Discovery Lab, a grassroots organization that supports entrepreneurs, will be hosting a pitch event on July 29, the day before AgSmart, the Alberta agriculture technology event, on July 30 and 31.

Discovery Lab@AgSmart aims to bring together Discovery Lab’s network of advisors and investors and connect them with people who are starting up agriculture technology businesses.

“The whole event is framed and constructed to help those people who are trying to start and grow a company,” said Michael Overduin, CEO of Discovery Lab.

The Discovery Lab process has benefitted Mark Olson, CEO of Flokk, a company that has created software and hardware that makes cow-side data gathering easier for management and traceability.

He worked with Discovery Lab and Olds College to bring the concept to agriculture.

“We’ve established valuable contacts every time we’ve gone,” said Olson.

Discovery Labs works to make the process of being involved as welcoming and simple for companies.

“We try and make it as easy as possible, and as a result, we attract a large variety of people,” said Overduin.

That includes companies that are at the concept phase up to those that are selling a product and looking for more guidance or funding.  They also could be looking to find a way into a new foreign market and people in Discovery Lab’s network can help with that too.

Discovery Lab has 270 advisors in its network.

There will be 15 companies presenting information about their company at the event, with room for one more, says Overduin. The companies receive coaching on their presentation and feedback after the event.

Flokk will be one of the presenters.

“We’re pursuing this because we this see as a much more effective way to try and attract and engagement investors, and we’re going and then doing it on our own,” said Olson.

Farmers are encouraged to attend the event too.

“This is a huge growth industry in Canada, with global demand,” said Overduin. Attending the event allows farmers to observe technology trends, opportunities and what they could implement on their farm. It’s also an opportunity for farmer to expand their networks.

Anyone interested in attending can sign up at www.discoverylab.ca.

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The two institutions have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) which entails both schools working together for five years on various programs, notably Olds College’s Smart Farm operation.

The partnership comes as a result of an 800-acre donation west of Craik, Sask., about 85 km north of Moose Jaw, from Margery Steckler and late husband George Steckler to Olds College. It’s the largest such donation the institution has ever received.

The aim of the Smart Farm with the new partnership is to train students and give them opportunities in the technologically advancing agriculture sector, such as with drones and autonomous farming equipment.

“I mean, that’s where farming is going,” Saskatchewan Polytechnic CEO Dr. Larry Rosia said at the two schools’ announcement on Monday last week at that school’s ag equipment technician shop in Saskatoon.

“That’s another example of what we could bring to the partnership as we do a lot of drone training. We have a fleet of drones, and our drones are collecting data. We could share that data with Olds College.”

Smart Farm has over 100 different partners that range from a variety of agriculture companies. Olds College president Stuart Cullum said he believes this will be another valuable asset for students, besides getting to work with another school — namely, to learn how to work with industry, as they will be converging with them in the program.

“There’s a lot of complementary programming. This programming that we don’t have at Olds because we’re very industry-focused on agriculture,” said Cullum. “There’s some things that we do in a real deep way that we can offer to Saskatchewan Polytechnic.”

Rosia noted there’s also the possibility of students and instructors being able to crossover between the two institutions.

“It’s too early to say, but the sky’s the limit as to the opportunity for student exchanges and instructor exchanges,” said Rosia.

Saskatchewan Polytechnic academic chair Deanna Herman sees the partnership as a great opportunity because it upgrades the students from a small-scale operation to a much larger one, giving them the ability to train on tasks they couldn’t before, such as irrigation.

“Our students will have hands-on training and setting up irrigation systems and timing and all those kinds of things.”

Plans are still in the beginning stages for the two institutions, but their focus is to now work together and not compete.

“The past was all about competing, the future is all about partnering and collaborating,” Rosia said.

The MOU will be governed by a joint committee of representatives from both institutions.

— Liam O’Connor reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Saskatoon.

Olds College president Stuart Cullum (l) and Saskatchewan Polytechnic president Dr. Larry Rosia (r) shake hands after signing the MOU. (Liam O’Connor photo)

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Everyone has heard horror stories of entire bins ruined, but Joy Agnew, associate vice-president of applied research for Olds College, says it’s the less dramatic downgrading of quality that actually accounts for greater overall losses for Canadian farmers.

“Losing quality isn’t as big of a hit individually, but cumulatively across all farms, there’s huge economic loss there,” she says.

Brent Elliott, acting program manager of Infestation Control and Sanitation for the Canadian Grain Commission, says catastrophic spoilage isn’t common, but it does happen.

“Sometimes not all the bins are located in the yard and folks will forget a bin that’s two miles from the farm,” he says. “Or there are older bins where the farmer doesn’t put in that monitoring because they’re using it as a temporary storage.

“All the field work, fertilizing, and managing weeds, insects and field conditions, and they finally get it to the bin and the job is only half done. They are taking an awful risk if they’re not monitoring the grain in storage.”

Stored grain is an “ecosystem” that’s dynamic and changing due to air currents and conduction changes in the bin, Elliot explains. Stored grain might be stable at one point, but that could change. Even on the Prairies in midwinter, grain can retain August’s heat in its core.

Then the problems can compound: stored grain’s high moisture and humidity are attractive to insects, particularly Cryptolestes ferrugineus — the rusty grain beetle which accounts for 95 per cent of problems with storage pests in Western Canada. Elliot says their respiration leads to condensation and further spoilage. 

New products

Preventing losses starts with monitoring, but with the explosion of new products on the market, it can be hard to know which option will be the best fit.

“Farmers are very much looking for simple, easy-to-use solutions,” says Agnew. “There might be cool new products coming out, but if they don’t work well and aren’t easy to use, farmers won’t want to adopt them.”

Olds College Smart Farm is currently collaborating with Top Grade Ag, a Calgary startup, to test its In-Bin Drying (IBD) Monitor. The product aims to help farmers better understand drying rates to optimize IBD, running fans and heaters only as needed. The product combines sensors in the outlet with a web-based app to continually measure water-removal rates. Agnew’s program is assisting with optimal sensor placement, sensor orientation and improving the algorithm to better estimate airflow rate.

“It’s going to be a very informative tool once it’s ready to roll,” she says.

Jitendra Paliwal is a professor of biosystems engineering and associate dean of the University of Manitoba’s faculty of agricultural and food sciences. He runs an imaging and spectroscopy lab at the university’s CWB Centre for Grain Storage Research. One of the lab’s “success stories,” says Paliwal, is a product called GrainViz that was developed out of a student project using electromagnetic imaging to monitor stored grain. The students started a company called 151 Research, which was later bought by AGCO.

GrainViz uses antennae installed on the inside wall of the bin to create a 3D image map of the moisture in the bin. The product is completely wireless and can show pockets of high moisture, a precondition to spoilage, says Paliwal.

“At the back end, the antennas sense the electrical properties of the grain as it changes from dry to wet, and this is the change we’re capturing. We’re now looking at developing the same technology to look into other kinds of grain storage configurations, such as concrete silos, bunkers and open pile storage.” 

Paliwal says that so far, the technology costs more than traditional cable monitoring, but for larger bins the cost is justified.

Cable monitoring is now a “mature” technology, which means there are lots of comparatively priced product offerings on the market. Many different types of cables can be deployed to measure temperature, humidity and more. But Paliwal says less than 10 per cent of stored grain is monitored by cables, giving an edge to newer, more comprehensive monitoring technology.

Paliwal’s lab is embarking on a new project exploring how laser biostimulation — which is used in human cosmetic surgery — might also be able to turn back the clock on damaged grain.

CO2 detection

Another cable-free option now available in Canada and the U.S. is Amber Agriculture’s Ace Air system, the first carbon dioxide grain-monitoring sensor for grain management.

“CO2 sensing is a predictive measurement. We use it as a direct replacement for temperature monitoring, which is a reactive measurement,” explains Amber Agriculture’s co-founder Lucas Frye.

“This one product space for grain monitoring has been very infrastructure-heavy, so to monitor temperature and moisture, to use software for running aeration systems, all these products have been [built] around hanging moisture and temperature cables inside the bins. As we built the technology, we started from first principles, looking for the least amount of pieces necessary to do the work.”

Ace Air is sold as a kit including a fan controller and CO2 sensor that farmers can self-install in around 20 minutes per bin. The product can be diagnosed, debugged and serviced remotely, says Frye. It’s available for around US$3,000.

Grain drying research

Monitoring technology goes hand-in-hand with drying technology.

Chandra Singh is applied research chair in agricultural engineering and technology at Lethbridge College’s Centre for Applied Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. This year he began an Agricultural Funding Corporation-funded project focused on minimizing post-harvest losses of grain through improved on-farm grain drying.

The project will compare in-bin natural air drying, in-bin drying with heaters, high-temperature drying and combination drying (high-temperature drying followed by natural air drying in-bin.) Trials will be conducted on-farm across five sub-regions of Alberta to develop localized recommendations.

“We also want to see how we can look at the factors that influence drying and how you can optimize your drying process,” says Singh.

The project is running in collaboration with Calgary-based industry partner OPIsystems, which will offer a 20 per cent discount on its monitoring cables and control system costs for participating farmers.

Lethbridge College is currently looking for farmer participation in the trial with on-farm grain drying and storage capacity — 20,000- to 50,000-bushel bins are preferred.

“This project is unique in Western Canada,” says Singh. “No on-farm grain bin drying study has been conducted. Each grower has a different capacity — we want to consider all the variables and factors and look at what will be the best options for them.

“I want to see the reduction of post-harvest losses in Alberta,” Singh says. “Say winter starts early and there isn’t enough time to get grain off the field. With this project, we want to show that we can get the crop off early and wet and still get a quality crop.”

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The Olds College Smart Farm will lead the Pan-Canadian Smart Farm Network, which will also include Glacier FarmMedia Discovery Farm at Langham, Sask. and the Lakeland College Student-Managed Farm – Powered by New Holland at Vermilion, Alta.

The new network’s first joint project will evaluate the “functionality, connectivity and value of data” from a common suite of sensors measuring soil, climate and crop conditions.

Each of the project sites has installed Metos Canada’s wireless sensors and other data-gathering devices such as for field monitoring, weather monitoring and forecasting, water management, disease modelling, insect monitoring and crop nutrition management.

The data will go to make on-farm management decisions — timing fungicide applications, for example — and the farms will “evaluate the benefit of using data to manage those decisions.”

Some funding for the new network’s activities will come from the Canadian Agri-Food Automation and Intelligence Network (CAAIN), a separate network of over 60 technology and agrifood companies and organizations backed with funding from the federal innovation, science and economic development ministry. Both Olds and Lakeland are among CAAIN’s core partners.

A specific focus for CAAIN, when that network was launched in 2019, was to “create and implement a smart farm platform that integrates partners and creates the context for testing, demonstrating and scaling technologies.”

In all, the Pan-Canadian Smart Farm Network will pay for network-approved activities with a $2.9 million funding envelope including $1.1 million over three years from CAAIN, about $570,000 from other public-sector agencies and the balance from private-sector partners.

The Pan-Canadian network was one of nine winners of funding through CAAIN’s 2020 Closed Competition, in which other recipients include a project to develop a non-invasive approach to determine the gender and fertility of pre-incubated chicken eggs. In a separate release Thursday, CAAIN said it will announce the seven other recipients “over the coming weeks.”

On a call Wednesday with editors from Glacier FarmMedia — whose media assets include this website — Dr. Joy Agnew, Olds College’s associate vice-president of applied research and principal investigator for the Pan-Canadian Smart Farm Network project, said the new network has “ambitious” plans to expand to additional sites in the near future.

The initial collaboration — taking place across different agriculture zones and land bases — is expected to bring more depth to the results of the evaluation, she said in a joint release Thursday.

“Independent validation of ag technologies is critical and so is ensuring that validation is done using more than a single smart farm,” she said. “By joining with other partners, we’ll be providing farmers with information that will meaningfully inform their decisions about how and where to use sensor technology.”

The new network, she said on the GFM call, is “truly an example of a situation where one plus one plus one equals five.”

Blake Weiseth, applied research lead for the GFM Discovery Farm and agriculture research chair for Saskatchewan Polytechnic, noted the farm has been using Metos sensor data in field-scale projects and “having access in real time to similar data from other sites in Canada will expand our understanding of its value.”

Work is already underway to find more smart farm network members across Canada, the partners said, adding they expect to have opportunities to link the Pan-Canadian network with other smart farms internationally.

Glacier FarmMedia’s other Discovery Farm site, at Woodstock, Ont., is an example of a farm that could be added to the Pan-Canadian network if sufficient funding is made available, Weiseth said.

Josie Van Lent, Lakeland’s dean of agriculture technology and applied research, said Wednesday the network will also provide real value on the education side as “living labs” for the colleges’ students.

At Lakeland, the Pan-Canadian network’s activities are expected to be integrated into the college’s crop technology, animal science technology and bachelor of agriculture technology programs.

“When Olds College submitted this project for consideration, we were immediately intrigued,” CAAIN CEO Kerry Wright said in Thursday’s release. “Smart farms validate and demonstrate the use of innovative agricultural technology in a specific environment, and they provide opportunities to train students enrolled in post-secondary agriculture programs on the latest trends in ag tech.”

Another advantage for the Pan-Canadian network, she said, lies in “its opportunity to link smart farms across the country, thereby multiplying learnings and increasing the value of any data generated.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The new strategy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re-thinking “school”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Olds College is changing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Student-managed at Lakeland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ridgetown, and far beyond

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Convocation is the harvest,” she says.

Parent expectations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Preparing a farm business plan is part of the capstone courses in management planning in today’s ag schools. At the end of their U of M diploma course, for instance, students defend their plan to a panel of farmers, agronomists, bankers, lawyers, scientists and teachers.

“The objective is for them to understand the farm,” says Penner. “A lot of students that come from the farm know how to drive the tractor and do the labour side of things well, but lack knowledge in the management and financial areas. We want to bring them up to speed about how to be a good manager and understand how the farm’s finances work.”

Ag students in the diploma program at Olds College in Alberta also have to prepare a business plan, but they aren’t allowed to base it on their home farm. Instead, students have a choice of farm operation such as a grain or mixed farm, cow/calf operation or value-added or quota-based farm, but they must begin from scratch.

“The students choose what type of farm they want to start and then we give them the land base that they’re going to use,” says Mark Fournier, an instructor at Olds College. “They can’t take over their own operation because they know that one already, so they have to research the area, land prices, the equipment that they’re going to need and the loans and programs that are available to get started.”

“We wanted to make sure that there are no shortcuts for any of them,” says Fournier. “They actually have to research everything from scratch.”

Fournier says students not only gain the knowledge to research a brand new farm operation, they also understand the costs and amount of funding required, and the risks involved in starting a farm from scratch. The completed business plan also provides direction. “The value of a business plan is that everybody knows what’s happening and what the key priorities are, so when they’re making decisions, either as a farm family or as individuals, they know what those decisions should lead towards,” says Fournier.

There are many vital components to any business plan and Penner’s students focus first on defining the goals and objectives of the farm. “The first-semester students have to work on the overall vision and a mission statement,” says Penner. “We ask them where the farm is going and what do they need to do to get there. What are their two-, five- and 10-year goals? Maybe for some the short-term goal is to get a job or graduate from university. The five-year goal may to establish themselves in the ag industry, and take over the farm 10 years from now. Because things change so much, they need to do crop budgets and plan for the future every year, but if they have an over-arching vision of where they want to go, that helps to steer them into making informed decisions in the future.”

Understanding the finances

Finances are another big focus in preparing budgets for enterprises that become more diversified as students look at different ways to add value to farm operations. “We’re seeing the traditional enterprises like wheat, canola, soybeans, oats, corn and cattle, but we are also beginning to see some unique budgets coming forward,” says Penner. “I recently marked a budget on a maple farming enterprise as part of the farm. The objective is to figure out if something will fit on the farm. Will it be profitable?”

Fournier also focuses heavily on financial planning, and makes sure his students understand the differences between the types of plans, such as funding proposals for operating versus enterprise plans for new initiatives such as land purchases, new farming methods or technologies, or different crops or livestock.

“There are also plans that are designed to help struggling farms, so if they are at a point where they’re not overly profitable and it’s going to be a bit of a crisis, then they’ll need to work their way out of it,” says Fournier. “At that point they’re not looking from scratch, they’re looking from a point of usually very high loans and they need to plan for how they’re going to cope with that.”

Cash flows play a big part in these financial pictures and Fournier encourages students to do a 36-month rolling cash flow so every month they are looking at least two years out. “When we are doing our business plan in class I have them do a 36-month cash flow statement, and at all points, they have to have money in the bank, including a line of credit, just so they can eat,” he says.

What’s interesting is that often, halfway through the semester, students realize that out of their team of three, only one person can work on the farm full time and the other two have to go get full-time jobs just to make a go of it.

“That’s quite an eye-opener for them,” says Fournier, who doesn’t award any marks for profit in his course. “Grades are awarded on the best researched and most realistic plan, not the most profitable plan. If their final conclusion says that here’s the entire plan and as we have it thought out, it’s not going to be a profitable farm, and we cannot advise starting it, there’s full marks for that because that’s why we do business plans.

“If it’s not feasible on paper, if they can’t get it to work in black and white, then why would they risk millions of dollars and years of their life to run something into the ground. If the plan shows it’s going to be successful, fair enough, but what do you need to do that’s different if it’s not?”

In most cases, getting a farm enterprise off the ground involves a high demand for cash. Fournier recalls a former graduate whom he ran into who figured out he’d be better off working at Tim Horton’s than getting into a quota system as he’d hoped to do.

“He did a full business plan and realized he would need about $250,000 to put down in equity before he could actually make a living wage off of the farm,” says Fournier. “At that point in time, he was going up north to try and make his $250,000.”

The bigger picture

Looking at the bigger picture and how everything on the farm ties together is something that Penner’s students often struggle with. “They come to realize that it’s not just driving tractors, or hauling grain, or buying fertilizer. It’s the whole picture and how everything ties together,” says Penner.

That often extends to the industry as well. Fournier says he’s surprised at how little students pay attention to the larger agricultural industry and how they fit into it. “It amazes me that they know what they and their neighbours have done in the past, but when I ask them what has happened the last five years in Alberta or Western Canada or across Canada as a whole, they often have trouble with that,” says Fournier. “So it’s breaking them out of that mindset to not look just at their particular farm, but to look at the overall industry that’s probably the biggest hurdle I’ve come across. To see that, yes, their farm is important but it’s part of a bigger system and we have these micro/macro trends that will have an impact on them.”

Part of the reason for planning is to try and anticipate the unexpected, which is why Penner includes a stress test as part of his students’ business plan project.

“We tell them to think of something that they don’t think is ever going to happen on the farm, and consider how the farm would handle this stress,” Penner says. “As an example, what if the neighbour decides to sell their farm and it’s the same size as theirs; can they afford to double in size? What happens if they have a crop insurance year? What happens if they have another year like we had this past year, where crop yields in some areas were through the roof? How does that affect the farm? It’s about looking at what they’re doing now, but planning for the future, and for a best-case scenario, and a worst-case scenario, and for things that come out of left field.”

Fournier’s program also tries to prepare students for some unexpected pitfalls, and he says one of the biggest fears he has is increasing interest rates. “Our students have never known a period of rising interest rates. They’ve always known incredible low interest rates so for them this is the norm,” he says. “In all probability they will, over their lifetime, see interest rates at least double and if they don’t factor that into their long-term loan payment decisions, we could definitely see some struggling farms in the future.”

Help with transition

A big component of the business plan project at both U of M and Olds College is transition planning, and that begins with equipping the students so they can start to have a conversation with their parents and begin to understand the family farm operation better.

This is often the hardest part of the transition process, and can be a stumbling block to creating an effective business plan.

“One of my assignments is to go home and ask your parents if they have a will,” says Penner.

“The succession plan starts there. Being able to discuss finances with parents is difficult because the parents have worked hard for years to build the operation and sharing it with an 18-year-old or somebody that wants to move from the tractor into management, that’s a tricky conversation. Our goal is to start that conversation.”

It’s not unusual for some students to come back frustrated at first because their parents just don’t want to have that conversation, but as they progress through the business planning process and demonstrate their ability to understand complex management issues, and share that knowledge with their parents, in many cases the attitudes and relationships change.

“Often, what we find is that as the conversation goes on between the students and the parents, the parents sit back and say this kid is showing initiative and really does understand what’s going on,” says Penner. “The students are smart. They start to figure things out on their own and it really opens that dialogue and is a positive experience.”

At Olds College, succession planning is part of the finance component of their program because a big part of the process is figuring out how the next generation will finance the farm transition.

“The incoming generation needs to know all the tax rules and regulations and what vehicle they’re going to use to pay the last generation out, and whether it’s a family trust, or a corporate farm and who’s going to own the land,” says Fournier.

“If there are multiple kids, what role are they going to take, who’s going to be the boss, who’s going to live in the big house, and what roles are off-farm siblings going to play? These are things that any long-term farm plan should have. So we are trying to give our students some high-level tools to help them open up discussions over the next few years with their parents about farm transition.”

A lifelong value

Penner has many students come back and tell him that these exercises have helped them make decisions and weather challenges on their own farm years later. “The students get a good grasp of their operation and when there’s an opportunity to expand the farm or to step in and be a manager, I’ve had a number of students say, this has really prepared me, this has really been a useful exercise,” he says. “It’s neat to have students emailing me a couple of years after the fact and say, ‘Can I get your spreadsheet because I want to do something at home on the farm and I remember using this and it worked well’.”

Fournier says the biggest feedback he gets from students about what the program has taught them is how hard it is to make a profit and how expensive farming really is. That causes them to get realistic about farming in a big hurry.

“In the first year they are often talking about new equipment, but when they’re doing the business plan, most of the equipment is coming from Kijiji, it’s equipment that’s five or six years old because they learn that getting this older, less costly equipment is the only way they can get enough money to eat,” says Fournier.

It takes a lot of time and effort to write a comprehensive business plan, which is why they shouldn’t sit on the top shelf and gather dust. “When people are getting started, they should do a larger plan and update it on an annual basis,” says Fournier. “Needs are always going to change and they need to know what’s the cash position, the loans position, what needs to change, is there new equipment that needs to come in, how is that going to be dealt with, so they can address all these needs on a proactive ongoing basis.”

Because the bigger picture is so important, it’s vital that students get out in the industry and make connections, build relationships and never stop learning.

“I tell my students to go to as many workshops and seminars as they can, learn what the changes are, look how people are adapting to changes. Then make those contacts and start incorporating those into their yearly operational plans,” says Fournier. “Forming relationships in order to navigate the challenges of the future is essential because the industry is changing so fast. You don’t necessarily have to be leading the industry but you need to be talking with those who are leading the industry to see what’s working and what’s not.

“I advise my students to be involved in different things. It doesn’t need to be all ag-related but if they are on a Co-op board, or the curling rink board, or part of an organization, they’re going to be in leadership with other tremendous leaders and will learn from them and be encouraged by them to keep learning and to keep working at it.”

The post Smarter than you think appeared first on Country Guide.

“Don’t use emojis, they’re cute, but they’re not professional,” Mark Fournier of Alberta’s Olds College tells his students. The school offers applied degree and diploma programs in agribusiness and agricultural management, respectively, and has made the decision to include texting skills and strategies as part of its curriculum.

Texting is a skill?

Like many post-secondary instructors, career counsellors and professors, Fournier has found it isn’t just students, it’s also industry that is increasingly relying on electric communication.

Texting is changing Fournier’s teaching patterns. “If we were to go back even 10 years ago, students would come into the instructor’s office to talk to the instructor to get a little extra help or get some clarification on some issue. Then we moved over to email, so students became more comfortable with emailing instructors, and now we’ve actually found that phone conversations have almost dropped off. I think I could probably count on one hand the number of students over the last three years that have actually phoned me,” says Fournier. “Text messaging is taking over.”

But the important point for Fournier is that industry is also shifting to texting for its communication needs, and agribusinesses want employees who can communicate effectively in short bursts of text.

Texting isn’t just a teenage way of keeping connected. Increasingly, it’s a business strength too, and it’s creating a communications environment that farms will need to excel in as well.

The pressure will only grow, he says. “A producer will text message their supplier or text message the dealer to say they are having a problem, so more and more industry members are working with the general public through text messaging.”

Other technologies, like video conferencing and FaceTime, are also becoming invaluable tools for farmers, Fournier says, and they too require soft skills or “people skills” to be effective.

Just because two people are speaking over a video link or text, it doesn’t mean they can stop paying attention to social cues, be vague about important details or let professionalism slip.

Even educators, however, are trying to figure out how these new skills contribute to success, versus when they may be a distraction, or actually get in the way.

“Maybe I’m old school, but I refuse to believe I’m old,” says Pascal Thériault, a lecturer with McGill’s faculty of agricultural and environmental sciences. Even so, the 40-year-old Thériault finds himself leaving phone messages that aren’t returned, and counselling students against communicating through Facebook.

“A student, instead of leaving me a phone message in my office, will actually send me a Facebook message when we’re not even Facebook friends,” Thériault says. “So I’d open up my Facebook message from such and such and it says, “I won’t make it to class because I am sick.” Of course my first reaction is to say, ‘send me a real email.’”

But while Facebook remains taboo in business communications, the text message has become an acceptable, if not favoured, form of communication. Thériault adds that the convenience of texting has now won him over, but agrees that professional text messages must be kept short, concise and free of abbreviations.

“How can you manage a business with just text messages?” he asks. “I’m slowly trying to get there. Even for our internship businesses, because (our students) all do internships over the summer, we found over the years that even if we don’t want to give them our personal cell phone numbers, it’s just so much easier to do that. Text me if there’s something, I’ll text you. They reply to us right away and it’s done.”

What texting can’t do is replace face-to-face communication, something that many — if not most, students — need to work on when they begin college or university.

Fournier agrees that some of his agriculture students are genuinely unnerved by having to speak to people in person.

“The students that are coming into post-secondary now are very used to having their cell phones out, are very used to communicating in very short bursts through text messages, and we’re actually finding that there is almost a level of being uncomfortable when they are forced to engage for too long a period face-to face,” Fournier says, adding that giving or receiving critical or constructive feedback seems to challenge them the most. “They haven’t had that as much as they’ve had in the past, because of the technology being a buffer, that’s some thing that we as educators are trying to adapt to and overcome.”

At the Ontario College of Agriculture at Guelph University, students are pushed to expand their soft skills by organizing events, networking and participating in the larger community. Melinda Vanryn, program counsellor for the school’s bachelor of science in agriculture degree, says that soft skills are often developed on campus, but outside of the classroom.

“We have a job fair for students and in some ways it’s not about getting a job… these opportunities give students the soft skills that people are looking for, they go to the job fair and come back saying, ‘Oh, hey, I learned to network a little more, I felt a little more comfortable walking up and introducing myself to a stranger,’ so I think a lot of those opportunities are important… and I’m hoping students are recognizing what else they are gaining from those experiences.”

Andy Robinson is the college’s professor of teaching excellence and has been involved in a number of new experiential learning initiatives at the school, working to integrate real world lessons into an academic setting.

“Basically, I’m identifying areas where students have a significant learning opportunity that’s outside of a traditional classroom type of environment,” Robinson says. It’s a different education than their parents had, and uses independent-learning course codes to allow students to get credit for some, perhaps, non-traditional activities, Robinson explains.

A simple example is an event called College Royal, the largest student-run university open house in North America. It started as preparation for the Royal Winter Fair and is in some ways an expansion of the 4-H model.

Students who participate learn to show livestock and display forages, while also honing their time-management and leadership skills.

Maybe it sounds like old-fashioned school projects, but there’s more to it than that. Students must also write a reflective piece on the experience that outlines what they have learned and gives advice to next year’s participants. Importantly, too, they must formulate a decision-making timeline which they present to their peers.

“In this particular example it’s primarily leadership skills they’re taking away, and it also gets at how to train others to do a skill that you’re very familiar with,” Robinson says, adding that these skills are important for those who hope to manage their own farm business one day.

The initiative also gets students sharing information through in-depth writing projects, and away from the short bursts of text they are so often accustomed to.

“We’ve put an emphasis on making sure they can write reports,” said Paul Gumprich, an associate professor of agriculture at the University of the Fraser Valley. “We feel it is important that they are able to communicate to their staff, to employees or other businesses they deal with… in detail.”

The school also works to prepare its agriculture students to be their own public relations managers, as consumers become more interested and outspoken about agriculture and food policy.

“We teach classes on how to handle the media in less than ideal conditions as well,” says Gumprich. Whether it’s responding to zoning changes or animal welfare issues after an undercover video surfaces, the professor says today’s farmers are called on to have a public persona and public response like never before.

“I’d like to say that they’ll never have to deal with conflict… but we all know that’s not true, so we try to put some focus on that,” he says. “We try and put them into those situations, or at least get them thinking about those things, things like GMOs and animal welfare. If they are growing those crops or raising animals… they will have to deal with consumers and their perceptions.”

Students at Fraser Valley also practice speaking on camera and do test runs of audio interviews to gain the confidence they need to become leaders in representing their industry.

Thériault says responding effectively to criticism or concern, both in person and online, has become an increasing focus of skill development for McGill’s agriculture students as well. He says students benefit from stepping back from their family farms and looking critically how they operate and how some of their practices might be perceived by those without an agricultural background.

“Because if you were brought up on the farm and all you do is farming, then what you’re doing is right… but you need to be able to express it in a way that consumers understand,” says Thériault.

However, this also means our young farmers need the soft or fluid skills to listen to other points of view — even if they find them offensive — and then build a discussion around them, rather than a confrontation.

“I had one student who is vegan and is a supporter of PETA and 60 per cent of the class are dairy farmers… to her milk is murder,” Thériault says. “But my dairy farmers claim that you’re going to die if you don’t drink milk, of course because that’s what they were brought up to believe. So there’s lots of belief being challenged.”

But the students in his course handled the situation with more aplomb than he anticipated.

“I was surprised because they are more polite than I was expecting them to be. I was ready to walk in with a fire extinguisher to put down those fires,” he recalls, adding that even with two fairly entrenched views, there is room for debate and understanding. “The more food information you know the more you can communicate to the consumer what you’re doing. And that’s not technical, you could be running a campaign, you could be running things that might or might not work.”

Robinson also stresses that communication with folks off the farm has become an increasingly important soft skill for agriculturalists.

“We do have a course in communication and they definitely cover how to use social media effectively and other techniques for communicating the agriculture message,” he says. “We also, certainly within the 4H program we’re running on campus, have guest speakers that talk about using social media effectively to get the message out. And not just social media, but other media as well.”

Critically analyzing and interpreting incoming information is also key for students looking to return to the family farm, start their own enterprise or work at another agribusiness. Just as consumers can be targeted by misinformation, so are farmers.

“We are teaching them various critical thinking skills — how you conduct analysis — and throughout the program they will build their skill in complex decision-making in all their courses,” says Michele Rogalsky, director of the School of Agriculture at the University of Manitoba. Students get exposed to new technologies in agronomy, livestock and business management, for example. But once they learn what the technology can do, they also look at whether it would be a good decision to integrate it into a particular farm or agribusiness.

With agricultural research evolving so rapidly, it’s more important than ever to be able to critically evaluate such opportunities, Rogalsky adds.

“We are no longer just looking at seeding rates and soil fertility practices,” Rogalsky says. “Those will change, so we need critical thinking skills to assess new information… What are the biases? How do you determine where you are getting that agronomic information from? Then, more importantly, how to you make sure it applies to your farm specifically?

“I think all of our courses are recognizing that production information and practices are changing so quickly, we’ve got to prepare the students.”

The ability to carefully and critically evaluate new information and claims is also something that employers are looking for, she adds, noting it has come up repeatedly in consultations with industry.

“So three years from now, whatever that new crop is, they are going to have the skills and resources to gather that information and make appropriate and effective financial management decisions,” says the director.

Thériault agrees. To him, at the end of the day, teaching agriculture is about bringing well-rounded, thoughtful people onto the farm, into the workforce and into the community.

“We are teaching them to manage multi-million dollar businesses, so it’s not just about having the skills to milk a cow or deciding the right machinery for you,” Thériault says. “I like to think it’s about life in general.”

The post Smart stuff appeared first on Country Guide.

The Liberal government committed up to $950 million (over five years) in its March budget to create hubs that would focus on key economic sectors in an effort to kickstart investment, boost exports and create jobs.

The proposed Smart Agri-Food Super Cluster “is intended to create a pan-Canadian platform to help the sector’s diverse, and sometimes disparate, ‘silos’ align more coherently to identify and resolve challenges in the agrifood value chain,” its three proponents said in a news release.

“We felt it important to create something that constructively brings together all the players that comprise the ways we do farming and food,” said Bill Whitelaw, chair of the group’s steering committee. “Our approach is intended to resolve some of the fragmentation dynamics that often hinder innovation efforts.”

The group’s goals include promoting innovation in cropping, livestock, digital and agrifood processing technologies, the release stated.

If successful in obtaining federal seed money, the cluster would seek to involve businesses, not-for-profits, research organizations and post-secondary institutions in projects that create new jobs, export opportunities and safer and more sustainable food production.

“Ottawa would like to see innovation as the driving force that significantly improves Canada’s already strong ag and food leadership position globally,” said Whitelaw, a senior executive with Glacier Media Group (parent company of this website).

“Moving the country upward in global export rankings could create billions of new economic impact.”

If its proposal is funded, the Smart Agri-Food Super Cluster would be administered from Calgary but would seek out partners from across the country, he said.

The supercluster concept has been successfully applied in California’s Silicon Valley, Canada’s Kitchener-Waterloo region, and cities such as Berlin and Tel Aviv, the federal government said in announcing the program.

The creation of superclusters will depend on what proposals are submitted, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains told the Toronto Star earlier this year.

He identified agrifood — along with areas such as advanced manufacturing, digital technology, and health/biosciences — as sectors where Canada is well positioned to become a stronger global player.

Calgary-based Agrium is in the process of merging with PotashCorp to form a new company to be called Nutrien. MDA (formerly MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates) is based in Vancouver and has annual revenues of more than $2 billion. –– AGCanada.com Network

The post Trio of groups proposes Alberta-based agrifood ‘supercluster’ appeared first on Country Guide.

Then they realized they should go even further.

This was the right time, they decided, to review the whole succession plan for the fourth-generation family farm that they would one day be taking on.

Yet it wasn’t something that Kent or his parents Judy and Ron relished the thought of doing, because Sereda Farms had been in almost continuous transition since 2005, and they were getting tired of the process.

“We had been in transition basically since my uncle decided to sell out in 2005, and then in 2010 we started the succession process to officially bring me into the company,” says 33-year-old Kent. “We had been in a constant period of change and adaptation and metamorphosis of the company. Mom, Dad and I were all just sick of that kind of stuff and wanted to get back to the business of farming.

“Then, when Holly and I married, of course she had some questions about how things were set up and where everybody stands. So it was an opportunity for us to go back and revisit all the details. It prompted us to really clarify what we were doing, and what the succession process was.”

Holly, 32, had grown up on a mixed farm in Sask­atchewan, and as she prepared to quit her job as manager of agricultural services for the County of Newell, her business and administration background, as well as her outsider’s eye view, helped her identify some areas of the farm operations, management and succession plan that needed some work.

“When you marry into a farm, you’re marrying into a family business, so there’s a lot to determine… where your place is and what your role is going to be within the organization,” says Holly. “Kent already had a succession plan in place but it needed updating, and it wasn’t totally complete.”

Can you survive the hit by the bus?

In her former job, Holly had been responsible for delivering programs, hiring employees, updating job descriptions, and developing safety protocols, operational processes and procedures.

She immediately had questions, particularly about what she calls the “hit by a bus” scenario.

“I started asking Kent questions like, well, you take care of this, and your dad takes care of this but what happens if one of you suddenly disappeared, if some tragedy struck? Do you have the processes in place to be able to carry on?”

“One of our goals,” says Holly, “is to be able to survive the being hit by a bus test by having all our processes and procedures in place and documented.”

Across the table, the Seredas could see that Holly was raising important questions.

“I knew we needed to do a better job at things, but I didn’t feel prepared enough. I didn’t know how to go about doing things better,” says Kent. “Holly brings a professional workplace background to the table, so it was natural for all three of us to rely on her as a facilitator. My parents have always been open with the business side of things with me, and they’re happy to do that with Holly as well.

“We feel like we’re doing these things proactively instead of reactively. Holly facilitated those soft issues that I would have difficulty talking with Mom and Dad about. She does a better job of handling those things.”

A history of change

In 1940, Kent’s grandfather had brought a truckload of fresh fruits and vegetables to convince his family to resettle from southwest Saskatchewan to Alberta. Originally, the family were set to relocate to the Peace country, but when Grandpa came out to Rolling Hills, about 45 minutes west of Medicine Hat, he knew that even if they had a crop failure, the family could irrigate a garden and feed themselves.

When he passed away in 1969, his two sons had to drop everything and become full-time farmers at the ages of 16 and 17. Ron eventually bought out his brother’s share of the farm, and at 64 is still active in the operation, as is his wife, Judy, who acts as chief financial officer.

The farm has changed a lot over the years. After Kent completed his ag diploma program at Olds College and came back to the farm in 2004, only a fifth of the land was in cash crops and the rest was in pasture or forages for beef production.

Since then, the family has gone completely out of beef production and added irrigated row, seed and specialty crops, such as corn, wheat, black beans, pinto beans, alfalfa seed and certified canola seed.

“It takes a lot of drive to change,” says Kent. “It was tough in our operation. But you have to keep your eyes open because I have seen a lot of biases, like looking over the fence and saying to yourself, we’ll never do that. You have to keep your eyes open and jump on opportunities when they come.”

Now, one of the couple’s priorities is to formalize their business methods, and they’re exceptionally clear at articulating how this formalization plays into their larger goals.

“It seems like we’re just laying down a foundation for success,” says Kent. “We’re not a large operation but we desire to grow the business. Competition and availability of land is getting tight, and we have to rethink what we’re doing.

“We want to formalize our business practices so that we’re making well-informed decisions. We want to know financials upside and down, and to use that to help our decision-making. We want personal and financial freedom from the business, opportunity for personal pursuits, and a good quality of life.

“Although we very much want to grow the business, we need to maximize what we’re doing here currently.”

One area of focus is capital efficiency, because relative to the size of their operation — around 1,200 acres — capital purchases are their biggest investment decision.

“Only one or two of those decisions made wrongly can damage a business, so we want to be confident going forward that we understand the details of those decisions,” says Kent. “For example, if an opportunity arises to purchase land, we want to know exactly what we’re going to have to compromise, and what the financial picture looks like if we do that, so we are making a sound business decision rather than an emotional one.”

Working on management skills

The couple are part of a growing trend among young producers who want to get advanced business management training. They are actively working on their business management skills — Holly is involved in the Bridging the Gap: Step up to Succession program offered through Farm Management Canada, and both she and Kent are taking the Agri-Food Management Excellence’s CTEAM (Canadian Total Excellence in Agricultural Management) program.

Both Bridging the Gap and CTEAM are not only helping them learn how to approach some of the issues they need to address on their own farm, but the programs also inspire them to carry on with the process.

“I had always wanted to do the CTEAM program but I just didn’t have the motivation,” says Kent. “It’s helped tremendously to keep us encouraged and keep our momentum. We really want to keep at it and make sure the business transforms, so a big part of CTEAM is giving us confidence that we are doing things right and maintaining our enthusiasm to keep going with it.”

Part of that enthusiasm comes from the other participants in the programs and from the valuable networking opportunities they have had through attending various conferences, such as the Agricultural Excellence Conference in Calgary, Canadian Young Farmers Forum in Ottawa, and the International Farm Management Association, which is coming up in Scotland this July.

“Sometimes it seems counterproductive to take time off to attend a conference or a workshop, but in the long run, it’s so valuable for so many reasons. It’s not just that you’re going to learn a new skill or identify things that you have to work on, it gives you an opportunity to network and meet other people in your industry,” says Holly. “Sometimes the conversations you have afterwards are more valuable than what you learn in the conference or in the course. It’s important too because sometimes you need to take a step back and recharge and take time off. There’s almost always something at a conference or course that inspires you, and you learn a new idea, or you meet somebody who’s done something fascinating on their farm.”

Defining roles and responsibilities for everyone is something the family has struggled with. It may be easy for an individual to define what his or her current role is, but it’s not nearly as easy to figure out they want that role to be in 10 or 20 years time.

One of their first CTEAM exercises helped them out with this process, when Holly and Kent had to write a magazine article about their farm after they had accepted a fictitious award 15 or 20 years from now.

“After we did that, we came back and got Mom and Dad to write down where they see things in 10 years,” said Kent. “It was interesting. It was what I had hoped. Mom said she wants to be retired, she wants to hand off the bookkeeping to Holly, and Dad said he wants to help out when he’s needed. He wants his own corner of the shop where he can tinker with stuff… he really came out with what he wanted to do. So that exercise helped us to figure out where we are on the line of transformation into the future, where Dad wants to slow down and I’ll start taking over things.”

“We’ve been really lucky to have done both programs together; they’ve been really a great complement,” says Holly. “It’s allowed us to look at our operation and figure out what we are doing well and what we are not, and to make a list of goals and how we’re going to achieve them. We’re starting to get a plan in place for what we want to tackle next.”

Lots still to learn

What’s next is to learn to fully understand the financial statements and to know how to translate that knowledge into making sound business decisions, rather than emotional decisions. “Kent’s mom has been doing the books and financial stuff and that’s something I’m transitioning to taking over,” says Holly. “One of our main goals with CTEAM is to figure out how to generate an accrual report to make decisions on. How do we calculate all the different ratios and what does that mean when we’re making purchasing decisions. That is something we really want to get better at.”

The couple is also developing a strategic vision for the future. “Farmers wear so many hats that it’s hard to find the time to focus on the business aspect of the farm, because even though it’s vitally important to the organization, it’s hard to carve the time out to do that or gain the skills they need,” says Holly. “We wanted to actually take the time and prioritize, and focus on things like standard operating procedures and defining job roles and responsibilities based on everyone’s skill sets and aptitudes.”

The family is also starting to hold monthly business meetings to discuss where the farm is at, their goals and vision. Holly and Kent feel fortunate that their parents are so open and willing to discuss all the parameters that come with succession and management planning.

“We are very lucky,” says Holly. “After talking with so many young farmers, not just the people in my group but the people that we’ve met at conferences, we’re way ahead on that aspect. A lot of people are just so afraid to have those conversations because they are so awkward and can be very emotional at times, but they’re so important to the business and to good family relationships, so you can still all sit down for dinner together.”

The family is all onside when it comes to improving communications. “When both sides are communicating you’re more than likely on the same page in the first place,” says Kent. “When you’re not communicating, you’re making assumptions about how the other party feels or what they’re thinking, and that’s where it goes wrong.”

The continuous learning plan

Kent and Holly admit that learning about management isn’t a chore for either of them, and a formal, continuous learning plan is something that they are totally committed to because they have already seen the huge value that the programs they are involved in has brought to them and the farm.

“We haven’t formalized it yet but we plan to put down on paper that we are required to do a certain amount of off-the-farm learning every year,” says Holly. “I came back to the farm after college and I thought, is this it? Do we just stop learning from here? So I started going to conferences and when you get back out there and start listening to speakers, you realize how much of a benefit it is. It doesn’t mean that you learn a lesson, you come home and just apply it and it works. It affects your overall view of your operation. You make a thousand decisions every quarter, and if you’re influenced to do something in a better way, it helps.”

“It’s absolutely something that we are talking about because not only do you have to plan for what skills you want to develop, you have to budget for it,” says Holly. “These programs that we’ve been doing have brought up so many things that we need to learn to do and, obviously, we can’t do them all at once. So, if a conference comes up you can assess if it fits with your overall goals. If you have that written formalized plan about the areas that you want to learn, it helps you make better decisions to make sure you’re getting the most out of your time and money.”

Holly has a degree in agricultural biology and is a certified crop adviser. She had already become a member of the Canadian Association of Farm Advisers, and has been so inspired by their own succession experience, she hopes one day to be able to help other farm families with the process as a professional farm adviser. “It’s just a dream at the moment,” she says. “I have enjoyed this process so much that I would like to see how this process goes for us to the point where I’m confident that we are making headway, and then I’d like to work to help other people achieve a successful farm transition.”

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The Towers knew they couldn’t continue to manage alone forever, and they also knew they wouldn’t want to leave the farm near Red Deer, which they’d spent a lifetime creating.

And while their children love having a connection to the farm, they were away pursuing successful careers.

“Our kids are doing other things, but the land is important to them and we wanted to keep the land in the family,” says Tom, who established Tamara Ranch in 1967 with his wife, Margaret, about a mile from his great grandfather’s original homestead.

“We needed to find somebody who could manage the place,” says Tom. “But it was important that they had the same philosophy as us.”

It wasn’t only the kids they were thinking about. Like others, they were thinking about themselves too, and about their lifetime’s commitment to the land.

• Read more: Finding the right farm mentor

Surrounded by large-scale grain farms, the Towers figured that if they sold their land it would be swallowed up, becoming just another cluster of undifferentiated fields in a much larger crop production enterprise, and they couldn’t bear to think that the things that made their land special might be lost, or that all the work they had put into building soil health, improving the grasslands, increasing biodiversity and retaining natural habitat might be undone.

“We love our land. We’ve been on it for 50 years,” says Margaret. “But what were our options? We wanted to stay on the land, but we didn’t know how to still make an income off the land without selling or renting it.”

Needing land to rely on

Meanwhile, not too many miles away, Blake and Angela Hall were struggling to find a long-term land rental agreement that was stable enough to allow them to grow their grass-fed beef business.

After a year of university, Blake was having a hard time finding the right direction for his life. He had spent a couple of years participating in youth volunteer exchange programs in Canada and Burkino Faso, and had set two goals for himself; to learn how to build a house, and to grow food. “I figured there was probably no harm in learning those two skills whether they led me into a career or not,” says Blake. “I was 20 years old, and not tied down by family or debt.”

Blake spent a summer in Ontario with the CRAFT (Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training) program that taught him about growing food, and decided to stay in Ontario to start a carpentry apprenticeship. He obtained his journeyman’s certificate five years later, but it was that first summer on the farm that stirred a passion for agriculture.

When Blake moved back to Alberta in 2011 he bought his first small herd — 30 head of mixed pregnant cows and young steers. He also took a meat cutter’s course at Olds College where he met his future wife, Angela, another “townie” with no farm experience, who Blake describes as his happy farming accomplice.

A fateful meeting

The Halls and Towers crossed paths in 2012 when Blake answered Tom’s ad on Kijiji for grass-finish type cattle. When they got together, Tom and Margaret immediately sensed and liked Blake’s outlook, even though he’d grown up in the city.

“We were really impressed with this young man, and we started chatting about what he wanted to do with these cattle, and what he wanted out of life,” says Margaret. “We could see his love for the land and the passion for what he was doing. He wasn’t just playing at farming, he was really serious.”

The cattle were such good animals, Tom wondered why Blake was selling them, and when he answered that he needed to pay his winter feed bill, Tom and Margaret wanted to help. They purchased some of the female cattle and agreed to keep the calves to sell back to Blake.

From there it was a natural progression to ask Blake if he wanted to bring his herd to the ranch and manage it. “We could see that he needed some permanence, somewhere he could put his roots down, raise these animals and keep his business going,” said Margaret.

The Towers suggested a long-term plan to manage 400 acres of their land and also offered to let Blake and Angela move into the modular home on the next quarter on a rent-to-own basis.

The agreements

The Towers and Halls each sign a yearly Farm Services Agreement, which provides mutual protection for all parties and is an umbrella cover for all of the enterprises that operate independently on the ranch.

Tom and Margaret signed an additional five-year Scope of Work (SOW) agreement with Blake and Angela which covers the day-to-day activities that they share on the ranch. “This working agreement gives us the ability to bring Blake into the family operation, and allows him to become a part of it rather than a renter. We, in turn, have the confidence of a long-term relationship with the ability to mentor and impart what we have learned over the last 50-plus years,” says Tom. “We share similar philosophies and can work toward shared goals for the overall progress and success of Tamara Ranch.”

Importantly, the SOW provides Blake the opportunity to ranch with no fixed costs in land or mortgage payments.

Blake runs his cattle with the Towers cattle on 400 acres and pays them an animal day rate while they pay him a per-head day rate for looking after their cattle. This year, the grazing herd comprised 150 head of cows, calves, yearlings and fats, of which Blake owns about 60 per cent. They share costs for hay, straw, salt and mineral based on percentage of ownership of the herd.

“Blake buys our fat beef at a fixed hanging rate, and markets all the fats, including his own, through his company Prairie Gold Pastured Meats,” says Tom. “He pays us a percentage of gross on lamb and pork sales.”

The Towers custom graze a neighbour’s yearling replacement heifers and breed them for him, for which they’re paid on a per-head-per-day basis. They reimburse Blake for the management of them, which includes daily moves and health care. Tom and Margaret still manage the remaining 640 acres which grazes cattle from a local Hutterite colony.

The Towers could just rent their land, but would lose the ability to sustain it in the manner they’ve worked towards for the 50 years they’ve owned it. “The simple rent from the farmable land would pay us about what we are getting from the cattle sales and grazing,” says Tom.

Hiring a facilitator

Even though Blake and Angela hit if off immediately with Tom and Margaret, they were still cautious about jumping in with both feet. “It’s often the human element that leads to a breakdown in the partnership, whether it’s family or not, so we really took our time to decide,” says Blake, who ended up taking the same holistic management course that the Towers had taken in the ’90s.

“I’d seen a lot of farms that were successful, their marriages were intact, they had good family lives, and their common thread was holistic management,” Blake says.

Over that winter the two couples agreed it would be a good idea to hire a facilitator to help them with goal setting and to develop a strong communications strategy, something they knew would be important if their relationship was to grow and flourish.

They invited Kelly Sidoryk, a certified holistic management educator from Lloydminster to come and help them out.

Sidoryk’s role was to help each couple set goals and create their own vision, which she then helped to bring together to form a larger vision that would work not only for the whole operation, but also for all the people involved.

“This is hard work (for them) to do,” says Sidoryk. “It’s harder than building fences or making a financial plan, because you really need to sit down, and be open and communicate your wishes.”

“I really admire the Towers and the Halls for being able to create something unique,” Sidoryk says.

Focusing on goal setting and communication at the start made it easier in the long run, Blake agrees. “That’s when everything is good, and everybody is happy and excited. ”

“Inevitably things arise, and you can’t set up a communication framework reactively,” he adds. “As things come up, we’ve got the respect for each other, and the understanding that we can address those things, and it’s been successful so far.”

The communication strategy isn’t anything fancy. It’s as simple as sitting down together over coffee every Monday morning, talking about what’s going on at the ranch, and sharing ideas to tweak the management, or discuss any small disagreements or grievances that arise.

Blake says he feels lucky to have such a good relationship with the Towers, because he’s seen many of his peers from family farms whose succession planning hasn’t gone anywhere nearly as smoothly, and he’s fairly confident, having met the Towers’ children, that he’ll be able to work with the family for years to come.

Margaret and Tom had no doubt that their son Todd would hit it off with Blake, and vice versa, and they also knew that their desire to see the farm managed according to the ideals that Todd shares with them would hinge on their relationship.

“Todd has always loved the farm, and is totally in sync with what we have done here and the last thing he wants to see happen is the land pass out of the family,” says Margaret. “Todd and Blake are developing a great relationship. They have a similar philosophy, and they truly respect each other.”

Blake and Angela direct market grass-finished beef to private customers in Red Deer and Calgary under their own Prairie Gold Pastured Meats brand. “We have our animals butchered, and we deliver our beef directly to our consumers,” says Blake. “There’s no way that, as a small producer, we could have gotten a start in agriculture if we were trying to get into commodities. With direct marketing we keep our entire margin, and set our own price rather than take whatever price is being given at the auction mart.”

At the bank

As with many young producers starting out, it’s difficult to walk into a bank manager’s office and ask for an operating loan when you have little or no equity built up to back it. The Halls had to be creative to finance their operation. They run a herd share program — similar to a Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) arrangement, where customers purchase a share in the live animal that will provide their meat. This provides upfront revenue and a reasonably stable cash flow through the season.

“It is really the only way we were able to build the business,” says Blake. “When I was starting I was literally laughed out of lenders’ offices.”

A farm ‘incubator’

Interestingly, Tom and Margaret’s arrangement with Blake and Angela has morphed into a kind of “incubator” system which is helping other young people achieve their farming dreams too. They now also rent a seven-acre plot of land to Blake’s brother-in-law, Mike, who is running a successful CSA venture which employs up to five local people. They also have an agreement with another young couple, Sven and Nikki, who raise pastured poultry on their land in the summertime.

Tom and Margaret know what they are doing goes against the traditional retirement plan of selling off the land or re-mortgaging it to the next generation.

“We are trying to give the next generation of young farmers the opportunity to grow food, and it’s amazing how many young people want to do that,” says Margaret.

The model of bigger, bigger, bigger isn’t able to draw those young people back, she says. “We believe in a re-generative model of agriculture that goes way beyond sustainable, which allows these young people to manage smaller plots of land without having to worry about a big debt hanging over their heads.”

The bigger picture should also be kept in view, she adds. “They (Blake and Angela) are growing food for local customers, creating employment and keeping small, rural communities viable and strong.”

Becoming mentors

Through the process, of course, the Towers have had to accept change, they’ve had to get to know someone almost as well as they know their own son without having had a lifetime to spend with him doing that, and they’ve had to learn how to offer advice without smothering. “You have to mentor in a way that you allow the person to feel like they’re not being controlled, that they have the ability to make their own decisions,” Margaret says.

For an arrangement like theirs to work, there needs to be transparency, honesty, good communication, and flexibility, but you also need to change your mindset, Tom finds. “Farmers and ranchers have survived by being independent thinkers, but with a deal like this, you’ve got to change your thinking to interdependence.”

You also have to be prepared to discuss some tough issues, he adds, and one of them is finances, which even many farm families dance around. “We’ve all got to be financially sustainable so we have a lot of those kinds of conversations. We have shared costs, and separate costs, and we have an understanding of what all of those are,” Tom says. “You need transparency with finances.”

Although Blake would love to own land one day, he accepts it’s not likely to happen. “Land prices around Red Deer are so inflated beyond agricultural production value that I just can’t see us being able to own this place without me taking a high paying job in town for the rest of my career and that defeats our whole purpose,” he says.

Blake knows their relationship with Tom and Margaret is special and that it is because of them that he and Angela can pursue their goals of owning their own home and having financial autonomy while farming full time. But there’s something in it for Tom and Margaret too, allowing their agricultural legacy to live on, and giving them a chance to retire as gracefully as they farmed.

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