The last thing I expected at the Growing Your Farm Profits workshop was to cry. Farmers don’t cry, right? This seminar after all was supposed to be all about profits and business, not about emotions, but when I risked a sideways look at my six-foot-tall business partner, he too was blinking back the waterworks.
Full-time, part-time and wannabe farmers were introducing themselves and sharing their stories about a particular year. Strangely, we all talked about change and pain. A recent widow. A rejected bank loan. A child in the hospital. A man suffering through back injury. Buying a new farm and having a drought year. A childhood sacrificed with farm work. The family farm lost.
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Connecting our human reality with our business decisions seemed to be the difficulty that we all shared.
We shared something else too. We were all asking what’s next, and we were looking for a sense of direction, especially if it was in the form of financial solutions. For many of us, this workshop was a place to start by asking ourselves questions and by analyzing our businesses.
The Growing Your Farm Profits workshops like the one I attended are also Ontario’s gateway to the Growing Forward grant money that can be used for things like hiring a financial adviser to assess your business or to run risk projections on new enterprises, get training or even pay for legal documentation.
This is just a small portion of the non-business risk management portion of the federal $1.3 billion Growing Forward program. What you can get funding for — and how much you can get — varies widely based on where you farm, something which is true of the business planning portion too.
Each province and territory determines the type of management and skills development training it will offer, and how it will be delivered. Ontario is the only place where the program isn’t being delivered through the ministry of agriculture.
In Ontario, the two-day workshops similar to the one I attended are led by teams hired by Ontario Soil and Crops Improvement Association, although the binder they use was produced by the Ontario
ag ministry. The leaders basically guide the farmers in their groups on how to evaluate their businesses strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats, and then show them how to make the results general enough on the forms to get grants.
At our workshop in October, my husband and I started in on the first task, tackling 159 questions from high to low priority. It’s really a kind way of pointing out the holes in our business’s goals, structure, financial management, human resources, marketing, production, succession and social responsibility.
A week later, we came back with the 159 questions answered, and we added up our results. Then we worked on a SWOT analysis and created an action plan. At a later date, one of the leaders will come out to our farm to approve our action plan.
An early benefit of the workshops, or from any of these programs, is that they allow you to open the doors that you may need to open in order to make progress. For example, you get a chance to talk about the value-added idea you had while combining last year. You move from wondering about it to thinking about it. Or you hand the booklet to your father as an opener to talk about succession. Or maybe your discussion about internal weaknesses lets you talk about hiring a bookkeeper with your wife.
The grant money is reimbursed after you spend it on a cost-share basis. How much is available differs in every province. For example, in Ontario you could get a grant for $2,400 (farmers to pay $100) to go toward hiring a farm financial planner to analyse your farm finances and then come back a year later and review developments.
Basically, the funding in Ontario is broken down into three categories — the financial assessment as above, an advanced business plan which helps cover costs such succession and new-venture planning, or skills development. With almost full funding for the assessment, we’re told that we should do this first and that it may also save on preliminary work in the other categories. That common-sense approach applies to most of the provinces.
Even so, there were frustrations too. Some of them came from the nature of the group itself. It was very diverse, from large commercial expanding operations, to start-up organic farms, to folks trying to work out how to dissolve their operation. (In Ontario, if you’re in financial difficulty and need help right away you can call OMAFRA before attending the Growing Your Farm Profits workshop.)
In some provinces the program requires a higher net income from farming to qualify for the grants. In Newfoundland and Labrador you need at least $15,000 gross income. In Saskatchewan you must have annual gross farm income of at least $35,000 or be farming for less than six years and have the potential to generate $35,000 in gross farm income over the next 36 months.
The trickiest part for us was matching the available grants first to our needs and then to our busy schedule. It’s no use hiring someone to assess a business decision if we haven’t gathered good information beforehand. It helps that you can apply now and use the money later, for the duration of the five-year Growing Forward program.
The time commitment isn’t stopping many people. There’s been significant growth in the program this year, says Mike Terpstra, program manager for the Ontario soil and crop group. In year one, they had over 1,200 workshop participants at 76 workshops, and he expects to have more this year.
That year-one participation resulted in 190 projects such as farm financial assessments, skills training, advanced business planning, and business plan implementation. Roughly $250,000 has been approved so far on more than 350 projects.
“We’ve allocated more than $900,000 for cost-share projects for year two of the program,” says Terpstra. “This is close to 50 per cent of our budget, so we still have money available for producers.”
The uptake in the rest of the provinces varies and all the rest are offered through their provincial ministry of agriculture. In Ontario, much of the demand is built around the need for succession help and the non-intimidating, all-encompassing approach of the workshops.
To the east, P.E.I. and Nova Scotia have a self-assessment program very similar to Ontario’s, but workshops are one day and they aren’t mandatory. They offer increased rates of funding in planning and financial assessment to those who have a signed action plan. Their skills program is a stand-alone program.
P.E.I. has had 177 farms go through the workshops since the program started in April 2009, and has nine more workshops scheduled this winter. According to the 2006 Census, P.E.I. has only 1,300 farmers grossing more than $10,000 annually so about 14 per cent of farms have participated in self-assessment.
“Feedback from clients has been very positive for all programs,” says Colleen Younie, P.E.I.’s farm business management officer. “In the first year and a half we have spent $1.093 million on business development programs.”
Island farmers are mostly using the money to improve their farm accounting, marketing and management skills. Over one-third of the applications in the planning part are for succession.
Like several of the other provinces, P.E.I. also has a cost-share funding to take farm-related training and skills development intended to support greater farm business viability, up to 50 per cent to a maximum of $3,000. A list of farm-related skills and training opportunities is available, as well as a mechanism for other training to be considered.
“Language training for farmers who export and for farmers who have immigrated has also been funded,” says Younie.
There have also been grants for developing value-added products and production management for new enterprises. As well, individual farm businesses or groups of farms are using the money to explore new and create business plans to test their ideas for start-ups.
In Alberta, the program is more aimed at hiring outside expertise to assess feasibility or opportunity, research markets and build business plans to adapt and meet changing market and consumer demands. The “Business Opportunity Grant” is focused on helping farmers and organizations make changes and covers 75 per cent of the cost of the service and the user pays the rest up to $30,000.
Since it’s only providing help with new endeavours, succession planning is not included. Only 52 farmers or soon-to- be farmers have accessed the business opportunity grants so far, says Jodi Murphy, who works for the new entrant portion of the Growing Forward Agri- Business Programs for Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development.
Most of the applicants are wanting to do business and marketing plans for new endeavours or new markets, including feasibility and market research studies to add something new to their business or develop a value-added product to sell on the farm.
In all the provinces you can access extension people to help you through the process. In the Prairie provinces, you can work through booklets and applications one-on-one with an extension person. Each province has a special name for these staff, i.e. in Alberta they’re called new venture coaches.
These specialists help applicants solidify plans for their business, determine the next steps and how the grant can help them get there. “We strongly encourage applicants to work with a new venture coach to complete their applications,” Murphy says. It’s a new set of eyes to look at the problem.
This one-on-one approach is also taken in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. In Saskatchewan, you go through the Taking Stock booklet with an extension person to identify your business strengths and weaknesses and to identify the programs and services that can be accessed. Here it’s called the Business Growth and Development Funding and it supports services including financial management, succession planning and risk assessment. Up to $4,000 is available for private sector business services or farm-related education and training programs. Again, the farmer covers a minimum of 25 per cent of the consulting or training costs.
In Manitoba, if the applicant qualifies, a farm business specialist will help create a project plan. Together you select an appropriate, qualified business consultant and will be reimbursed part of the cost of the consultations.
Applicants are required to contribute $200 to participate in the program. Eligible costs include consultation fees of up to $500 per day (for up to five days) to a maximum of $2,300 per applicant.
While specifics differ among the provinces, there is an important point in common. March 2013 is the end of the Growing Forward program in all provinces.
If you apply now you can access the funds for the duration of the program. If your time is limited you might want to fill out the forms now and then use them at your convenience.
Which reminds me that I had better get on it, right after I finish an interview, do chores, drive a kid to a hockey game and finish the bookkeeping for this month.CG
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How you qualify and what you can get funding for — as well as how much you can get — varies widely based on where you farm
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It’s an interprovincial hodgepodge. alberta funds only new ventures. Saskatchewan has a one-on-one approach, and Ontario has gone to the classroom
