More and more, though, farmers are partnering with off-farm businesses that add value to the commodities they produce and sell them into non-traditional and niche markets.

“One of the primary ways I am seeing that happen is with farms that have historically only had a limited market to sell to, like a local co-op or selling a commodity to whoever has the best price,” says Clint Fischer, founder of Braintrust Ag in South Dakota, an online peer group of more than 300 farmers and ranchers across North America. “Farmers who need to diversify are partnering with more unique end- supply users who are adding value to the commodity and reselling it.”

Though Fischer says these sorts of arrangements have come up more often on the livestock end of things, he is seeing farmers sell their value-added products to smaller, name brand distributors and get paid a premium for growing or raising their crops or animals in a specific way to meet niche markets, i.e., organic, regenerative, etc.

“They could go to the local farmers market with their products, but that’s a lot of time and hassle, and so there are companies that are coming in and trying to solve that problem for farmers by bundling products from different producers together and selling them via the internet,” Fischer says. “Those sorts of partnerships are becoming more common as more markets open up.”

In the U.S. Midwest there is a lot of interest in cover crops, for example, so farmers are growing cover crops for seed that they are selling to specialized seed processors for sale to farmers in other parts of the country.

More risk in new markets

There’s a caveat, though. These sorts of arrangements do represent more risk for farmers, Fischer says, because they are not tried and true markets, so farmers need to make sure that whomever they sell their products to is solid and can pay.

“They need to get into the legal terms of what does the partnership look like, what are the terms for payment and who is guaranteeing it; who has the obligation, those sorts of things,” Fischer says. “In a newer market, there is always the risk of non-payment by a partner or middleman.”

Fischer always advises a written contract that sets out the terms and conditions but also what happens if someone doesn’t get paid. Also important to consider are requirements for traceability and tracking through a more complex value chain.

“All these things need to be thought about ahead of time,” Fischer says, but then adds, “Quite frankly, they rarely are.

“When farmers are selling bulk commodities to an elevator or grain buyer, they don’t need the detailed record-keeping they will need if they are selling into more of these niche markets… It adds a layer of complexity to producing that product, and farmers must assess if that is worth the premium price that they are going to make.”

Still a matter of trust

In the end, though, every partnership hinges on trust, whether it’s between two individuals, two farms or two separate businesses. While Fischer would never advise entering into a partnership or agreement of any kind without a written contract, he cautions that the contract is only as good as the trust each has in the other party and their desire to hold each other accountable.

“If you have a disagreement with the partner, are you willing to spend the time and money to bring forth a lawsuit and to hold them accountable to the contract, or enter into some other kind of dispute resolution mechanism like arbitration or mediation?” Fischer asks. “All of that takes money, time and stress. So, before you enter that partnership you have to decide: do I trust this person and am I willing, if I have to, to enforce the contract?”

So how do you establish trust? By doing your homework thoroughly. Fischer suggests you look at any new partnership or business arrangement through the lens of hiring an employee.

“When you are hiring someone, you are going to do a background check on them and check their references to make sure they are a good fit,” he says. When sizing up a potential partner, he adds, “Look at their track record, what’s their history and what’s their reputation in the industry? Are there people who have done business with them that you can get references from? Do they keep their promises, and do they have the financial backing to make good on their agreements?”

And bear in mind, Fischer adds, that even a business with a stellar reputation can run into insolvency issues when markets change, so there is always risk. That’s why no business arrangement should be done on a handshake; both parties need to negotiate what deal they can mutually agree to and then write it down. And though it may seem obvious, no one should sign a contract that someone puts in front of them without making sure they know and understand what is in it, even if that requires hiring
a lawyer to review it, Fischer adds.

“If someone throws a contract at you to sign and you just sign it, that can potentially do more harm than a handshake agreement, because it could be one-sided and you just don’t know,” he says.

Farmer experiences with partnerships

Sometimes, though, handshakes can work. Rosemary Wotske, owner of Poplar Bluff Organics in Wheatland County, Alta., has a longtime partnership with another local farmer, Cam Beard, that has been mutually beneficial to both.

Wotske originally asked if Beard would help deliver her specialty potatoes to her food service and retail customers, but he had an interest in direct marketing too, although he was more at home with a wrench fixing equipment than at marketing.

“He started growing carrots, beets and parsnips and we got this synergy going because I can’t weld, and he loved mechanical stuff, so if I needed some kind of a machine to do this or that he would weld something together that worked,” she says. “I was happy doing the marketing and he was happy not to have to come out of the fields, so the business really grew then.”

Wotkse admits that although they have never had any formal arrangement, the time is coming when they realize they will have to put a more business-like arrangement in place for succession purposes as the business has become more complex, with value-added products such as cold-pressed carrot juice and potato vodka, and plans are in the works to build an on-farm distillery.

Says Wotske: “We have been keeping it arm’s–length but now that the two of us are approaching retirement age, we’re going to need something formal in place because the business is big enough now that no one person can do it all, and we will have to set up a corporation to pick up all the different businesses.” 

Partnering with family?

As every farm family likely knows, the trickiest partnerships can be with family and friends. They can be a tangled and emotionally draining process, so farmers are well advised to start with the end in mind.

“Begin with the exit strategy,” says Clint Fischer, founder of Braintrust Ag. “At the start, everyone might be excited and have good intentions, feelings, emotions and ideas. But what happens when there is a breakup in that partnership, which always happens. Because someone will pass away, get disinterested, or get divorced at some point.”

A partnership is never going to last forever, he says.

“Looking at it from the exit strategy first brings reality into the process by addressing these what-if’s right off bat.”

The best thing anyone can do to preserve family relationships through a business partnership is to document everything they agree to in writing and sign it so that, down the road, they can hold each other accountable to what they agreed to.

Fischer also advises agreeing to solve disputes through a trusted third party, such as a board of advisors that everyone agrees on and trusts, or through a formal mediation process. But do put those details in writing at the start.

How do I know if I am good partnership material?

Of course, trust goes both ways, so anyone entering into a partnership, hard as it is, needs to try and be honest about their own personality and attributes. That starts with being aware of your reputation, says Clint Fischer, founder of Braintrust Ag.

“Do what you say you’re going to do. If your reputation has been dinged, work to rebuild that before entering a new partnership that includes people who aren’t in your inner circle and truly ‘know’ you,” he says.

Partners must be willing to compromise, so if that’s something you find impossible to do, then partnerships aren’t for you, he adds.

But that’s not all. A business partnership is like a marriage, there’s give and take but the primary driver is clear, consistent communication.

“What’s in the legal documents is designed to be a framework, but the day-to-day operations demand collaboration between the partners,” Fischer says.

“It’s impossible to document every potential scenario that will happen to the business and the partnership, so the docs are there to detail the big events. The smaller, more frequent events, still demand trust.”

Before entering into this ‘marriage’ farmers should ask themselves “If I were in the shoes of my potential partner, would I partner with me?”

Says Fischer: “If you are honest with that assessment, you can reveal much about yourself and uncover areas of concern for your potential partnership.”

The post ‘Partner up’ to help diversify your farm appeared first on Country Guide.

Troy Strozek and Michelle Schram, owners and operaters of Fresh Roots Farm at Cartwright, just north of the U.S. border southwest of Winnipeg, are already collaborating with other local farmers to offer their farm-grown products, alongside their own, through their established online store.

“There is lots of opportunity to work with other farms and to source from other farms,” says Schram.

The move came with a business insight. “If we have (production) limitations, but we have the demand, are there other people out there that don’t want to do the marketing but could provide production?” she and Strozek asked themselves. “We just need to keep pushing ourselves to think outside the box. Whenever we have done things like that with other farms it has always been beneficial to everyone.”

Strozek and Schram have been direct selling their grass-fed beef and honey from their own bees since 2012. Knowing that the traditional method of selling at the farmers market wasn’t going to work for them because they were three hours away from Winnipeg, they decided right from the outset to focus on online marketing.

Over the years their sales model has evolved and today they offer both an online store and a subscription service. Customers have the option to order a-la-carte beef cuts from the online store, or they can purchase a six-month subscription, over which time they receive a monthly box of meat with a variety of cuts.

These sales methods help them better manage their inventory. Plus, they provide the stability of a monthly revenue stream of product that is already presold.

Strozek and Schram deliver once a month to Winnipeg, usually to around 150 households. Every year, on average they serve around 1,500 customers and fill 1,700 orders.

• RELATED: Do’s and don’ts of farm direct marketing

Small farms are specializing

The pair are the first to admit their type of farming isn’t for everyone and that it can be exhausting, especially as they divide their time between the farm, marketing and raising two young sons.

They are also seeing a lot of transition in the sector, with more direct farmers simplifying their operations to specialize in one or two products.

“People are realizing that if they are trying to raise pigs, chickens and cattle so they can offer their customers an array of products, each of those is its own enterprise,” Strozek says. “Each
has its own expenses, its own infrastructure and it requires different skill sets. We have definitely seen more specialization happening recently, because even with just two enterprises, the times when work is overlapping is super-challenging.”

Then add the marketing side of things, which is primarily Schram’s responsibility and takes a huge amount of time and resources. Although she uses social media, she’s not convinced that every farm selling to consumers necessarily needs it. She has found the most effective way to stay connected with their customers is through their twice monthly e-newsletter because customers like reading stories about the farm and what they are doing.

Creating farm-to-fork

In today’s direct-to-customer sector — and especially for smaller farms in the sector — it comes down to finding a system that works for that particular farm.

A half-hour west of Strozek and Schram near Crystal City, Troy Schott and his sister, Rheagan Stewart have been direct marketing from their farm, Schott Ranch, since 2007, largely by focusing on making a trip to the farm an experience for their customers.

The brother and sister duo now have a year-round store where they sell their pasture-raised beef, chicken, pork, eggs and farm produce, as well as their own handmade tallow soaps and skin creams, and other local products.

Schott, though, studied greenspace management in college and also runs a landscaping business in addition to farming 2,600 acres of grain with his brother, Dennis.

• RELATED: Banding together on bison marketing

Four years ago, they added a greenhouse to the farm to sell annual and perennial bedding plants, trees and shrubs. Then, a couple of years ago, they launched a U-pick flower patch.

Plus, with her background in the culinary arts, Stewart is heading up their plan to build a fully certified kitchen on the farm where they can add value by making other food products, such as preserves and pickles. The business also plans to offer a subscription-based meal plan, with ready-to-cook frozen meals made from their own beef and produce.

Their latest diversification has been into Wagyu cattle, the Japanese breed known for its highly marbled meat. After purchasing a Wagyu bull from a breeder in Alberta, Schott has spent the last few years growing the herd, producing their first Wagyu beef for sale last year.

Wagyu cattle are fed for 30 months, about six months longer than regular beef cattle, and must be finished on a special diet of free-range hay and a little grain. The beef is considered a delicacy and retails for about $45 a pound for ribeye steak.

In turn, that means Schott needs a more creative approach to market it.

“The first Wagyu we had butchered so that the meat showed up around December 10 last year,” he said. “We sold all of the Wagyu beef in two weeks before Christmas with people buying packages for gifts.”

Now, the farm is on its way to producing a lot more Wagyu beef and hopes to sell to some high-end restaurants in Winnipeg, but the beauty is that if they don’t make the Wagyu grade (for marbling) Schott can still sell them as regular beef because he currently has more demand than he does stock.

Big land prices for small farms

Strozek and Schram don’t plan to do a lot differently as they continue to move ahead with farming and marketing. With high land prices in their area, expanding the farm’s acreage isn’t an option, which is why they have focused on regenerative agricultural practices and careful grazing management to maximize the carrying capacity of their existing pastures.

They have also expanded their bee operation significantly over the past few years, and do all their own processing and packaging on the farm.

“It’s been a way to diversify our income without the land overhead,” Strozek says. “The question is how to grow the honey business, but you can only scale so much before you reach the point where you need more labour, equipment and mechanization, which we are not averse to doing at some point.”

That said, one of their biggest challenges, and one common to many farms, is a shortage of labour. Even though the couple use government wage subsidy programs to hire summer students each year, it’s becoming harder and harder to find candidates with the skills they need, especially for the honey enterprise. Even those with the desire to work on a farm are hard to find.

“The pool of interest seems to be shrinking year to year,” Strozek says. “Maybe that’s evidence of a cultural shift and some of those larger, societal barriers to entry.”

The slow climb

Because of their distance from a major centre, getting people beyond just locals to come to the farm is an ongoing challenge for Schott and Stewart, so they spend a lot of time on social media, posting about what they are doing and what’s available, and they send out flyers twice a year to surrounding communities. But they are realistic about the time and effort it takes to build a direct-marketing business.

“We’ve always had the mentality that, as hard as it sometimes is, with our niche it’s definitely a slow burn; it takes time,” Stewart says.

“I look at the bigger picture,” Schott adds. “We are only on year four of a business purchase, so resilience is the biggest thing, and you have to be prepared to work hard. This year I am already seeing things change to the better. We have more people coming and we have only got 10 rib-eye beef steaks left in the freezer right now, so it’s working.”

The way forward?

Interestingly, Strozek and Troy are seeing new ideas, including new ways into the industry. Some small-farming entrants, for instance, are building their market before they even have a farm by buying from other farms and distributing the products.

It’s a model that isn’t for everyone, but it speaks to the kind of creative and entrepreneurial solutions that are needed to further develop resilient and effective regional food markets.

“There is some neat work happening at the consumer end with the development of food hubs and ways to aggregate, market and distribute products in the city, because not every farmer can or wants to do all of that work,” Strozek says.

“Farmers are so stretched, and they are trying to do so many things already,” he says. “If this is something that we value as a society, if we want to create space for smaller farms to survive, it needs extra support from consumers, government and other actors in the industry.”

The post How selling local works for these farmers appeared first on Country Guide.

“For entry farmers or those who are smaller, they don’t have the economy of scale to rely on as their primary economic model, so they have to achieve higher margins for their products which basically means going directly to the consumer,” says Phil Veldhuis, president of Direct Farm Manitoba.

Veldhuis, who has a honey farm at Starbuck, Man., has been direct marketing for over 40 years, and also taught a course about adding value for farms at the University of Manitoba’s School of Agriculture.

So, how popular is direct marketing. It may be much more than many conventional farmers think. Statistics Canada data shows that there are around 800 farms in Manitoba alone that are deriving some of their income from direct marketing to consumers, and Veldhuis estimates that direct marketing is the prime enterprise for roughly a third to a half of them.

There are all kinds of direct marketing models that farmers use to reach their customers, from a sign at the end of their lane, farmers markets and U-picks, to online and physical stores offering on-farm pickup or delivery options. The model a farmer chooses depends on many factors: how far they are from a large, urban market, the type of products they offer, their capacity to dedicate time and effort to marketing — whether that’s in the office updating their website or driving to attend a market.

• RELATED: Direct farm marketing makes gains in Manitoba

“A lot of farmers tend to try a bit of everything which is absolutely exhausting,” Veldhuis says. “I encourage farmers who are thinking about direct marketing to think about what model they’d want to commit to, what suits their crop and what they have the skill set for. Online sales seem easy until you realize how diligently you have to respond to emails and keep track of your inventory, which for something like fresh produce is very difficult.”

It’s important to keep the ultimate goal in sight, Veldhuis adds, which is to take advantage of a higher price that the customer is comfortable with, without having a percentage taken by a wholesaler or retailer, which in some cases could be as much as 50 percent.

Don’t price yourself out of the market

Since the pandemic, everyone knows that prices in the grocery store have jumped, which means there is more margin to be had without having to ask consumers to pay significantly more than they would at their local big chain store. Because there is a limit to how much people will (or can) spend for a farm-direct product, even for urban consumers.

“People who live in cities are surrounded by large organizations that are efficient at delivering food and other things that those people want,” Veldhuis says. “If you, as a farmer, think that you can just walk up to an urban person and say I’m organic or I’m regenerative and that person will throw their dollars at you, that is not true.

”The typical urban person is just as careful with their dollars as anybody else and chooses to express their values with just as much restraint as anyone else. So, if you’re going to market yourself on how great your farm is, the best you can get is a few percentage points more than what that same product would be at the local grocery store.”

Costs have also risen, including labour, which squeezes margins for smaller farms, where labour comprises a larger percentage of the value of their products.

“The labour supply is very tight right now, and when a young person can get minimum wage at a golf course riding the lawn mower all day, if you’re expecting them to work hard in the sun doing lots of different tasks, you have to pay them well,” Veldhuis says, adding there is still a positive story in there that needs more press. “That labour provides local value for your community and the province. The consumer needs to know that when they buy my honey, they’re helping put a bunch of kids through college because that’s who I employ to harvest my crop.”

Another big problem, especially across the Prairies, is a lack of infrastructure such as local meat processing capacity or food development facilities that can help farmers develop or scale up their food products. Direct Farm Manitoba is working with government to increase options for livestock processing and farmers market sales.

Be prepared for a lot more work

“With direct-to-consumer products, there are many different roles,” says Kendall Ballantine, who with husband, Jay, owns and operates Central Park Farms at Langley, B.C., and founded Marketing for Farmers, an online business providing advice for farmers about how to direct market to consumers. “Today’s farmers need to be web experts, and marketing experts, and it adds extra work hours.”

From their 160-acre, off-grid ranch in Rock Creek, B.C., and a 40-acre leased farm in Langley, they sell and deliver everything they produce on their farm direct to customers. They started out raising non-GMO fed, free-range chicken, pasture-raised pork, and eggs, and later added 21-day dry aged, grass-fed Black Angus beef.

Ballantine started Marketing for Farmers during the COVID-19 pandemic when a lot of direct marketers who had relied on farmers markets or restaurants for their sales, suddenly had to find other channels to sell their product.

“They suddenly didn’t have those options anymore, so I started pumping out information about how to do an online store, and handle inventory and do an email newsletter to communicate with customers, because we already had those sales channels up,” she says.

Creating value

The success of any direct marketing venture, whatever channels a farmer decides to use, obviously starts with offering a good product that tastes great, but it can still be a tough sell as buying direct from a farmer is usually not the cheapest or most convenient choice. The difference, the thing that makes someone willing to keep coming back to the market or the farm, and pay a little more, is the relationship they build with the people who are growing their food.

“It’s a balance between trying to build relationships and also understanding that customers want convenience,” Ballantine says. “We are seeing more producers, like us, who do home delivery, and some are coming up with subscription models, or attending farmers markets or different retail sales channels that are taking out some of that inconvenience that people associate with supporting local, but they are really starting to learn a lot of the techniques that previously only big box retailers had.”

The effects of COVID-19 were a mixed bag for many direct marketing farmers, but for many consumers it changed their buying behaviours and made them more aware and concerned about where their food was coming from.

“One thing we saw was that suddenly an older generation was more comfortable with buying food online,” Ballantine says. “And our business model has always been to tell our story and what we are about, so we keep a lot of the customer base that came to us during that time. We were really able to market to the fact that knowing and supporting your farmers is the safeguard that you have if something else happens down the road, and having a relationship with your farmer directly puts your family in a good spot for food security.”

So, while marketing requires a lot of time and effort, it’s also not free and producers should make sure they have budgeted for their marketing costs, such as fuel to make deliveries, transactional costs for card payments, social media boosting or website fees.

“If you are going to sell the same product for the same price as it is in Sobeys, you need to be able to take 10 per cent off that price as a marketing cost and still be profitable,” Veldhuis says. “And you have to make marketing a part of your day because if it’s like an extra chore that you do when you have time, your farm is not going to succeed with that model.”

Develop a strategy

Farmers have to develop a sales strategy that works for them, and it can change over time, but they do need a strategy, Ballantine says.

“Just because we grow it doesn’t mean people will come, and they need to decide if they want to take time away from the farm to set up and sell in person at a farmers market, or do they want to start sharing their story through social media, and sometimes it’s a combination of both,” she says. “We leaned heavily into farmers markets at the beginning because it had a built-in customer base, and although it was hard to take that much time away from the farm, we were able to build strong enough relationships that we could get that time back by leaving the markets, and now we do everything directly from the farm.”

Ballantine also believes that there is strength in collaborating with other direct-to-consumer farmers.

“There is always going to be room for all of us,” she says. “I have never viewed other farmers as competition, I have always viewed them as colleagues. If we, as direct-to-consumer producers, can work together, our voice will be a lot louder, and we are seeing some cool things with people offering subscription models and deliveries as a collective.”

Opportunities in direct marketing

While there are challenges to marketing farm products direct to consumers, there are also opportunities, especially as the demographics of the population are shifting. Newcomers to Canada come from many different countries and have different dietary preferences that small farms are well positioned to serve.

“There are plants and animals that they are looking for that aren’t represented in the major chain grocery stores such as goat, lamb and edible beans,” Veldhuis says. “Building a connection to new Canadians is where I see a bright opportunity, and many of them are people who have first-generational experience of getting food directly from farms.” 

Finding out how to start

At Cartwright, Troy Strozek and Michelle Schram have found a number of different resources and people in the direct marketing arena that have helped them build their farm and networks over the years, helping them gain valuable business insights and marketing advice.

“We have friends that are also direct marketing and we try to collaborate with other farms when we can,” Schram says. “I also did an online accelerator program called MyDigitalFarmer and spent almost a year connecting with a network of farmers, mostly female, who were doing the marketing for their farm businesses, and they were from all across North America. We got to dig deep into improving our skills together and the conversations amongst us were very productive.”

Strozek, meanwhile, says both holistic management training and the book Redefining Rich by Shannon Hayes (see resources) have helped give them a model for developing business goals that align with larger family and personal values.

Down the road, Troy Schott and Rheagan Stewart’s advice for others thinking about direct marketing is to get a feel for how it works by talking with others who are already doing it.

“I did a lot of that to get ideas from other farmers that have been doing it for longer than me,” Schott says. “Going in blind is tough, so maybe go work on one of those farms for a while… Learning by doing is definitely key.”

Another tip is to make it as easy and convenient as possible for customers, a key strategy for their planned meals service.

“In many families, both parents work, and they are busy running their kids around, and they don’t have time to make a home-cooked meal,” Schott says. “There’s a lot of opportunity for people to have nutritious meals set up ready to go from a source that they trust because they have been to the farm and see what we are doing.”

Resources to learn more about direct marketing:

Direct Farm Manitoba
Has resources and an annual conference in February.
MyDigitalFarmer – Corinna Bench
Farm Marketing Accelerator Group Coaching Program
Kendall Ballantine, British Columbia – Marketing for Farmers
Cornell University – Small Farms Program
Includes many free resources including marketing guides for small farms.
Book: Shannon Hayes — Redefining Rich: Achieving True Wealth with Small Business, Side Hustles, and Smart Living, published by BenBella Books.

The post Do’s and don’ts of farm direct marketing 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.

The post Direct farm marketing in your pocket appeared first on Country Guide.

Sixteen months past the initial pandemic lockdown in March 2020, Kitchen is in the enviable position of having her Grey County organic on-farm business rocket past its five-year growth plan. 

“There’s a lot more people who found out about our business because of the way we were operating and offering the online sales and home delivery and a relatively safe space,” she said. “And that’s been a really positive thing.”

Why it matters: The pandemic is forcing direct marketing businesses to rapidly alter their business plans to accommodate accelerated growth.

On the weekend when the March lockdown was announced, the on-farm store had 20 people filling their bags before they closed down in-person shopping altogether, said Kitchen. 

The switch to e-commerce was rapid, and within 24 hours of launching their online storefront through Local Line, the farm hit its quota for the week and had to shut down.

“We never really felt like that feeling of ‘oh my goodness, our sales are dropping off,” she said. “It just went — it just skyrocketed. So, we’ve been fortunate that we’ve actually done pretty well.”

When the province relaxed pandemic protocols in the summer of 2020, Kitchen said farmer’s markets and in-person purchases more than compensated for the mild drop in online orders. 

“We really focused on serving our community, and in turn, they supported us in a huge, huge way and continue to do so,” she said. “That’s been the reason why our business has been a success.” 

However, success comes with personal trade-offs she isn’t sure will work with their long-term business strategy. 

Pre-pandemic Kitchen and her husband Patrick shared the planting, tending and harvesting of eight acres of mixed vegetables, three-quarters of an acre of cut flowers, and 3,000 pasture-raised chickens through the summer. COVID demand added 50 pigs to their roster, along with online orders and homeschooling their children.

The tasks, although necessary, ate so much of their time they could no longer farm the land themselves. So instead, they hired people to work their fields, package and prepare orders so they could manage administrative and employee paperwork and demands. 

“You have to be careful that your popularity doesn’t overwhelm the rest of the business,” she said. “And that you still have the time to farm because that has been our single biggest challenge.”

The initial lockdown saw a five-fold increase in weekly demand and 2020 sales triple, balancing out the loss of hospitality sales, and as the province reopens, there isn’t any slowing down. 

“We’re just trying to figure out a way to get back to the point where we can enjoy it,” she said. “And feel like we’re on top of the production again, and not just the production on top of (us).”

Smarter customers

When Josh and Emma Butler launched J&E Meats in 2018 to direct market their beef, lamb and chicken, sales were so strong they built a brick-and-mortar on-farm shop that opened in June 2019. 

The Croton-area couple planned an official opening for the spring of 2020. While the pandemic provided numerous challenges, Emma Butler said it grew their business exponentially, allowing them to scale it into something workable as a family.

Initially, she wanted to wait a year to develop a website and e-commerce platform for the shop, but the pandemic forced her hand. She tied a point-of-sale program to the site that allowed her to track inventory and sales effectively, fulfill orders, process payments, deal with customer feedback and resolve issues. 

“In the long term, we’re going to see that pay off,” Butler said, adding COVID-19 has made consumers savvier. “(Customers) are factoring me into their schedules and in their budgets more than ever.”

Butler took to social media to market their farm story, offer insight into rural and farm life through her Instagram reels, and increase her customer base, which she did with great success. 

The pandemic provided challenges and highlighted gaps in processing, forcing the Butlers to reassess their on-farm business plan direction and increase control over their production. 

Butler had the livestock to cover early increased demand but there was limited access to abattoirs with the capacity to harvest and process the animals. Additionally, packaging, including bags, wrapping string, and paper shortages, further delayed products from getting into customers’ hands. 

“We want to be able just to have everything right in our backyard, and be able to do it all ourselves (and) have that quality control,” she said. 

While Butler isn’t quite ready for that level of expansion, it’s closer than she dreamed it would be a year ago. 

The pandemic tested the business’s sustainability and proved it to be a solid contributor to the farm’s bottom line, and it can provide a future for their three children. 

“This is very much our succession plan for our farm; it adds an element to our operation that we didn’t have before,” she said. “Farming is our career, so it’s nice that through J&E Meats…we’ve been able to really solidify that to our community and ourselves.”

Initially, the province failed to recognize farmers markets as essential services. As a result, the Farmers’ Markets of Ontario (FMO) lobbied diligently to get the proper designation and craft safety protocols to open in June 2020.  

“The pandemic was in its height, and there was a lot of fear from organizers right through to the vendors, so those (30) markets that didn’t open, the majority of them opened this year,” said Catherine Clark, FMO executive director. “That said, last year, we had five brand new farmers markets wanting to join FMO.”

The 2021 season is off to an excellent start. Twenty-nine of the closed markets returned, and eight new ones were created, she said. 

“The markets are doing extremely well. They did extremely well last year… they couldn’t keep up, they had to keep coming back with more product,” she said. “This year is the same. People are looking for the markets and looking to buy local.” 

Local has resonated much higher through the pandemic, said Clark, noting shoppers have called her office looking for information on vendors in their area to connect directly where the markets aren’t yet open. 

“We’re quite happy about that,” she said. “The support is out there.”

Volume tested everything

Local Line, an Ontario e-commerce software provider that connects producers with consumers via an online storefront, saw a 4,300 per cent increase in platform use from mid-March to mid-April 2020, said Cole Jones, the CEO. 

The exercise provided an opportunity to improve workflow efficiency, develop new features and partner with other service providers to build software solutions.

“You feel like you’re solid, you’re good, you’ve got all your features in place, and then 5,000 farmers come in the door, and you’re like, ‘oh man, you guys are really testing everything,’” Jones said. “It was an acceleration of things that we would have figured out, but we had the opportunity to figure them out all at once.” 

Most of the 5,700 farmers added in the first 90 days were individual producers, like Sideroad Farms, and were looking to maintain service to existing customers and grow their base, food hubs, wholesalers, and farmers markets. 

COVID-19 exposed society’s newest generations to the viability of small-scale farming as a career choice, said Jones. They could see an approach to agriculture using a culturally and fundamentally different decision-making process. 

“The special thing about local food, and the special thing about this whole movement, is that for the first time, the farmer owns the relationship,” Jones said. “They are ultimately the ones that are in exact control of their destiny, of the products they grow, the business they want to run, and how they want to do that.”

The new outlook enables young farmers to secure their future as independent entrepreneurs, find good access to markets and develop a good, loyal customer base, he said. 

“If we have programs that can help them, then, frankly, we feel like it’s our responsibility to at least make it available to them,” he said. “It’s a pretty meaningful time of growth for us, that’s for sure. Every day we actually have farmers that chat-in from around the world wanting to sign up for Local Line.”

Diana Martin is a reporter for Farmtario. Her article appeared in the Aug. 9, 2021 issue.

The post Direct farm marketers shift gears during pandemic lockdown phase appeared first on Country Guide.

But are you expert at launching startups too?

It’s one of the big questions of 2020, when so many of the ideas that are bubbling up across farm country call for connecting with the market in ways that farmers haven’t really done in past.

Even before COVID-19, Braden Douglas, founder of CREW Marketing Partners, was getting contacted by a growing number of farmers.

“There’s an appetite for farms to get more entrepreneurial and engaged,” says Douglas.

A big reason is that more farmers like Rob and Charlotte Lepp are looking to diversify to make their farms more viable.

“They want that control,” says Douglas, who founded CREW in 2007 after a career in consumer goods marketing with companies like Frito-Lay and Proctor & Gamble. “And when they have their own products and set their own pricing, doing their own thing, it allows them to diversify some of the revenue, and also to diversify their total portfolio.”

CREW has offices in Vancouver, Kelowna and Toronto, employing over 50 people providing marketing advice and services to all points in the food value chain, from implement manufacturers and dealerships to commodity organizations, co-operatives, wineries, food processors and individual farm businesses.

There are multiple factors driving the farm trend, Douglas says. Some start in the marketplace; some on the farm.

New opportunities that come with the changing consumer are high on the list. In fact, they were there even before COVID-19 intensified the trend. “Consumers want greater transparency,” Douglas says. “They love the romance of farm-to-fork, they want to see where their food is made and they have questions, so when they can have a direct relationship with a farmer, it’s a better experience for the consumer, it’s usually a better product, and it’s a good win/win.”

There’s also the growth of social media, which opens a world of new business opportunities by giving farmers efficient tools for identifying and contacting potential customers.

And there’s a demographic change in the farmers too.

“For the farms we’re working with to launch products and build their own brands, it has often been a way for the parents to engage the next generation,” says Douglas.

“It’s usually the younger generation, the children in their 20s, 30s or younger, that are excited about it, and they’re engaged because they can sell it, and use social media or some other platforms to get the word out. We’re seeing a lot of farms, for succession reasons, are getting the next generation involved in marketing, and they’re loving it.”

Oh, and there’s one more reason.

It’s that more farmers are buying into the key message. It isn’t just words anymore. “When you have your own products and brand, it’s like real estate,” Douglas says. “You are building equity or value that can be quite profitable one day.”

Taking the plunge

But how do farmers make that decision to try direct-marketing, or launch their own value-added products? How do they assess if they have the time, money and skills needed to see the process through, and if it’s likely to be successful? When do they know they need help and turn to a marketing company like CREW? And if they do that, how do they know they are getting the right advice and the help they need?

Douglas and his team have developed an eight-stage process (see sidebar) that’s designed to help their clients know what they are getting into and determine if the fit is right for them.

Hurdles do have to be addressed. Consider the farmer’s personality, for example. The traits that make you a great food producer aren’t necessarily the ones you’ll need for putting yourself out there and creating buzz around a new product.

There’s also the cost to bring a product to market, and the complexity of things like packaging, food safety, co-manufacturing and distribution.

“I always want to make sure that they have their eyes wide open when they get into (a new venture) because I want them to be successful, so they need to know what it’s going to take and be sure it’s what they want,” says Douglas.

Marketing can get expensive, but a good marketing company can help stretch advertising dollars and figure out the most effective ways to reach the audience you want to reach, while not breaking the budget.

“In my experience, if you’re going to launch something from scratch and you want professional help to create the branding, packaging, get a website launched, and everything else, you’re usually looking at a minimum of $50,000 to do it well,” says Douglas. “If you want to do it on a smaller scale, it could be much less. For $10,000 you could probably have a pretty good website, and get some presence, some photography done and test it out to see what happens.”

Even the things that seem simple will take more time and effort than you might think. “With social media, it doesn’t cost a lot in terms of the amount to communicate, but it takes a lot of time and that’s an investment and a skillset.

“I always say, if you’re going to do it, make sure you do it right. Do it well, do it smaller, get the model right and then really grow it if it starts to gain traction behind it.”

The good news is that there are a number of government programs available for farmers to help them become better at processing and create value-added products.

In today’s world, marketing means going beyond just telling the farm story.

“Just selling where (the product) comes from isn’t enough anymore, unless it’s a really local market, but on a larger scale, there are a lot of people doing that right now,” says Douglas.

“We’re fortunate in Canada to have an ample supply of great food, so you have to create a niche and a unique point of difference that is worth people wanting to pay more for your product, or else you’ll end up competing against the Walmart, Loblaws and Sobeys of the world, and you’re not going to win.”

When to bring in help

The decision to bring in a professional marketing company like CREW is a big step, and often it’s tied to the level of risk involved.

“If it’s going to be low-risk, you can probably figure out a lot of things on your own, but if you are going to take some higher risk, and maybe have to buy equipment (or make larger investments to make the product), I would say it’s much better to bring in professional help,” Douglas says.

It has to be the right help, which means doing some research and making sure the marketing company has expertise in the food industry.

“There are a lot of people that know marketing and branding and social media and all this, but to market food and to be successful at it, it’s really hard,” says Douglas. “They need to know all that’s involved, the regulations and all the things that come with selling food.”

They also have to be a fit as far as working with you, because a lot of marketers are used to working with very large companies and may not understand the needs of a smaller operation.

“A smaller business, like a farm, will need a little bit more help and education; they need a little bit more nuts and bolts on what to do,” says Douglas.

Do your research

“I’ve seen it over again in market research where people will tell you, ‘I love this, I would totally buy it,’ and when they go to the grocery store, they don’t buy it,” says Douglas. “They either buy what they’re already used to buying or they buy what’s on special because price typically overrides purchase decisions. So, you have to do your due diligence because once you’re in, you’re committed.”

It is true, though, that Canada is producing some great opportunities to diversify the farm and bring in additional revenue.

Consumers continue to love the farm-to-fork concept, says Douglas, and want to not only know where their food is grown, but also connect with the people who grow it. It’s a trend that has probably grown even stronger because of the COVID-19 pandemic and also because of food scares with imported food products.

That isn’t the only trend, though. There’s also huge growth in pre-packaged meals that consumers can just pop in the oven, and for health and wellness foods.

Purchasing food online is here to stay too. “We are seeing a lot more people becoming comfortable with e-commerce now, so farmers can have that direct connection with people who want to order their products,” says Douglas.

But that doesn’t mean you can always expect an overnight success. “It takes time for consumers to understand something, to start to cook with it, to get it into their diet, to create habitual behaviour, which then increases demand over time,” says Douglas, who believes the Canadian farm industry is missing opportunities by not promoting itself more aggressively.

He sees opportunities for smart co-ops to ask, for instance, “how are we going to get barley or these different types of grains to be in the diet of Canadians, and get inside of it to get the price up.”

“Canadian grains should be premium in the market. We’re modest at times to our own detriment, and we have to be prouder and say we’ve got great farmers, they care, they have great food safety standards, and we can grow some of the best food in the whole entire world.”

Eight crucial steps to direct marketing

CREW Marketing Partners of Vancouver has helped a lot of clients involved in the food supply chain, including individual farms, diversify into direct marketing by taking them through this eight-step process to help them develop a marketing strategy that will bring them success.

1. Organizational direction: Have a clear idea of why you want to start a new venture and a vision for it.

2. The product: What are you going to sell? What makes your product unique or special?

3. Audience: Who are you going to be selling to? Where are they located? Are there enough people to support it? Are you looking at the organic, high end where consumers are willing to pay extra or will it be low cost?

4. Price point: What is the price point that you’re going to be able to achieve in the market and does it cover costs and make you a profit? How will you price it and position it well?

5. Distribution: Where and how are you going to distribute it? Is it local, is it going to be through markets, grocery stores or online?

6. Brand and promotion: What will you call your product? How will you package it? What is the brand going to say? How are you going to get people excited about your product? What channels will you use — social media, print, newsletters, etc.

7. Budget: How much can you afford to spend on marketing and promotion? What’s the most cost-effective methods to use?

8. Measure results: Did you achieve your sales targets? Are you reaching the right audiences — there are lots of online, low-cost or free analytics tools available to help with this.

The post Building the chain appeared first on Country Guide.

The fly in the sticky trap is, you’re great at growing it. But who has a clue how to package the product, brand it, promote it or make those sales.

That was where farmers Rob and Charlotte Lepp started. They were great at production but didn’t really know much about marketing and promotion, so when they decided to establish their year-round, on-farm market to sell products from their farm and others close by, they decided early on that they would need some professional help.

It all began with a corn stand

Again, the way the story starts isn’t exactly unusual. It goes back to 1995, long before COVID-19, when the Lepps, like hundreds of Canadian farmers, first dipped a toe into direct marketing by selling sweet corn off the back of a trailer, later upgrading a corn stand at a site on their property near Abbotsford, B.C., which just happens to be at the intersection of a four-lane highway, so was a highly visible location.

Sweet corn seemed such a natural fit for their farm. As the province’s third-largest hog producer, they were already growing corn, and they were also looking to spread the manure across more acres. Plus, sweet corn would fit the family, creating jobs for their kids and their kids’ friends as they grew up.

After Rob’s dad retired in the early 2000s, the couple began thinking about ramping up the direct marketing side of things by creating a year-round market on the farm. It seemed like the perfect time to do it because Charlotte, an avid cook, was seeing the local food movement begin to develop. Now in their 40s, with their kids grown, the couple also had more time as well as more energy to devote to developing a new business.

“Chefs, cooking magazines and the cooking shows were talking more and more about local food, and we already loved the connection with the people we sold to,” says Charlotte. “We said, if we are going to change what we’re doing, because we had a couple of really bad years with the hog industry, we have to do it now before we get too old.”

Pencilling a plan

Initially envisioning just a larger produce stand, the couple were sketching plans for their new market on napkins for a couple of years, but it kept growing as they thought about adding more items.

“We’re livestock producers, so we thought why can’t we have a butcher shop in there as well,” says Charlotte. “Then we realized we wanted it to be more than just a little fruit and vegetable stand.”

They decided to cut back on hog production, raising just enough animals to provide pork for the market, which they finally built in 2009, a much larger, grander structure than they had originally planned that has prompted a lot of diversification of the farm to provide it with different products to sell.

The Lepps bought chicken quota and converted one of the old hog barns into a chicken barn. They bought cattle and started grazing them on a friend’s farm nearby and purchased a mixed orchard at Osoyoos in the Okanagan Valley. When their youngest son, Michael, joined the farm, they diversified further into strawberries, pumpkins, pickling cucumbers and beans, and last year added four acres of strawberry production under hoop houses.

What’s key is noticing trends and keeping up with what’s going on in the marketplace, says Charlotte, so this year they rented a greenhouse for hydroponic lettuce to serve their customers through the winter.

“We have all of the summer crops but we need income coming in all year-round,” says Charlotte. “So, we looked at what people are eating in the winter; they’re eating lots of salads and there’s more food safety issues with things like romaine coming in from California and Arizona, which was sort of another thing that we picked up on. This is something that we can grow here year-round and people eat a lot of it.”

Both Charlotte and Rob grew up on farms in the Abbotsford area. Rob’s father and uncle owned a road construction business and farmed on the side, but sold the business to get into hog farming in the 1970s. Charlotte’s parents came to Canada after the Second World War and bought a mixed farm growing raspberries and raising chickens. Charlotte and Rob eventually took over the farm from Rob’s dad and continued in hog production as they raised their three children Carrie, Michael and Jason. Michael now takes care of the farm operation, while Jason runs the butcher shop at the market.

Call in the professionals

Rob and Charlotte have high standards in everything they do, and they insisted that any marketing or advertising for the new market had to look good. “We knew that we didn’t know how to do that,” says Charlotte. “Starting up as a business, when we had absolutely zero retail experience other than our little corn stand, took so much energy we just couldn’t do everything.”

Someone they knew mentioned CREW Marketing Partners, a local company with offices in Vancouver and Kelowna, where founder Braden Douglas had deep roots in the food supply industries, having worked for large companies like Frito-Lay and Proctor & Gamble, and the Lepps decided to give them a try.

They feel now it was the right decision, even though it was a hard decision to make at a time when they had already sunk a lot of money into developing the market.

“It seemed like an incredibly big expense when there were already so many other expenses and people were already coming to the market, but as I said, you have to continually stay in front of them or they forget about you. They’re fickle and there are lots of options,” says Charlotte.

They were also finding that, all of a sudden, their message wasn’t as unique as it used to be.

“When we started, our tag line was “fresh from our farm to your place” and within five years, the grocery stores were all using a very similar message,” says Charlotte. “So, when the big grocery store is saying the same thing that you are, and they’re doing it at a cheaper price, you have to figure out what’s your value proposition now. What are we going to do differently? What do we offer that they don’t? And how do we tell people that, so that they continue to be willing to pay a little bit more than at the big chain grocery stores?”

So you see why the Lepp Farm Market tag line is now “Better When Shared.”

Stretch the marketing dollars

CREW also helped them stretch their marketing dollars to target the people most likely to become their customers.

“The marketing world is huge and big companies have big marketing budgets so we’re up against that, and we needed someone to say, this is the most efficient use of your dollars and to help us figure out what is our market. They helped us do customer surveys, and once we knew who our customer was looking to be, they helped us determine which postal codes in Abbotsford are our customers, based on household income and those kinds of things. Then they helped us design a mail-out, so rather than spending money and blanketing the whole city, we were able, with their help, to target potential customers, because you need to spend your money on people that are already kind of your people.”

With hundreds of marketing companies out there, what advice do the Lepps have to offer to help find the right one?

“Make sure they understand who you are,” says Charlotte. “Your marketing team has to get to know you because they are now your voice, which is really scary giving your voice over to somebody. What they do has to reflect who you are as a family, your values, your standing in the community. You have to take the time to find a marketing company that you feel comfortable with.”

Applying what they’ve learned

Those years working with CREW taught them a lot, and although they no longer engage a marketing company, they have hired two full-time people to work exclusively on advertising and promotion for Lepp Farm Market.

They use a lot of social media, particularly Instagram, which Charlotte says has now surpassed Facebook as the preferred digital tool, and they also send out a weekly email newsletter that includes Charlotte’s recipes and news about the farm and products at the market. The newsletter reaches around 10,000 subscribers and has a 28.8 per cent open rate, which is high.

Their focus continues to be promoting themselves as farmers, keying in on the burgeoning demand not just for locally grown food, but the desire to connect with the people growing it, something that has been ramped up even more during the COVID-19 pandemic as more people started preparing meals and eating at home.

“People love that it’s a family-owned business and in our Instagram stories, when I am talking about strawberries, I’m standing in the strawberry tunnels or I’ll be standing in the field with the corn planter behind me in May and say, ‘We’re planting the corn today that you will be eating this summer,’” says Charlotte. “It’s that personal touch that is resonating with people, and when they buy our products, they think of the Lepp family.”

But it’s important to keep delivering the messages consistently and often, says Charlotte.

“It’s just that same message over and over, this is grown on Lepp Farms, this is grown by our family, this is grown locally, and still, after 10 years, people that are regular customers will say, I didn’t know you raised the animals yourself, and you think, I have done nothing but talk about this for 10 years, how can you miss this message?” she says. “But you have to keep making it fresh, people get tone deaf really quickly, so you’ve got to stay on top of it, and we always give a personal answer on Facebook or Instagram if someone asks a question.”

No to online sales

The Lepp business model, like so many others, changed during COVID-19, as they launched an online purchasing option, and, after having to close their café, found themselves selling ready-prepared meals from the market’s kitchen. The online has dropped off and although it’s something they had been thinking about doing for a while, Charlotte says they know that their success is about the face-to-face relationships with the customers who walk through their door.

“We don’t want visitors just to drive through our parking lot, we want them to see the strawberry fields we just picked from,” says Charlotte. “You don’t see this stuff if you’re just clicking and buying carrots and lettuce.”

The Lepps’ other big focus is on providing exemplary customer service. “We have a high staff ratio, where we do things well so our products are naturally more expensive,” says Charlotte.

“We have a full butcher team, but with that, a customer can come to our market and say, can you cut this steak a certain way.”

Nothing makes Rob and Charlotte’s day better than a customer complimenting their staff and having an enjoyable shopping experience when they walk through the door.

They employ up to 100 people during peak times at the farm and market, keeping the market open seven days a week and running through an average of 800 transactions a day, although that number is higher in the summer.

Constantly evolving

It’s a busy life, but the promotion never stops and the Lepps have to constantly evolve to keep up with new trends, like mobile technology.

“We are revamping our website for the third time to be more mobile friendly because 70 per cent of our views are on a mobile device now,” says Charlotte.

Their advice to anyone looking to diversify their farm is to make sure you are promoting something you are passionate about, and to keep up with trends in food retail and food service.

“I’ve seen a lot of trends come and go already in the food world in these 10 years, but people wanting to connect with where their food is grown and the people who grow it, that is a trend that is not going away, it’s only gaining strength,” says Charlotte. “When you see all the big guys trying to do it, then you know you’re on to something and they can’t do it. You are the farmer, so you have something to offer that the big grocery stores cannot duplicate. ”

Don’t be scared to experiment, adds Charlotte, but know that the bottom line is you have to be profitable.

“What people want and what you can produce are often two different things,” Charlotte says. “People want strawberries that look like a picture in a magazine. They want them certified organic, and they want to buy them at Costco prices, and I tell people you can maybe have two of the three, but you can’t have all three. It’s impossible.”

Working with the public is not always easy and they constantly need to be educated about what you grow, says Charlotte. “Like every business owner, you have to be willing to put hard work into it, but if you’re a farmer, you have a great story and people want to hear that story, and you have to tell the story endlessly.”

The post Owning the supply chain appeared first on Country Guide.

Then, there’s the male lead, also tall, also lanky. Raised on a mixed farm in west central Saskatchewan, soft-spoken, a handyman. Formerly an International Agriculture exchange worker, now a cowboy for hire.

And, of course, they link up, deciding that the ranching life is for them.

Then, the real interest grows as they pioneer their own 21st century version of cattle ranching.

So let’s introduce Tyler and Rachel Herbert, the proprietors of Trail’s End Beef. From their farm on the outskirts of Parkland, right in the middle of Alberta’s famous ranching country, they sell grass-fed beef to their clientele an hour north in the city of Calgary (population 1.4 million and growing) and the surrounding area.

The day Country Guide arrived for the interview, moody, rumbling skies threatened a much-needed rain, (except for the hay crop just swathed on Rachel’s uncle’s farm north of Nanton), and it was like the TV show was still on.

I found Rachel taking some cuttings from her perennial bed on the west side of the house, when Tyler joined us in the yard after capturing their horses.

They tell me that after our interview the next job on their list is to gather some two-plus year old steers and get them ready to go to the abattoir.

But, like all plot lines, there’s more background to this story.

While Rachel grew up in the city of Calgary and was educated at the Waldorf School where holistic learning is emphasized, her ancestral roots in southern Alberta’s ranching community run deep.

Her mother was the granddaughter of Fred and Edith Ings. Fred started the OH Ranch in the rich grasslands of the Porcupine Hills in the late 1880s, which makes Rachel a fourth-generation Albertan.

The land where the Trail’s End cows now summer and where they grow lush and fat on some of the best native grass in the world, was where Rachel spent her summers growing up.

Her late mother came into the land about 15 years ago, about the same time Rachel and Tyler met when he was working as a cowboy for a local outfit. With that land as a base, and a few of her mother’s cows and Tyler’s yearlings, the young couple ventured into the cattle business.

“We recognize that what we are doing is cattle ranching; we aren’t raising our cows and calves any differently, but the yearling and finished-beef cattle are definitely outside the norm,” Rachel says over a cup of strong, black tea in their tidy, homey country kitchen, complete with an authentic Hoosier cupboard.

It was her mother Linda Loree who discovered the American grass-fed niche, and Tyler immediately recognized the value and the fit for the small scale of their operation. And they’ve made it grow. Their first year, they slaughtered four head. Now, 15 years later, they slaughter 60 head of their own cattle.

Despite the storybook plot, it’s their strong business plan — meticulously nurtured and executed with hard work — that is the key to Trail’s End success.

The decision to raise grass-fed beef is the obvious difference from the cattle business norm. However the Herberts also invest more time and resources into their herd by growing their calves to 24 to 28 months of age before they are sent to market, a full year later than grain-fed cattle are slaughtered.

Their deliberate strategy allowed the Herberts to take advantage of the genetics of their small-framed, easy-keeping Red and Black Angus-based herd and the ample grass available to grow their calves.

Rachel waxes enthusiastic when she talks about the difference an extra year on the hoof makes to the quality of their beef. “It makes amazing beef; the quality is superb.”

At least in the beginning, Rachel says they needed to help their customers understand the difference between grass-fed and grain-fed beef.

“When we began, we were really educating people about grass-fed meat. People genuinely didn’t know what was grass-fed was,” she says. The couple would, for example, attend an Earth Day or Christmas market just to network. Most people were under the impression that cattle got to live on grass their whole lives and the Herberts explained the grass-finished difference. Now there is such a popular demand for grass-finished beef that people are surprised the end product isn’t commonly found at the grocery store or a restaurant.

Another key to the quality of Trail’s End beef lies in the low-stress way the animals are handled throughout their lives.

The loading and sorting system Tyler designed and built for their animals displays the hallmark curves and solid walls of Temple Grandin’s low-stress handling research. There’s enough room to get among them on horseback, another quiet way to work cows.

And Trail’s End cattle ARE handled more than most. Because the home quarter (purchased by the couple and financed through Tyler’s off-farm job in Alberta’s oil patch) and the summer pasture are 20 km apart, their cattle get used to being trailered.

Tyler comments when the cattle take that last trip to Coaldale to the butcher, it is just another familiar ride in their own trailer.

From a small herd of 20, the Herberts have grown their business in sync with customer demand to 60 of their own cattle, plus an additional 40 head that they slaughter for the A7 Ranche (another heritage ranching operation) and butcher as Trail’s End Beef. The beef sells out every year.

It’s quite an accomplishment considering they are marketing their cattle in wholesale lots: quarter, sides and whole carcasses, to mainly urban customers.

“I don’t know from a business perspective that what we’re doing is any more profitable than a cow-calf operation, with our input of feed and keeping them that extra year” says Rachel, who then goes on to say, “It is as viable as any other type of production, but we get the rewards of getting to know our cattle and getting to know who we’re feeding.”

And, as you might have guessed, Rachel is no longer a vegetarian. “I am confident a diet full of grass-finished meat is the way we were designed to eat.”

Their direct-sales option

Whether you call it “pasture to plate” or “farm gate to plate,” sustaining a direct-selling model adds another layer to the business of farming.

Trail’s End adeptly uses electronic and social media to leverage its business assets. The backbone is meticulous record-keeping: treatment records, pasture records, calving records, butchering records, customer records.

Rachel characterizes this record-keeping as computer ranching, and she will often use that hashtag when she Instagrams photos from their operations. She flat out says their business would not be possible without it.

Tyler uses a pocket journal to note calf birth dates and tag numbers. As well as CCIA tags, the Herberts also tag each calf with a year letter (like purebred breeders) so that they can easily identify the year of birth. This is a particularly important piece of record-keeping because these animals go to slaughter a year later than most. Meat inspectors will sometimes question the age of the carcass, in keeping with Agriculture Canada’s 30-month slaughtering cut-off, instituted during the BSE crisis. An age-verified birth certificate accompanies each animal to the butcher.

Trail’s End has had a website from the get-go and has recently revamped it. It is the key customer point of contact, and Rachel has made sure the online order form is simple and easy to use.

The Herberts also bring orders into the city of Calgary so it is convenient for their customers to pick them up.

Trail’s End has an active Instagram account, where the Herberts are able to share Tyler’s great shots of their operation. Even in the winter, after their hectic June-September marketing season, Rachel will post beef recipes on the website to keep Trail’s End customers engaged, also sending out a customer newsletter and blog.

The couple have participated in Alberta Agriculture’s Open Farm Days since its inception. Both credit the opportunity to open the door on their ranching lifestyle to urban Albertans as another building block in their success, especially as they started their direct farm sales.

So important is that open-door atmosphere that the Herberts built a galley kitchen in their new barn where they host visitors. The barn displays Tyler’s handiness and inventiveness. A tack room inset rotates 360 degrees, allowing saddles and tack to be displayed in the lounge or rotated to the barn side when they are using their horses.

A greener label

Crucial in the Trail’s End Beef story is the holistic, sustainable way the cattle are raised. They are outside all year long with room to roam, fed a forage-based diet their entire lives and have access to clean water.

To add another layer of transparency to their business, and define what grass-fed actually means in practice, Rachel and Tyler Herbert applied to be certified by A Greener World, an American-based third-party auditor that individually certifies operations for animal welfare practices.

Trail’s End has received two stages of certification: first for their animal welfare practices and second, for grass-fed beef. Being certified verifies Trail’s End is raising their animals according to high welfare standards.

The label is the first — and only — food label in North America to guarantee food products come from animals fed a 100 per cent grass and forage diet, and raised entirely outdoors on pasture or range.

Rachel says the AGW certification is an interesting tool.

“Our customers can know (from a third party) this animal was on pasture literally every day of its life with no grain supplementation.”

Even their abattoir took the step of being certified by AGW.

Prairie Meats, Coaldale

Prairie Meats in Coaldale, Alta., has processed the Trail’s End cattle since Tyler and Rachel Herbert expanded their venture.

The Herberts view the relationship as a business partnership, and Prairie Meats owner Jennifer Anderson agrees.

“If we make their customers happy, then we make them happy,” Anderson says. Trail’s End is not their only direct-to-market customer. She says segregating each animal and ensuring its meat gets to the right customer is just standard practice for them.

As a small abattoir, they pride themselves on quality control and their ability to trace the processed meat to the animal and farm it came from. They use the Herberts’ tagging system to issue a number to each animal as it arrives. As well, the Herberts receive a sample of meat from each carcass they process. If there are concerns with a customer’s order, that sample allows it to be matched to the animal and, if need be, sent for DNA testing.

It means the Herberts also get to see the results of their labour on their plate, Rachel explains. “We can check out the marbling, compare our notes to what animal it was from, what pasture it was in, what time of the summer it was butchered. We really make sure we’ve got the quality.”

Again, this meticulous record-keeping from both parties allows for transparency and quality control.

The beef Tyler and Rachel raise weigh as much as 1,500 pounds on the hoof when they are ready to go to market and can dress out as high as 900 pounds on the rail, though they estimate the average is 850. Because the cattle are direct marketed, they are not graded but Rachel says they would be AAA or AA if they were.

“We feel confident working with processors that are so open,” Rachel says of the relationship with their butcher. Tyler adds: “They want to accommodate us with what we’re doing as much as they can.”

The post Strategically grass-fed appeared first on Country Guide.