improve this environment is by adopting their own practices of clarity,” he says in his report. “The framework of policy has to be such that businesses can be competitive while fulfilling societal goals. It is a balance that is hard to achieve. We see, however, that people and businesses involved in the sector are keen to help, and in ways feel frustrated that they are not more engaged.”

External influences will become that much more influential on business as government adopts new policies with respect to sustainability and climate change, Cote adds.

All Nuffield scholars derive both significant professional and personal development from their experiences, and he certainly did as well, says Cote. 

“In our own business, understanding our own creation of value has allowed us to be confident enough to actively work towards expansion of the business,” he writes in his report. Having gained insight into the influence of government programs on small value-added businesses will allow him to make a more effective contribution to the agriculture sector, too, he says. His sponsors were Nuffield Canada Alumni and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, and he is a board member of the Saskatchewan Food Industry Development Centre, so he’s looking forward to future opportunities to share his Nuffield research widely, particularly with government, and hopes it will contribute to helping grow his province’s value-added sector.

Q&A

It’s a trait of Nuffield scholars that they actively pursue continuous, lifelong learning, and that they always encourage others to find these opportunities, too. John Cote and his spouse Barb Stefanyshyn-Cote are exceptional examples of this. Both make this investment in themselves. Barb is also a Nuffield scholar. In 2003 she embarked on travels to several countries, including China, looking for ways to stem the outflow of rural populations, afterward publishing her own extensive report through Nuffield Canada entitled The Social Impact of Increasing Farm Size and Rural De-population.

Country Guide: We always ask the Nuffield scholars we interview to tell us how you find time for the travel and report writing required of these scholarship opportunities.

John Cote: The easy answer is you have a good team and they’ll make up for it. But I like to think of myself as fairly goal driven. You set yourself a goal and it happens. If you continually say “I can’t do that because I don’t have the time,” you’ll never have it. If you say “I’m going to be gone for the next six weeks,” you just rearrange your life around being gone for that six weeks.

It’s all about establishing the goal and just doing everything you need to do to make it work. And I have the unique experience of being both a Nuffield Scholar and a Nuffield spouse. When Barb did her Nuffield, she left me with four children, the youngest was two and the oldest was seven. Having Barb gone for those six weeks was probably my best experience as a parent, ever.

Because when you’re on your own you have a real appreciation for everything the other person does. It was a really a great experience. Usually the Nuffielder is always worried about the people that have to stay at home and take up the slack. It can be a good growing experience for both sides.

CG: Nuffield Canada’s Scholarship opportunity is a chance to get away and think more deeply about a subject area of a scholars’ choosing. What would you say is the value of stepping away from your own business for a while this way?

John Cote: Barb and I are great believers that continuous learning is the only way to success. The biggest failing we have as small business people, whether it’s value added or not, is we get so busy in the day-to-day running of the business we don’t have time to sit back and be introspective and think about what we’re actually doing.

You need to make that investment in yourself and go out and look for answers. If you’ve got questions, you need to go out and look for answers. Don’t expect the answers to come to you. You need to go out and start digging and finding out. 

There’s a lot of really well-run businesses out there and they’re typically willing to share where they went wrong, and what they would do again, and what they would do sooner. Hopefully a lot of people will go out and say “This is something that we can do.” Maybe it won’t be through a Nuffield scholarship, but maybe on their own.

CG: You’ve written extensively about the value of leadership in business success.  What is the overall impact you would say Nuffield has already had on you, and will continue to have?

John Cote: I wouldn’t consider myself a natural leader by any stretch. The way our business is structured, Barb would have much more of the leadership role. When I came back I realized that I’d been kind of always been saying to her “You’re the leader, you do the leading.”

But it’s not that way. Everybody has to do the leading. Because that’s part of what you can bring to the business. No one can understand the business the way Barb and I understand it, because we’re the ones that are driving it. We have to make sure that we’re messaging together, and leading together, and that we’re encouraging together as a team all the time.”

The Canadian Nuffield Agricultural Scholarship Association (Nuffield Canada) is part of Nuffield International, a non-profit global organization that inspires individuals around the world to travel, study and shape the future of agriculture and their local and global communities. Scholars devote months of their time digging into a topic of interest to them, developing expertise in their area of study that then makes them an invaluable resource to others.

– John Cote’s full-length report An Exploration of the Internal and External Forces Influencing Small Agri-Value Businesses is found on Nuffield Canada’s website.

The post The ‘how’ of success appeared first on Country Guide.

Yes, you may feel remorse for it afterwards. But do you understand why you get angry, if it’s your usual response to stress? And do you know what your angry outbursts are doing to those around you?

Arguably, there’s plenty to fuel fury on the farm. In a high-stakes business environment, even the longest fuse can burn to its limit. Difficulty controlling emotions, irritability and angry outbursts are sure signs someone is under stress. Plus agricultural workplaces can be relatively isolated, and those who work in them are often in prolonged close proximity with family members.

That kind of work environment can be where someone prone to anger finds it possible to vent more often than they would in an office environment or workplace with unrelated co-workers.

There can be another reason why farmers, men especially, can be prone to anger, says Cynthia Beck, an MSc candidate in clinical psychology at the University of Regina who works in rural mental health and farms with her family in southeastern Saskatchewan.

“Society has taught us that some emotions are more acceptable than others. For men, anger is an acceptable emotion,” Beck says. “I think we may not realize how ingrained that is.”

There’s another cultural link too. Farmers are culturally conditioned not to show a lot of emotions, says Beck. “We’re a stoic, self-reliant bunch.”

In this context, it’s important to know that is a learned response. If we are often angry, we were likely taught at a young age that outwardly showing anger is a coping mechanism.

“For a lot of us, we’ve learned it can be a very effective coping mechanism,” Beck says. “Anger is derived from frustration, but anger is also a very effective coping tool. A lot of people use anger as an avoidance strategy. If they don’t want to have a conversation about something, such as a touchy subject, they’ll get angry, and people usually drop the subject. The avoidance strategy is successful.”

What we don’t know

We often have little awareness of our anger, or why we respond with anger when things get beyond our control, says Beck. “Anger is an habitual response. For some people, our brain and body will naturally respond and progress to anger before knowing what’s really wrong.”

It’s a habit that can be passed along from family member to family member as we learn by example. Those who tend to get angry a lot may have learned from living examples, even their parents, that anger is the way to deal with a stressful situation, she says. That’s how anger can be harmful to the mental health of everyone involved. 

“If a farmer, male or female, has really big anger problems, they may be dealing with challenged mental health, and chances are they grew up around a parent or a family member, or watching a worker on the farm deal with things with anger. They dealt with stress or adversity with anger, and the generation before that did, and perhaps the generation before that.”

There’s no end to situations that can prompt one to get angry, of course. The unrelenting and intense schedule of farm work and deadlines takes its toll, too.

“We sometimes live chaotic lifestyles, and our income and our future basically rely on our productivity during high-production seasons,” Beck says.

That’s not typically when you’re going to be all that aware of your habitual anger response, she says.

“When you’re in the moment and swept up in the pace of life, there’s so little time to make a point of being self-aware and to acknowledge the emotions that we’re experiencing. Quite often we’re operating from a fight, flight or freeze mode. That’s the evolutionary system within each one of us that influences how we deal with problems. It’s a combination of instinctual and learned behaviour, and when it comes to those instinctual or habitual behaviours, we don’t have a lot of awareness around them.”

Practical help

Beck offers some basic, practical advice for those who get angry a lot that can help them and also help end the cycle. To start, some self-care can help.

“A lot of times when people are really angry, there are a few basic factors impacting the anger response,” she says. “Did they get enough sleep? Have they drunk any water that day? When was the last time they ate?”

One way to help the person in the immediate moment is to give them space and let them finish their crisis response to the stress. Do not tell them to calm down. Once they have cooled off, offer them a bottle of water and a snack.

“Chances are they’ll say no, or they might throw the water in your face. But even if you can say ‘take a minute and eat this,’ or ‘drink this water,’ you’ll give them time to finish the stress response.”

Saying anger is an accepted emotion isn’t to say it’s an acceptable one, Beck stresses. Her first question of any farmer asking for help with their anger is to guide them to be more self-aware, asking them what their coping strategies are, with the goal of developing healthier ones.

“I would encourage them to start taking note of what their habitual response is. I’d ask, for instance,‘If you’re out sorting cattle and it doesn’t go your way, what do you do?’ Just having someone talking about their anger response in really concrete terms helps to create awareness. The next time it happens and you are yelling at the people who are trying to help you, hear yourself and then feel free to stop right then. Your helpers won’t mind! It’s one way to start taking small steps to changing behaviour.”

Also focus on managing that anger both in the moment and for the longer term, she emphasizes. 

A better farm

Anger isn’t good for your own mental health, nor that of your spouse, your kids or your employees.

“Think about it. You literally are teaching your children how to cope with stress for the rest of their lives. And is your coping mechanism healthy? No, probably not. Your anger affects the mental and physical health of the people around you.”

The young people she sees struggling with anxiety or depression usually didn’t develop it on their own, she adds. “Family system and social environment play a role.”

And if you need another reason to learn to manage your anger, think about the implications your behaviour will ultimately have on your farm operation, too.

“It affects the bottom line,” Beck says, then adds, “Success isn’t only about the money. It’s about the health and well-being of the farm operation unit, and all of the people there are working towards the common goal of making that operation a success. If people are missing out on physical health, mental health and emotional well-being, then productivity is going to diminish. It’s like operating a tractor with only three tires: costly, unproductive and unnecessary.”

The post Manage anger on the farm appeared first on Country Guide.

Maybe in this case, though, it depended more on the stars than usual. For Easton Sellers, the opportunity to farm came out of pure serendipity. Even Sellers admits a farm career was once the farthest thing from his mind.

But then he met a Manitoba couple with a small farm to sell and no immediate plan for exactly what would happen next, and his thoughts began to turn to an agricultural career.

That was in 2015 when Sellers, a young American who was born and raised in the suburbs of Orlando, Florida, (we did say this story involves a weird alignment of the stars!) was taking time off from university to travel and do some soul-searching, as so many twenty-somethings do.

It wasn’t exactly a conventional start. Sellers somehow found his way to Manitoba’s Interlake that summer to work on another farm, taking part in the Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF Canada) program. Since 1971, the program has provided a cultural exchange for international visitors to experience rural living and gain practical skills while living on host farms.

It was his first taste of farm and rural life, and an eye-opener, exposing Sellers to a livelihood and lifestyle he’d never previously experienced and knew next to nothing about.

“I had no agricultural background whatsoever, not even gardening. And I had never heard of Manitoba either,” Sellers says. “I spent a couple of months in the Interlake and had a really good experience so I came up the following year for the whole season, to get the whole picture.”

That’s when he was introduced to Bob Pizey and Betty Kehler who had their 40-acre Plum Ridge Farm, an organically managed fruit farm near Teulon, Man., up for sale. 

The couple befriended him and he began learning how they themselves had started from scratch in the 1970s. They also revealed they were looking for a successor. In fact, the couple had been visited by various potential buyers, but so far, there’d been no takers.

Sellers began to think about the possibility of becoming that successor, but the hurdles were high. He lacked the means to buy a farm, and being from the U.S., knew he would have to wait, possibly several years, before he could gain Canadian citizenship to even become eligible for a farm loan to purchase it. Plus, he had no training as a farm manager.

But there was a kind of link to build on. As he began his own foray into agriculture, Sellers had in common with Pizey and Kehler, what, was that they themselves also started afresh, neither of them having ever owned a farm, although Kehler had grown up on one.

They had also started with what the real estate market would call “a project,” 40 acres of marginal grain land and bush, with a simple farm house, that Pizey bought in 1976. 

That was the long-shot birth of Plum Ridge Farm, but then Kehler joined him shortly afterward, and the pair would go on to transform the site over the next 40-plus years into a prosperous U-pick producing organically grown apples, saskatoons and field-grown strawberries, becoming one of the few farms in the province to do so at this scale.

It begins for real

Intent on learning all he could, Sellers began an informal yet focused mentorship with Pizey and Kehler in 2016, learning all about their farm practices and the farm’s history and management. The couple saw hopeful prospects in him.

Sellers remembers that year well, walking the width and breadth of Plum Ridge Farm, with the prospect of settling in Canada and becoming the couple’s successor growing large in his imagination. Then he screwed up his courage and sat down and told Kehler and Pizey he was prepared to commit to it — if a path would open to make it possible to transfer ownership to him one day.

“I had set my mind on this,” he says. “I said, ‘I’ll do my part and I’ll do everything I can do!”

Then the stars got involved again. A long-time family friend of Pizey’s and Kehler’s worked out a purchase agreement with Sellers for when he’d be in a position to buy it himself.

That deal enabled Pizey and Kehler to move to new retirement digs in B.C. and Sellers to begin his immigration procedures.

Sellers moved to Plum Ridge Farm in 2017 to live and manage the property entirely on his own. He also joined the Prairie Fruit Growers Association in Manitoba that year. And, by using everything he’d learned so far, he began to re-establish strawberry acres the couple had discontinued when their own capacity for the labour-intensive work had declined.

Still, the old adage “the more you know…” was firmly planted in his mind. Expecting a wait of several years for his citizenship transfer, he decided to enrol as an international student at the University of Manitoba’s diploma of agriculture program, too. Kehler was herself a graduate of it years earlier, and recommended it.

Sellers entered the program determined to become the best farm manager possible for Plum Ridge Farm. He knew he needed many skill sets and competencies, plus the mindset of a manager to make this actually work.

His mentorship with Pizey and Kehler had gone well, “but you can’t just tell someone how to farm,” he says.

“I knew I needed to start preparing myself to make smart decisions.” 

From tiny acorns

By 2018 Sellers had a full year at Plum Ridge Farm behind him, plus his first year in the diploma program. He’d seen his first strawberry crop, a mere half-acre, through to maturity, and 2018 turned out to be a banner year, with the weather co-operating and plentiful berries.

Plum Ridge Farm’s loyal customers returned in droves. It was the best possible way to begin, says Sellers. “The amount of fruit produced on half an acre blew my mind,” he says. “I really needed that, so I knew what’s possible.”

The following year, of course, things didn’t go quite as well. That was part of the education too. The 2019-20 crop year saw untimely downpours followed by drought, made even more difficult because Sellers was experimenting with a new strawberry variety and with management methods that ended up reducing yield. 

And it has been up and down since then too. 2021, for instance, was simply “a disaster” from winter-kill.

Still, Sellers has always been undeterred. These have been valuable lessons for him, he says, because they combined with all he was learning in his classes about business risk management, and how to ride out the highs and lows that inevitably come with every farm year.

Getting noticed

Sellers was, as they say, a keener, both on the farm and at school, and the school noticed. He was co-valedictorian for his 2019 graduation class, but he wasn’t done with school then either. He was hired that year to become one of its full-time farm management instructors.

Sellers is now settled into life on the farm, and into his position with the University of Manitoba, and has become a director with Prairie Fruit Growers Association (PFGA), the non-profit group representing Manitoba and Saskatchewan fruit growers. He remains manager for Plum Ridge Farm for now, but he’s on course to become the farm’s owner, too.

“I am in the process of purchasing,” he says. “We developed a purchasing agreement throughout the succession process and now I’m still only on a work visa, so the immigration story continues. I have applied for permanent residency and that takes time. Hopefully, that will go through, and then I will have access to financing. I cannot get a farm mortgage as a young farmer, or any sort of home mortgage, without being a permanent resident.”

The purchase agreement, he adds, was of utmost importance for clarifying each party’s goals. Again, it was studying agriculture, plus being advised by experienced growers through PFGA that informed the development of that agreement, he adds.

Importantly, he now has a Manitoba farm family of his own as well. He has met the woman he’ll eventually marry in Manitoba, too. She is Olivia Carey, a commercial airline pilot, raised on an Interlake farm, but not interested in farming herself. They plan to get married in the next couple of years.

“She doesn’t want to be a farmer, but she helps me out a ton,” says Sellers. “And her family is one of the great supports I’ve had here … Farming is sometimes made possible by farm family members who don’t necessarily want to be farmers.”

True to the vision

Sellers gave his assurances to the departing Kehler and Pizey that he’ll continue to advance their vision for the farm. He has no plans to make any immediate changes or to switch from their organic practices. But he will add new technology as he sees a need and fit for it, he says. To date that’s included digitizing the irrigation system so he can control it from his cell phone — “a big labour saver,” he says — and he’s also added a weather station and soil probe to take some of the guesswork out of managing the strawberry fields.

Sellers’ story is about a young urbanite without a farm background discovering that farming was the thing he most wanted to do, and if you ask him, he’ll tell you it’s about being incredibly lucky and having an opportunity like this present itself.

It was Pizey and Kehler’s ultimate success that spurred him to want to take his own life in this direction, he says.

“I felt like I wasn’t starting from complete scratch,” he says. “It’s rare. This farm is a beautiful place. Bob and Betty did an amazing job and devoted their lives to this property … That I have the opportunity to continue here doing that is really special.”

The first time

Bob Pizey and Betty Kehler were do-it-yourselfers from the start. They had the can-do mentality of a farmer, matched by a farmer’s endless energy and ability to learn. Maybe, in other words, they could make a go of it.

Pizey himself had no farm background when he first became intrigued by the idea of small-scale farming in the early 1970s. He’d been born and raised in Winnipeg, and he still remembers the visions he had about what he thought he was getting into.

“I thought about becoming one those bourgeois guys in knee-high boots and a tweed jacket,” he says laughing at the recollection. “The idea kind of suited me at the time.

”But it never did work out like that.”

He was working for an excavation company in Winnipeg when he started looking, with limited means, for some property in Manitoba’s Interlake. 

“I thought that all I’d ever be able to afford was some rock and swamp,” he says. A realtor led him to the property northwest of Teulon that was rated excellent for fruit and vegetables. Pizey figured he’d got lucky and bought it.

Of course, though, it wasn’t actually so excellent, and he and Betty Kehler, the smart-as-a-whip young woman he’d met at a Prairie Fruit Growers Association meeting would spend years making it more productive. 

Kehler had grown up on a farm in southern Manitoba, but had pursued a social work career, without any prospects for farming herself. Burnt out from that field after a few years, she was home from a stint of world travel and looking for a place to do some good in it when she met Pizey. 

It was no picnic on the farm in the early 1980s. “We started out with $5,000 each and interest rates were 22 per cent,” Kehler recalls. It was an education. They needed plumbing but couldn’t afford a plumber so they figured out how to install it themselves. They needed to make repairs to the house and eventually to build a barn and farm shop. They couldn’t afford a carpenter so they did that work too, and they learned farming is a lot more than putting a seed in the ground. 

It could have easily been overwhelming, but Kehler says they learned another big lesson to stand back, look at the big picture and take the years one at a time.  

“It’s an attitude of, well, okay, we’re on this learning curve. And it finally makes you far richer, because it empowers you so you can do all of this.”

Pizey and Kehler spent the next 40-plus years transforming those 40 acres. They hand planted thousands of trees in shelter belts to surround their property, and established new woodlots. They designed and installed an underground irrigation system for their fruit crops that began to thrive as the soil fertility improved. They stuck to their original vision of farming organically, implementing unusual but effective methods, like their gaggles of geese deployed to serve as weeders of their established strawberry fields.

They also eventually designed and built their own post-and-beam home with help from a few families. 

“I read Joiners quarterly before we did that,” recalls Pizey. 

Plum Ridge Farm became a popular summer destination with loyal U-pick customers. They had a strong community around them, and the vivacious couple also built up a large network in the province’s organic sector, and forged many friendships among younger people, too. Some would come and go on Plum Ridge Farm during Pizey’s and Kehler’s final years, looking after the place during their absences, and expressed genuine interest in becoming its successors. 

There was much to learn from the couple. Always careful with cash, the couple were strict about budgeting, always tracking gross farm income and costs of production, and discerning between needs and wants. No purchase was made without an assessment of its impacts on their bottom line. They owned all the farm equipment they needed, and a truck, but never a car.

They lived well by living simply, say the couple. 

“I had a sharp pencil. I thought that was pretty important,” says Pizey. “It seemed like a more likely way to prosper.”

Kehler says a big part of their ambition was to encourage other young farm entrants that theirs is a doable way to farm, with the right skills and mindset, and a satisfying way to live, too.

“We learned so much about growing food and how important food is and we were always encouraging other people, especially the younger generation, that growing food is always going to be really important,” says Kehler.

“We thought we’d be like starter yeast, inspiring a huge number of young people to do this.” 

That didn’t quite happen as they thought it might, she says. But she does see a new generation making calculated decisions and figuring out their own way to get started, too. In fact, she sees new urgency in them. “Growing food locally is going to be way, way, way more important.”

The post A young farmer’s fresh start appeared first on Country Guide.

Partly, it’s a human resource issue. Every year, Canada’s farms and agricultural businesses fall further behind. More and more traditional farm jobs go unfilled while, at the same time, new job descriptions are being created that demand even harder-to-find skills and vision. And it isn’t just on the farm. Farm groups, boards and ag businesses of every variety have to be on permanent lookout for smart, skilled people to staff and manage them. 

But it also a question of culture. The sector has definitely made progress. It has expanded the demographic it typically draws from. Yet it still sorely lags among population groups like women, Indigenous people, immigrants and others we call “underrepresented” even though they are vast segments of the rest of Canadian society. 

It means Canada’s farms are getting less and less Canadian.

Why is that? And what’s to be done about it? Canadian ag leaders are increasingly aware that agriculture needs to open up in order to future-proof the industry. More than ever, becoming inclusive is both a moral responsibility and a business imperative.

Now, bold conversations are beginning. New ideas are surfacing. Below are just a sampling of what Country Guide found when we went looking. Across the country, there’s a feeling that history is about to change.

Early in 2021, the Western Producer carried an op-ed article headlined, “It is Time for Bold Moves on Diversity” and in Alberta Farmer Express, “It is Time to Finally Address the Lack of Diversity in Agriculture.”

It was written by two Canadian farm leaders, Erin Gowriluk and Hannah Konschuh. In plain, powerful language, they asked the industry to look at itself in a way it seldom has before. 

“Although our industry has made progress in the areas of inclusion and diversity in recent decades,” they wrote, “we are nowhere near where we need to be.”

Gowriluk, executive director of Grain Growers of Canada and Konschuh, a farmer from Cluny, Alta., were launching The Diversity Imperative podcast, a project sponsored by Syngenta. 

Recent world events had kindled the need to find where there’s room for improvement in their industry, say the two women, both fully cognizant this is a conversation that’s far from easy to have, or even begin.

Yet, as they both also say, tough questions lead to great conversation, and great conversation leads to progress. And begin, we must.

What initially compelled Konschuh, who also sits on the Alberta Wheat Commission board of directors and has provided leadership in other areas, was her own acute awareness that women aren’t yet as engaged as they could and should be. And the industry can be painfully slow to change. Just ask any group of women, she says, about the leers, the offensive remarks and the putdowns they can be subjected to at any farm trade show.

“It shouldn’t be the norm to have only one female producer in the room sitting around the board table for any organization,” Konschuh says.

It’s also been clear for a long time that there’s far more to talk about than gender when it comes to inclusivity. 

“If we are going to have fulsome conversations about DEI (diversity, equity and inclusiveness) in our sector, it includes more than just our experience as women in ag. We need to be talking about LGBTQ inclusion, we need to be talking about race and racism, about Indigenous agriculture. A big one for me is ability and ableism.”

The Diversity Imperative’s first six episodes have already covered a lot of ground, including guests such as Christine Simpson, hockey reporter for Sportsnet, talking about what sport can teach agriculture when it comes to diversity and inclusion and production ag specialist Julia Romagnoli with John Deere from Guelph, Ont., the creator and curator of the Pride in Ag Instagram account to make positive change for LGBTQ inclusion across the sector.

University of Saskatchewan’s assistant professor and soil biogeochemist Melissa Arcand, who is also academic advisor for a program training students to work in resource management and land governance in Indigenous communities, has also been a guest, as has Marie-Claude Bibeau talking about being the first federal female Minister of Agriculture in Canada. 

The podcast has proved ideal for getting this discussion rolling, says Gowriluk. She, too, had been thinking about these issues a long while, and says that prior to making her own commitment to this project, she saw things she found unsettling on social media when she tried to raise topics about the inclusion of women. 

“I was surprised by the reactions that I would get,” she says. “Typically women were very supportive and understanding of what I was posting. But I was really surprised to see some of the other reactions. They were sometimes aggressive, or angry. They implied that I had no business sharing these sorts of things, or suggesting that there even was an issue.

“That was the first thing that said to me ‘we’ve got a long way to go’, when many of our male colleagues in this sector refuse to even see there may be some challenges for their female colleagues.”

Beef Farmers of Ontario

Diversity, equity and inclusion have become priority areas for workplaces in many industries, as boards ask who’s missing from the table and employers try to figure out what meaningful changes they must make to become more inclusive. Now, the first farm organizations are starting to take bold steps in this direction. 

Beef Farmers of Ontario is convinced diversity matters, and it is intent on building DEI into their sector.

In early January the group representing 19,000 beef producers gave the agri-food industry much to think about with the release of a strongly worded, detailed diversity, equity and inclusion statement.

They were committing their organization to advocate for DEI within the beef sector and to joining “with those in our community who are calling for an end to systemic racism, as well as discrimination and prejudice based on sexual orientation, gender, religion, and ability (visible and invisible), and linguistic discrimination,” the statement said.

BFO leaders were frank about why they were taking this stand.

“We recognize the beef sector is not always a diverse industry, particularly at the farmer and association level,” said BFO president Rob Lipsett.

“Further along our supply chain, however, there is a great amount of diversity among the people dedicated to ensuring our product makes it to the tables of consumers. Likewise, our consumers are another integral and incredibly diverse group from all walks of life. We feel it is important to be a voice, build bridges, listen, learn and support all members of our community.”

Jordan Miller was one of BFO’s board members urging their association to make this move.

His own thoughts around diversity began to intensify since the murder of American George Floyd in 2020 and attention focused on racism and social inequity.

“Change is hard, but big change is necessary. This is a first step,” says Miller, a sixth-generation cow/calf operator from Manitoulin Island who joined with fellow BFO director Joe Dickenson to urge his industry group to go in this direction.

The rest of the BFO board supported this even while recognizing it could be polarizing among even their own membership.

“I was a bit apprehensive,” admits Miller. “You never know how people are going to react but the board unanimously accepted it.”

The plan commits their organization to learning and ultimately to action, although it will take some time to figure out what that action will actually look like, Miller says. Their DEI statement recognizes the need to develop from within the organization, and that means a commitment to listening and learning, and to speaking up against discriminatory language and behavior.

Since releasing the statement they’ve hired Ontario-based leadership training company Bloom Consulting to do diversity training for the board, committee members and staff.

“Right now we simply don’t understand all of the issues,” Miller says. “We shouldn’t pretend that we do.”

Building relationships

At its root, diversity in agriculture is about building relationships both within and beyond the sector itself.

Farm Credit Canada views the diversification of Canada’s agriculture and food industry as an integral part of its mandate, and it says it begins with both understanding and supporting this country’s Indigenous communities and entrepreneurs to grow and thrive in our agriculture and food industry, says Michael Hoffort, FCC president and CEO.

“It begins with developing a deeper understanding of Indigenous agriculture — the history, barriers, aspirations and opportunities of today,” said Hoffort in a recent release announcing findings of an FCC survey of Canadian Indigenous farmers. 

The survey asked producers to identify how they’re currently involved in the sector, the barriers they face and the opportunities they’re seizing (see Indigenous Challenges).

Human resource crisis

It isn’t agriculture’s only challenge. Finding ways for a broader representation of more population groups in agriculture is happening at the same time as we’re learning more about the industry’s overall skills shortage.

Now bordering on a human resource crisis, the numbers clearly show agriculture’s dearth of human capacity for managing, innovating, and operating farms and agribusinesses is a problem that is only intensifying as time passes. It means that making progress on revitalizing agriculture’s most important resource — its human resource — matters more than ever. 

The acute skills shortage and the associated business risks it poses to the entire sector are most clearly depicted in research conducted by the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC) which has long recognized that women, Indigenous people, immigrants and persons with disabilities are underrepresented even though they have the potential to make important contributions.

Boosting diversity, equity and inclusion has long been a focus of CAHRC’s extensive work to help agricultural employers become inclusive, supportive employers of choice, says Jennifer Wright, a senior advisor with CAHRC, whose organization is continuously exploring ways to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in the sector.

CAHRC has sponsored a large volume of original research, developed profiles and case studies, and posted numerous documents on its website on a wide range of related topics, including structural racism within the food system and tools to help farm and other ag business owners create inclusive work environments. 

“The research is very clear,” says Wright. “When you have an employee base with diverse experiences and backgrounds, you actually have a really positive impact on your bottom line. It’s because you have different ideas and different ways of doing things coming to the table. It helps support an innovative work environment.”

Students

Meanwhile, schools of agriculture across the country continue to be a key front in attracting more people from diverse backgrounds to the sector. 

Progress has been made in recent years through promoting their programs to young people who didn’t grow up on the farm, says Michele Rogalsky, director of the school of agriculture within the faculty of agricultural and food sciences at University of Manitoba. 

Without question the number of female students is rising and the gender gap is closing, she says. Today about a third of all students are female and, notably, many plan to become managers of family farms. 

They’ve also seen the number of international students rise over the years.

“Back in the 1990s it was zero to one per cent,” Rogalsky says. “It increased a bit in the 2000s, but we had a big jump last fall at 5.9 per cent.”

There are many ways these students’ global perspectives benefit their program. However, where Rogalsky sees work ahead is in building relationships with Indigenous communities so their youth will be attracted to the program, too. 

“I think we as an ag sector have done a very poor job communicating and targeting that message to the influencers and decision-makers that are supporting these young individuals when they’re making their career path,” she says. 

Likewise, Geoff Brown, dean of agricultural and environmental sciences at Lakeland College says, colleges are also working hard to attract students from a greater diversity of backgrounds, including more women, and more Indigenous and international students. 

“There are just so many careers in agriculture and we need good people from all over,” Brown says. “When you draw in a diverse population, and under-represented populations, you bring in different perspectives that aren’t quite as traditional, which can only strengthen the industry.”

Adds Konschuh: “We are an industry that relies on innovation yet the conversation often focuses on technology. But what’s the conduit that that technology comes to life by? Well, it’s by people. We’ve typically been pulling from one demographic. To meet some of the lofty goals we’ve set for ourselves as a sector, we need all sorts of people contributing to that goal.”

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable

How do we get there? That’s what podcasts and DEI statements and outreach programs for creating inclusive workplaces are for. 

Yes, this is a conversation that can cause cognitive dissonance, or shoulder shrugging, or outright resistance. But the same could be said about early initiatives to improve safety on the farm. That was once something a lot of farmers didn’t want to talk about either. 

“Let’s all agree to lean into this together, shall we?” says Gowriluk. “Accept that there may be times that you may fear that you may say the wrong thing or offend someone, but I think if you are there, that suggests you’re coming from the right place. As long as you’re open to hearing from others, understanding their perspectives and learning along the way, I think that’s a really good place to start.” 

Indigenous challenges

More than 70 per cent of Indigenous producers in Canada told a recent FCC online survey they plan to increase participation in the ag sector over the next five years.

That’s despite their also reporting a poor to average experience in the sector in the past, with challenges including access to capital, equipment, labour and knowledge.

It’s a sign of changing times and the increasing priority we can expect to see placed on agriculture within overall economic development across Canadian Indigenous communities.

The survey was commissioned last fall to gain a better understanding of Indigenous producers’ priorities, what they’re doing now and where they see opportunities ahead, says Shaun Soonias, FCC’s director of Indigenous relations. 

It wasn’t a large survey but it has yielded important insights that will enable FCC to be a supportive partner in the advancement of Indigenous agriculture in the spirit of reconciliation and collaboration, Soonias says. 

One of the reasons for increasing interest in agriculture is that more communities are regaining access to significant land bases through Treaty Land Entitlement settlements. 

“What we’re seeing now is a lot of communities starting to shift their eyes back to lands that they have in their control and see what they can do to fully monetize them and steward them,” he says.

The survey respondents also expressed notable interest re-establishing Indigenous food security and placed high priority on the need to create agricultural and financial learning opportunities for Indigenous youth. Things need to be done to ensure the next generation is prepared and excited to continue growing agriculture and food businesses, while fostering relationships with elders who offer a wealth of traditional knowledge, the survey respondents said.

Almost half said they see significant opportunities in greenhouse operation, community gardens, food processing and other small-scale agriculture activities on Indigenous lands.

Soonias, who is also a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation near Battleford, Sask., said FCC wants not only to better understand the landscape of Indigenous agriculture in Canada but to be a partner in advancing Indigenous agriculture in all the forms it will take. 

“We [FCC] haven’t been in this space historically,” Soonias says. “Loans were available and made, and we’ve done business, but there wasn’t anything that was really structured around how to foster success and not only to address the opportunities but some of the challenges that are unique to Indigenous communities.”

Another initiative now underway within FCC is extensive Indigenous awareness and relations training underway for its 2,000 employees across Canada. The training aims to help staff better understand the legislative and systemic barriers that prevent Indigenous communities from fully participating in Canada’s agriculture industry, and the long-standing hurdles that have also been faced by the country’s Métis and Inuit populations. 

The Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council has also been researching issues and priorities of Indigenous producers, noting in a 2020 report that while the Canadian farm population is declining, the share of Indigenous people in the ag sector has grown significantly. 

The number of Indigenous ag operators leapt 51.6 per cent between 1996 and 2016. 

Indigenous operators are pursuing activities related to traditional practices like harvesting of berries, herbs, rice and plants and other non-timber forest products, tapping trees for maple syrup production, and combining plants into traditional medicine, as well as fishing, hunting and trapping. 

Ranching and farming are gaining too, from cattle ranching to bison and beekeeping, and more operators are starting agri-tourism and farm-to-table businesses, setting up farm education attractions with interpretive sites and restaurants.

The post Facing facts appeared first on Country Guide.

Ryan and his wife Sarah, and his parents Joanne and Jim, own South Glanton Farms just north of Brandon, where they grow annual crops and raise a 300-head herd of Black Angus cattle in a forage-based grazing system.

Like on most Canadian farms, the Boyds are a family that have gone to school on what they have learned on their own property and much of the farm’s evolution has been in the same direction as overall industry trends.

The question is, should they have looked further afield? And it seemed there was only one way to be sure.

Ryan was “bitten by the soil health bug” early in life, he says, and has been a passionate advocate for regenerative agriculture approaches his entire farm career. The Boyds’ system grazes their animals together in large groups and moves them daily, much as the original herds of bison on the Canadian Prairies would roam in a natural ecosystem.

To Boyd, the results were clear. Wildlife, for instance, became abundant on their farm. And by rotating pasture and cash crops, they’ve also boosted soil health and biodiversity.

From a business perspective, diversification has lessened their external costs and lowered their market and weather risks, and their cattle have added value to the byproducts of their grain production.

It’s all because, after nearly two decades at it, Boyd had begun to ask if his way of thinking about things needed a refresh. He especially wanted to learn from others, who use such approaches, how they make the financials work.

“We’ve been moving down this generative track for quite a number of years, and the grazing thing is where my passion really is,” Boyd told Country Guide earlier this spring.

“But I’d been holed up on this farm, head down, working for getting on to 15 years since university was done,” he says. “I was in dire need of getting out and opening my eyes up again to the broader realisms of the world and agriculture in general.”

He was awarded a scholarship through the Canadian Nuffield Agriculture Scholarship Association in 2019, and seized the opportunity to expand his horizons and take his questions on the road.

As he’d later write in his Nuffield report: “The elephant in the room, or pasture, in this case, is how to make the numbers work. Obviously, if grazing ruminants allowed significant, comparable profit metrics to crop farming, the acres in perennial forage would not be declining.”

His newly published report, found on Nuffield Canada’s website and titled Grazing Ruminants: A Profitable Long-Term Solution to Agricultural Profitability, Productivity and Climate Change offers detailed descriptions of grazing systems on farms around the world, and the observations and recommendations of the farmers, grazing consultants and researchers he met.

Boyd’s travels took him to other farms in Canada, the United States, Mexico and Brazil as well as The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. He was able to compare the implementation of grazing systems operating in vastly different growing conditions, from tropical high rainfall environments to regions under drought, and under very different market and even political environments, too.

“That was probably one of the biggest eye-openers,” Boyd says. “It was a reminder to me as a farmer of what is possible in these contrasting environments.”

What quickly became obvious was that the managers of farms he visited have a very strong understanding of the economics of what they do, and manage accordingly, he writes in his report.

They know how to capitalize on marketing opportunities and shared a willingness to embrace the complexities of operating these integrated farms.

Bigger ideas

The Boyds have begun to emulate the practices of some of the farms he visited, including those he saw utilized by Florida-based cattle and grazing manager Jaime Elizondo. Elizondo deploys an ultra-high stock density method he calls “total grazing,” in which large numbers of cattle graze one area at a time, then are moved several times a day to new areas.

That method challenged his own ideas about just how much of a plant needs to be left afterward to regrow, Boyd says, explaining that Elizondo gives each intensely grazed area a long recovery period with remarkable regrowth results.

What Elizondo has been able to achieve are dramatically increased stocking rates — two to four times conventional — with animal densities of 500,000 pounds live-weight per acre or more.

Another outstanding grazing system he describes is that of fellow Nuffielder Andrew Fowler in Western Australia. The Fowler family use their cattle and sheep in their cropping system, grazing cash crops of canola and cereals in a vegetative state as well as crop residues. They attribute the consistent success they’ve had with their integrated system to shifting their land base over time from two-thirds pasture and one-third crop to two-thirds crop and one-third pasture — without sacrificing stocking rates, Boyd writes in his report. 

What especially impressed him about the Fowlers’ approach is that it’s basically an old-fashioned idea — albeit on a large scale at about 50,000 acres with huge herds of cattle and sheep — and they’ve had 20 consecutive years of profitability. 

“He attributed that to their diverse system,” Boyd says. “They’re using all the latest and greatest technology to grow their crops, but the marriage of those two, the livestock enterprises and the grain, makes for a very efficient system,” said Boyd. “It reminded me that sometimes there’s lots of things that we went away from that weren’t necessarily a bad idea, if one can manage that diversity.”

Bringing it back home

One of his key recommendations in his report related to making these kinds of systems work is optimally and actively managing and monitoring water availability, and ensuring water infiltration is maximized.

The main reason consistent margins with annual crop production have proved elusive on their own farm all these years, Boyd notes in his report, is due to the sporadic rainfall they experience, including prolonged periods when they get below-average precipitation.

On another farm in Australia he saw extensive measures deployed to store rainwater in ponds for later use in flood irrigation. If perennial grazing systems are going to complement and compete financially with the reduced water demand of annual cropping systems, he writes, then the water cycle will have to be managed much more efficiently.

The common denominator among those successfully integrating ruminants is their willingness to embrace the management complexities of these systems, he says.

As part of their own plan now, Boyd says they’ll continue to focus on developing a low-maintenance cow herd capable of grazing at ultra-high stock density. Importantly, they must identify specific animals that perform well under these total grazing conditions, because the right genetics is key to putting this system together.

They are in early stages launching their farm brand Boyd Beef brand, and developing markets, even as most of their production still moves through conventional supply chains right now.

As for the question he took with him during his Nuffield travels, his conclusion is “it’s not a clear winner” when it comes to being a financially competitive way to farm — at least not yet.

“I don’t think it will be as long as we have cheap fossil fuels at our disposal, and by that I mean cheap fertilizer and fuel, to make our systems function as efficiently as they do. I think until those costs go up, whether through policy or just supply and demand, I think cattle will remain simply a value-add,” he said.

“But I think really astute managers will be able to make a grazing system competitive. And if you average it all out over five or 10 years, I think it does come closer… especially when you consider there’s less need for machinery, and the lack of need for fertilizer if you’re managing the grazing correctly to get the nutrients recycling.”

The neighbours too

Of course, the Boyd farm will continue building relationships with surrounding grain farms to bring the benefits of grazing ruminants to their farms in a mutually beneficial arrangement, he writes in his report.

He includes a piece of the best advice he was ever given in his report, too:

“It does not matter how fast you go, but merely that you are going [in] the right direction.”

“I have seen this time and time again in my travels and on our own farm when trying to create a natural farming system mimicking nature,” he writes.“A realistic expectation for timeline of results needs to be allowed and one must be prepared for a steep learning curve.”

Is a Nuffield Scholarship right for you?

In 2019, Ryan Boyd got his pitch approved for a Nuffield Canada scholarship that has taken him around the world. Should you be knocking on their door too?

Country Guide: What are the lasting impacts of being part of the Nuffield Canada program?

Ryan Boyd: My first exposure to Nuffield was really reports and specific topics of study that other scholars had looked into and researched. They’ve been extremely valuable to how we farm and how it has impacted how people farm the world over.

But the real value of Nuffield is the network that you become a part of. You develop friendships and acquaintances from all over the place with a myriad of expertise which is invaluable, and that continues much longer than after the report has been published.

The biggest impact it’s had on me? It’s given me my confidence back, and made me realize some of my wild ideas on the farm maybe aren’t so wild. But it has also grounded these ideas with a little bit of realism, as to what I can expect to achieve and what I need to achieve for our farm.

It’s really put a lot of life back into our farm and energy and excitement, just knowing what’s out there and what’s possible. I’ve never been as excited to be in an agriculture business as I am now. 

Country Guide: It’s tricky for farm managers to carve out time away from the business. How did that work out for you?

Ryan Boyd: I was fortunate that my wife Sarah was fully supportive as were my parents. You certainly need to have your inner circles’ full support. We also have good hired help on the farm and they were able to step up and fill the void while I was gone.

That’s also one of the critical values of Nuffield. It forces you to remove yourself from the business.

One of the demands, at least prior to COVID, was to be on the road for a minimum of [a] six-week period. That requirement to be away forces you to think more like a manager than a worker and that, in itself, just forces you to get your ducks in a row to become that manager as opposed to the one with boots on the ground working every day.

That has a huge impact on the viability of the business and the potential for growth moving forward. I don’t have a ton of great advice for others, but I’d say if you like to travel and you have that curiosity that I think most farm folks do, go for it and see where it leads you. You don’t know what you don’t know and you don’t know what’s out there until you go and look. 

Country Guide: Your scholarship was sponsored by The Western Grains Research Foundation and you also had a lot of additional sponsorship support from businesses and organizations and people you know. How did all that come together?

Ryan Boyd: My father-in-law Bernie Whetter was a really big help. When I was first began telling him about the Nuffield opportunity he thought it was the greatest thing ever and was fully supportive from day one. And one of the things he wanted to do was help secure some sponsorship.

I’m not someone who likes to ask for money, but between Bernie and me, we just asked some local businesses and some of the local organizations I’ve been involved with. I was completely blown away with the support we received. It was extremely humbling for sure and certainly fruitful. I think it just speaks to the value of this program. If people haven’t heard of the Nuffield program, which many people haven’t, when you start telling them what it is and the opportunities that exist in it, people have no problem getting behind it and sponsoring it.

The post The big question appeared first on Country Guide.

One thing is absolutely clear, though. Agriculture and the agri-food sector have gotten back to to near normal operations, and they did so with astonishing speed after some early disruptions. 

Farming stands out in marked contrast to the chaos and downturn that hit other industries from manufacturing and hospitality to the transportation sector. 

Now it turns out British Columbia is a great case study.

A 2020 B.C. study shows agriculture is a stabilizing industry and a core component of the provincial economy, and it will continue to play a huge role as the province digs out from its pandemic-induced economic downturn. 

The B.C. Agriculture Council (BCAC) and Investment Agriculture Foundation of B.C. (IAF) had commissioned the study from MNP LLP to help develop a new vision for the sector.

To complete the report MNP hit the books, looking at GDP, tax revenues and employment, as well as provincial and local government priorities that agriculture can address, and the sector’s responsiveness to key public issues such as food security and economic recovery. 

For farmers, says BCAC president Stan Vander Waal, the upshot is a better understanding of their contribution to the economy.

The release of Study of the British Columbia Agriculture Sector, at the height of COVID’s devastating economic downturn, amplified the value of agriculture in both good times and bad. COVID, Vander Waal says, “really put the spotlight on this report and the reality of what agriculture can be… and is.”

With over 200 commodities, B.C. has one of the most diverse agricultural sectors in the country. It is Canada’s largest fruit-producing region, and ranks second for greenhouse vegetable production, and third for field-grown vegetables. It also has the second-largest floriculture and nursery industry, and the third-largest share of national receipts in supply-managed products. 

The province’s 17,528 farms generated an estimated $3.8 billion in farm cash receipts in 2019. But that’s just the beginning. Study of the British Columbia Agriculture Sector pegs its overall contribution to the B.C. economy that year at $8.5 billion. It supported 35,100 direct jobs and ag businesses also paid $950 million in taxes and made a net contribution of $3.9 billion to the provincial gross domestic product. 

The report also compares B.C.’s ag sector with other important west coast industries, showing that jobs in agriculture in 2019 were roughly equal to those created by construction of 18,000 new homes, equal to approximately 40 per cent of new home starts in B.C. It also points out that the number of jobs generated by the province’s farm and agri-processing sectors are three to four times higher than those within the provincial mining industry. 

The report also has a range of projected economic impacts through to 2030 in terms of real GDP and employment. Real GDP was projected to grow by up to 20 per cent while the change in direct employment was projected to grow by up to 15 per cent — if capacity constraints do not have a significant impact on production. 

B.C. has many enviable advantages, including its long and highly favourable growing season and access to international markets, but its lack of labour and limited arable land are two key weaknesses identified in the report. 

Although up to 15 per cent of B.C. land is suitable for farming, less than five per cent is considered suitable for growing crops and a scant one per cent is Class 1 farmland, which is always under pressure despite the provincial agricultural land reserve. 

And with many types of crops requiring hand harvesting the sector also struggles with unfulfilled labour needs and difficulties trying to attract and retain the skills it needs. 

The report cites the need to foster regional immigration, place new value on farming trades, and contribute to rural regions so more people will live where agricultural jobs are located. 

It also notes the sector is already contributing to employment and training opportunities across every region in the province.

Vander Waal says what really stands out from this report is that ag proved its mettle during this past year of extreme job losses and shuttered businesses.

Employment levels in agriculture fell by approximately two per cent in the second quarter of 2020, significantly less than the 14 per cent drop in overall provincial employment, the report notes. B.C.’s other sectors such as accommodation and foodservices were very hard hit, making the province the second-most affected labour market in Canada last year. 

The ag sector showed further capacity to lessen COVID-19’s negative effects as farmers carried on business as usual and continued to support local suppliers and service providers such as feed stores and repair shops, as well as other retail and industries in rural B.C. 

“(Agriculture) can play a major role in helping the province weather and recover from the pandemic-induced economic downturn due to both its inherent recession-resilience and its important role in fostering economic development in rural communities,” the report says. 

The report looks well beyond economic impact, examining how agriculture is already contributing to public priorities such as food security, employment and training, and environmental sustainability. 

With nearly 3,000 food processing companies producing over $10 billion in annual sales, B.C. is a leader in food processing, and the ag sector has led in food security, such as with school programs delivering locally grown fruit and vegetables to children. 

With disruptions in food-supply chains due to COVID-19, the B.C. government has also connected businesses and food producers with a network of local social service agencies to recover nutritious foods and deliver them to the hungry.

As all levels of government shift their focus from a COVID-19 emergency response to the task of supporting long-term economic recovery, a more in-depth look into sustainable local food systems could be among those priorities, the report says. Increasing awareness of buying local and having proper support in place for local food producers will not only provide employment opportunities but also help the province transition to a more resilient, environmentally sound economy, and it will also help farmers increase their capacity to adopt food processing and on-site packaging, the report says. 

As the B.C. ag sector adds value to local production with further processing, this also increases the sector’s contribution to GDP, employment and taxes. 

Agriculture will also help the province address environmental sustainability, including through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions, a top-of-mind priority of the province that agriculture is well positioned to add, says Vander Waal. 

The ag sector is already contributing to solutions in this area, through improved methods of soil conservation, establishment of agro-forestry systems, improved livestock manure management and planting of cover crops, the report notes. 

B.C.’s farmers are also positioned to help mitigate provincial emergencies through proper management of Crown land and natural resources, an area that’s gained in importance after the province’s unprecedented flood and wildfire seasons of 2017 and 2018.

This report lays out how the focus and priorities of B.C. as a whole align with what’s important to the farm sector, says Vander Waal. 

Overall, the report seeks to lay out how agriculture is part of the solution to many of the challenges facing the province, and not only in times of COVID-19 but long-term. It creates an opportunity for the sector to rebrand itself and create a new vision for agriculture in B.C. with new ideas.

“We’ve had an opportunity to put the focus back on food and to re-emphasize how important agriculture is through this study,” Vander Waal says. “Now we can work on some strategic thinking behind new ideas and a shift in perspective… We really felt this was an opportunity to highlight agriculture as a real solution in terms of the future for the province.” 

The post A better Canada appeared first on Country Guide.

In ag and food, new business ideas are bubbling up, and the drive is on for ways to lift them beyond the conceptual stage.

Plus, our dinnertime routines and expectations continue to evolve. Old markets are fading. New ones have their chance, both here and overseas.

But where is the door into this bright new future?

Maybe it’s Canada’s network of food development centres, where farmers and food insiders go to transform their market dreams into commercial projects. Are the centres up to job? Here’s a look at their past year. 

Exactly when the COVID-19 lockdown arrived, Winnipeg-based food entrepreneur James Battershill had his new consumer product all ready for in-store sampling and development. It’s called Bump Beef + Plant Blend, a mix of ground beef and textured pea protein, and Battershill was all set to hit “send” on his marketing plan. Then everything got put on hold. 

If you’ll forgive the pun, though, this proved to be just a bump in the road. Despite the lockdown, “Bump” did get launched. And then the good news began to roll in. 

Bump is a simple two-ingredient, 70/30 ground beef/plant protein blend. It’s aimed at consumers who want to eat a little less meat but not eliminate it entirely from their diet. And it turned out these consumers were eager to buy, pandemic or not.

And it also turned Battershill’s marketing plan was spot on, offering local deliveries throughout Winnipeg just in time for barbecue season. 

Battershill is best known among farmers in Manitoba as the former executive director with Keystone Agriculture Producers. It was during his stint with KAP that his thoughts first turned to creating Bump. He’d been paying attention to the messages that farm audiences were hearing about shifting Canadian food choices, and about how consumers are turning to diets built around environmental issues, and how they want to cut back on meat, although not necessarily cut it out. 

“I was going to an enormous number of conferences and events during my time at KAP where industry experts were highlighting the changes in consumer preferences and the emergence of new types of protein ingredients,” Battershill says, adding that he was also hearing about the implications of global dietary changes on agriculture, land and water use. 

Battershill was convinced, though, that few consumers would actually switch and become strict vegetarians, even as companies launched products to cater to this market. Instead, they’d become “flexitarians,” buying less meat but not eliminating it.

In short, they’d be a new market category that, according to his market research, wasn’t being well served. 

“We felt that there was a niche that we could effectively fill,” he says.

Battershill left his position with KAP in 2019 to pursue that opportunity. He initially sought the assistance of staff from the Prairie Research Kitchen, a 4,600-square-foot kitchen and food science lab housed within the Paterson GlobalFoods Institute at Red River College in downtown Winnipeg. 

Their team helped him with all aspects of product formulation and development. Then, from the provincially operated Food Development Centre at nearby Portage la Prairie, he got additional help from food scientists and technicians on product shelf life analysis, nutritional labelling and packaging.

All that support proved invaluable to getting Bump from concept to commercialization, says Battershill.

• Read more: 10 years of change in 10 months

“I had huge knowledge and skill gaps,” Battershill says. “We wouldn’t have been able to launch in anywhere near the time span without access to those services and supports.”

Bump had begun where most food innovations begin — in the home kitchen. It might have remained there, were it not for the work performed in these food centres, by food scientists and other technical people who help clients like Battershill navigate the gauntlet of technical hurdles, sensory evaluations, and process design in order to scale up production for a commercial product. 

Across the country

Every year the Saskatchewan Food Industry Development Centre also helps new clients create new food businesses from grains and pulse crops along with the berries, honey and animal products that so many Sask­atchewan producers raise and grow. 

A Willow Bunch, Sask. farm family became one of those clients a year ago. In 2020, owners of Dosch Organic Acres, a family farm since 1960, approached the centre with their idea and recipe to create a farm-grown snack food called Wheat Crunch Organic Snack.

The snack would add value to their farm’s production, and it would capture more of that value for the farm, says Darlene Dosch, the entrepreneurial third-generation daughter-in law of the family.

“We wanted to add value over what we grow, and build a business brand,” Dosch says. 

They’ve had an excellent launch of the product, which is now carried in 50 stores throughout the province, not to mention many other store locations in Western Canada including Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, Canadian Tire, Co-op grocery and gas bars, and various independent and specialty stores, and pharmacies. 

Unexpectedly, that’s the kind of year that unfolded for many food product innovators. 

When the lockdown hit, no one could predict what the impact might be on food development centre operations. Certainly no one anticipated what actually did happen, says Dan Prefontaine, president of Saskatchewan Food Industry Development Centre Inc. (i.e. the food centre).

The centre has operated in Saskatoon since 1997 and today is a not-for-profit, fee-for-service operation partially funded by provincial, federal and industry programs. More than 400 food and beverage entrepreneurs, like the Dosch family, have brought ideas through its doors and into the 55,000-square-foot dedicated food-processing facility, built to CFIA standards.

“We had a tiny bit of a lull,” Prefontaine says about last spring. “It didn’t last long. Then our business jumped dramatically. We actually ended up having one of the busiest years we’ve ever had. Our clients used our services actually more, and we had a lot of clients, both domestic and international, reaching out.”

The incubator facilities on site, where companies manufacture food products they’ve already scaled up, also went into high gear. Prefontaine attributes the uptick to the acceleration of longer-term trends, and entrepreneurial people seeing and capturing new opportunities from them. 

Major retailers have been seeking local suppliers for some time now as consumers want foods and food products grown, raised and processed closer to home, he says. 

“There has been a big shift in the last three or four years, and it really came to light during COVID,” he says. “For our processors it’s opened up a lot of opportunities. COVID created shortages in certain areas and so they turned to more local production to fill the gap. I think, in the long term, we’ve sort of opened up a different trend here, and that trend will be to continue to grow the regional food manufacturing market.”

Theirs, like other food development centres elsewhere in the country, provides expertise and know-how to help new food products get started. They’re equipped with every imaginable tool and piece of equipment required to bake, cook, liquify, freeze-dry or perform any other food processing procedure for the creation of safe, shelf-life stable, well-packaged products. 

The centres can also provide key support to new businesses to help with their start ups, while reducing their capital risk and taking the guesswork out of it. 

They offer experienced and trained staff that can help with every step, and facilities to use on a fee-for-service basis, so there’s no equipment to buy and install, says Prefontaine, who quips that the motto behind it all essentially is: If it doesn’t fly, you’ll fail fast and cheap.

Food development centres across the country are staffed with a vast range of expertise, including people like Saskatchewan Food Centre’s Sara Lui, manager of product development. She works with clients ranging from individuals with new businesses to multinational companies in order to develop innovative food products, do technical trouble-shooting, and navigate the complexities of food regulations and labelling. One of Lui’s teammates is Shannon Hood-Niefer, vice-president of innovation and technology with over 18 years experience in the food industry conducting research and development with various commodities in the agricultural sector. 

“When I first started in 1999 we were often looking at fallow deer, elk and the bison industry, with clients looking to take farmed game animals and convert to saleable products for consumers,” Prefontaine recalls. It was the trend, with a focus on speciality livestock. 

As time passed, product development turned to a wide range of other areas, sauces, condiments and snack foods, with a continuing demand by small business startups looking to add value to Saskatchewan commodity and specialty crops and livestock. Their range of services offered is broad — from product formulation to packaging to incubator suites — and their list of Saskatchewan-grown ingredients includes honey, bison and beef, mustard, quinoa, lentils, Haskap, eggs, to name but a few. 

The site works with nine of the top Fortune 500 companies as clients, plus multiple other food manufacturers globally with a primary focus on pulses for use in value-added food products. 

Many SMEs and new business startups seek out the services of the food centre. 

There’s something else that’s interesting too. Very high percentages of their clients have been female entrepreneurs, says Prefontaine, adding that this prompted them recently to develop programs specifically geared to the needs of female food food makers. 

“Probably 55 to 60 per cent of the businesses we deal with, especially the startups, are driven by women,” he says. 

“These are young entrepreneurial women looking to put more value into their farms.” 

Busy in 2020

Next door in Alberta, Ken Gossen, executive director of the Food Processing Development Centre in Leduc, says their staff have seen the same uptick in interest in product development. 

The centre has been in operation since the early 1980s and in an average year develops anywhere from 100 to 150 new products, says Gossen. Not every product will have a successful market launch, for various reasons, but 2020 saw a high number reach store shelves. 

In fact, Gossen can put a number on it. This past year, they saw 41 different types of food products hit store shelves. 

Again, that’s the kind of year it’s been. 

“It’s been interesting,” says Gossen. “With the pandemic, we did initially see a drop-off, or cancelling of bookings. But since that initial quarter things shifted. It’s because some people and some companies have looked at this as an opportunity to take the time now to innovate.”

Theirs is a 65,000-square-foot pilot plant and product development laboratory equipped with over $20 million in equipment to support food product innovation, development and commercialization in that province. 

Now, Gossen expects demand for their services to be even stronger as the economy begins to recover and foodservice kicks into high gear again. 

Farm Credit Canada projects that increases in disposable income and savings from 2020 will spur growth in food and beverage consumption once foodservices can safely open. Its 2021 Food and Beverage Report released this spring says, despite the challenges the pandemic created, most economic indicators for the food and beverage processing sector remain strong compared to other sectors of the Canadian economy. 

A FCC survey also shows that “Canadian” is a point of differentiation, and helps sell product. Plus, compared to pre-pandemic, 58 per cent of Canadians say they are more likely to buy Canadian-made or -grown food, 56 per cent are more likely to look for Canadian-made or -grown food when they buy groceries, and 50 per cent are more likely to think about how their food is grown.

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