Faced with higher living costs and changing lifestyles, consumers are eating out less, cooking more at home, replacing meals with snacks and putting a sharper focus on value and nutrition.

And for Canada’s farmers and agri-food sector, the changes bring both risks and opportunity.

Canada’s restaurant and food service sector is a $124-billion industry, which sources approximately 68 per cent of its food and beverage from domestic suppliers. When restaurant traffic slows, the impact is felt throughout the supply chain.

At the same time, experts say that evolving consumer habits are creating new demand for the products, production methods and innovation that the Canadian agri-food industry is uniquely positioned to offer.

Current trends

The most immediate change is happening in restaurants.

According to a recent report, three quarters of Canadians are eating out less often. The primary reason for this is economics, says Sara Hamdy, research analyst with Restaurants Canada.

“More than 40 per cent of Canadians just can’t afford to dine out month to month as much as they’d like to,” she says.

According to the same report, even higher-income households are cutting back.

“Canadians who are dining out once a week or more are shifting to … maybe two or three times a month rather than four times or more,” says Hamdy.

At the same time, restaurant operators are facing their own cost pressures, with food costs cited as a top concern for the year ahead, Hamdy says.

Another emerging trend for Canadian consumers is a rise in snacking. About 65 per cent of Canadians report replacing full meals with snacks at least once a month, according to the Restaurants Canada report — a trend driven by both rising food costs and busier lifestyles, says Hamdy.

“This is a trend that we noted in a way that Canadians are adjusting to the increase of cost. They’re just not able to afford a full meal anymore, so they’re cutting back into snacks.”

Younger consumers in particular are gravitating toward portable, lower-cost options that fit a “grab-and-go” routine, she says.

But these changing eating patterns have not affected consumers’ desire for value, which dominates Canadian food choices today, says Ashley Kanary, director of Global Agri-Food at Export Development Canada.

After the pandemic, many consumers returned to simpler eating habits and became more conscious of prices, he says.

“When people looked at ways to save money, food was one of the first things that came out pretty hot.”

However, at the same time, consumers didn’t want to cut back on quality or health, he says.

These factors combined helped fuel strong growth for private-label grocery products, which now rival or outperform national brands in quality while offering savings of 15-20 per cent.

“When I look at those trends, that has not slowed down at all,” Kanary says. “If anything, globally, private-label products are outpacing all branded product growth, no matter where you go.”

But value shopping also doesn’t mean consumers have stopped treating themselves, he says.

“Even as people tighten their budgets, the indulgence factor is still there. In private label, everybody’s raised their game, and those products are as good, or even sometimes better than the national brand themselves. People are saying: ‘If I can get something that tastes better for 20 per cent less, I’m absolutely okay with that.’”

Beyond affordability, nutrition trends also continue to shape consumer behaviour, he says, with one of the strongest long-term shifts favouring higher-protein foods.

The challenge now, he says, is raising the taste profile in high- and added-protein products. “The desire … is to get things to taste great,” Kanary says. “People have always struggled getting around the added taste and or bitterness that protein-added causes.”

One final trend with long-term implications is sustainability, Kanary says.

Retailers and food companies are increasingly expecting suppliers to meet environmental standards, from emissions reductions to compostable packaging, but without charging more for the associated products.

“Sustainability expectations are rising, but consumers aren’t willing to pay a premium for it,” he says.

“They’re actually saying: ‘I want you to become sustainable and don’t charge me extra for that. We just need you to get better and raise your game.’”

Canada’s advantages

Despite the constraints these evolving eating habits cause for food supplies and producers, Canada is well positioned to meet many evolving consumer expectations for food, specifically around protein, sustainability, value and convenience.

“We feel that protein overall is where it’s at and Canada has amazing strengths in protein,” Kanary says, mentioning Canada’s pulse, poultry, seafood and beef industry as examples of high-quality protein sources.

He also believes Canada could have a competitive advantage in terms of rising sustainability expectations — provided companies can deliver results without higher costs.

“There’s an opportunity for Canadian companies to be leaders in sustainability on a global scale and I believe Canada is really strong in this area,” he says. “The key is to keep that momentum going, but not at any cost.”

Changing eating habits are also driving demand for portable, convenient options that still deliver quality and nutrition, another area where Canada is gaining ground as our food manufacturing sector expands its role in value-added products.

Food and beverage processing is now Canada’s largest manufacturing industry, with shipments topping $156 billion in 2023, according to Statistics Canada. Much of that growth is coming from ready-to-eat and snack categories, while Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada reports rising exports of consumer-oriented products such as processed foods. This points to growing opportunity for Canada to capture more value beyond the farm gate while supplying the convenient, high-value foods today’s consumers want.

Going forward

Some of the current eating trends for Canadians — fewer restaurant visits and more snacking — may ease as household budgets recover.

But several underlying shifts appear more durable, including greater price sensitivity, demand for convenience and flexibility, stronger interest in protein and functional foods, and rising sustainability expectations.

For Canadian farmers and processors, the key takeaway is that demand is not shrinking, but it is changing. Growth opportunities are increasingly tied to value-added processing, efficient production. and the ability to supply ingredients that fit portable, affordable and nutritious food formats.

At the same time, Canada’s strengths in high-quality protein production, strong environmental performance and an expanding food manufacturing sector position the industry to compete in both domestic and export markets.

The pressure, however, will be on cost competitiveness. Consumers and retailers are expecting better performance on price, quality and sustainability at the same time, putting greater emphasis on efficiency and innovation throughout the supply chain.

The direction of demand may be shifting, but the long-term outlook for Canadian agriculture remains strong. The farms and agri-food businesses that succeed will be those that focus not only on production, but on understanding how and where their products fit into a food system that is becoming more value-driven, more convenience-focused and more closely tied to consumer expectations.

The post The changing landscape of Canadian food demand appeared first on Country Guide.

What Is Optional Inventory Adjustment?

Many farmers using the cash method of accounting do not include unsold grain or livestock inventory in their income at year end. Despite this, the CRA allows producers to elect to include some, or all, of that inventory’s fair market value in their income using OIA.

OIA works in two-year periods:

• Year 1: You add the elected OIA amount to your taxable income.
• Year 2: You deduct that same amount from income, even if you have not sold the inventory yet.

OIA doesn’t eliminate taxes. It simply shifts income from one year to another, giving farmers more control over when their income is taxed and the rates they are taxed at.

Why farmers use OIA

Farmers use OIAto take advantage of low-income years. Some years are tight. Maybe markets drop, yields fall or weather works against you. In these slow years, farmers often do not fully use the lowest tax brackets.

By claiming an OIA, you can add income while still staying in the lowest tax rates, meaning you pay tax at a cheaper rate than you would in a stronger year. It’s a strategic move: pay a little tax now, save a lot later.

OIA versus Mandatory Inventory Adjustment (MIA)

It is important to separate OIA from Mandatory Inventory Adjustment (MIA).

For farmers using the cash-method of accounting, MIA applies automatically when a farm loss is reported and purchased inventory is still on hand at year-end. The adjustment applies only to inventory that was purchased, not to grain or livestock that was raised or produced by the farm. In this situation, income must be increased up to the amount of the loss and the adjustment is deducted from income in the following year.

Simply put: OIA is voluntary. MIA is required, but only when a loss exists and purchased inventory remains on hand.

Incorporated farms and the small business deduction

For incorporated farms, managing taxable income becomes especially important. The small business deduction applies to the first $500,000 of active business and is taxed at a much lower tax rate, resulting in a reduced overall year-end tax burden.

Using OIA can help to spread income more evenly between years, reducing the risk that a single strong year results in higher than anticipated taxes. This can help a farm maintain access to the small business deduction and improve flexibility for future tax planning.

Final thoughts

Optional Inventory Adjustment is a CRA‑approved, farmer‑focused tool designed for the reality of unpredictable farm income. When proper tax planning takes place, it helps to:

• Manage income between years
• Take advantage of certain tax credits
• Support long‑term financial stability
• Increase flexibility during volatile markets

For many Canadian farmers, OIA is one of the simplest ways to build resilience into their tax planning without changing how the farm operates.

If you have any questions about OIA or need further clarification, don’t hesitate to contact your trusted tax advisor for guidance.

Doug Hewko is a chartered accountant and partner at KPMG in Lethbridge. Contact: dhewko@kpmg.ca. He would like to thank Yvonne Leineke and Braeden Petro of KPMG for their assistance with writing this article.

The post Managing highs and lows: How optional inventory adjustments fit into farm strategy appeared first on Country Guide.

So, just months before COVID-19 hit, they launched De Boers Market, which sells beef, chicken and an assortment of fresh produce in the summer months.

The sisters know that they don’t have it all figured out. But they do know that like the farm, their business partnership is always going to be a work in progress. And like the farm, it takes conscious effort, willingness and dedication to maintain a farm family partnership that’s not only a win for the people in it but for the business and the generations to come.

All together

I was curious to find out what underlies their partnership, the processes they’ve implemented to ensure it flourishes, the pros and cons, the dos and don’ts. How do they navigate rough patches and awkward conversations? What does a successful partnership look like for them?

Tellingly, Kori cradled her four-month-old son throughout the entire interview. I say “tellingly” because both Casie and Kori juggle young children, a dairy farm and a new on-farm market. So, if the partnership dynamics and parameters aren’t tight, they realize that things could fall apart quickly.

Until the summer of 2019, the primary business was the dairy farm made up of Kori, Casie and their dad. (Their mom used to be a big part of the farm as well, but she passed away in 2011.) Both their husbands are also involved when they’re not at their other jobs.

“My husband, Jason, is a butcher by trade so he’s an integral part of the market operation,” says Kori.

“And my husband, Tom, is a mechanic, so we’ve pretty much got all the bases covered,” Casie jokes.

They didn’t just luck out on complementary-to-the-farm careers with their husbands. Luck was also on their side when it came to the new business. Unlike thousands of other businesses at the start of the pandemic, the timing of their launch was right. “By early 2020, about six months after we opened, no one could go to — and then no one wanted to go to — a grocery store anymore,” says Kori. “By that point, we already had regular customers. During the early part of COVID, we literally put their orders outside the door in a cooler for pickup. It gave us a really good push at the start.”

Initially they ran the market out of the old renovated milkhouse, but just before Christmas 2023, they opened their new store. “This year has completely exceeded our expectations,” says Kori.

“It’s overwhelming, but we tell everyone that it’s pleasantly overwhelming,” quips Casie.

Four summer students worked for them this past season and one has stayed on part-time to help after school.

So, it looks like all the external, technical boxes are checked off. But what about the internal, untechnical stuff like everyday, personal business relationships — the ingredient that can make or break a business?

Finding their groove

The north star that guides their partnership may seem at first a pessimistic approach, but the sisters are realists.

“It sounds bad, but we plan around failure,” says Casie. “Don’t always assume that everything is going to be fantastic, all sunshine and roses. People shouldn’t cut corners in a partnership. Make sure that everything is laid out and set in stone because you don’t want to get into a situation where something comes up — not necessarily that you get in a fight — but there are other reasons that it can fail. You want to have a solid foundation that will help you handle that well without putting the other person out of business or without everything completely crumbling.”

Because, unfortunately, a failed partnership isn’t just a failure for one person. It means a failure for everyone involved in the partnership, including, possibly, those in relationships with the partners.

Does this start-with-the-end-in-mind approach offer a more comprehensive view of partnerships — a proactive “hindsight is 20/20” perspective? And is this a more common approach with today’s generation? Kori and Casie think it is.

“Many people our age have seen partnerships with older generations where, unfortunately, things weren’t laid out properly. Seeing the downside of things makes you think a little more when it comes to you being in a similar situation,” says Casie.

Kori says that it’s crucial to have a comprehensive partnership agreement in place. “I think the most important things about a partnership are communication and documentation. Verbal agreements are great until there’s an issue or a conflict. If stuff is not written down properly then you end up with more problems.”

When it comes to communication, the sisters always aim to improve. “Something we’re trying — and I admit that we’re trying to get better at — is having meetings,” says Kori. “Sometimes they’re formal quarterly meetings and sometimes informal weekly meetings. I mean, we talk every morning about what needs to get done each day and we both have our to-do lists, but I think having frequent formal meetings would be beneficial. It’s a chance to be transparent and discuss goals, wants and requirements. Meetings help us prioritize those wants and needs rather than someone buying something and later saying, ‘Oh hey, I spent $5,000 on this. Hope you’re okay with that.’”

And what about those awkward moments when the siblings need to discuss something bad?

The sisters exchange grins and Casie says, “We’re siblings so we’ve spent our lives figuring out each other’s communication styles. For example, I like to argue it out and then come back in a couple hours with a better hold on the issue or some ideas on how to solve the problem at hand.”

Casie continues, “I know when to just give Kori a minute and just drop it and we’ll pick it back up in a couple hours. Five years ago, we didn’t get along as well as we do now, but experience over time and learning and growing up has helped us figure it out.”

“I think you have to grow together,” agrees Kori. “You have to be strong enough to get through the hard times and learn that things can be better and figure out how to make things work. Because right off the bat, at the beginning of the partnership, things probably aren’t so smooth because it’s like a ‘getting to know you’ phase.”

Good communication was a theme the sisters returned to several times throughout the interview. “It’s a boring answer and it sounds cliché, but communication is the one key thing that underlies a healthy partnership,” stresses Kori.

Related to good communication is respect. “We’ve found that what works best is being mindful of and deferring to people’s areas of expertise,” says Kori. “For example, in the cut room, it’s obviously Jason who’s the boss there. Animal welfare is more my area of expertise and Casie went to school for engineering so machinery and fixing the robot milker is more hers.”

“I think there were a lot more arguments before we had our children because we were working together all the time so then everyone thought that they were in charge of everything,” Kori says. “Now little things aren’t as big of an issue anymore because we have our own responsibilities or parts of the business that we’re in charge of.”

Kori says finding out who is more fitted technically or personality-wise to a role or responsibility has been part trial and error, but also an unexpected beneficial outcome of their growing families. “When we started having children a lot of the jobs got shifted around. For example, when I had my first child Casie took responsibility for the baby calves and my husband took some time off from his job to help on the farm, which morphed into him taking over breeding. When babies started coming into the picture, we had to figure out how to split up the workload because we’d be down a person for a while. Basically, those years helped us find our niches.”

Where pros and cons overlap

The types of farm conversations that drive a business forward hinge on “what ifs.”

What if we tried this? What if we replaced that? But what happens when there are several competing ideas? How do you narrow down which one(s) to try?

Kori and Casie believe that these idea conversations lead to an interesting Venn diagram intersection where the pros and risks of a partnership meet.

“It’s ironic but having so many ideas and different opinions is definitely a pro for us, especially for the butcher shop,” says Casie. “Jason’s a butcher, but he was never on the retail side, so it’s all new to us. We’re learning as we go and it’s been a benefit to have other people to bounce ideas off. At the same time, you’ve got to be careful because, if not handled properly, too many people with too many differing ideas can make things tough.”

Kori says good practice is everyone taking a step back to think over ideas. “Don’t argue when you’re fired up. Sleep on it, then come back to a new discussion tomorrow.”

Another atypical pro-risk intersection for them has been balancing starting and growing a business and family at the same time.

Kori says the mingling of family and partnership was one of the first things they wrote down on their pro list when preparing for this interview. “Having a partnership allows us time off with our kids while the business keeps going,” she says. While the new storefront means more work for the moment, the upside is that they’re all together at the store as a family most Saturdays. She and Casie alternate weekend milkings and they try to each take a week off in the summer to get away.

“On non-partnership farms, or if it’s just a couple, you never get away unless you can find someone to do chores for you,” Kori says. “While we can’t go on vacation together, our partnership means that we at least get to take some time off individually with our kids and husbands. Even if it’s as simple as just having a Sunday off, it’s nice to get that little bit of a break.”

The post Ontario sisters strike farm business partnership appeared first on Country Guide.

For the non-farming public, it’s an opportunity to get out of the city and learn about where their food comes from.

A number of ventures fall under the agri-tourism umbrella. Farm markets, farm tours, accommodations, horseback riding or other forms of recreation are just a few examples.

They all take a lot more than just letting strangers onto the farm for some sightseeing, though. Agri-tourism means you have to actively welcome them. You have to engage with them, you have to make their day memorable.

• RELATED: An invitation for more guests and And even more on the way

It’s all, as the saying goes, a mouthful, and it can’t happen without clear goals and the planning needed to achieve them.

But don’t be too quick to say it would never work for you.

The demand for agri-tourism is strong, says Rebecca Mackenzie, president and CEO of the Culinary Tourism Alliance, a not-for-profit organization that aims to grow culinary and agri-tourism offerings.

Consumer research shows more Canadians want opportunities to immerse themselves in the places they go. They love tasting local foods and learning how they are grown and used.

Then, if it’s done right, Mackenzie says, visitors become ambassadors for your product. It will keep them coming back and telling others about your farm. “The potential for ‘Taste of Place’ is huge,” she says.

The Davis family, northwest of Toronto at Caledon East, first diversified their farm operation 35 years ago by building a feed and farm supply store. This was to prove only the first of the family’s many forays into retail, value-adding and agri-tourism, however, and Sean Davis is now the third generation to make it his growth strategy.

Getting started did take courage, Davis knows. His father had been working off-farm until the job was relocated to another area, which is when he chose to open the feed supply store on the farm instead of moving with the company.

“The store allowed my dad to have a career on the farm,” Davis sums up.

It also encouraged the family to continuously innovate, and the store has evolved many times as a result. Just after the millennium, for instance, the Davis family began growing sunflowers as a commodity so they could sell birdseed in the store along with the oats that they were already growing for horses.

Then, 15 years ago, when Sean and his wife Amy joined the farm operation, a garden centre was added to the farm operation. In addition to eggs, sunflower oil and sunflower honey, they also began selling potted chrysanthemums, Christmas trees and pumpkins.

Then, in a bolder step, they ventured into agri-tourism eight years ago by opening up their sunflower fields to the public.

The Davis family had learned how much interest their sunflower fields could attract almost by accident. Davis had reported a wild boar on the farm and a local news camera crew drove out. When they saw the acres of sunflowers, which had already finished blooming, the crew instantly asked if they could return the next summer.

The result wasn’t exactly a feature film. Instead, it logged in as a quick 30-second clip of the sunflower fields. But it aired on TV and it made enough impact that a tour bus stopped by the very next day, launching the Davis family into agri-tourism.

Each year the agri-tourism operation grows. Five years ago, the family created a two-week Sunflower Festival and Davis says that they try to add something new each year.

So far, that includes live music, family photo sessions, wagon rides, yoga nights, paint nights, refreshments, a mini-golf course, petting zoo and a market featuring local vendors. Cars, trucks and a pink couch are situated amongst the sunflowers as a backdrop for photo ops.

“Year by year we’ve built the experience for visitors. It’s about making it fun for families,” Davis says.

For 2024, visitors were welcome 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. from July 27 to August 18.

Ticket sales started July 1, with 2024 prices at $13.50 for visitors aged 12 and up and $5 for children aged 6 to 12. Those under 6 were free, but still needed a ticket.

The farm operation is a family affair with Davis and his wife, Amy, his parents, his aunt and now his children, aged nine and eleven, getting involved. He says his children love sunflower time.

The Sunflower Festival also brings Davis’s two brothers (including one who lives in Romania) back to the farm to help out, and the festival creates jobs for 20 local teenagers.

When asked what it takes to be successful with agri-tourism, Davis was quick to respond: “You gotta love, love, love people.”

He says he enjoys meeting and chatting with visitors who come from diverse backgrounds. “Some come from farms and some have never been to a farm before,” he says.

Davis admits there are sacrifices too. Sharing the property with the public has meant creating boundaries around their personal space (one year they found a family picnicking on their back deck).They have also had people show up after the festival was over so they make a point of emphasizing the closing date in their advertisements.

The time commitment is also becoming more challenging as his children get older and play more organized sports, says Davis. This year he has decided not to sell Christmas trees due to the conflict with hockey at that time of the year.

Davis used to crush sunflowers to make oil but found he couldn’t keep up with the amount of work. He has since found a neighbouring farmer who has taken on the pressing.

It also takes a lot of planning, Davis adds. As soon as the first of January rolls around, the planning and thinking about what new things they will try kicks into gear. “You have to set it up right for things to go smoothly,” he says.

Timing the planting of the sunflowers is also critical. The fields have to be planted 67 days before the start of the festival to ensure the sunflowers are in bloom at the right time. He also staggers the planting in order to extend the festival so it can run from the end of July to mid-August.

Finding enough good staff to help out during the festival is another challenge, he says.

Davis says they are fortunate that the municipality is supportive. In his experience, the insurance company is also supportive once he shows them how he will ensure that activities are safe.

Although other sunflower farms have opened up since Davis began, he’s not worried about the competition. “We’re as busy as we want to be,” he says.

The farm’s proximity to the Greater Toronto Area also helps, and adding new activities every year keeps it fresh (in 2024 they added a haunted house).

But nothing happens without planning and execution, or without technology.

“Social media plays a humungous part in the tourism business,” says Davis.

Luckily, he studied computer science at university and is finding this helpful for managing the farm’s social media accounts, but success has also taken a string of business, economics and entrepreneurship courses.

The opportunity is huge, but so is the personal investment, says Davis.“You’ve got to be on top of that stuff and advertising yourself out there.”

Is agri-tourism right for you?

Questions to consider before venturing down the agri-tourism path:

• Are you prepared for the increased risk and liability of inviting people onto your farm and associated insurance coverage?
• Do you have access to capital required for the necessary infrastructure or equipment?
• Do you have customer service skills?
• Do you have marketing, website and social media knowledge?
• Are you prepared to manage employees and educate them about the farm and agriculture?
• Are your neighbours onboard with your plans to invite the public onto your farm?
• Are you willing to invest your time in the administrative aspects of agri-tourism including regulatory and land-use planning paperwork?

Source: Experience Simcoe County (website)

The post Ontario growers bring ‘sun and fun’ to agri-tourism market appeared first on Country Guide.

There’s a lot to learn about Canada’s food development centres, but the fact is, few of our farmers have ever been inside one. So Country Guide has gone on a sort of field trip, and here’s what we found out.

First, there are both private and publicly run centres in just about every province across Canada, plus a number of municipal centres too, and their job is to provide experts and facilities to help would-be food entrepreneurs develop, test and produce their food products.

It’s also important to know that these centres deal with clients of all different sizes, from the individual with a family recipe to large, multinational food companies with a proven track record of developing successful food products.

For farmers, though, there are a ton of questions. If you’ve got a great idea for a value-added food product, at what point should you approach your local food development centre for help?

What will you need to do when you walk in the door? Is it a simple matter of hiring them, as you would an agronomist, or will you have to sell the centre on the idea that your concept is worth exploring?

If you have to sell them, what will you need to know about the market and about your potential competitors? And just how would you find all that out?

Plus, what can you expect the centre to help you with? Will they offer just technical support or will they provide business support as well, like how to set your price and how to achieve realistic sales targets? And what are some of the trends in the food business that you need to understand to be more successful with your food product? 

There are a lot of questions.

How to start the conversation

The Saskatchewan Food Industry Development Centre (SFIDC) in Saskatoon offers facilities, equipment and trained technicians to provide technical support that helps food entrepreneurs scale up production of their product to a commercial level.

“In most cases, people have a recipe already,” says Carmen Ly, communications director at SFIDC. “They have been selling at the farmers market or have made something for gatherings that their friends love. They may already be making it in small batches in a health-inspected kitchen and selling it in limited quantities to a small number of retailers.

“That’s usually how it starts, and when they feel that they can make a business out of it, that’s when they generally approach us to help them scale it up. We may need to fine-tune their formulation, review their labelling and provide advice on what else needs to be done before commercial production. We have hundreds of pieces of equipment to manufacture a variety of food products.”

For convenience, most food entrepreneurs will go to the centre in their own province, although sometimes it’s worth going farther afield to access specialized equipment or services that the local centre doesn’t offer.

The Ontario Agri-Food Venture Centre (OAFVC) at Colborne specializes in production support and has a scale-up facility that provides similar services to SFIDC for low-risk food processing (in other words, the facility does not do any meat processing).

The Colborne centre sees itself as the first step in the process for food entrepreneurs who often arrive with only a bare-bones concept.

“We suggest people that can help them conceptualize their product, get it to the point where they understand how to make their product, what’s it’s going to take, what the ingredients are, and do a nutritional facts table,” says Trissia Mellor, OAFVC manager.

“We help people when they’re not quite sure where to go or what to do next. We can give them ideas for things like sourcing packaging, or labels, or how to get French translation, or for the food science side of things. Based on where the client is and what the product is they’re looking to develop, we’ll give them some ideas on where they might turn for their next step. It’s very specific to what their outcome is based on, who we know in the industry, and what their specialties are.”

OAFVC can also connect clients to other partners and resources, like independent food scientists and development programs such as the George Brown College Food Innovation Research Studio’s FIRSt program. This program provides small and medium-sized Toronto-area businesses in the food and beverage industries with access to expertise, technology, equipment and state-of-the-art facilities to accelerate new food ideas from concept to commercialization. There is also the Guelph University Food Innovation Centre and the Niagara College Canadian Food and Wine Institute Innovation Centre, as well as other independent food scientists who can help at various development and research stages.

Then the entrepreneurs come back to the OAFVC when they are ready to scale up their production to serve more demand.

The Food Development Centre (FDC) at Portage la Prairie, Man. was the first in Canada, and since 1978 it has been offering services to help food entrepreneurs develop their products. Robin Young, director of value-added who operates the FDC as a branch of Manitoba Agriculture, says the sooner clients approach the centre in their process the better, because its staff can help navigate the complicated requirements inherent in the food business.

“The food business is unique and there are permits and licensing requirements, even down to how to write a product label,” Young says. “We encourage people to talk to our business development team even if they just have an idea so we can have some of those conversations.”

Some entrepreneurs need help across the board. As they get more established, others often learn what their strengths are and focus their energies there. For them, the centre’s role becomes one of helping them fill any potential knowledge gaps or to find other service providers to help them.

“We would refer a client to the FDC once they have refined their concept and have an idea of where they want to go with their business,” Young says. It’s important to get it right, he says. “The FDC charges for our services, and we want to make best use of their resources.”

Staking your turf

A conversation Manitoba Agriculture advisors always have with their clients is about how to establish margins and differentiate their product.

“We advise people to set their margin right off the top. It’s intimidating because often the cost of their product, when they are starting out, is going to be high, and they are coming to market often at a higher price point than their multinational competition for the same section,” Young says.

Marketing today is not simply about putting a product on a grocery store shelf. Today’s retailers expect the food entrepreneur to be a part of the marketing story to help drive customers to the stores to buy their product. That means the entrepreneur must develop unique marketing to convince consumers to believe in and buy their brand.

“We encourage our clients to find out what is in their story that provides that extra value that someone will make a point to buy their product,” Young says. “When they’re talking to retailers, we encourage them to bring that story as part of their value proposition.”

For the small entrepreneur who does have a product that they have been producing already, perhaps in a commercial community kitchen, the best place to test it is at a farmers market or other venue where they have a direct, ongoing relationship with customers. It’s valuable for gauging how well the product sells and sometimes for refining the product based on the feedback they get.

In fact, Young says many of the branch’s clients continue to attend farmers markets even after their products are available in retail stores because they value the input they get and keep the personal relationship strong with consumers.

Help with the homework

Mellor says the OAFVC looks for clients who have a safe, proven process. “By that I mean they’ve made the product at home or, better still, in a small commercial kitchen before, and they’re already selling it somewhere,” she says.

“It could be a farmers market, it could be a farm-gate stand, it could be one or two boutique retail outlets, but they’re looking for an opportunity to grow their business, grow their production, grow their batch size, and that’s when they come to us for help.” 

The OAFVC is also very often a first point of contact with someone who basically just has an idea for a product that has yet to be produced and proven. With such cases, the centre helps them understand what it’s going to take to develop that idea, and it will also help connect them to the right people to do it.

Not everyone who has an idea for a product, even when they have already made and sold that product, will have a true understanding of what it takes to scale up the recipe, so OAFVC staff will often arrange a tour of its facilities to help the client visualize what making a lot more of their product will entail.

Sometimes it’s simply a matter of understanding terminology. For example, what is the difference between a proofing oven, a convection oven and a steam oven.

“When folks start out in a community kitchen, that’s sort of a church basement situation; they might not realize what that looks like to to scale up from a pot of sauce to a 190- to 200-litre batch,” Mellor says. “For new clients or products, we can do a trial shift where they come in for up to four hours of production time and we try to process as close as we can to 60 litres or 60 kilos of their product. It’s helpful for the team to understand what the process is to get the end product that the client wants, and helps the client understand what that process is going to look like and if we can do it here. 

A lot of questions

“We’re happy to sit down with them, help them understand the process that they need to go through, and help them understand where they are in that process,” Mellor says.“They may have a great idea, but there are some things they need to think about like how are they going to source their ingredients, what the final product is going to look like, what the packaging is going to look like, what they need on the label (French and English for example), who is their target consumer.”

Business essentials

At the very least, before a new food entrepreneur makes the call or visits their local food development centre, they should have a basic understanding of where they want their business to go, says Carmen Ly at Saskatchewan’s food centre.

“Not just the idea itself, but the business and marketing plan,” Ly emphasizes. “Even if it’s just a draft. At least that tells us that they have explored the potential of the product/business and it gives them direction on how to proceed with their business.”

And also be prepared to spend some time looking in the mirror. Ontario’s Trissia Mellor has worked with a number of farmers who have developed successful value-added products, and she finds the number one thing they share is a passion for what they are doing. 

“I think it holds true across the board. The more excited they can be about the process, the continuous learning and growing their business, the more successful they will be,” Mellor says. “The ones that I’ve seen that have fallen off are the ones that say, ‘I don’t have to do this, I could be doing this other thing instead’.”

As Mellor asks, “If you aren’t committed and excited about your product, how can you get a consumer excited?”

Of course, cost is a big part of any business plan, and how much a centre will charge will depend on where the client is at with the product and the complexity of that product. Development costs could range from hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on those specifics.

While Ly’s centre can assist with scaling up the recipe to produce larger batches and doing nutritional analysis and food safety testing, it doesn’t offer business planning or marketing analysis. That’s where the entrepreneur needs to do some homework before they think about manufacturing the actual product on a bigger scale.

To help, the Saskatchewan centre offers online tools as a starting point for clients to assess where they are at with their business. This helps them explore if they are really ready to take the next step on developing and scaling up the product.

“We want to make sure that they are able to answer the questions, and really give their food business some thought,” Ly says. “They need to know that there is a market for the product first.” 

One of the best ways for clients to do that market analysis is to simply go shopping. 

“Take a look at what’s out there, especially in the retail stores or shelves where you envision your product would be,” Ly says. “What are the products you will be competing with? What is their packaging like? What’s their competitive edge compared to yours?” 

What’s trending in food?

For food development centres across the country, the big spike this year is in plant-based and animal-derived proteins.

Ontario Agri-Food Venture Centre (OAFVC) at Colborne, Ont., only works on plant-derived food products, but the upsurge is huge, with everything from cauliflower french fries to products that put a new, often healthier spin on traditional products, such as sugar-free ketchups and barbecue sauces.

“One of our new Canadian clients has created a ketchup-type sauce that as a condiment also counts as a serving of vegetables,” says Trissia Mellor, manager of the Ontario centre, where business has doubled since 2019. “Many of the products that we are seeing are much more health-conscious.”

The Food Development Centre (FDC) at Portage la Prairie, Man., is getting busier and is well positioned to take advantage of the growing protein trends in today’s markets.

“We do produce such high-quality proteins, both animal and plant, in Manitoba and we’ve seen all along that there is an interest in protein-type products,” says Robin Young, director of value-added at Manitoba Agriculture. “Health and wellness is still a strong trend, and the clinical nutrition market is massive for products that provide a specific health benefit to patients with a specific condition.”

The Saskatchewan Food Industry Development Centre (SFIDC) at Saskatoon is also seeing huge interest in plant-based proteins in the area of vegan meat alternatives and non-dairy foods. “Our extrusion technology, coupled with our years of prototype development work in meat alternatives is really paving the way for Saskatchewan’s food industry,” says Carmen Ly, communications director at SFIDC. “We have successfully developed various plant-based meats including jerky, burgers, chicken nugget, and seafood. The possibilities are endless.”

In Ontario, Mellor also sees more growth in clients asking the centre to connect them with local farmers.

An example is one food processor who is committed to being as close to zero waste as possible. 

“We have some clients that work hard at creating a whole closed-loop system like that,” says Mellor. “We also have clients that come in and ask us if we can help them to source some of their ingredients locally.”

Historically, the Ontario centre saw a lot of farm families looking for help to develop value-added products, and they still do see some. And while its current protein focus means FDC is serving more established companies, keeping strong links with the farm community is still a high priority.

“Some food entrepreneurs don’t come from agriculture or know anything about agriculture, so connecting them to the value chain is something I think we do really well,” says Manitoba’s Robin Young. “We love working with farm families and farmers that are looking to add value. They know the production end of their value chain … it’s the other end of the value chain, closer to the consumer, where we can help educate them.”

Interestingly, retailers are also seeking out more local suppliers because farmers are so much more in tune with consumers than they used to be.

But there’s another twist too, Young says. Now, it’s retailers who are walking through farmers markets to see what products they can develop.”

Everything needs to be right, though, and it all needs to be adapted to the current consumer, including packaging.

“They are not building packaging that makes the product look bigger than it is,” Mellor says. “They are very truthful in what they put to market, as in ‘this is my product, see it and take it for what it is’.”

How much will it cost?

Although some food development centres give detailed breakdowns on their websites of the cost for different processes, equipment rentals and staff time etc., there isn’t an average cost because it’s dependent on the stage a client is at when they come to the food lab for help and the type of product they want to develop.

“The project cost increases depending on the challenge and the product,” says Carmen Ly, communications director at the Saskatchewan Food Industry Development Centre. “Product development could cost from $1,000 to $20,000. We deal with small entrepreneurs to large multinational companies who are paying $50,000 for development. Project contracts are established before we start the work so that clients are aware of the costs.”

– This article was originally published in the May/June 2022 issue of Country Guide.

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But in 2024, it isn’t so simple for a mid-sized farm anymore, Paulovich says. “We have to farm differently for our children.”

It’s true that when Paulovich and Noble took over her family’s farm at Manning, Alta., they knew from the start that farming would always mean being flexible and always being on the lookout for improvements.

Yet when all three of their children expressed interest in farming as a career, the family realized that “different” had to be more different than they had expected, and that they would need a creative succession plan, as reported in Country Guide in 2018.

Since then, they have expanded their land base and kept all three kids heavily involved.

Their son Lee, with a degree in agriculture and resource economics from the University of Alberta, is back on the farm full-time, focusing mainly on the cropping side of things while daughter Jolene looks to the cow herd and to growing the direct-to-consumer beef side of the business. As well, daughter Cara works as a chartered professional accountant near Edmonton, from where she can keep involved with the farm.

Paulovich says the farm had previously done some direct-to-consumer sales on the beef side, but when it came to succession planning, the family strategically decided this was an area that could be part of a vertical integration plan.

“My mom and dad did a little bit of selling direct to consumers and then my husband and I did the same thing. Of course, it was always halves and quarters. And then, when Jolene and Lee came back we said ‘okay, guys, we have to do something more.’”

READ MORE: Right for your farm too?

Adding a new brand

Jolene, who has a degree in agriculture from the University of Alberta, teamed up with Cara to expand the value-added retail component of the farm business, and together the family developed the Jackknife Creek Land & Cattle product brand to sell beef products ranging from steak and ribs to sausages, ground beef and specialty cuts. They also offer curated boxes and quarter or half beef options.

On top of that, the two have spent the last four years developing an online presence and store for the brand, work that Cara is able to do remotely from her home base although she still comes home for a week every two months to help out on the farm.

Their efforts have paid off and the farm’s direct-to-consumer sales have doubled in the last year.

Now the daughters have plans to continue growing their customer base, despite the challenges of being so far away from most major markets (Manning is in the northern Peace County region of Alberta, approximately 600 kilometres north of Edmonton) and despite having to work around restrictions on selling out of province.

They are currently exploring shipping options, for instance, although this comes with its own challenges. Because shipping options in Alberta are very expensive, they’re looking at how to keep product frozen until it reaches the customer.

Farming for the long term

Meanwhile, the family is applying the same level of innovation and determination to farm practices that promote soil health and reduce their reliance on inputs.

This is an area that has always been of interest to Paulovich, having spent 15 years serving as the manager of the North Peace Applied Research Association (NPARA), an agricultural research and extension non-profit group. (She continues to do contract work with the organization, as executive director of its biannual soil health conference, the Western Canada Conference on Soil Health and Grazing.)

“Many people treat the soil as a medium, not thinking that it is a living organism,” Paulovich says. “That was our starting point.”

Her experience at NPARA allowed her to meet and follow many leading experts in the area of regenerative agriculture, including Gabe Brown, a farmer from North Dakota and author on the topic of soil health and regenerative agriculture.

From experts like Brown, who champions restoring the natural ecological balance of farmland soils, “I was able to involve my whole family in the learning process and trying different things out,” Paulovich says.“That was definitely instrumental in us thinking about different ways of doing things.”

The kids were not just expected to watch these practices, but to participate, lead and make decisions, Jolene says.

It’s a part of farm life she remembers from her own youth. “Mom and Dad always involved us in the decision-making aspect of the farm,” she says, adding that she remembers being asked to make decisions on crop rotations and replacement heifers from a young age. “We were always brought into the decision-making process.”

She says this experience is part of why she always knew she would return to the farm.

“I don’t remember ever wanting to be anything else really. Even as a little kid, we were so involved in the farm. That’s what I always wanted to do. The only reason why I would have looked at something else for a degree in university was to complement what I was doing on the farm.”

Now, she is continuing with the family tradition of carrying out her own on-farm research with regenerative ag practices for both the grain and cattle sides of the operation. Her work in this area was fuelled by the family’s history of experimenting with several regenerative concepts on their farm, including trying out various uses of cover crops plus ways to reduce tillage and fostering biodiversity in crops and pastures.

One of the practices she has found to improve efficiency is with using cover crops for swath grazing.

“Traditionally for forage we have hay fields and pastures… now we’ve added swath grazing, allowing us to add cattle and forages to cropland. And so that’s another crop into our crop rotation.”

The family has also been exploring intercropping, and Paulovich is encouraged by how many more farmers are taking an interest in soil health, a fact that is reflected in the growing popularity of the Western Canada Conference on Soil Health and Grazing.

She had hoped, however, that farmers who were taking initiatives to improve their soil health in previous decades would get credit for their work at a federal level — which they are not right now.

“Our early adopters are not being rewarded,” she says, adding she believes a lot of the current incentive programs for farmers are set up to benefit late adopters of beneficial practices.

“A lot of it is only for those that are wanting to do it now, not for those of us that have done it before. That does bother me.”

She also believes some of the federal incentive programs are based on unsound metrics.

“A lot of the metrics are based on a percentage reduction, so if you’re coming in at an already low fertilizer rate and you’re still expected to reduce that as a percentage, you might have bottomed out already.”

But mostly, she is happy knowing that her farm is making progress in these areas and that all parties involved are focused on constant improvements.

Future plans include continuing such work and also exploring options for better managing micronutrients in the soil through crop rotations, biological seed treatments and more. She wants to test better ways to generate and record their on-farm research data to showcase improvements, too, and potentially grow forages for seed.

For Jolene, the overall goal of all these efforts is to improve efficiency of the farm.

“We haven’t wiped out fertilizer and pesticide use but we’re very judicious with what we do use. We’re looking at optimizing our land, not just throwing as much fertilizer out there as possible to get the highest yield,” she says.

“We want to do the best that we can by our land and our cattle.”

Focus on finance

For Cara, farm sustainability also includes the long-term financial health of the business. This is partially why she pursued her accounting degree, she says.

“I remember in high school, trying to figure out what I was going to go to school for,” she says, adding that back then they already knew all three kids wanted to come back to the farm.

“I looked at the acres that we had at that point and thought ‘how is this going to work with three families?’”

She decided to pursue accounting because it played to her strengths as an analytical thinker, and she saw demand for accountants who also understood farming. The flexibility and offsetting busy seasons were also appealing.

Now, she’s able to bring her experience as an accountant to the financial side of the farm.

“I would like to see the farm always being sustainable in multiple ways — including financially and operationally,” she says. “I just want to keep seeing us improve year over year.”

That leaves the next big question: When will their parents retire?

As Paulovich considers it, she looks around her. “I feel we are very, very blessed that all of our children are still very interested in farming and in agriculture. That two of them came back full-time, and that Cara is able to participate as much as she does remotely … we’re just very blessed.”

– This article was originally published in the January 2024 issue of Country Guide.

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As more farms like Jackknife Creek Cattle & Land find success with their direct-to-consumer ventures, many experts believe it’s a good time for others to do the same.

Food veteran Jo-Ann McArthur says Canada is ready and waiting.

“Is it a good time? Absolutely,” she says.

McArthur, president of Toronto-based Nourish Food Marketing, says now is a good time to boost margins by cutting out the middleman.

And farmers can also capitalize on the boom in local, where the driver is because consumers see farmers as individuals with high integrity. “It’s all about food with the story and a real person behind it,” McArthur says.

With 14 per cent of Canadian farms selling directly to consumers in 2021, it’s still a minority, but the number is growing.

“We’ve definitely seen more,” says David Lazarenko, executive vice-president of ThinkShift marketing agency in Winnipeg. “When COVID hit and trust in the food supply went up, I think that it allowed us to start having those positive conversations again.”

But there’s another solid business reason too — the availability of e-commerce solutions to cheaply connect farms and their markets.

Says Lazarenko: “The world has really opened that up to anyone and everyone, without the risk associated with ‘am I going to get paid?’”

Getting started

Like any business, a direct-to-consumer operation requires planning based on a strong understanding of who you are and your value proposition. It needs an operations plan, too, and a sales and marketing strategy.

Strategic decisions are crucial. Farm-gate retail and farmer’s markets may work for your location, but selling through other retailers or just focusing on online sales with delivery services may be a better option.

Do think longer-term though, McArthur recommends. “Once you get enough customers… you may go to your local specialty stores,” she says. “And then eventually you can get into a chain if you’ve got enough volume for that.”

Be thorough with the marketing plan though. As more farms get into this space, the need for product differentiation grows, Lazarenko says. “The farmers that are really seeing the rewards of this are approaching it like a business — they’re establishing a brand, they’re differentiating their brand, they’re telling a story.”

McArthur also advises thinking carefully upfront about product pricing. Cost it out as if you were hiring paid employees to do all the work, she says.

“Once you set a selling price, it’s really hard to move it upwards a lot. … If your objective is to sell eventually at a retailer, you have to understand all the different pieces that are going to eat into your margins and price accordingly.”

Startup costs

Although an e-commerce website can cost as little as $1,000 to $5,000 if you do it yourself, experts recommend budgeting more like $20,000 to $25,000 for a professionally designed product plus branding and some initial paid marketing campaigns.

Provincial grants may help, and multi-generational farms may have younger, tech-inclined family members on hand to help.

Overall, though, your investment in this area should be a reflection of your estimated ROI.

“There’s no way you can get into this without some form of investment upfront,” Lazarenko says. “If you want this to be big, the investment is going to have be the same. You can’t put in a little and get a whole lot out.”

The post Right for your farm too? appeared first on Country Guide.

While direct farm marketing has grown in popularity in recent times, it isn’t new to everybody. Some farmers have years of experience in this field, and if you’re considering starting a new direct-to-consumer business, perhaps this is the group to learn from.

Country Guide recently talked to three regional winners from Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmers, i.e. farm operators between the ages of 18 and 39 who demonstrate excellence in their profession.

Our go-to sources are the people behind Cutter Ranch, Wholesome Pickins Market & Bakery, and Our Little Farm, and they were recognized for their success in running direct-to-consumer operations with businesses that stack up in head-to-head competition with our top livestock and grain-and-oilseed farms.

With over four decades of experience between them, these farmers reflect on what they’ve learned on the front lines. We asked, what advice would they give someone looking to start a similar direct marketing operation?

Start small, act big

Tyler McNaughton & Sacha Bentall
Cutter Ranch, Fort Steele, B.C.
2018 B.C./Yukon Outstanding Young Farmers

Tucked in the southeast corner of British Columbia at Fort Steele, Tyler McNaughton finds business value in connecting first-hand with customers and making them feel part of the farm.

He and his wife Sacha Bentall started Cutter Ranch nearly 15 years ago. Today, the business provides lamb, beef and pork directly to consumers in the East Kootenays region as well as Vancouver.

In addition to keeping the customer top of mind, McNaughton encourages new direct farm marketing businesses to start small.

“We started with a very small sheep flock and really focused on learning how to farm the animal correctly, sell the animal and develop a business around that,” he explains. “The smaller your operation starts, the smaller your mistakes are going to be. And there’s inevitably going to be challenges, especially with a startup.”

But there’s a vital followup. Small business owners don’t have to act according to size. When you behave like a bigger company and do everything with business tenets in mind, you get sharper. And the sharper you can make the business when it’s small, the more success you’re going to have when it grows, says McNaughton.

Study your chosen sector, he says, so you have a really clear understanding of everything from how you’ll get the inputs you need in the beginning to how you’ll get the end product to the consumer at the end.

“You can be a small farm, but you still have to behave as if you are a grocery store, to a degree,” McNaughton says. “Continuity of supply is very important because customers are conditioned to wanting an array of products and convenience. In terms of timing production, we have to make sure we always have supply available.”

He also believes continual investment is key. Upgrading tools and equipment over time is partly why Cutter Ranch is well positioned for future growth.

In addition, he’s learned that farming and running a meat retail business are two very separate roles. While he and Sacha have always been considered full-time ranchers, the meat business is essentially their second job.

“The food market is evolving,” he says. “We have room to grow and we’ve also been at it long enough to feel confident investing in the farm, developing relationships and going after new opportunities.”

Get the right help

David & Jenn VanDeVelde
Wholesome Pickins Market & Bakery, Delhi, Ont.
2022 Ontario Outstanding Young Farmers

We don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” Jenn VanDeVelde explains. “A lot of people are doing direct farm marketing and almost all of those people want to share ideas and help each other.”

VanDeVelde, who operates Wholesome Pickins Market & Bakery in Delhi, Ont., with her husband David, values community and strongly advises other farmers to get involved in industry groups and associations if they want to get into direct marketing.

Resources available through groups like Farm Fresh Ontario and Berry Growers of Ontario have been invaluable to their operation, VanDeVelde says.

Equally important is seeking support from a farm advisor has benefited Wholesome Pickins, too. When their business quickly grew from a few employees to more than 20, the VanDeVeldes didn’t have the human resource policies and procedures to handle it. Instead of trying to learn on their own, they hired a consultant to set up a management system that’s easy to follow.

“It’s important to recognize when something isn’t in your wheelhouse and bring in someone who can help you,” she says.

Although their business now has a staff of almost 40, and although it would be easy for Jenn and David to stay behind the scenes attending to their essential managerial roles, the couple are rigorous about spending time getting to know customers.

They call it their key to success in direct farm marketing. Both make a conscious effort to be present in the farm store to speak with shoppers on a regular basis.

Asking for feedback and listening to customers has resulted in new products being added to the market and high customer satisfaction, which has likely played a significant role in the overall growth of the business.

“Word of mouth is your greatest advertisement, every time,” says VanDeVelde. “When people talk about you and tell their friends about you, you’re going to be able to grow and expand just based on that.”

She encourages anyone building a direct farm business to be their authentic selves. What does that mean? In short, be true to your own values and make decisions that align with your beliefs. It will resonate with people, she says.

Wholesome Pickins started in 2006 when the couple began diversifying their fourth-generation tobacco and grain farm by growing strawberries and selling them to consumers out of their driveway.

By 2010, they renovated a shop and gradually added fruits and vegetables, milk, cheeses, meats and more. Another expansion took place when a kitchen was added in 2013.

Today, they offer baked goods and a line of savory meals in addition to their own fruit and 70 to 90 vendor products.

VanDeVelde says every item available in the market has to pass the authenticity test. They source as many products as possible from Norfolk County and the rest from other locations within Ontario.

Although they are known as a “one stop shop” for cottagers travelling to and from Lake Erie, they don’t offer items like pop. “You can go anywhere to buy a can of pop so that doesn’t feel authentic to us. We want you to come here to buy Hitchhiker lemonade and other products that are made in Ontario, because those are the stories that matter to us,” she says.

Lay a solid foundation

Jim Thompson & Geneviève Grossenbacher
Our Little Farm, Lochaber-Partie-Ouest, Que.
2021 Quebec Outstanding Young Farmers

It’s a question that Jim Thompson has been asked before. He’s a Quebec-based farmer who has mentored numerous people interested in organic vegetable production, the sector he has worked in his entire career.

To Thompson, it’s common sense that you shouldn’t start a direct farm marketing business without experience or an education in agriculture. But it’s common sense that he has seen some ignore.

“People seem to think that what we do is easy, and that they can quit their good-paying job to start growing vegetables,” Thompson says. “But this is a business where capitalization is high and the margins are often small. Without experience, you can lose your shirt quickly.”

Thompson spent six years working on vegetable farms and took a self-learning approach to studying agriculture academically before he and his partner Geneviève Grossenbacher started Our Little Farm in 2011.

Now, they grow 35 different types of vegetables and supply them to 375 families per week during their 16-week season. He credits the success of the farm to the solid foundation he and Grossenbacher were able to build based on their past experience.

But besides education in agriculture, Thompson’s biggest piece of advice for someone starting out in the direct farm marketing industry is to get to know the customer they want to sell to.

“A general marketing strategy is to segment the market into a target market, but that is hard to do for niche marketing because you might be overmarketing to a group that is actually not interested in your product,” he explains.

If Thompson was to look at the potential market of customers in the Gatineau and Ottawa area, for example, traditional marketing principles may encourage him to target neighbourhoods with higher household incomes. But it’s possible that this demographic frequents restaurants and spends a lot of time travelling, and that there are more families in lower-income areas who are interested in organic vegetables. You have to be careful about making assumptions, he says.

“Talk to potential clients to learn what they want,” advises Thompson. “Don’t expect that they are excited to eat what you’re excited to grow.”

He believes it’s important for customers to feel a connection to the farm. Those who buy from Our Little Farm appreciate that their food baskets come with a newsletter of recipes to make with the included vegetables.

“If you’re going into direct marketing, you have to think about the need you are fulfilling,” he says. “I’m not selling vegetables, I’m selling what to make for dinner.”

The post Taking a direct mindset to farm marketing appeared first on Country Guide.

Few jobs are more studded with brands than farming. Farmers fill their equipment sheds with brands, they seed and spray their fields with brands, they even wear them.

Now, the farm itself is becoming a brand, with more farms across the country putting more thought into how they can use modern marketing so buyers, input suppliers, and just about everyone else will see that doing business with their farm is the right thing for them to do.

It’s all based on the idea that everyone has a brand. Whether you think you do or don’t is beside the point. It’s like how your neighbours have an idea whether you’re lazy or hard-working, or whether you’re friendly or stand-offish, without you actually telling them.

The difference is, with modern branding you take charge of what you want others — especially the people you do business with — do think of you. Then you use branding strategies to make sure those ideas get imbedded.

It raises a question, though. Why would you want to stand out?

Elysia Vandenhurk, chief revenue officer (CRO) of Three Farmers, a company founded over a decade ago by Saskatchewan farmers Colin Rosengren, Ron Emde and Dan Vandenhurk, had a crystal clear reason for wanting to brand their enterprise. They were breaking new ground, trying to get buyers they hadn’t yet met to want to buy a kind of oil none of them had ever used.

Over this past decade, however, Three Farmers’ need for branding has evolved into something even more sophisticated, now that it is also a consumer packed-goods company that produces and markets snack foods made from various pulses as well as cold-pressed camelina oil.

Country Guide has talked with Three Farmers in the past, and we went back to Vandenhurk again to see what her key brand learnings have been through that decade.

To Vandenhurk, it’s been a voyage discovering that so many of the benefits that branding experts talk about can also be immensely valuable for farm businesses.

What does that mean? “Your brand is the persona that goes out there but it also is what leads the culture of your internal people and communicates your values,” Vandenhurk says.

“The brand is something that threads through everything your company does, how you hire, who you hire, how you make decisions, the products and services you put out there. It’s the core element that threads through the company and leads the success of the company.”

At Three Farmers today, it is Elysia and sister Natasha who handle the day-to-day running of the company. Natasha, who is currently CEO, has a degree in business economics from the University of Saskatchewan, and Elysia is a Red Seal Chef. They are using their combination of education and training to move the company to the next level, which depends on them creating a Three Farmers brand identity that is recognized worldwide.

“We have a unique structure because we have the three initial founding farmers, then myself and my sister, who are also founders, and we are daughters of farmers but a different generation with different skillsets,” Vandenhurk says. “Right out of the gate, we had a really good team around the table that offered very different skills and value.”

But even with oodles of talent around the table from the outset, one of their biggest strengths was recognizing the skills they didn’t have and approaching a professional marketing agency to fill the gaps.

“When we decided we were going to pursue a food product made from camelina, we went to a marketing agency right away because we knew we were moving into consumer-packaged goods,” Vandenhurk says. “We knew that we needed to bring this idea to life in a creative form … We needed a brand, a story and a creative look to go with the quality and functionality of what the product is.”

Building a brand identity

A brand identity answers the big question of why someone would ever want to do business with you instead of some other farm somewhere else.

“Why me? What is my unique differentiator?” asks Vandenurk. “That is the point that you need to hit home.”

In a way, it’s more straightforward for Three Farmers than for most farms. They’ve got a product to sell based on their unique food and snack skills. But it’s more than that too. They also have a core set of values which makes them good people to do business with.

At its core, though, it’s the same for any farm. The principals of any farm might start by asking themselves why they farm. What are your values and beliefs? How are those beliefs reflected in the way you farm and the products the farm produces? What is the culture and personality of your farm? How does the farm stand out?

“Write out your story,” Vandenhurk says. “Then reach out of your comfort zone.” Take a buyer out to lunch and tell them your story. See what they react to. Test your story with others too. Even consider urbanites who know nothing about farming. If you write a long paragraph about your farm — the kind of thing you often see on websites — what parts of it do people react to?

The odds, says Vandenhurk, are that you’ll be wrong about what they latch onto. “Something we learned along the way is that what we think is going to sell, or what we think people want to hear, isn’t actually that. It’s a different piece of the story they want to hear,” she says.

In fact, it’s good advice across the board.

Farms are feeling more pressure to differentiate themselves in some way and to brand themselves as progressive or technologically innovative, or as leaders in things like stewardship or eco-friendly practices because consumers are demanding to know more about where their food comes from and the people who grow it.

“Listen to your audience and to the consumer,” Vandenhurk says. “How are they evolving? What are the questions they’re asking and what are the pain points they have? The pain points change and evolve but if you have a product or service out there, and you are no longer filling a gap or conveniently solving some sort of pain point then you become irrelevant.”

For Three Farmers, the process is continuous. They constantly invite feedback and validate the brand, especially via their social media channels.

“Our social channels are kind of a community where the consumer comes to ask more questions,” Vandenhurk says. “We want to know who is coming to our channels and why are they there? How did they get there? How did they hear about us? What content are they looking for? Is it educational, is it fun content, what are they there for?”

There’s a valuable lesson at the bottom of it, Vandenhurk says. “There are so many different messages and so many things we want to say, but sometimes when you say too much you don’t say anything.”

Spending the money

Building a brand is likely going to cost some money and it can be hard sometimes to see the value of that investment, especially for commodity-based farms that don’t have a direct connection to the end-consumer.

“You have to put money into a brand to bring it to life, and people can struggle with the value of that sometimes, especially at the farm gate,” Vandenhurk says. “But a brand is a tool that’s used for your internal culture, for how you hire people, the partners you partner with, the people you do business with. It can be used as a very effective tool in building success for your business. It helps you make decisions, because when you have refined the things that go into your brand, your decisions and innovations always ladder back to it.”

How to get started

Tim Young, founder of Small Farm Nation, says the basic ideas are simple. Farms are unique businesses that need a strong business brand to thrive, he says. And deciding what the brand should focus on is almost always an easy choice.

“The heart of any farm business is the farmer,” says Young. “The best farms are those where the farmer has established something of a personal brand.”

Young started his career in corporate America but left to start a marketing agency in 1995 that grew to 450 employees. But Young says he began wanting to do something that was more “soul-satisfying,” so he sold the business in 2006 and began a pastured-livestock and artisan cheese business on a farm in Georgia. Now, under the banner of Small Farm Nation, he offers marketing courses and website and branding services to farmers across the U.S.

The Small Farm Nation website and blog are loaded with tips to help farmers get started on branding their farm business, and Young has given permission to Country Guide to reproduce a Canadianized version, which we have adapted below:

Take a stand.
Leaders take stands, whether it’s for something (i.e. sustainability) or against something else (poor customer service). So take a stand but frame your message with a positive outcome for the consumer. Don’t just rant about what’s wrong; paint a vision of how the world would be better off with your vision. We’re drawn to people with vision.

Be consistently present.
Leaders show up. For most farms, this is what blogging, social media and content marketing are all about. If you’re larger, you might use public relations and the media. Either way, just get out there with your message, consistently.

Create sound bites.
A sound bite is a message that you distill into a few words. This becomes a “repeatable nugget” where the goal is to help people recall what you said and why you said it. Put in the time to distill your message into sound bites so it is easy for others to carry your torch. Begin building a personal farm brand by creating a powerful sound bite that is reflective of your farm brand. It should be less than nine seconds long to read: the shorter the better. The average sound bite today is seven seconds. Then use the sound bite consistently to reinforce your brand message and include it in quotes in social media image headers.

It’s not about you. It’s about them.
You’re the change agent. Your customer is the beneficiary. Your goal is to change the world or create something for their benefit. Once they clearly understand how they benefit and why the change you represent is much better for them, they’ll hop aboard your train.

Show the real you.
Particularly on social media, show the real you. This means it’s not all business all the time. Share something personal about yourself, whether it’s talking about your family or sharing a picture of you in a ridiculous Halloween costume with your kids, or at a social gathering. Be real, because you want people to relate to you as a real person, not a corporate icon.

Be transparent.
Have the courage to be vulnerable. Let people know your worries, or that you make mistakes. It shows you are human and builds empathy. Don’t always try to be “right.” You’re taking a stand, you’re pursuing a better way of life, but you are still a human.

Help ‘them’ to get involved.
Think about how your audience can take action or get involved and engage with you in some way. What do you want them to do? Your followers need you to guide them to the actions that will help you to succeed as the change agent you represent. Don’t just deliver the message; tell them what they need to do to help you achieve the vision.

Act one to many: think one to one.
The best way to build your brand might be to sit down with each person individually, but that’s not realistic. Instead, we have to use technology. In that sense, we’re acting as one to many. We create one post and distribute it to many people, which is a better leverage of your time. However, your message needs to sound like one-to-one so the listener feels you are speaking directly to them. Farmers who excel at this are relatable and their messages always resonate. That’s the goal. It’s an art, but one you can master.

The post Talking up the farm story appeared first on Country Guide.

It all sounds so very quaint, alright as a sideline for a hobby farmer or a way for the kids to pay for school. But nothing a real farmer would touch.

But that was then. It certainly isn’t now.

Statistics Canada reports that 13.6 per cent of farms across the country — or a total of 25,917 farms — had direct sales in 2020, up from 12.7 per cent, or 24,510, in 2015.

That’s roughly one farm in seven. More striking though, is the scale of some of those operations. Going direct has become serious business.

“Direct-to-consumer sales can be an attractive option,” says Connie Osborne, a media relations specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA). The farm’s costs go up because marketing is more expensive, but the payoff is that margins go up too because the output is being sold further down the value chain.

Direct deliveries

Farmers have long found ways to draw in hip urban crowds looking to source fresh food through options like farmers markets, on-farm stores, farm-gate sales, community-supported agriculture and direct deliveries.

The latter, in particular, has surged thanks to COVID-19, with farmers adapting new ways to identify and connect with customers.

In response to pandemic contact restrictions, 13,006 farms were direct delivering to consumers in 2020, compared to the 15,647 combined that had on-site farm stores, stands, kiosks, U-pick or farm-gate sales, according to Statistics Canada.

Ontario leads the pack

No province had more farms reporting direct sales that year than Ontario, with 7,697 selling some type of farm commodity directly to consumers. That was up 3 per cent from the previous census. Ontario also reported strong direct marketing relative to other provinces, following only Newfoundland/Labrador, British Columbia and Quebec with 15.9 per cent of its farms doing at least some direct sales.

Ontario topped all others in the number of vegetable and melon farms with 1,562. In fact, StatsCan says this farm category was most likely to report direct sales: in 2020, 52.2 per cent of farms in Canada that produced vegetables and/or melons also reported direct sales, up from 50.2 per cent in 2015.

“Direct-to-consumer sales is a growing opportunity for Ontario farmers,” says OMAFRA’s Osborne.

Almost all direct marketing farms in Ontario sold unprocessed products, and about 13 per cent also sold value-added processed products, she says.

“Roughly 43 per cent of these farms delivered products directly to the consumer, while about 69 per cent sold product directly to the consumer through on-farm facilities,” adds Osborne.

Citing a survey by Foodland Ontario, the province’s consumer promotion program, Osborne says Ontarians are becoming increasingly conscious of the source of the products they purchase, but they’re motivated by more than just local: 85 per cent of respondents said they were more likely to purchase locally if they knew it was benefiting local farmers.

The B.C. value question

B.C.’s high proportion of direct marketing — a third of its farms, approximately 5,300, report direct sales — can partly be explained by the province’s lead in some key demographics, including the highest proportion of farms with operating revenue under $10,000 at 33.75 per cent.

What’s key there is that direct sales make up a bigger part of revenue for smaller farms overall. In 2020, farms with less than $10,000 in sales accounted for nearly half (47.9 per cent) of farms in which direct sales represented over three-quarters of total farm operating revenues, StatsCan reported. (Farms with $2 million or more in sales accounted for only 0.8 per cent of farms in which direct sales represented more than three-quarters of total revenues.)

StatsCan’s ag census reported additional key demographics: B.C. also had the most fruit and tree nut farms at 3,036, and the third most vegetable and melon farms with 1,077.

Also important to B.C.’s direct sales sector is how consumers there view local food.

BC Agriculture Council (BCAC) research for 2021 surveyed 831 residents and found that 67 per cent cited food grown/raised in B.C. as an issue of importance that had an impact on their purchasing decisions.

Organic foods also provided a boost to B.C.’s direct sales. According to a September 2022 analysis from Organic BC, 39 per cent of organic consumers chose direct-to-consumer channels like farmers markets, community-supported agriculture, and farm stands for their grocery shopping.

Provincial government support was another contributor. The provincial government partnered with the BC Association of Farmers’ Markets to help direct farms pivot to online sales during the pandemic. Over 70 farmers markets launched an online virtual store in 2020, generating over $2.5 million in sales, with an additional $1.4 million in 2021.

Prairies

With their low population density, the Canadian Prairies lag behind the leaders in direct marketing, although Alberta might surprise a few with its number of farms reporting direct sales rising a quarter from the previous census to 2,608.

“I do know anecdotally from talking to different producers and small-scale processors here that demand during COVID really, really escalated,” says Mary Beckie, a professor at the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health. “Farmers and processors had to diversify their marketing platforms really quickly, so now we see a lot more marketing online, and I think that that’s really boosted sales.”

Manitoba led the Prairie provinces in the proportion of farms reporting direct sales with 6.9 per cent (up from 6.1 per cent), but the actual number of farms was lowest among the three at 1,013, an increase of 113.

Manitoba Agriculture reported that the province’s proportion, less than half the national one, could be attributed to its large number of oilseed and grain farms. Only 1.7 per cent of oilseed and grain farms in Manitoba reported direct sales in 2020, a lower rate than any other farm type.

Most direct sales in Manitoba were related to “unprocessed” foods, which included fruits, vegetables, meat cuts, poultry, eggs, maple syrup and honey, Manitoba Agriculture said.

The focus on grain and oilseed production explanation also applies to Saskatchewan, Canada’s breadbasket, which had a mere 4.1 per cent of farms reporting direct sales. Still, that was a rise from 3.8 per cent in the last census, with the number of farms climbing by 104 to 1,400.

Outlook for 2023

While the direct sector is growing, the outlook this summer isn’t as sunny.

Food inflation topping five per cent and worries about a global recession mean consumers are more price conscious.

“Consumers will continue to look for ways to save money on groceries, such as by purchasing in bulk, using coupons or buying store brands,” says Sylvain Charlebois, Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab project lead and director.

“Food shoppers are very price sensitive,” agrees David Connell, a professor at the University of Northern British Columbia’s department of ecosystem science and management. “The average food shopper in Western society has a very strong penchant for ‘cheap food’ and for minimizing the proportion of the household budget spent on food; they are willing to compromise on food quality for a lower price.”

Some experts are more upbeat, however. The U of A’s Mary Beckie thinks the relationships that developed between farmers and their customers during the pandemic could have some lasting power.

Beckie also points to Feed BC’s success in developing partnerships to connect local food to local public buyers, like health care facilities and post-secondary institutions.

Connell does expect direct sales to increase, too, partly because the superior quality of local fresh food ties in with consumers’ health focus.

Also supporting the sector is the perception that the world is more vulnerable to disruptions of the global agri-food network.

However, disruptions in the food supply chain aren’t necessarily good news for local either, says Charlebois, since weather fears make consumers feel they need a broad-based supply to be secure.

Charlebois sees other challenges looming too. Biggest may be the consumer perception that direct-marketed food is more expensive. Sometimes, that perception is justified. Direct-market prices may reflect superior quality, choice or convenience. Often, though, direct is price-competitive.

Direct marketing also faces more competition from large retail chains and supermarkets, Charlebois says. “(They) are increasingly looking to source products from small-scale farmers,” which sounds like good news for the sector, but it makes life tougher for those outside the chain-store loop.

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