Growing up the daughter of a barber, every now and again Bette Jean Crews would hear the phrase “just a farmer.” When she married a grower and became a farmer herself, she understood just how misguided that phrase was. After 40 years of helping run an 800-acre family farm in the Trenton area of Ontario, Crews has come to appreciate the abilities of farmers and the complexity of the industry.
Farmers were multi-disciplinary centuries before the word was invented. Now, they must add whole new layers of meaning to the term.
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“The demand is only going to get greater,” Crews says.
Just look at business management, agrees Don Connick, who operates a mixed farm south of Gull Lake, Sask.
Connick rattles off a list of reasons: “Input prices keep going up, land prices are in for some serious escalation, and then there’s the management of credit and dealing with financial institutions.”
The pressures on a whole range of business skills will be intense, Connick predicts. “Short- and long-term planning, goal setting and the organizational skills to try to bring these plans and goals into place will be important.”
Knowing how to market will also be key, but so will knowing how to fit both marketing and production into a broader business picture, says Stephen Vandervalk, a fourth-generation farmer from Fort Macleod, Alta. For instance, Vandervalk knows how addictive it can be to be always chasing higher yields and higher field efficiency. But if that last five per cent of production means you might lose 20 or 25 five per cent on the marketing side, it won’t be sustainable.
“With the wheat monopoly going, you’re going to see all the durum, malt barley and spring wheat as cash crops,” Vandervalk says, pointing out farmers will be need to skillfully adjust their marketing plans to fit the right mix of the right cereals in with their sales of canola and special crops for the good of the overall operation.
Connick agrees. “The learning curve is going to be pretty steep.”
Crews says marketing has changed significantly from when she first joined the farm, when she had little option but to sell her apples to packers for less than she wanted. These days, the choices afforded growers are far greater.
“Farmers more and more are finding their own markets, and doing more research into niche and specialty markets,” Crews says, noting grain farmers are discovering alternatives as well, such as selling directly to ethanol plants or oilseed processors. “Those opportunities I think farmers need to be aware of, and have the background and the knowledge to investigate the best business decision for their farm.”
Marketing skills to understand futures markets and financial skills to hedge the Canadian dollar are other skills farmers will need, Crews says. Such skills are already widely used by larger farmers, but Crews points out that her son, who has come into the family farm that includes up to 400 acres of grain, is looking at those markets more than she or her husband ever did.
“That’s going to be definitely a mandatory requirement,” Crews says.
“It’s going to be more and more important in the future,” Connick adds. “That’s going to have to be a skill that’s either developed by the individual or hired out to someone you trust to make these decisions for you. And that sort of expertise will not come cheap.”
Ultimately, Vandervalk believes one of the most important traits a farmer can and will need to have in the years ahead is the ability to thrive in a world that demands risk taking.
He points to his own region. “I can think of a time when people thought $50 an acre was ridiculous to pay for rent and anyone was crazy who did that. But those people who went ahead and stepped up did very well,” says Vandervalk, who grows red and white spring wheat, durum, canola, mustard, peas, barley and timothy with his father and brother. “Now, rents are $60 to $65 and you only wish you could rent for $50.”
Information in hand
It isn’t just what you learn. It’s how
Today, being able to keep up to date with developments in government programs, technology and markets is just what you do as a farmer. Tomorrow, that ability to keep on the cutting edge will be a prized skill of its own.
It will also expand. There will be new demands, including traceability and food safety, and new government regulations and new red tape.
“We’re getting into a lot of record-keeping, identity preservation, phytosanitary rules, health rules with animals,” says Connick. “This is probably something that’s going to grow in the future and we will have to deal with it.”
It will be a challenge to find the time to keep track of what’s happening off the farm while still running the operation. In part, that means even more pressure on the human resources front, with farmers having to create clear roles for every individual in the operation so the farmers can spend their time managing, not doing.
“Some of the tasks that we do now may have to give way to keeping on top of the information end of it,” Connick says.
In addition to better time management, staying current with pertinent news will require more than just waiting for a newsletter to arrive at your doorstep. Farmers will need to go out and get that information, and the best way will be to utilize new technology to find the answers they’ll need, according to Wayne Black.
“It’s not as simple as just picking up the phone and calling your local retailer, because your local retailer is going to probably do the same thing a lot of farmers do now — get onto Google and search for their answers,” says Black, who farms in Ontario’s Huron County.
Besides farm news websites, blogs and social media like Twitter and Facebook can provide an efficient route for keeping in touch, locally and abroad.
“We’re sharing information about production techniques with farmers in the U.S. and talking about concerns with crop prices or crop production with farmers across North America. It’s not just within our county and province any more,” says Black. “Since last year, I’ve noticed a lot of farmers in Ontario really picking up this Twitter tool for social media… they’re able to access research data much faster and apply it to their farms, and researchers can access the data much faster from what’s happening on the farm.”
Twitter is also changing the way some farmers interact with one another. Chatting while in line at the elevator or at the coffee shop is giving way to exchanging ideas online, and with the mobility offered by Smartphones, farmers no longer need to be tied to their desktop to get online, and can communicate from wherever they happen to be.
“I use Twitter instead of going to the coffee shop. And with today’s technology in agriculture, there’s other farmers that can use Twitter as if they’re at the coffee shop while they’re in their fields. It’s giving farmers a whole new social avenue without having to leave the farm,” says Black.
Uninitiated farmers should understand technology is much more user friendly than it ever was and likely will become simpler to use as time goes on.
“The best way to learn it is through trial and error. You will make mistakes, but the more you use it and the more you practise with it, the better at it you’re going to get,” he says.
Still, if farmers are too leery about being on the Internet or using social media, they could alternatively cope by having their local sales or service rep drop in on them or phone them with developing information. What they glean could help keep them in the game, as Black believes it’s this kind of technology that could help break the production ceiling that’s been reached.
“As we make this information more accessible to the producer and researchers, we should be able to trend above our existing production plateau to feed that nine billion by 2050,” says Black. “If it comes to that, where we are able to improve our production capabilities through the Internet and social media by more timely information for our own individual production — be it cows, pigs, crops, what have you — the people that don’t adapt to that are going to be left behind.”
Since running a farm will require ever more business acumen and technical knowledge, many believe a post-secondary education is a must-have for the next generation of farmers.
It isn’t that you can’t learn how to farm from your parents. It’s that school takes you away from the day-to-day, so you can focus on how all aspects of farming must integrate together.
In fact, more farmers believe that to get that ability to see the bigger picture, you don’t actually need an agriculture degree. A degree of almost any kind will help.
Besides, leaving the farm and going away to school can help young people decide whether they really do want to go back to the farm.
“I personally feel if you’re going to run your own farm, to go and get an education because you get connections, meet people and get different life perspectives,” says Stephen Vandervalk, who tried his hand in engineering, management, geology and economics before returning to the farm in Alberta.
But Vandervalk feels the farmers of the future needn’t automatically choose an ag degree, especially since more input suppliers and ag companies provide farm-learning opportunities.
“I’ve had more education from companies than I know what to do with,” Vandervalk says, but concedes: “Going to ag school would be better than just staying on the farm.”
Ontario apple grower Bette Jean Crews also advocates post-secondary education. She took business courses and her husband went to an ag college. Crews knows farming is a complicated business and believes an ongoing education can help in developing best management practices.
“It’s important in lots of ways in that it develops skill sets, contacts, and an appetite for learning,” says Don Connick, who earned a Bachelor of Agriculture from the University of Saskatchewan.
Although Connick has found his university degree valuable, he doesn’t want to discount those who have the innate ability and intelligence to be able to learn needed skills outside of a formal post-secondary setting.
But it can certainly go a long way to meeting the growing requirements of an already demanding industry.
“You need a lot of skills to succeed at farming,” says Michele Rogalsky, director of the University of Manitoba’s School of Agriculture.
The school offers a two-year Ag Diploma program, and has been preparing individuals to manage farms for just over a century. While practices of production and business vary and change, farming principles remain the same, she says.
The course work is heavy as it tries to cover whatever a student may need in the years ahead. The curriculum covers crop and livestock production and management, as well as courses in economics, marketing, and business management. Studies also include mechanics, and students are exposed to emerging equipment technologies.
Issues of world markets, and regulations concerning issues like ecological sustainability, animal welfare and water run-off are addressed as well, and students have course options related to bio systems engineering, water management and precision agriculture. The program also has a focus on written and oral communication.
“We really try to stress that throughout the curriculum, they need critical thinking and communication skills; you need that to farm and you need that to manage,” says Rogalsky.
Connick agrees. He says that as farms grow larger, there will be greater demand for hired labour, and right now, the availability is limited. And with the scarcity of employees, hanging onto good staff will be essential.
“If you want to be successful in this business and successful with hiring labour or even hiring custom operators, human relations and communication skills are going to be something we’ll need and have to learn,” Connick says. “Recruitment is tough but once you get a good person in place, you want to retain them. And it’s difficult.”
The students are also required to complete a comprehensive management planning project. Working with the students on their two-year project are five farm management instructors, who also happen to be practising producers. The undertaking might task students from family farms to assess and analyze the production and financial records for those farms. Later, they’ll don their manager’s hats in order to budget and assess alternatives as if they were in charge.
Financial projections, budget scenarios, and risk analysis will all be included in putting together a comprehensive production plan and financial statements. And after all that, students must defend and support their decision-making to a panel, which could include bankers, ag lenders, farmers and professors.
“They can be grilled on any question — the rations for the livestock, breeding programs, weed control programs, and issues regarding ag sustainability,” Rogalsky says. “It’s a rigorous program. After the two years, they come out with a very well rounded education.” CG
