When we think of strong leaders we often leap to examples like politicians, sport coaches and the CEOs of large corporations, so it’s little surprise that our ideas of leadership can be mixed in with the skills it takes to manage large groups of employees, or to chair meetings or grab the microphone like a great orator.

On the farm, though, leadership needs to involve even more than that.

When you think of successful farms, the vast majority in Canada have only a few, mostly related members, yet all those farms have great leadership. Their business leaders make great decisions — strategically, thoughtfully and bravely. And although these same farmers may not always be the loudest voices in the community or in their commodity groups, they’re communicating well within their smaller family-based teams and they have strong relationships with suppliers, buyers and advisers.

Which is why, even on the farm, communication skills are increasingly being seen as essential components of leadership.

Being able to engagingly lead a farm business and to clearly articulate your goals can no longer be thought of as just a one-way, top-down process, says Richard Stup, a Pennsylvania-based business leadership expert who works with small businesses, including farms, to develop leadership skills and human resources management.

Business leadership isn’t some trait you inherit or something you mysteriously absorb by living on a farm, says Stup, who grew up on a farm himself and has a masters in agricultural education and a PhD in workforce management.

Nor is it something you get by drinking a magic potion as a kid. Instead, it’s something you work at, Stup says. “Leadership for your farm business is about creating a culture and systems to use resources more efficiently, and of course that takes motivated people.”

In Canada, meanwhile, while taking his MBA at Western University’s Ivey School of Business, Steve Koeckhoven learned leadership skills that he’s been able to bring home to the family farm near Wolseley, Sask., and also to his work off-farm for Agrium in Calgary.

“My experience in agriculture is lifelong, and the MBA has definitely helped me weave my way through my career off-farm and on the farm,” the 34-year-old Koeckhoven says.

In retrospect, he now adds, the most significant lessons he took back to the farm started with learning how essential listening is for problem solving, and how important leading teams is to his own performance.

And there’s another lesson too, he says. “Ninety per cent of leadership is communications.” As with most such programs, the MBA at Ivey required listening to lectures, but the program is also heavily weighted toward group work and case studies. Teams of four or five classmates analyze and develop solutions for each scenario.

Koeckhoven was the lone farmer in a class full of international professionals who came with all sorts of undergraduate degrees and aggressive, go-getter personalities, plus high levels of intelligence.

In that environment, they all had to learn to actively listen to the group. “I got so many insights into ways to attack a problem if I listened to the others in the group.”

On the Koeckhoven family farm, meanwhile, three strong-willed successful men were trying to work together. Steve and younger brother John now farm with their parents, Harry and Anika. Like the MBA case study groups, everyone was trying to have input into everything on the farm, and rarely did they really listen to the others. Voices got louder, more aggressive and at times even ended up in arguments.

Koeckhoven remembers a time when he got a loaded grain truck stuck exactly where his brother had told him not to drive. He hadn’t listened. His mom actually videoed the ensuing crazy interaction and showed them later, trying to make everyone laugh at themselves.

However, her underlying message struck him as he participated in the case study groups: the three Koeckhoven men needed to figure out a better way to work together. To be successful and happy working together, they needed to really listen to each other, instead of pretending to listen, maybe even nodding and all the while thinking of something else.

Create a fearless culture

Whether you want to or not, as a leader you will create a culture on your farm. “When I’m at the farm at my desk, life seems so much simpler, less complicated, than it is when I’m in my office in downtown Calgary,” Koeckhoven says with a sigh. “It’s a good life.”

The Koeckhoven Farms culture is focused on profitability, but family comes first and all parties respect that there’s life outside the farm as well. Koeckhoven says this “just try it” attitude likely comes from his parents immigrating to Canada in the ’80s with three children in tow. They bought a dairy farm in Alberta, even though their experience in Holland was grain farming.

But Harry had understood the economics of supply management and how it made sense financially. “Dad milked his first cow at 40 years old,” says Steve.

Over the next decades, Harry and Anika steadily expanded the herd from 20 to 125 cows and the Koeckhoven kids grew up milking cows, all while also being taught to be curious about things other than farming.

Steve earned his bachelor of commerce in finance from the University of Alberta and only during the last year did he take his electives in agriculture. It was that taste and his parents’ passion for farming that spurred him to switch to agricultural economics to do his masters on cost of production and management of resources, with his first job out of university working as an agricultural consultant with MNP.

At home, Steve and his dad also crunched numbers to see if it made financial sense to fulfil his dad’s dream of grain farming in Canada. The culture of smart, out-of-the-box thinking drove the process.

In the early 2000s they took the plunge, selling the cows, quota and Alberta farmland and buying a farm in southern Saskatchewan. Today they own, crop-share and rent about 5,500 acres.

In addition to themselves and the two brothers working on the farm on holidays, they hire one man in the summer — an agricultural college graduate who is respected by the whole family. Although they pay him over market wages, Steve says hiring the right match for their farm is worth it.

“Leading employees is more than not bossing them around or retention, it’s respecting how much they bring to your farm,” he says.

The next step

Steve says today’s successful farmers need to understand how important engaged people — employees, family owners, suppliers and advisers — are to the continued growth of their business.

He isn’t alone. “I find the 30- to 40-year-olds are a different generation, with a different mindset and have a different approach to business management,” says Stup.

Farmers, like any other business people who produce stuff, tend to be focused on production, he finds, yet he repeats that leading your farm business is actually about creating a culture and systems to use resources more efficiently, and of course that takes communication and motivated people.

If the leaders are disengaged, non-communicative, and don’t care about their employees, that becomes the culture for the business.

To Stup, it’s clear: “If the farmer doesn’t like managing people, doesn’t like building teams, then they need to hire someone who likes managing people.”

“Leadership is all about developing a culture, and leaders set the culture, ” he says.

Your strategy

At the heart of any successful farm today is a base strategy, but it has to be communicated among everyone involved.

Almost all farms have multiple partners, from two spouses to multiple family members to non-family partners, and it’s when there is a lack of cohesion on goals and values that there is almost certain to be conflicts, often leading to lack of motivation or even business failure.

In Saskatchewan, the Koeckhovens’ goal was to build a grain farm that maximized their assets — both labour and physical assets. With the size of their farm and the equipment they have, including one combine and a pull-type sprayer, Steve thinks they’ve reached their point of capital maximization.

Their crop rotation of soybeans, canola, wheat, flax, and various pulses stretches the harvest season, so with some extra-long days, they can get away with one combine and some custom hours. Their pull sprayer isn’t as efficient but the family calculates they are better to hire some custom spraying.

Equipment purchases beyond this point are when returns start bleeding. “We are always trying to maximize capital allocations,” says Steve. “Farmers go broke on equipment.”

The same general goal of maximizing resources applies to expansion of land base, although many factors go into longer-term investment decisions. “At 5,000 to 5,500 acres we are at maximum efficiency,” says Steve. “To expand we’d really have to double to get to that maximum efficiency again.”

He believes your debt-to-equity ratio only looks as good as the market value of your assets. When they bought the farm, they wanted a certain scale and to get it, they took on debt. At $1,000 per acre, they had stretched their return on capital and maxed out their working capital.

With higher land values, rental rates have increased, and so has their risk, says Steve. To mitigate some of this risk they have a crop share agreement for 1,200 acres, which also means they have to share profits, but there is value to shared risk. Paying more for rent is not a good use of working capital, especially when things are tight.

“In bumper years we do pay more but, in years like last year when we have a crop insurance claim, the risk is shared,” says Steve. “I want to protect the downside.”

Keep learning

The move to Saskatchewan also led to another learning opportunity for Steve when he got a chance to work with a new fledgling venture capital business called One Earth Farms. It was an exciting new business model based on better margins with scale based on rented land — much of it from Indian reserves and corporately run.

In the five years he worked for One Earth Farms, it grew to 120,000 acres and over 10,000 head of cattle and Steve learned huge amounts about venture capitalism and the intrinsic value proposition of families owning and operating farms.

One Earth Farms business model was somewhat challenging to overlay on the traditonal large-acre farming models of Western Canada, says Steve. For example, even with a core of schooled and dedicated employees, their model couldn’t achieve the same results that naturally derive out of the commitment of family farms and private ownership.

In addition, the margins in crop farming were often too tight to adequately compensate for the admininstrative standards that had to be met by a farm reporting its results through a publicly traded corporation, such as quarterly audits.

In 2014, One Earth went out of the cropping business and the leadership changed. Eventually the company changed its focus to food companies, brought in new leadership, and Steve moved on. But the venture capital rollercoaster had left him with a broad knowledge of startup business, and he had also earned his Ivey MBA.

He had decided to do his MBA in Ontario rather than closer to home because many of the upper executives at Sprott were Bay Street-based and had done their post-graduate degrees at Western or the University of Toronto. He also wanted to learn about leadership from a diverse, international business group, not from a program heavy with commodity industries or in a room full of farmers.

Steve not only came out of the program with new perspectives and a prestigious degree, he has a group of interesting friends in business he can call on for opinions and ideas from around the world. This group is invaluable, even if he doesn’t leverage it for business deals. “I can pick people’s brains from other industries, other countries,” he says.

Communication pulls succession

One goal of the MBA program was to look at small business planning, with case studies often containing insights into how you should work with family. Showing his dad and brother what he learned with these case studies helped everyone to think about how to do succession planning for their farm.

Steve shared some of the unique ways to get things done and different pathways through problems he had learned at Ivey which might have helped them consider different solutions on how to split assets. With farming’s typical high asset-value/low-cash conundrum, succession planning has its own difficulties compared to other types of business. His experience helped give them the framework and confidence to move forward, and now both the sons own shares in the company with their parents.

But most importantly, they listened to each other’s opinions on what would work and what wouldn’t. “I bet half the problems that families run into with succession start when they want to talk more than they want to listen,” says Steve.

He really enjoyed the challenge of learning how to most effectively communicate during his MBA studies and not just talking for the sake of talking. Half of the grade was for participation, based on quality not quantity. “You have to be prepared to make significant contributions to the topic,” says Steve. “I used to talk more.”

He enjoyed being the lone farmer in the group because the stereotype gave him the advantage. When he arrived in a suit and spoke intelligently, people really listened to him.

Delegate to strengths

Solving the Ivey case studies with all the aggressive, talented people also made Steve realize that not everybody can be in the front seat for every decision, and that each person on the farm has their strengths.

At first the team members, including Steve, were too focused on talking and finding the solution, not listening and managing the process. “Everyone was so keen to find the rabbit, they buried themselves in the details of holes and trails,” he says. “But sometimes you have to pull yourself out of the details to see the solution.”

Through the case study work the professors weren’t necessarily looking to see if students could find a specific right answer. They wanted to see how they thought about a problem and finally came to a consensus around a solution. For example, many of the engineers struggled with trying to understand that sometimes 1+1 = 2 but 1+4-3 also equals 2.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, Dad (Harry) has his fingers in everything but has taken a step back to let his sons make decisions. “Many years ago Dad took CTEAM and TEPAP and I think that helped him learn how to give us the reins to allow us to make mistakes so we can learn,” says Steve.

The family has also looked at allocating the responsibilities for different roles. For example, Steve’s brother John is operationally strong so he does most of the seeding and harvesting recommendations, like what field to seed first and how deep to plant. Steve is more of a numbers guy and works on the accounting and capital allocation.

Divvying up the lead roles put the best person in the front seat for different parts of their business. They still don’t always agree instantly with each other but, Steve notices, sometimes it’s best to listen from the back seat.

– This article was originally published in the December 2017 issue of Country Guide.

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“We are currently seeking eligible partners across Canada that have existing training programs that may be in need of further refinement or support,” it said in an emailed newsletter.

Eligible organizations can access funding between Feb. 1 and March 31 of this year, CAHRC’s website says. The training programs must be ready for delivery so participants may finish them by the end of March.

Funding may be used for things like enhancement of programs and materials, funding to deliver training in Indigenous communities or at an institution, and for ‘wrap around’ supports for participants, such as transportation or childcare allowances.

CAHRC will ask for an in-kind contribution of 10 per cent of the training program’s total budget.

The deadline to apply is Jan. 31.

—Geralyn Wichers is associate digital editor with AgCanada. She writes from southeast Manitoba.

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Among them is 18-year-old George Meggison. He’s following in the footsteps of two sisters, as well as his parents and grandfathers, who all earned university degrees and diplomas here.

Meggison’s parents, Coral and Steve, farm near Goodlands, Man., and are happy to see their son choosing to study agriculture. His older sisters, Sheena and Katie, are both recent graduates with four-year agricultural degrees.

“We’re excited for George, too,” says Steve Meggison on the 2,600-acre mixed farm he operates with Coral in the southwestern corner of Manitoba. In part, Steve is remembering his own early days when he began his post-secondary education.

“Maybe one of the most important things is just to get out of here for a while, and go have some fun,” he says. “You’re meeting new people and starting to be in charge for yourself.”

Of course, he adds, that time away is an opportunity to broaden perspectives, too, and to learn to think independently and to problem solve while absorbing the content of the two-year ag diploma program.

“What we want him to learn, aside from the technical, practical information in each course, is how to develop contacts and to network with people,” Steve says. “People you meet at university can be important to you later in your life.”

All of the above is why parents across Canada invest in sons’ and daughters’ educations. They share the Meggisons’ hopes. They want their children to thrive and prosper.

They also know, though, that a good education for the next generation helps advance the family farm enterprise too. It adds a highly trained farm manager to the farm team and brings new ideas, perspectives and skills.

Further education also opens up a world of opportunity for off-farm, ag-related careers and good-paying employment in a sector awash with challenging new jobs.

Agricultural schools like this one, and others across the country have a long history of producing, generation after generation, the right fit for those jobs. Thanks to their efforts, Canada has world-class farm managers and great business heads.

But oh, the times are changing, and with them, the skill sets and competencies the next generation needs.

The new strategy

In the crowd this fall day is Michele Rogalsky, director of University of Manitoba’s School of Agriculture’s diploma program. She is also president of the Canadian Association of Diploma in Agriculture Programs (CADAP), representing 15 post-secondary institutions across Canada that offer ag diplomas. If anyone understands the challenge of keeping up and ensuring their programs are meeting the needs of this rapidly changing industry, it’s her.

Here’s the strategy. At the University of Manitoba the focus is on teaching farm science and technology, but their students are also being equipped with management skills, Rogalsky says.

Yes, students will head back to the farm competent in a broad set of technical areas, with real insights into modern best practices.

But they’ll also be able to think on their feet, to problem solve and to score points as team players.

Plus, they’ll also bring a valuable understanding of agricultural and food systems.

“They become critical and independent thinkers and mature responsible citizens,” says Rogalsky.

University of Manitoba’s program is recognized by the Agronomists of Manitoba as qualification for a technical agrologist’s designation, and the diploma in agriculture is regularly a gateway to two more years of study in the faculty of agricultural and food sciences degree program, too.

Re-thinking “school”

The University of Manitoba recently completed an extensive review of their program offerings, says Rogalsky, leading to a new focus that it implemented last year. The emphasis now is on teaching the principles that underlie modern farm production and agribusiness management practices, not just the how-tos.

The goal is to expand students’ opportunities to develop and apply higher level decision-making skills. It’s to help them excel at assessing a farm business, and at assessing the impact of current agricultural issues on individual farm operations and on the industry as a whole.

For students, this means new core courses, such as one on how integrated agri-food systems expand the focus from the farm gate to the consumer’s plate. The U of M has also replaced a farm machinery course with one focused on precision agriculture and on how technological tools feed into decision-making. The goal is to help students better understand technological applications and their potential value in terms of the farm’s management targets.

What the two-year program ultimately enables each student to produce is a detailed farm management plan, which they take before a panel of financial and producer organizations and industry representatives.

“It’s comparable to a thesis defense,” says Rogalsky.

Developing a farm management plan has been a component of their program for decades, with students using it to demonstrate they’ve learned a broad range of skills, like knowing how to calculate costs of production, how to evaluate the information that informs their decisions, and how to communicate clearly.

Why Olds College is changing

Like the other colleges that Country Guide checked in with, Alberta’s Olds College has reviewed its ag programming, doing extensive engagement surveys on what skills are most important for their graduates.

What those surveys have shown Olds, says college president Stuart Cullum, is the value of soft skills.

“The graduates coming out of Olds College need to be effective communicators, they need to understand business, they need to know how to collaborate, and be systems thinkers,” Cullum insists.

Olds College has been adding significant new programming to its offerings, too.

But that certainly doesn’t mean it’s all bookwork and theory. “Technology integration is another important skill set we’re always talking about,” says Cullum.

The Alberta school’s Smart Farm, a giant laboratory for its agricultural technology students, is a unique offering in Canada, giving students access to innovative new technology, and a place where something known as “design thinking” is emphasized, enabling students to engage with ag tech in innovative, reflective ways.

Cullum says students are challenged to think about problems to solve, opportunities to seize, and how agricultural technology can be used to optimize productivity and environmental sustainability.

Olds College has recently launched major new programs to equip students with new ag tech skills. These include its new precision agriculture — techgronomy diploma and its agriculture technology integration post-diploma certificate, both starting in 2020.

The courses will prepare grads to work in a fast-paced environment disrupted by technology, and they will explore how to link emerging technologies with existing farm infrastructure, Cullum says. “It’s a role and a skill set that will be valuable on-farm as well as in other parts of the industry and the service sector for agriculture.”

Olds College also unveiled its new Werklund School in the autumn, and part of its longstanding commitment to building Alberta’s position as a global leader in agriculture and technology.

The college sees a need for graduates with a strong understanding of the connections between agronomy, technology and data sciences. That, says Cullum, includes knowing how to integrate technology on-farm.

“We want to develop graduates who can come into an environment where they’re going to be experiencing different levels of technology and working with equipment that in some cases may be older,” says Cullum. That will mean sorting out problems and opportunities with an uneven technology platform, and it will be a pivotal role on the home farm.

In their background research, the Olds team heard parents underscore how essential it is that their incoming generation be confident in new technologies.

“But they don’t want to see their kids just become efficient in the use of tech or how to practice agriculture production,” Cullum says.

“They want to ensure that they have skills to solve some of the problems that they (the parents) don’t know how to solve themselves, and to have that new generation of expertise and insight.”

Student-managed at Lakeland

Lakeland College at Vermilion, Alta., has pioneered the Student-Managed Farm, a model that sees students fully engage in either an animal science or crop technology unit, managing and making decisions and running the 2,000-acre farm with its beef and dairy herds and flock of sheep.

The students set goals, budgets, prepare reports and do the work, all with the goal of operating a profitable and sustainable agribusiness.

All the various enterprises of the farm are managed by the students who look after marketing, finances, and public relations.

“The students take everything they’ve learned… academics and skill-based, competency-based learning and apply it to a real-world business,” says Josie Van Lent, dean of Lakeland College School of Agricultural Sciences, who has made increasing student enrolment, expanding student-managed learning opportunities, and developing key connections with industry her key priorities.

“That business, for us, happens to be our farm right outside our back door.”

Van Lent says colleges are evolving to include more agri-business topics, and they aim to foster skill sets around managing and leading and being involved in businesses and farms that are multi-layered in terms of their employment structure. They also want their students to be skilled at new communication vehicles.

This generation of farm managers and agriculture overall is under scrutiny in ways unimaginable not so long ago, she says. “We actually have curriculum around social media, and how to make sure that you are an agvocate.”

What students learn is that social media is best used to educate and share what’s going on in a farming operation, and that a professional way of communicating is the best approach, rather than being reactive and defensive when confronting the public.

“Each of our students should have competency around social media and addressing how we present ourselves as an industry,” Van Lent says.

Ridgetown, and far beyond

University of Guelph’s Ridgetown Campus in Ridge­town, Ont., offers a two-year associate diploma in agriculture, where students learn the science, technology and business of agriculture focussing their studies in areas such as agribusiness, crops, livestock, or fruit and vegetable production.

Campus director Ken McEwan echoes his colleagues across Canada, emphasizing the need to keep curriculum up to date with developing technology but also the importance of skills such as strong communication, strategic thinking and business management.

McEwan also talks of the importance of incorporating a global perspective on agriculture into the mix, so in addition to their studies in production management, ag economics and marketing and others, students in the agriculture or horticulture diploma programs can add international trips and study abroad for credit towards their diploma.

In the Guelph program, this can mean anything from trips to the midwestern U.S. to see a variety of farms and agribusinesses, or to Belize in Central America to tour citrus farms, banana plantations, beef and dairy operations, and other development projects.

This comes on top of one of the benefits for students in colleges anywhere in Canada, i.e. the exposure to people from different backgrounds. On today’s campuses, this means interacting with a wider group of international students and a more diverse student body.

Rogalsky agrees. What all these programs aim for is to produce graduates whose competencies and skills give them an ability to anticipate and work within a fast-paced and rapidly changing industry, and it makes her liken the arrival of every year’s first-year students to the first day of spring seeding.

“Convocation is the harvest,” she says.

Parent expectations

Not every student will end up on the farm. Maybe that’s one of the strengths of these programs. For instance, in that orientation session at the University of Manitoba this September were Chris and Charlotte Unrau.

The Winkler, Man. couple do not farm but own an agribusiness, Precision Land Solutions, installing drain tile on farmland. The morning’s session about what their son, Adam, 19, enrolling this fall, will be studying brought back a lot of memories for Chris. He graduated from the program in 1996.

He has continuously applied the skills from the diploma program, he says. “You come into a program like this and you will learn very, very practical skills, even skills that will carry you through the rest of your life,” Chris says, adding that you learn to be a lifelong learner, and how to look for answers and solutions to the problems and challenges that come your way. “That for me is the bigger piece.”

“Just broadening your horizons, opening your eyes that not everything is done the way you think it’s done. There are alternatives, new concepts. Being able to know how to come to a solution. You may not know the solution but you’ll know someone who does know, or you’ll know how to get there. That I think is very, very critical for people coming out of this program.

“And I don’t think I realized this until fairly recently, but also to be able to know how to work with other people. and being able to get along with others being able to negotiate, collaborate, co-operate,” he adds.

Unrau remembers the farm management plan he put together more than 20 years ago.

Ultimately, he went an entirely different direction. His own background was a family in the construction business, so he’d compiled a plan that involved using the family business to build barns and expand into hog production.

Operating their company turned out to be exactly what he wanted to do.

“I’m looking forward to this for Adam. He has ideas and hopes and dreams and some of it involves working with cattle. I’d love more than anything for him to use the farm plan project to put together a business plan to figure out what he wants to do, and through that process he’ll learn a lot about himself, he’ll learn about the industry, and he’ll make contacts. It could be one of those things where it just propels him into success, or maybe, like me, he’ll decide, no, that’s not what he wants to do, too.”

The Meggisons have the same aspirations for George. Their older daughter, Sheena, has recently married and is now farming with her husband, while Katie, who graduated this past spring, is headed for New Zealand for some career exploration. George will make his own choices over time, too, his parents say. “If he chooses to come back to the farm, that’s all good,” says Coral.

“But this may trigger an interest in him to do something else that’s going to lead him away from the farm. And that’s okay, too.”

This article was originally titled ‘Report Card’ in the November 2019 issue of Country Guide.

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The Knowledge Gap theory is that information has traditionally been more accessible to those with higher socio-economic status. With the arrival of social media, however, those gaps have decreased; access to information has become available to everyone.

But when our brain is bombarded with information, it attempts to construct meaning from all the bits and pieces while simultaneously making split-second decisions about what needs to be remembered. All this action can leave the brain feeling a little muddled, so it employs heuristics, or mental shortcuts, to help process the information.

These shortcuts can create “cognitive holes,” or gaps in our knowledge, as the brain aims for efficiency.

To make sense of what’s important, relevant and urgent, our brains connect the dots of incoming information and then fill gaps with stuff we already know, concepts we’re more familiar with, or information from trusted sources (friends, family). The trouble is, the information we use to fill in these gaps can be incomplete, or even worse, completely wrong.

For years, those who possessed agricultural knowledge lived in rural areas and didn’t necessarily have the means to share information. As well, traditional media outlets don’t always present accurate information about the ag industry. When combined, these factors threaten to expand knowledge gaps into a chasm.

How can we help consumers fill cognitive holes and knowledge gaps about the ag industry?

More information on its own will not fill the hole.

The Information Deficit Model is based on the idea that if we throw more information at those who don’t understand an issue, they’ll finally “get it.” In recent years this theory has been largely discredited. We now know that when the general public doesn’t understand something scientific (i.e. agriculture), it can’t be fixed by simply supplying more facts. There are too many other factors at play such as emotions, world views, and ethical, cultural, and religious beliefs.

The key seems to be curiosity. It might have killed the cat, as the old saying tells us, but it can help you fill cognitive holes.

Behavioural economist George Lowenstein discovered that curiosity happens when we feel a gap in our knowledge. Curiosity can, therefore, lead to learning since knowledge gaps create interest — but we need to figure out how to open gaps before we can close them.

Our tendency is to tell people the facts. However, they first must realize that they need these facts. To convince people they need your information, introduce some specific knowledge they’re missing by asking a question that highlights a gap in their knowledge.

Mysteries are one way to counteract knowledge gaps, because they create a need for closure: “The ‘ah-ha’ experience is much more satisfying if it’s preceded by the ‘huh?’ experience,” says Robert Cialdini, persuasion expert.

Author J.J. Abrams once said that “mystery is more important than knowledge.” Find ways to generate intrigue with your listener and they’ll need to know more.

Learn how people learn

To fill knowledge gaps efficiently, it’s important to consider the various ways in which people learn.

The modern learner, as characterized by Deloitte Modern Learner research, wants to learn, but they are desperately trying to keep up. They’re feeling overwhelmed, distracted, and impatient, so they want learning content that is relevant, focused and succinct, timely, mobile, and engaging.

As people increasingly turn to the online world for just-in-time answers, you can use these windows of opportunity to share your expertise and fill knowledge gaps. According to 2016 data from the Pew Research Center, 61 per cent of U.S. adults got their news from social media, up from 49 per cent in 2012. You’re missing a giant opportunity for filling knowledge potholes if you’re not on the most popular social media sites, taking part in conversations and sharing myth-busting information.

Most importantly, the information you share should prioritize consumers’ learning and information goals. If you do, you’ll stand a better chance of capturing their attention, filling knowledge gaps, and ensuring they seek out you, the expert, when they have future gaps.

We all have gaps in our knowledge, so we shouldn’t judge others for theirs. What we should do is help consumers fill their knowledge gaps, especially since research shows that identifying and filling gaps is an important factor in the survival and growth of alliances.

“By socially interacting with alliance partners, individuals are able to communicate and explain their ideas and to put information together to fill their knowledge gaps,” says a study from Cardiff and Napier Universities. Think what an effective farmer-consumer alliance could mean for the industry!

By helping consumers get the information they need, you’re ultimately creating an environment in which your business can thrive.

April Stewart is a sixth-generation dairy farmer in Quebec, president of Canadian Young Speakers for Agriculture, and principal of Alba PR, whose latest project is The Farmer’s Survival Guide.

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In a nutshell, it’s because there are jobs in agriculture after school — good jobs that offer exciting and interesting career paths for young graduates. They are jobs that mix high levels of responsibility with the use of cutting-edge technology. Even better, they offer opportunities to help protect the planet and more.

At McGill, one of Canada’s oldest ag programs, more students are signing up than ever, not only for the hands-on side of agriculture where they can implement new technologies, but also for business decision-making as well.

Canada’s ag sector will be in good hands, says a confident Dr. Jim Fyles, McGill’s associate ag dean, who notes that the ag students he meets “are driven by an entrepreneurial spirit of innovation, on one hand, and by a desire to help feed the world in a sustainable manner on the other.”

The story is the same at Canada’s newest ag university.

“It’s unbelievable how many jobs there are in agriculture,” says Dr. Tom Baumann, associate professor in the agriculture technology department at the University of the Fraser Valley in Chilliwack, B.C.

His university is new — only six years old — and it has Canada’s newest bachelor of science in agriculture (B.Sc.Agr.) degree, open only since 2016. It’s small, of course, but enrolment has already doubled to about 25 students this year and they feel they’ve got a tiger by the tail. Plus, their diploma program is booming too.

Employment opportunities are regional, they’re national, they’re in the field and in the barn, and they’re in the boardroom. “There are jobs at Farm Credit Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, so many in sales and extension,” says Baumann. “Our grads are in demand at greenhouse operations, at dairy farms… They are especially looking to fill mid-management positions.”

And the students are up to the job, says McGill’s Fyles. He describes them, as they describe themselves, in one memorable phrase: “super keen.”

The following snapshots across the country aim to capture that excitement. As I said, it’s inspirational.

University of Manitoba

At the University of Manitoba, enrolment in ag programs has been maxed out for quite some time but those days may soon be over.

“Our enrolment over the last five years has remained steady — around 720 students in our undergraduate degree programs and 150 students in our two-year diploma program,” reports Dr. Jared Carlberg, associate dean (academic) of the faculty of agricultural and food sciences.

Now the school thinks it can double its intake.

U of M has hit its admissions cap for both degree and diploma almost every year, and the school, which offers diplomas and five B.Sc. degrees (agriculture, which includes agronomy, plant biotechnology and animal systems, agribusiness, agro-ecology, food science, and human nutritional sciences) will be petitioning to increase its number of admissions spots.

Says Carlberg: “We believe our faculty has the potential to double in size in the intermediate term as we complete our ongoing curriculum renewal, update our promotional and recruitment efforts, and consider new programs that could include areas such as food justice and sovereignty and sustainable food systems.”

University of Alberta

The University of Alberta is another institution with capped and maxed out ag program enrolment. The institution offers several B.Sc.Agr. degrees (agriculture and resource economics, animal science, crop science and sustainable ag systems), a B.Sc. in animal health and B.Sc. in agriculture/food business management, in which students access a range of courses within the Alberta School of Business.

Women account for three-quarters of ag students, and international enrolment in its ag programs sits at about 15 per cent. Many of these students transfer from partner universities in other countries, notably China.

Jim Bohun, assistant dean (academic and student programs) in the faculty of agricultural, life and environmental sciences, says the B.Sc.Agr. animal science major and the B.Sc. in animal health have the highest enrolment due to factors such as professor expertise, industry support and institutional infrastructure (U of A has cattle, swine and poultry facilities).

“Applications to our ag-related programs have been steadily increasing,” says Bohun. “As we have a mandated enrolment target, we are unable to increase enrolment to meet this demand. As a result, admission averages have been rising. Increasing applications are largely based on efforts to promote employability of agriculture graduates along with interest in pre-vet programs.” Incorporation of new technologies is also attracting students to the U of A.

University of Saskatchewan

The University of Saskatchewan has one ag program already capped, and Dr. Fran Walley, academic associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Bioresources, says the institution has seen “a pretty dramatic increase” in enrolment in the college over the last five years. In the last year, it’s exploded from 850 students to just shy of 1,300 this year. Some of that, she says, is due to the launch of new programs related to land and resource management, but also due to the great career opportunities for graduates.

“There are a lot of jobs in Saskatchewan in agriculture and resource management,” Walley notes. “Agriculture is a big industry in the province. Ag business is very strong as well. Our students do well getting summer jobs and our graduate surveys show that they get really good jobs in their areas of study.” The college doesn’t need to do much promotion, she says, as prospective students living in the province are quite aware of opportunities that exist in the ag industry.

U of Sask offers three main ag degrees and two diplomas. The B.Sc.Agr. is the main degree, but a B.Sc.Agr. business was introduced several years ago, as was a B.Sc. in animal bioscience (which had 150 applicants this year for 90 spots). The ag-related diploma programs are available in agronomy and ag business. Walley notes that for more than a decade now, there have been more women than men in the ag programs, and that the percentage of international students has stayed pretty steady at about 10 per cent.

University of Guelph

In Ontario, the University of Guelph has seen steady growth in enrolment across all agricultural programs over the last five years, with a B.Sc.Agr. offered at the main Guelph campus and diploma programs at its Ridgetown campus. Dr. Jonathan Schmidt, associate academic dean in the university’s Ontario Agriculture College, attributes growing student numbers to a general increase in the awareness of agriculture and food in the population at large.

Schmidt believes society today values learning about food production and is excited about producing food in sustainable ways. He also thinks awareness of all the opportunities available in the ag sector has grown, with a large number of careers inside and outside the farm gate, including many professional opportunities and cutting-edge jobs with exciting futures.

“We promote agriculture as it is today, technically demanding and sophisticated, and that resonates with young people,” Schmidt says. “Agriculture includes running significant-sized businesses. I think there’s a positive feeling about the sector these days… it’s the largest economic sector in Ontario, so that creates an attraction to being involved in it or at least exploring it.”

Schmidt says that farm kids wanting education before they return to the family farm account for only a minority of their total student numbers.

Like other long-established ag institutions, U of G’s offerings have evolved and are quite different now compared to decades past. “Topics are much more spread out now among various programs,” Schmidt says. “For example, the food and agricultural business program is offered in the bachelor of commerce degree now, and things like pest management and soil science are included within the B.Sc. in environmental science.”

Schmidt believes the number of women in almost all of the programs has stayed steady for the last seven or eight years, at about 60 per cent (except the equine programs, which are about 95 per cent women).

“We would like to grow our international student enrolment, which has gone down a bit in recent years,” Schmidt says. “It’s one of our goals as a college and one reason for this is that interactions with international students are very enriching for domestic students.”

Like many other institutions, the U of G promotes ag programs to students in high schools, and Schmidt says the university’s website is also very important in promoting programs and graduate job opportunities to high school students, teachers and guidance counsellors. He adds that other organizations such as AgScape are also doing very proactive things to drive interest in agriculture sector education.

As to whether more farm business management content has been added over time to various programs, Schmidt says no, as it’s been there the whole time. “We’ve been pretty rigorous all along in including a lot of it,” he says. “Farm businesses require understanding the soil, plants, animals and so on, as well as financial management, operations management, economics, marketing. So we’ve always strived to provide a balance for the B.Sc.Agr. students who study everything from breeding and agronomy to commodities markets. The description in the academic calendar makes this very clear.”

Eastern Canada

Dalhousie University’s faculty of agriculture, in Truro, Nova Scotia, reports that animal-focused programs like bioveterinary science, animal science and pre-veterinary science remain popular and that they have stable enrolment across ag programs.

In fall of 2017, McGill University in Montreal enrolled over 2,100 students in the faculty of agricultural and environmental sciences, 1,455 being female, up about eight per cent over the last five years. One diploma (Farm Management & Technology) is offered, along with s everal B.Sc.Agr. environmental science degrees (such as agricultural economics, agro-environmental sciences and global food security).

Jim Fyles, associate dean of student affairs in the faculty of agricultural and environmental sciences, says he and his colleagues are “delighted” to see enrolments in agriculture programs rebounding after many years of decline, a scenario which he says has been experienced across North America.

“Our enrolments in agricultural degree programs have increased almost 90 per cent since 2010, which is remarkable enough, but particularly when the demographic trend in university entrance-aged students has declined 20 per cent over the same time,” Fyles says. “Enrolments in bioresource engineering, which has a strong foundation in agriculture, have increased by over 40 per cent.”

While Fyles says the content McGill offers in its ag programs “seems to be working well,” he adds that his faculty has several new professors, and that their new perspectives and expertise may result in some changes.

Like the other ag department leaders, Fyles believes ag program enrolment is growing at McGill because of an increasing emphasis on the cutting-edge science and technology in modern agriculture, from genomics to remote-sensing driven precision management. He also agrees that there is a broader understanding of agriculture these days, and the fact that McGill’s ag programs include urban, international and organic production contexts for food production draws a wider cross-section of students, many of whom are from an urban background.

“We have diversity of students with a diversity of motivations, but on the whole it seems that they are looking for a balance,” Fyles observes, “A career path certainly, but one in an area that is interesting and exciting to them.”

However, Fyles adds that while “students, parents and surveys tell us that getting a job is very important in enrolment decisions… some programs, such as agricultural economics in which a job at the end is almost certain, are undersubscribed.”

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Every single one of the 650,000 is also a unique individual, with their own background and interests. But there is at least one thing they have in common. They all wear a blue corduroy jacket, because they are the Future Farmers of America (FFA).

If the only things you’ve heard about FFA have been in country songs, you may be surprised to learn that many FFA members are not farmers. In fact, some don’t have any connection to agriculture at all.

That was certainly the case for David Townsend. “Having not come from a farm or any kind of agricultural background, I was unaware of where our food, fibre and clothes come from,” Townsend tells me when we met recently.

I had wondered how he came to join the FFA, and he says it wasn’t actually a decision; it was an accident. “I was placed into an animal science class by mistake,” he laughs.

Once in the class, though, he quickly got involved in the variety of activities offered by FFA.

“I stayed involved in agriculture education because of these incredible experiences and opportunities, along with the amazing people who have impacted my life for the better,” Townsend says.

Those experiences and opportunities have led Townsend to his current position as the national FFA president, and it’s the kind of story that gives you faith in the leadership abilities of our future generation.

However, it turns out that these stories are not uncommon for FFA members. Townsend’s peer and colleague DeShawn Blanding, national FFA vice-president, is another young man who has risen through the ranks of FFA.

After enrolling in his freshman year with no agriculture experience, Blanding eventually got elected as president of his local FFA chapter as well as state vice-president for South Carolina during his high school career.

It begs the question: is there something special about Townsend and Blanding that brought them to their leadership positions? Or is there something special about the FFA experience? Are leaders born, or are leaders made?

A formula for development

The national FFA organization mission is all about developing potential in youth, including their potential for premier leadership, personal growth, and career success.

How do you develop a leader? According to FFA, the formula is a robust school-based agricultural education model, which is comprised of three main components:

• Classroom/laboratory
• Supervised agricultural experiences
• FFA activities

Members must be enrolled in an agricultural education program in their local school where they learn about agri-food topics such as horticulture, veterinary medicine, food science, etc. These classes look different in each school and are largely dependent on local resources and the teacher’s area of expertise.

Agricultural educators teach the classes but are also the advisers for the local FFA chapter.

The classroom/laboratory component is often the gateway into the world of FFA. For Victoria Harris, who is serving as the national FFA secretary, her entrance came in the form of an elective course in her sophomore year. “I took veterinary assisting. This is how I found myself in an ag class, and I quickly joined FFA,” Harris recalls. “Pretty soon, I found myself shadowing a veterinarian and raising livestock with my FFA chapter.”

Opportunities like job shadowing are another part of the agriculture education model. Hands-on supervised agricultural experiences (SAEs) allow FFA members to apply the skills they have learned in the classroom and try out careers in a low risk way. Experiences range from internships and research projects to community service days.

The entrepreneurial payoff

Many of the experiences also have an entrepreneurial element. FFA members can develop their own agricultural business or collaborate on a school-based enterprise where they make financial and management decisions.

These are popular options and feed into the entrepreneurial drive of many young people. In fact, a study conducted in 2015 found that 42 per cent of teenagers surveyed intend to be entrepreneurs or self-employed.

With first-hand experience running these ventures, FFA members are ready to take on the business world for themselves.

The third component of the agricultural education model engages members in FFA competitions and development activities at local, state, and national levels. The variety of activities is impressive, with career and leadership development events incorporating options including agronomy, marketing, and public speaking.

While technical skills are important, a major focus for FFA is to foster employability skills, also called soft skills. However, according to Townsend, there is nothing “soft” about communication or teamwork abilities. “Josh Bledsoe, COO of the national FFA organization, who I greatly look up to, dislikes the term ‘soft skills,’” Townsend tells me. “Instead he refers to them as ‘power skills’ because they give you the power to be successful in a career and in life.”

These skills have certainly served Blanding well. As a freshman, he described himself as painfully shy. But he had an adviser who believed in him and invested time and energy to break that shell. Blanding now credits the career and leadership development activities of FFA for the growth of his voice and his passion for agriculture.

Says Blanding, “I now understand the importance of using my abilities to take the initiative to make an impact, motivate, and empower.”

Inspiring careers in agriculture

Involvement in FFA does more than foster business and “power skills.” Sometimes it informs career aspirations. For instance, her veterinary assisting class exposed Harris to new career opportunities, and she now intends to pursue a career as a food animal veterinarian.

Blanding also had his mind opened to new opportunities through his agricultural education experience.

He had entered high school planning to become a doctor, but through his FFA experience he had a shift in his thinking. “I recognized the importance of agricultural diversity,” he says, “and the need for environmental sustainability.” He is now majoring in natural resources and engineering.

Townsend says there are many ways to “engage with food production and processing even before it gets into a kitchen for chefs to use.” After completing his degree in plant science, agriculture and natural resources, his hope is to “own and operate a farm growing specialty crops — fruits and vegetables.”

FFA members (as well as other non-FFA youth) can also learn about careers in agriculture on a new website called agexplorer.com.

The website was developed in collaboration between FFA, AgCareers.com and Discovery Education. Over 235 unique careers in agriculture are profiled and include information on education requirements, typical employers and even salary recommendations.

Through AgExplorer.com, youth can see that agriculture careers align with interests including environment, technology and business, and they also see that all 235 careers are valuable opportunities for FFA members to apply their knowledge and skills.

As the strategic career success partner of the national FFA organization, AgCareers.com believes those FFA members will help fill agriculture’s shortage of skilled labour. “This is a key pipeline of talent as North America prepares to lead the way in feeding 10 billion people” says Eric Spell, president of AgCareers.com.

The 650,000 blue jackets are not only the future farmers of America, they are part of the future of agriculture around the world. Blanding, Townsend and Harris know their career prospects are bright. The technical knowledge, and the power skills they have fostered through FFA will enable them to tackle current challenges and grasp future opportunities.

The post 650,000 blue jackets appeared first on Country Guide.

The institution is about 30 km south of downtown Chicago, and in many ways, it is a standard high school. It has lockers, classrooms, and a gymnasium.

However, there is something unique about CHSAS. Every single student here is studying agriculture.

CHSAS stands for Chicago High School of Agricultural Sciences. The school sits on 72 acres, 39 of which are a working farm. There is also a greenhouse, an aquaponics lab, livestock barn, bee hives, and a fully equipped food science lab.

As I travelled through the halls, the pride and enthusiasm were palpable. Sheila Fowler, the school’s vice-principal, notices that unique feeling at CHSAS too. “Our relatively small student population allows CHSAS to maintain a family-like atmosphere which is characteristic of many agricultural organizations throughout America,” she says.

And it’s true. There is a family-like quality to the interactions here. The two young women who led me around barely stopped talking, eagerly telling me about their experiences as students, as we moved from one area of the school to the next.

Something for every interest

Like most high schools, student course selections are fairly generalized for students entering their first year. However, by Grade 11 each student at CHSAS selects a career pathway to focus on as they complete their high school journey.

Pathway options include agricultural education, agricultural finance and economics, agricultural mechanics and technology, animal science, food science and technology, and horticulture.

This school year a biotechnology pathway was also added to round out the lineup of options.

For my first stop, my tour guides led me to the school greenhouse, home of the horticulture pathway. The greenhouse was beyond steamy on that summery day, so we moved our conversation to the classroom where the walls were covered with landscape plans. At the back of the room was a business centre, complete with computers and stacks of textbooks on horticulture and plant propagation.

I heard from the horticulture students that while they do a lot of planning and paperwork, the learning is definitely focused on hands-on experience. Within each of the pathways, students develop theoretical knowledge in classroom instruction and hands-on technical skills through practical projects. According to Fowler, the agriculture classes “are designed to give students ownership of projects. Students have a vested interest in making sure their work is successful.”

Each spring the horticulture pathway works together with the ag mechanics pathway to put together a display for the Flower and Garden Show held in downtown Chicago. It is an opportunity for students to put their skills to the test, competing against other schools and also established businesses. They also plan, advertise, and facilitate a plant sale each year for the local community.

Building business skills

Business skills are top of mind in all of the pathways. Every student at CHSAS is a member of Future Farmers of America (FFA), which requires them to complete, among other activities, a Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE). An SAE can take many different forms, such as entrepreneurial ventures, internships, or even school-based enterprises.

At CHSAS, one of the school-based enterprises is a farm stand that sells produce grown on the school grounds. It is managed by the ag finance and economics pathway, whose students were sitting in front of computers, working on their final projects as I entered their classroom.

I asked this group if they enjoy attending such a unique high school. A young man piped up and said “it’s great. You get to actually do stuff, not just read about it.” He explained that one of their first projects that year had been on investments. They chose real stocks and competed against each other to see which selections were most profitable.

“So what kind of stocks did you choose?” I asked. They responded that a portion of their selections had to be agri-business stocks, and they had been surprised by the number of agricultural options.

“I never knew that there were so many companies that sell tractors!” exclaimed one student.

That lack of familiarity with agriculture businesses is probably because these students don’t come from a farming or agriculture background. Every student here lives within the city limits of Chicago.

Challenging stereotypes

The school’s mission statement is ambitious, saying CHSAS “… provides opportunities for diverse students from across the city to study agriculture with the goal of developing marketable skills as well as college level competencies.”

The integration of academic and agricultural programs helps students see beyond old farming stereotypes. There may be a barn, tractors, and crops on campus, but students quickly realize agriculture is more than primary production, and that agriculture is good for our economy, environment, and culture.

Not surprisingly, there are stereotypes about the school. Many people in the city of Chicago refer to CHSAS as “the farm school,” and a few of the students I spoke to were initially apprehensive about attending, based on that description.

Despite a country nickname, CHSAS has a track record of success that attracts students from across the city. In 2016 the school received a 1+ rating, the highest score from the Chicago Public Schools.

Other statistics are impressive too: a four-year graduation rate of 81.1 per cent, college enrollment at 79.8 per cent, and a dropout rate of only 2.1 per cent.

Learners into leaders

In addition to specific agricultural competencies, there is a clear emphasis on developing employability and soft skills, such as communications and teamwork.

“Students know that it’s important to be academically strong, but they also know it’s equally important to be a good worker,” says Fowler, who is also the FFA adviser for the school.

FFA activities are designed to foster leadership skills and personal growth in youth. Competitions, conferences and conventions equip students with essential skills for career success.

Through participation in these youth development activities, the students gain confidence in their abilities and have the chance to interact with leaders in the agricultural field.

In fact, CHSAS prides itself on connecting with the agricultural community. During my visit, a steady stream of students headed to a classroom where interviews for a summer internship at a prominent agri-business were taking place.

It turns out that a pathway to an agriculture career is fairly common. On average, approximately 37 per cent of a CHSAS graduating class declare an ag-related major as they enter college. Those who move on to jobs within the agri-food sector often come back to the school to speak to students about their career and offer guidance and advice on entering the workforce.

The success of CHSAS highlights the value of emphasizing experiential learning and soft skills. Much can be learned from the integration of agriculture, education, and a strong youth development system like FFA.

With the pervasive labour shortage facing the agri-food sector, wouldn’t it be great to see 37 per cent of all graduating high school classes choosing agriculture pathways?

Whether or not the road leads to agriculture for individual students, the most important thing is that their agricultural training helps them leave high school with competence and confidence. Fowler knows that her graduates are ready to meet the world head on. “Students have the skills necessary to thrive,” she tells me. “They can conduct themselves as young professionals.”

For more information on CHSAS visit: www.chicagoagr.org/.

This article first appeared as ‘Check this Chicago school’ in the March 14, 2017 issue of Country Guide.

The post Chicago high school turning learners into leaders appeared first on Country Guide.

It’s clear there’s something special about agriculture on campus.

At the University of Saskatchewan, for instance, growth in agriculture faculty students has far outpaced the rest of the university, and has even topped the department’s own ambitious targets.

“Our undergrad enrolment is up 11.5 per cent this year and our grad enrolment is also up… it will be more than five per cent,” says Mary Buhr, dean of the U of S’s College of Agriculture and Bioresources.

By contrast, overall U of S enrolment managed only a 0.6 per cent rise.

Buhr says the college’s current five-year plan ends in 2016 but its goals have already been surpassed with undergrad enrolment climbing around 10 per cent in each of the last five years.

“We were targeting to grow to 850 undergraduates by 2016,” Buhr says. “In 2015, we are over 1,100.”

But that’s not the only proof of the new muscle being shown by agriculture in academia.

At the University of Manitoba’s faculty of agriculture and food sciences, for example, enrolment has surged due to the same national trends as at Guelph and Saskatchewan, but it also received an extra shot in the arm when the faculty absorbed parts of the former department of human ecology.

“We have seen a nearly 50 per cent increase in our degree program numbers by virtue of adding the bachelor of science in human nutritional sciences to our programs,” says spokeswoman Crystal Jorgenson.

Jorgenson calls it a natural fit in terms of research collaborations, and adds that it has enhanced partnerships with researchers and industry partners.

“In July of this year, the department of textile sciences became part of our department of biosystems engineering, and has increased our offerings in graduate education in some very unique and exciting areas,” Jorgenson adds.

Similarly, at the University of Alberta, just under 400 students enrolled this year in the three ag programs offered by the faculty of agricultural, life and environmental sciences, up from 315 five years ago.

Yet faculty dean Stan Blade also notes that the ratio of graduate students to undergrad is changing, with over 500 students at the master’s and PhD levels across the entire faculty.

Part of this reflects corporate investment, with about $44 million in external money coming in each year over the last five years to support research and the growing number of graduate students.

“I’ve spoken to a number of those grad students, and they think that they have further opportunities from a career standpoint by getting a graduate degree even on top of their bachelor’s,” says Blade. “We’ve seen the trend up in those graduate student numbers (partly) because of the huge investments that companies and others are making with us. But I think there’s also an appetite for people to get those higher-level degrees as well. That could be something to watch in the future.”

Blade has also noticed that parents who have graduated from university often put emphasis on their children earning their degrees as well. “When people are running multimillion-dollar operations, they need to have a lot of skills,” Blade says.

Job prospects are excellent too and students graduating with agricultural degrees have employers waiting to hire them.

“This is a $27-billion industry just in our province, and clearly that kind of activity requires great people. We’re certainly confident we’re putting those people into the workplace,” says Blade.

“I care about the fact that all of our graduates get jobs — and many of them get multiple job offers,” adds Buhr. “Our country needs our graduates, so that’s why we want more students, because they are fulfilling a need within the province and the country.”

Varamo also sees a huge appetite in the agri-food and agribusiness industries for skilled professionals.

“It seems as though many of our students upon graduation are finding employment… employment of choice in the areas of interest that they have,” Varamo says. In some cases, students have secured jobs before they even graduate, he adds.

The University of Manitoba held its Agricultural, Science and Engineering Career Fair in October and numerous ag industry recruiters were on hand, eager to speak with students.

“It has actually become increasingly competitive — employers want to interact with our students through pizza nights and information sessions in their search for top-quality summer and permanent employees,” Jorgenson says.

U of M ag students typically have their summer or permanent job offers by November.

Explaining the numbers

Student enrolment has trended higher in the last few years thanks in part to strength in the agriculture industry.

“The agricultural economy is doing well, and all the signs are that agriculture will be a solid profession for many years to come,” says Buhr.

Even so, Buhr adds that growth in her faculty has been outpacing the farm economy. Previously, enrolments had echoed farm income, with student numbers rising about two years after the ag economy started rising, and dropping about two years following a decline.

That has changed.

“Over the last few years the farm economy has been pretty robust and our numbers have been growing, but we’ve been growing at a faster rate than the farm economy,” says Buhr. “We expect we will be more independent of the economy because we have programs that aren’t as directly linked to primary agriculture. We’re expecting our numbers are not going to go down.”

Programs like renewable resource management, agribusiness, animal bioscience, and next year’s Aboriginal agriculture and land management, are contributing by attracting students from beyond the farm and rural areas.

“Once they come into the college, they realize the wealth of career opportunities in agriculture and are really turned on by it,” says Buhr. “All of our graduating students get jobs; they have a choice of jobs. And the word is getting out about that.”

Heavy recruiting by all the agriculture departments has paved the way for the success they’ve experienced, and as at Saskatchewan, most schools are extending their recruitment to students with non-farm and urban backgrounds.

“Part of the initiative with our (recruitment program) is to reach out into those urban areas and communicate to a kid from a high school in downtown Toronto who’s never stepped on a farm that you don’t have to come from a farming background,” says Varamo.

The U of M has had success targeting urban students by presenting its Student Ambassadors program at high schools, and by interacting with city kids at a variety of recruitment events both on and off campus, as well as through more indirect approaches like workshops for science teachers.

Programs such Agriculture in the Classroom and campaigns such as Farm Credit Canada’s Agriculture More Than Ever also increase the overall awareness of career opportunities in the agri-food industry, Jorgenson says.

“We have been conducting a strong student recruitment campaign for the last few years, and we are also seeing an increase in the number of students moving from our two-year diploma program into our degree program,” she says.

Enhanced learning

Today’s agriculture degree graduates are emerging with an enhanced set of experiences, beyond what existed even 20 years ago thanks to experiential learning at home and abroad.

“We get our students involved with volunteer programs in the city, and we have a number of practicums and internships within our various programs that get people out into the community and working in businesses,” says Blade, adding that international experience is available as well. “Over the past number of years, we have formalized programs that the faculty puts on for students to go to Cuba, India, Japan and Mexico.”

Exchange programs provide valuable enhanced learning outside campus, and these ag faculties all offer their own unique experiences.

“It sets (students) up to differentiate themselves from another candidate down the road when they’re applying for a job,” says Varamo.

Schools are also developing more online courses for their own students and people in mid-career who don’t necessarily have time to spend on campus.

“By no means are we unique in this, but this is something we keep hearing from people who want to enhance their skills, so we’re certainly going beyond the chalk-and-blackboard approach,” says Blade.

Buhr notes her faculty is meeting the challenges of managing the ever-increasing number of students while still maintaining quality.

Says Buhr: “We are looking at every possible method and new ways of doing things in order to continue to provide a quality education to far more students than we were expecting to have.”

This article was originally published as “Full classes” in the November 2015 issue of Country Guide

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What strengths and skills will farmers need to succeed in the future we’re rushing toward? With the turnover between generations accelerating, it’s a question that is coming squarely into play on a growing number of farms.

Do your kids have what it takes? Or, if you’re a young wannabe farmer reading this, how do you make yourself into a person who has those skills?

Country Guide asked some of Canada’s most respected agricultural educators if they see trends in knowlege or skills gaps among today’s farm hopefuls. Then we asked how their schools are filling those gaps.

Two are on the front lines of the future of agriculture, including Mark Fournier, instructor at Olds College and Ken McEwan, director of the University of Guelph’s Ridgetown Campus, the lead college-level program for Ontario agriculture.

They hear and see — and test — the next generation before our sons and daughters get back to the farm.

First up though is Larry Martin, former professor at the University of Guelph and currently partner and instructor at Agri-Food Management Excellence. Over 200 farmers have graduated from the Canadian Total Excellence in Agricultural Management (CTEAM) program that he has facilitated and instructed since 1998.

These are farmers who believe they have the aptitude to succeed, which is why they invest the $7,500 to take CTEAM, and compared to when Martin first starting teaching the program, they’re getting younger, and also more intense about growth.

Participants want to expand and push further, and CTEAM is designed to help them look at how their farm fits into the industry and to discuss it with others who have a bigger-picture perspective and hands-on experience. Increasingly, they tend not only to be younger, but also to be growing their operations both in size and in complexity, says Martin. And they’re highly self-motivated to improve.

They also tend to be good at turning what they learn into action, and using it to build success. “They’re willing to take risks, but only take measured risks,” Martin says. “And they’re always looking for new or different things.”

Typically the people signing up for CTEAM enter it needing to better understand strategic planning and execution, he says. Often they don’t even see that they need help with planning until they start into the program. Before they enrol, only about one in seven have a formal written plan.

As part of the two-year program administered in four, four-day sessions across Canada, participants develop a three- to five-year business plan. Almost all implement these plans, and equally impressively, over half update their plans to accommodate changes they’ve made along the way.

“They have a higher appreciation for financial management, and can now build on the knowledge and apply it to their farms,” says Martin.

The HR hurdle

That doesn’t mean it’s all easy. In fact, there’s one skill set in particular that Martin sees many students needing to work on.

A major limitation to growth on these farms is that farmers lack knowledge in human resources management, and the CTEAM process is designed to enhance their knowledge of how to delegate and have the systems in place to manage people.

One of the first insights, then, is that to succeed, tomorrow’s farmers need to understand that they will have to get better at HR.

“To grow, you’ve got to manage managers,” says Martin. “This can be difficult if you’re accustomed to doing things for yourself.”

During after-class get-togethers, CTEAM participants share their problems, plans and dreams with others who understand. Discussing their businesses with similar-minded farmers enables them to find the holes in their plans, as well as gaps in how they manage.

Within this group they can freely discuss risk, marketing and expansion plans, and, says Martin, they tend to caution each other.

At each of the four sessions, the participants must verbally present their updated and improved business plan, and get feedback from other members of the class. They’re able to share their numbers and plans freely because their neighbours aren’t there. The small-group dynamic also means the farmer-students tend to put extra effort into their presentations because they don’t want to embarrass themselves.

That brings in the second insight about today’s successful young farmers. The reality is that the world is changing rapidly, so they commit to continual learning, and Martin has revamped the course material many times over the years, especially the strategic planning portion.

Today the students want more feedback and guidance. “There’s a higher appreciation for what’s needed to succeed,” says Martin. “And higher expectations of what they want to get out of the program.”

A passion to succeed

Mark Fournier, instructor at Olds College in Alberta, thinks the No. 1 requirement for success in farming is passion — followed by planning, perseverance and profits. “They’re going to be doing this 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so they need to be motivated,” he says.

Fournier says this level of farming passion quickly shows itself at the college level. If the students are forced to go, or are simply not committed enough, they don’t do well and are usually culled out by Christmas. Although they’re a small percentage, this group is just not ready to dig into farming every day using real money or to deal with real risk.

They also need an appreciation for financial skills.

Wanting to farm and having the resources and skills are completely different. Fournier says knowing how to budget and forecast is imperative. His class does a 12-month rolling cash flow, so they know their position at quarterly and one-year intervals and can take needed corrective measures right away.

The most important ratio his students will need is current ratio. “Cash is king, if you want to keep operating,” says Fournier. “Profits don’t put food on the table; money in the bank does.”

Fournier also shows students how scale and specialization can impact revenues. He tells his students that they either have to be as big as possible or go for a niche. To illustrate, he shows them on paper how to expand quickly, and then they run cash flows, current ratios to see the vivid impact of interest rates on returns in black and white.

The Facebook challenge

Generally the students from farms understand there will be good and bad years, says Fournier. However, from what he hears, the students don’t talk a lot about risk. They’re more concerned about what their roles will be when they go home, and about their time frames for succession. “They need to interject risk analysis into their thinking,” says Fournier.

“If you have five generations behind you, you’re less likely to want to take on higher risk levels,” says Fournier, who is also a huge believer in ensuring his students can calculate their break-even prices. Knowing what your costs are per bushel and what you need to get out of that bushel to live is powerful. He asks them: “If you need five or 10 per cent to live, and then prices drop, what discretionary costs can you cut?”

They also need to understand leveraging. These students are going to be taking on long term 20- or 30-year mortgages and we don’t know what interest rates are going to do that far ahead. “This generation is used to low interest rates, so I make them look at debt servicing at seven or eight per cent,” says Fournier, who also asks lenders to come to Olds to explain debt management and their young farmer loan programs.

“They need to know how to sharpen their iPads,” says Fournier. At Olds, all students have iPads with spreadsheets. The idea is to train them to do real-time financial management in the tractor as they make decisions on the fly.

Ironically a great challenge for the Facebook generation going through college now is they don’t know how to connect with real humans, face to face. Fournier suggests to his students when they go home to the farm that they take some time to join the crew at the local coffee shop. Just listen at first and eventually you’ll be asked to join in. “Not only do you learn from the older generation, it is a way to be a part of the marketplace,” says Fournier. “Be collaborative.”

Don’t sugar coat it

In Ontario, Ken McEwan, professor and now director at University of Guelph’s Ridgetown Campus sees many of the same trends, and the same opportunities and challenges.

Historically, successful farmers were able to do many things well, especially in production and business areas and in working with people. However, now it takes more than just knowledge, McEwan says.

To succeed now, farmers also need to have a vision, know how to manage a staff, and have the necessary energy to take on the many challenges associated with primary production.

The curriculum for the associate diploma in agriculture at Ridgetown College tries to expose students to the many different components of operating a viable farm business, including production, business management and human resource management. Many of the production courses can be taken as electives to suit the interests of the individual student, such as precision agriculture, dairy production, and greenhouse management.

Over the years, McEwan has seen success and failure come from all sorts of skill and personal traits. “Student optimism might be modestly improved with the higher commodity prices,” he says. “But most young people pursuing a career in primary production do so because they enjoy the challenges.”

Today McEwan also sees the importance of adapting to and adopting technology, including everything from auto steer to plant genetics. New farmers now need to understand the global marketplace too, he adds. “Historically, a lot of emphasis was placed on U.S. farm policy but now one needs to have a working knowledge of global trade and foreign government policy.”

McEwan doesn’t sugar coat the real impact that issues of scale and the startup costs for a competitive farming operation have on the likelihood of success. “Students who possess a farm background and have supportive parents often do well because of the capital intensity associated with operating a commercial-scale farm,” says McEwan.

But that isn’t a guarantee. McEwan has also seen such farms fail when there’s a lack of planning or motivation, or an inability to change. Says McEwan: “It is very important to have a workable succession plan and realize it is a process that takes time.”

This article was originally published as “What they’ll need to succeed,” in the November 2014 issue of Country Guide

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