a new venture - agcanada · 2014. 6. 3. · publications mail agreement number 40069240 + s wring...

CAN YOU BE SUED IF GMO POLLEN DRIFTS OFF FARM?CHEAPER LAND, BUT TOUGHER FARMING IN EAST ONTARIOHERE’S THE PROOF. OUR GRAININFRASTRUCTURE IS THIRD WORLD

A NEWVENTURELike B.C.’s Grant Stevely,more farms get the spirit

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CONTENTSBUSINESS

8 THAT’S THE SPIRITFarm smarts are the engine for these two enterprising ventures in B.C.’s Okanagan. And oh yes, stir in some passion too.

16 THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLEDWho says you can’t do niche marketing from a remote location? Apparently no one told the Wilkinsons.

20 GREAT EXPECTATIONSAg businesses are facing a succession crisis of their own, which is why DuPont Pioneer has brought Andrew Lauver to Saskatoon.

24 GRAIN DRAINWinnipeg used to be the clear capital of agriculture in the West. But can it keep the crown?

26 HERITAGE ON THE MOVECan you keep farm and family together when you move after 170 years on the same ground?

32 SO CLOSE, SO FARIt takes a different kind of farmer to thrive amid the challenges of eastern Ontario.

36 RETURN OF THE CZARSWill the Putin effect hurt the outlook for global farm machinery manufacturing and sales?

38 THE CANADIAN-MADE BOTTLENECKThe West’s grain paralysis is nothing new. Our Third World grain infrastructure is inadequate now, and it’s getting worse.

42 SIX QUESTIONS FOR THE AG ENTREPRENEURSSo you’ve got a great idea for a new product or service. Should you actually invest in developing it?

54 GUIDE LEGAL — AS THE WIND BLOWSCan you be sued if GMO pollen from your fi eld drifts onto a neighbour’s property, or onto an organic farm miles away?

56 GUIDE LIFE — NEW LIFE FOR OLD CHURCHESThese rural churches are fi nding life and a renewed sense of mission by reconnecting with their local communities.

62 THE OTHER VIEWAlberta grain grower Michael Kalisvaart writes that today’s young farmers are being unwisely held back by older farmers.

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JUNE 2014

J U N E 2 0 1 4 c o u n t r y - g u i d e . c a 3

ACROSS THIS COUNTRY With midsummer fast approaching, we crossed Canada to talk to farmers and agribusinesses about how they’re preparing for the future. Their answers will inspire you. They should inspire the whole country.

6 MACHINERY GUIDEEverything in agriculture is getting bigger. That means tires too.

58 GUIDE HEALTHTake care of your digestive tract, and it will take care of you.

60 HANSON ACRES It wasn’t anybody’s fault, except the fella with the grin.

EVERY ISSUE

PRODUCTION 44 ON THE REBOUND

Higher premiums and strong global demand are drivinga new wave of interest in IP soybeans.

48 FINE TUNING FOR WEEDSWeed control is getting so precise, it’s essential to be sure that you are using the right words the right way.

50 TUFTED VETCH TAKES OFFTufted vetch isn’t a new weed, but it sure is a different weed challenge.

52 PEST PATROL Are you sure you know the most effective and most practical way to clean your sprayer?

EDITORIAL STAFFEditor: Tom Button 12827 Klondyke Line, Ridgetown, ON N0P 2C0 (519) 674-1449 Fax (519) 674-5229 Email: [email protected]

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Contents of this publication are copyrighted and may be reproduced only with the permission of the editor. Country Guide, incorporating the Nor’West Farmer and Farm & Home, is published by Farm Business Communications. Head office: Winnipeg, Manitoba. Printed by Transcontinental LGMC.

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PRINTED IN CANADA Vol. 133 No. 8Internet address: www.agcanada.com

The editors and journalists who write, contribute and provide opinions to Country Guide and Farm Business Communications attempt to provide accurate and useful opinions, information and analysis. However, the editors, journalists, Country Guide and Farm Business Communications, cannot and do not guarantee the accuracy of the information contained in this publication and the editors as well as Country Guide and Farm Business Communications assume no responsibility for any actions or decisions taken by any reader for this publication based on any and all information provided.

4 c o u n t r y - g u i d e . c a j u n e 2 0 1 4

d e s k

A hot time in the cityThere’s nothing wrong with a fishing

lodge, of course. Nor for that matter is there any reason to miss out on going to a golf course or cottage. I hope to spend some time there myself.

But a summer without some serious time in at least one of Canada’s great cities can hardly qualify as a productive season.

I have written about this before, and I am thinking about it again because for our June issue every year, we make a point of criss-crossing the country and reporting on some of the major farm trends that we’re seeing.

Agriculture is so vibrant, there’s never enough room to include even the most whittled-down list of stories that we prom-ise ourselves during planning, and more gets left out than ever gets included.

But there’s Gerald Pilger’s piece on Can-ada’s grain infrastructure, and Michael Kalisvaart’s column at the very back of the magazine. They are essential for grounding the entire issue in the world of the real. When you read them, you’ll know what I mean, but I hope you’ll pause over the issue’s other stories too. Every year, I’m more and more convinced that agriculture is a people story.

But I also always feel it’s a mistake to pretend that we’re covering agriculture in Canada without seriously engaging with anyone in what are, from every possible view, this country’s world-class cities.

In an earlier editorial, I wrote that Swift Current is a fine place. So are Brandon and Guelph, and Medicine Hat and Regina.

The fact is, however, that Canada has three cities that are on a different plane — Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver — and it’s as short-sighted to say you can understand this country without visiting these great cities as it is to feel that you can understand Canada if you don’t appreciate at least to a minimal degree its phenemonal, world-class ability to produce food.

If you bemoan the agricultural igno-rance of the average Canadian, I hope you’ll devote time to learning this summer about Canada’s amazing urbanites. They’re as much a part of our country as we are, and we should be equally proud of them.

So take a week this summer and visit one of our great cities. Choose one that you’ve never spent time in before, or the one you know least well. Take the family too, especially if they’re unsure.

It’s unconscionable today to raise kids who haven’t spent enough time in these cities to at least understand why other kids are so energized by them.

Talk to your spouse and set a date today. In the first place, you’ll have a great vacation, which is a good thing. You’ve earned it. In the second place, if you’re like most people in rural Canada, you’ll find that most of our preconceptions about big cities are actually misconceptions.

What a great feeling it is to rise above them.

Then let me know what you think. As always, I want to hear from you. I’m at [email protected]. Enjoy!

Tom Button is editor of Country Guide magazine

ISSN 1915-8491

7660 Mill Rd. RR4, Guelph ON N1H 6J1Voice: (519) 837-1620 Fax: (519) 824-1835

Email: [email protected] site: www.christianfarmers.org

A professional organization of entrepreneurial farming families

CHRISTIAN FARMERS FEDERATION OF ONTARIO

CFFO Strategic Business Thinking

The Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario believes that there is a place

for all farmers within the rural landscape. We are working hard on behalf of all farmers – not just our members – to ensure that Ontario is a place where farm businesses can succeed, no matter the size.

The CFFO believes that aligning the rules that govern water use to support sustainable agriculture in this province is essential to moving the industry forward. The CFFO recognizes that ‘regulatory burden’ is an issue facing all farmers, and that it needs to be streamlined in order to make it easier and more profi table to conduct business without sacrifi cing commitments to quality or safety. At the same time, the CFFO recognizes that

farmers need support when it comes to adopting new technology.

Whether you are a large farmer who would benefi t from reduced unit costs for exporting, or a small farmer who’s working hard to meet standards to support local food production, the CFFO is working to support you in your endeavours in building a prosperous, sustainable agriculture sector.

When you succeed, Ontario succeeds!

“Don’t give up, look up”

The Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario is one of two accredited General Farm Organizations in Ontario. The organization is focused on the long-term issues facing the sector, and is supported by 4000 farmers in the province. Learn more about us at www.christianfarmers.org

succeeds!

A general farm organization that is rooted in faith and

guided by values

• 22 District Associations Across Ontario• Supporting our members since 1954• A Professional Organization of Entrepreneurial Farming Families

www.christianfarmers.org

PHOTO COURTESY RAVEN INDUSTRIES

Machinery By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor

In agriculture today, everything is getting bigger. The yields, the farms, and certainly the equipment have all grown larger in the past five years, and now the tire manufacturers have joined the trend. Late in 2013, more manufacturers began breaking the seven-foot barrier, crossing over from Group 48 into Group 49s and 50s, with diameters of 7.2 and 7.6 feet, respectively. Some are even pushing their new series into the Group 51 level.

Yet that is only part of the story with the newer tire designs. Some manufacturers are exploring the “extreme flotation” concept to reduce soil compaction, tighten turns, and provide a smoother ride. For all that technology is doing for equipment and precision agriculture, however, it really does come down to taking better care of the soil. Here’s a glimpse at what’s new.

ALLIANCE AGRIFLEX 363

Bigger machinery inevitably means more road time between fields. It affects our machinery choices, for instance, driving the spike in self-propelled sprayers. It is also affecting tire choice, with farmers looking for new designs that can excel both on pavement and across a range of soil conditions. The Agriflex 363 series is new from Alliance and is an example of the company’s Improved Flexion (IF) design. The configuration of the tire means it can work with higher tire deflec-tion, translating into 20 per cent higher load capacities at the same inflation pressures. At the same time, it can also perform just as well at lower air pressures and a standard load, increasing the footprint of the tire and reducing ground pressure. Added blocks in the tread also provide superior traction on softer surfaces.www.atgtire.com

TRELLEBORG

Sustainable farming has become an important theme with Trel-leborg’s new tires, and they used several exhibitions earlier this year to show off all they have to offer. First on the list is their IF900/65R46 TM1000 High Power line, with what the company calls “incompa-rable flotation performance.” Incorporating Trelleborg’s BlueTire tread design, it’s been engineered to make the most of both tread width and its larger footprint, said by the company to be the widest on the mar-ket. Trelleborg also launched its ProgressiveTraction design, featuring a double lug which is engineered to improve efficiency in the field. In addition to boosting traction more than 10 per cent, the Progressive Traction design also generates extra pull, reducing working time while increasing efficiency.www.trelleborg.com

6 c o u n t r y - g u i d e . c a J U N E 2 0 1 4

Visit www.rrwms.ca Follow us @weedmgmt

Download the WEED ID APPGo to iTunes today or visit weedidapp.ca

ALWAYS READ AND FOLLOW PESTICIDE LABEL DIRECTIONS. Monsanto and Vine Design® and Roundup Ready® are registered trademarks of Monsanto Technology LLC, Monsanto Canada, Inc. licensee. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2014 Monsanto Canada Inc.

Lead by

Example

For optimal weed control, use label rates and make herbicide applications when

weeds are at the correct stage for control.

Apply the Right Rate at the Right Time

MICHELIN AGRIBIB 480 95 R50When something works, people tend to stick with it. For Michelin,

2014 marks a revisiting of the AgriBib technology that the com-pany launched in 2012. The new AgriBib 480 95 R50 is taller, and designed more for larger, front-wheel assist tractors. The key to its performance is the capacity to handle larger loads and an improved quality of ride. The company also promises longer-lasting tread and improved traction. This particular design is expected to be released in North America during the latter months of 2014, and it’s expected to garner plenty of attention when it does arrive; John Deere and Case New Holland are partnering with Michelin for the launch.www.michelin.com

GOODYEAR-TITAN FARM TIRES Goodyear is stepping up its interest in the farm tire sector. Not only

has the company made the jump into the Group 49 and 50 catego-ries, they’re into Group 51 as well, and it is investing in Extreme Flota-tion technology as well. In all, Goodyear is pushing three new series and 11 different sizes, with three Super Traction radials in Group 50 and 51, seven sizes in the Optitrac tires, four Group 49s and three Group 50s. And for what Goodyear says is the ultimate — or extreme — in flotation, there’s the Goodyear DT930 featuring the low sidewall (LSW) technology, with smaller sidewalls and a larger rim diameter, meaning less road lope and power hop.www.titan-intl.com

Visit www.rrwms.ca Follow us @weedmgmt

Download the WEED ID APPGo to iTunes today or visit weedidapp.ca

ALWAYS READ AND FOLLOW PESTICIDE LABEL DIRECTIONS. Monsanto and Vine Design® and Roundup Ready® are registered trademarks of Monsanto Technology LLC, Monsanto Canada, Inc. licensee. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2014 Monsanto Canada Inc.

Lead by

Example

For optimal weed control, use label rates and make herbicide applications when

weeds are at the correct stage for control.

Apply the Right Rate at the Right Time

8 c o u n t r y - g u i d e . c a J u n e 2 0 1 4

aybe these two startup agribusinesses are riding the coattails of B.C.’s wine industry. Or, maybe they’re on to something unique and innovative. Either way, they’re succeed-ing in farm-based ventures based on the pas-

sions of their customers, and they are thriving on the essential passion of their owners.

With the summer tourist season barely six weeks away, and with out-of-town traffic already picking up, Grant Stevely is under some serious pressure when I arrive. After five years of researching, planning, designing, investing, and jumping through bureaucratic hoops and hacking through red tape, his dream is in the final stages of becoming reality.

His production facility, tasting area and landscaping are all on track. Calls are already coming in from retailers and restau-rants keen to feature his output.

“And that’s before I’ve actually produced a single product,” Stevely says.

Unfortunately, he’s got one fairly major problem. The deliv-ery of the production equipment, which had originally been scheduled to be installed and operational in April, has been delayed by two very crucial months. The holdup means Stevely won’t open his doors to the public until Canada Day… at best.

Given the seasonality of the tourist business, he’ll have to hit the ground running from day one, and he is crossing every finger and toe that there are no additional delays.

Still, for a guy with an ever-building mountain of startup costs on the one hand, and little in incoming cash on the other, he’s surprisingly cool under pressure. His calm comes from a total con-fidence in the business plan, he tells me. But it also comes from his respect for his craft, and from his eagerness to begin showing what he can do, and educating consumers on his product.

Of course, the whiff of whisky at 9 a.m. just might help a little too.

Don’t be alarmed though. Any early-morning sipping is all in the name of research. Stevely is a passionate connoisseur of all things whisky, a keen advocate for the expansion of B.C.’s craft alcohol industry, and the owner and soon-to-be distiller behind Canada’s newest craft distillery, Dubh Glas Distillery in Oliver, B.C.

Farm smarts, an incredible dose of dedication, and intense passion for their products are driving these two ventures into consumerism

By Madeleine Baerg

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JOB ID: 6583 1E

DATE: JUNE 3, 2014

CLIENT: SYNGENTA CANADA

PROJECT: ROI EAST – JK

PUBLICATION: COUNTRY GUIDE E

DESIGNER: JEFF ANTON

( ) MECHANICAL ( ) PDF/X

FINAL SIZE: 16.25" X 10.75"

UCR: 240%

CLIENT SERVICE

PROOFREADING

ART DIRECTION

PRODUCTION

Always read and follow label directions. The Syngenta logo is a registered trademark of a Syngenta Group Company. © 2014 Syngenta.

Visit SyngentaFarm.ca or contact our Customer Resource Centre at 1-87-SYNGENTA (1-877-964-3682).

WHAT MATTERS MOST?

Syngenta listens. My diversifi ed operation uses a lot of product. When I told my Rep empty jugs were a hassle, he passed that information on. This year, my product is available in bulk. Syngenta makes my effi ciency a priority, and I appreciate that. Jesse Kloepfer, 3rd generation farm owner and custom operator, Lola May Farms, Harley, ON

effi ciency a priority, and I appreciate that.

6583-1E_SYT_East_ROI_Ad_JK_CntryGdE.indd All Pages 2014-04-08 11:56 AM

1 2 c o u n t r y - g u i d e . c a J u n e 2 0 1 4

Meanwhile, a valley away, Jyl Cheg-win and Roger Hol are also well aware of the clock ticking down to tourist sea-son, and when I join them, the hammer-ing in the background — today it’s a deck under construction — and Hol’s rapid-fire directions to staff punctuate Chegwin’s description of their business vision, and prove the to-do list still has a ways to go.

“When you really like something, you put more effort into it. And we really, really love what we’re doing here. But yes, we’re running flat out,” Chegwin admits with both a sigh and a laugh. “We want to cater to the high-end market, but it takes a lot to get things really polished.”

Hol and Chegwin’s just-about-to-open agribusiness is ambitious to say the least: a vineyard, winery, three-unit (hopefully growing soon to 10-unit) tourist accom-modation, event location for up to 350 people, and hands-on agri-tourism expe-rience which together make up VineGlass Winery in Cawston, B.C.

“What are we? We are farmers first. But, we are hosts too. We like to say what we offer is experiential tourism. We encourage our guests to walk through the vineyard; learn about the vineyard; see what stage the grapes are at; partici-pate in whatever vineyard tasks we are working on that day. Basically, to step into the farming life,” says Hol.

“Our primary guests are city people who love wine and nature but have never had the opportunity to learn about a vine-yard, who want to see how things are grown and get their hands dirty,” contin-ues Chegwin. “There has been a growing movement toward knowing more about your food and finding your rural roots. People in the city want to connect with the country so they can get to know where their food — and their wine — comes from.”

Only 20 years ago, B.C.’s Okanagan and Similkameen valleys were character-ized by countless acres of apples, peaches, cherries and plums. But the consistently hot days of summer, the cool evenings, and the long fall that produce excellent tree fruits also suit a somewhat easier to grow and (usually) more lucrative crop: wine grapes. Today, the majority of fruit-growing ground in the valley bottoms, as well as much of the desert hillside above, has been repurposed as vineyard.

It’s a change that has created its own economics. Cactus- and sagebrush-

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Continued from page 8

covered hillside that, until recently, was relatively worthless is now priced at $120,000 per acre and more.

The growth of the wine industry in the Okanagan and Similkameen is nothing short of phenomenal. Where in 1990 there were just 14 wineries in these neighbouring valleys combined, today the Similkameen has 15 and the Okanagan boasts a whop-ping 123 large-scale and boutique wineries.

The Okanagan was recently selected as the top wine tourism destination in the world by the Huffington Post, an honour that will help increase the $140 million in economic impact wine tourism generated last year for the valley. And, 20 minutes to the west, the Similkameen Valley now happily sports the title of “one of the world’s five best wine regions you’ve never heard of,” as dubbed by EnRoutE MagazinE.

The wine industry trajectory appears to be pointed firmly upwards. Wine tour-ism continues to grow on a year-over-year basis. More and more wineries are popping up each year in the Okanagan and Similkameen, and higher and higher hillsides are turning from desert yellow to vineyard green.

Both Dubh Glas Distillery and Vine-Glass Winery intend to benefit from wine tourists’ enthusiasm for the region. They both believe that what they plan to offer ties in nicely with the existing wine industry, yet is unique enough to set them apart in the competition for tourist atten-tion and dollars.

“Craft distilling is a great comple-mentary industry for wine tourism,” says Stevely. “We can make a whisky that is uniquely Canadian, uniquely Okanagan. I want to mature our whisky in Canadian wine barrels to create a lighter, fruitier whisky. And I can make fruit liqueurs — eau de vies and schnapps — from the area’s peaches and cherries; fruit that is perfect but might not be the right size or the right shape to sell on a grocery shelf. I love making something out of fruit that would otherwise be landfill.”

“When we first started thinking about opening VineGlass, the Napa Valley (Cal-ifornia) had over 2,000 wineries, more than 600 restaurants, and something like 30,000 tourist beds in an area the same size as the Okanagan and Similkameen,” says Chegwin. “People want variety. A study done a decade ago said we need hundreds of wineries in this area; there’s so much potential. It said there’s not nearly enough restaurants, not nearly

enough high-end accommodations. Since then, there’s been a proliferation of win-eries and it’s turned into an industry. But there’s still so much room for growth and creativity. And in our area, there is no high-end accommodation at all, no one offering a hands-on experience.”

Dubh Glas (since everyone asks) is pronounced “Douglas,” as in Stevely’s middle name. It’s fitting that his business name is a twist on his own name since this business has consumed Stevely from vision through execution.

The original concept was born in 2009. To bring it to fruition, Stevely took a giant leap of faith: he went back to school to develop a business plan, sold virtually everything he had, quit his job, and trav-elled to Arizona to educate himself on the science and magic of distillation. Finally, after much research into where the most wine industry traffic might be and where the liquor laws would be most receptive to craft distilling, he uprooted from Alberta and moved to the “Wine Capital of Can-ada”: small-town Oliver, B.C.

“When people sample a product, they feel an attachment to it and to its story, so the key for me is getting people in the door,” Stevely says. “Twenty-two per cent of winery visitors are drive-by; 37 per cent are referrals. I knew I had to have a location with a high profile so I could capitalize on drive-bys, and I needed to be in a community with a strong referral market. I began to realize the Okanagan was the place I had to be.”

He’s hopeful the craft distilling indus-try will grow into a destination industry of its own.

“The craft distilling industry in the United States has blossomed; there’s been absolutely huge growth. Usually we’re reflective of what happens there. And, last year’s changes to B.C. liquor reg-ulations really improved things for us. Under a craft distilling licence, if you make your product with 100 per cent B.C. product, you can sell directly to licensees now, which is a really big deal for us,” says Stevely.

B.C.’s proposal to allow craft distillers to sell their products at farmers’ markets, likely as soon as this summer, make the province even more conducive to small-scale distillers.

For its part, VineGlass is the product of a shared vision a decade old.

“Back 10 years ago, we had 75 acres

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of grapes but there wasn’t much beyond a living from it; we were just barely squeaking by with many years in the red. I explored added-value avenues for the vineyard, but the winery we were grow-ing for would not let us make our own wine. After 30 years of farming, we real-ized there was no way for us to make a living as a traditional farmer doing what we were doing. So, we sold the farm eight years ago to the winery and moved down river,” explains Hol. “Our inten-tion from the beginning when we bought this property was to combine a winery with accommodation and agri-tourism. We have always felt that that would be the most successful model.”

The most successful, and the most personally satisfying for these two agri-tourism advocates. Both Hol and Cheg-win have been actively involved with the B.C. Agri-tourism Alliance (BCATA), and Hol sat on the board of the B.C. Wine

Institute (BCWI). Both were directly involved in putting together a study on behalf of these two organizations about the agri-tourism industry.

In addition to farming and agri-tour-ism experience, Chegwin brings another perhaps more rare skill to their busi-ness. She boasts several years’ expe-rience building corn mazes in B.C.’s Fraser Valley, which gave her the know-how to help design and build Vine-Glass’s most memorable attribute: the image of a giant wineglass etched into the vineyard itself.

Hol and Chegwin hope to grow their facility to accommodate more overnight guests and develop their event-hosting reputation. VineGlass’s quiet location, on-site catering facilities, three acres of gardens and gracious pool area, com-bined with an authentic and accessible farm experience, lend themselves well to corporate training and team-building workshops.

With recent personal experience with

cancer, Chegwin also sees a connection to wellness. “This is the most incredibly peaceful place to be. Even after being here for eight years we still don’t take it for granted,” she says. “It is the ideal place to get away from outside pressures and focus without outside interference.”

Stevely is confident in his product. He has enlisted the consulting help of one of the greats in the business: Mike Nicol-son, a master distiller for 36 years at six of Scotland’s top distilleries, who also assisted in the startup of Shelter Point Distillery in Comox. And, when the pro-duction equipment finally arrives, it will be new and high tech, which means Ste-vely will be able to produce a very high-quality product in a short amount of time. (“It no longer needs to be old to be good. Especially if you age it in small barrels, it can be three or four years and superb,” he explains.)

Stevely has big plans for what he’d like to accomplish in the short-term future: a minimum of 2,500 litres of

whisky in pre-sale casks, and as much gin and fruit liqueur (both of which are produced relatively quickly) as the mar-ket will bear. He is currently pre-selling half-casks (44 bottles) of whisky for $2,000 and has had impressive demand despite not yet even having publicly announced the offering.

“This is my passion — I absolutely love whisky, so I don’t want to be too big. I want to be an integral part of the business over the long haul,” Stevely says. “There have been tough days when I’ve thought it was easier collecting a pay-cheque. But it will be worth it in the end.”

Chegwin and Hol are similarly positive. “We’ve been very intentional about

where we are, what we’re building, and how we’ve gone about doing it,” says Hol. “It has been a daunting startup but it’s always difficult to start something brand new. Like any new business, it takes three to five years to get it going. But we’re sure that we can make this work.” CG

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“�I�want�to�look�back��and�say�I�did�it,”�says�Stevely.�“I�don’t�want�to�say�I�could�have,�but�didn’t�have�the�guts.”

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Agriculture in Canada is becoming increasingly hectic; farmers are adapting to changes in

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variety of speakers featuring a range of topics, from making the most of life, developing

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RUTH ANN SWANSBURG A.K.A., THE MONCTON COUPON LADY Saving Time & Money in the Kitchen

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In fact, Kevin and Judy Wilkinson say, value-add marketing can actually cut a lot of the volatility out of farming

The road less TravelledHere’s proof that niche markets can thrive far away from the city lights

evin and Judy Wilkinson have never been afraid to take the road less travelled, as I learn while navigating their winding driveway on

a late-spring weekend. Four-wheel drive is a must to get through the thick mud here, and the laneway snakes through the boreal forest for about two miles before stopping at their ranch, Trail’s End Bison.

On the south side of the driveway is a sliver of Thunderchild Reserve, which butts up against northwestern Saskatch-ewan’s Turtle Lake. On the north, bison stare from behind pasture fence. One bull slowly rises to his feet, vigilant.

The laneway opens into a clearing. A ranch house with wood siding and a large deck are the first things you see. An Esso sign in mint condition hangs from an out-building fashioned like an old gas station.

The Wilkinsons have been run-ning bison from this ranch since 1977, shortly after Kevin’s interest in bison was sparked during his first job, at Al Oem-ing’s game farm near Ardrossan, Alta.

“I worked up there for one winter, and the buffalo — both the Wood and Plains — were on my feed route,” Kevin recalls.

Kevin settled into ranching and started raising cattle. But he still had bison on the brain, so he and his brother-in-law, Rick Hartley, bought two bison cows with calves, plus a bull, from a pro-ducer near Maidstone, Sask.

“That was our start. And pretty soon we got rid of the cattle, and just got into the buffalo more,” says Kevin.

Judy soon got involved too, and in March 1982 was elected to the first

board of directors for the Canadian Buf-falo Association. At that time, Canada had roughly 175 bison producers, and 54 became members.

Marketing bison was easier said than done when Judy and Kevin started out. “You never really knew who was going to buy these bulls that were ready to go,” says Judy.

At the Canadian Buffalo Association’s first sale in 1982, yearling heifers aver-aged $875 and yearling bulls $775.

In the early ’90s, the exotic market started taking off, and bison heifers were suddenly valuable breeding animals. A young couple bought the Wilkinsons’ best heifer calves for $1,500 apiece. “And we were just dancing because we thought, ‘We’ve got it made,’” says Kevin.

But that was just the start of the sky-rocketing breeding market. The Wilkin-sons sold heifer calves for $5,000 to $6,000 in 1996. Cows went for $9,000.

“It’s absolutely unreal when you think of it now, how people were so desperate to get a buffalo,” says Kevin.

The good times didn’t last forever, though. A sharp market correction was followed by drought and BSE. Business

was so lean the Wilkinsons sold yearlings for around $400.

“You couldn’t make a living on it,” says Kevin.

Though Kevin and Judy had made money during the boom, they’d also kept back a lot of heifer calves, expanding their herd. They knew they had to do something to boost their revenue. And that is how, as they recovered from the crashing market, they mapped out a new path to add value to their bison.

In 2004, the Wilkinsons started mar-keting Trail’s End Buffalo Stix.

“Most people, when they think of jerky, they think of the old full-muscle product, hard to chew and spicy,” says Kevin. “They don’t realize that ours is totally different because it’s a ground jerky, it’s very moist, it’s easy to chew.”

Judy worked with Saskatoon’s Food Centre in Innovation Place to develop the recipe. Another bison producer was add-ing saskatoon berries to jerky, so to avoid competing directly with that product, they first tried blueberries, but the final product proved too moist.

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But cranberries added flavour without too much moisture. They christened the winning recipe Cranberry Craze.

Today Kevin and Judy have two lines of Cranberry Craze Buffalo Stix. The provincially inspected line is processed at Drake Meats, located in Drake, Sask. The Drake Meats line includes bison from Kevin and Judy’s own herd.

Any food products sold outside the province have to be sourced through a federally inspected system, however, so the Wilkinsons also process a line at the Food Centre. Federal regulations require the animals to be slaughtered in a feder-ally inspected plant, and Kevin and Judy are a long way from the closest facility, so they buy prime cuts with less fat.

The Wilkinsons have talked about adding other flavours, but that would necessitate another production run, sepa-rate labels, more packaging, and more samples, says Kevin.

“And I don’t necessarily think it would up your sales. I think it would just change your sales. More work for less,” says Judy. “Plus we can’t get enough pro-duction time for what we want now.”

During our conversation at their kitchen table, neither of the Wilkinsons utter the word “branding.” But it’s clear they’ve attracted a loyal following.

The Wilkinsons aren’t looking to develop a big market because their pro-duction capacity is limited. But they tried out many different marketing strategies before hitting on what works.

These days they focus on consumer-direct sales, such as trade and craft shows, plus mail orders. Spring and fall are busy times for them as they hit shows from Fort McMurray and Calgary to Regina and everywhere in between. Last year they sold their products at 26 shows.

Knowing how to engage people so they try a sample is important, Kevin says. Judy agrees, adding, “I call it the five-second rule. It takes five seconds for the sample to hit their mouth before their face goes, ‘Oh my God.’”

In 2011 a customer nominated their Buffalo Stix for the Canadian Space Agency’s Snacks for Space, and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield voted to ensure they made the trip to the International Space Station.

“We got customers out of that,” says Kevin. “That was a real boost.”

Nor was the customer who submitted the nomination an anomaly. The Wilkin-sons have repeat customers who drop by while they’re on the show circuit.

Judy says it’s easy to sell a stick of jerky because it’s an impulse buy. “But it’s the people who buy from you all the time that build your business. And I’m always really grateful to them because that’s what makes your business.”

These days Kevin and Judy use Apple’s Square Reader to accept pay-ments at trade and craft shows. Before Square, they only accepted cash or cheque so they could avoid the bite of transaction fees. But many customers carried neither, and they tended to lose sales when people went to the ATM, and never came back.

So they allowed people to take product home and mail a cheque later.

“I figured I’d rather feed people than Visa,” says Judy. They’ve left shows with various customers owing them $800 in total, but they’ve rarely been burned.


Getting their bison jerky chosen for the International Space Station sparked more sales.Continued from page 17

And people not only repay Kevin and Judy’s goodwill by buying prod-uct, but by offering them ideas too. For example, a customer wanted a family-size pack, so the Wilkinsons created it.

“We’re always listening to people,” says Judy.

Judy had what she calls a profound moment last year at a show in Red Deer. A woman dropped by her booth and told her, “You’re first on my list. You’re the reason I came to the show.”

Judy and Kevin still keep an eye out for new markets, however.

An Ontario group called the Carni-vore Club is featuring their Buffalo Stix in June. The club sends a package of gourmet meat products to its members each month.

“So that’s a pretty cool thing because that’s going to be a group of people who have never, ever heard of us before,” says Judy.

Plenty of challenges“In the food industry, everything

costs a lot of money,” says Judy. Prod-ucts that don’t fit in stock boxes require a special die, which can cost thousands, she adds. “But we’ve been really, really lucky in that everything we produce fits in stock boxes. Little things like that have just flowed.”

Kevin and Judy have also managed to keep the business risk at a manage-able level.

“Because we started so small and just did the little steps all along, we didn’t get into a bind where we had a huge investment,” Kevin says. “I think that’s the trouble with a lot of busi-nesses. They start too big.”

Making and packaging jerky is labour intensive. A different butcher used to process their provincial line, and because the business had an old

cryovac machine, Judy had to open each bag, fill it with product, stuff it into the machine, and seal it.

“I did 35,000 (packages) that year and got tennis elbow really bad,” says Judy. “So I came home and said to Kevin, we’ve got to change this. We’ve got to do something different.”

The tennis elbow spurred the switch to Drake Meats, which has a larger, mechanized cryovac machine.

Flexibility and patience are also important when it comes to deal-ing with the supply chain, says Judy. “When you don’t do it yourself, you’re totally at the mercy of everyone else.”

Last year they had a batch of prod-uct that lost its seal. “So you’re already selling product that’s unacceptable. And you get feedback. And of course we were more than willing to reimburse (customers),” says Kevin.

But the bigger worry is the custom-ers who didn’t contact them, Judy adds, especially as they may have been first-time buyers.

Lately the U.S. has been draining Canada’s bison herd, and more bison producers are retiring while prices are good. This makes it harder for Judy and Kevin to source meat for their fed-eral line, especially as dwindling supply means higher prices for those prime cuts.

“You don’t want to run out of meat because you’ve got shows booked,” says Kevin. And because the Food Centre has so many clients, it’s hard to book in with them, he adds. “So there are only so many spaces in the whole year that you can actually get your product made.”

But Judy managed to buy most of the meat she’ll need for the upcoming year before prices jumped.

Somehow, it all comes together. For instance, tracking inventory is an important task for traceability and to see which products are making money. Judy picked up those skills at a previous off-farm job, although she says when she finished the job, she thought, “What am I ever going to do with that?

“Things that you think are nowhere in life end up being really beneficial,” she says.

After 10 years, Kevin and Judy say they wouldn’t do anything differently. “It’s like every single little thing has added to what we do now,” says Judy.

Perhaps that’s proof enough. As the poet wrote, taking the road less trav-elled can make all the difference. cg

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cross the country, agriculture has evolved at blinding speed. Today’s farms operate on a scale and at a pace that no one could have imagined 20 years ago, not to mention the sophis-

tication of their financial and business management, or the sheer value of the assets they must command.

It’s why all eyes are on the newest generation of farmers, fresh from college and university and full of passion and determination to succeed. We know they’re going to farm differently from their parents, but there’s incredible excitement and impatience to see how they’re actually going to do it.

It turns out the same thing is happening in agri-business, where the challenges and opportunities surrounding succession are every bit as real and high stakes as they are on the farm.

In fact, there may be no place better in Canada for seeing the drama unfold than at the DuPont Pioneer regional office in Saskatoon, where a young American named Andrew Lauver has been named

an emerging leader in international business for the giant ag multinational.

Only 23, there’s already a kind of mythology sur-rounding Lauver, and inside that mythology is a kind of composite picture of the management character-istics that DuPont Pioneer thinks will prove winners for its next generation of senior execs.

First to come to mind is Lauver’s Chuck Grassley story. Grassley is widely known both in the U.S. and Canada as the U.S. senator for Iowa since 1981. He had farmed part time in the 1950s, but then excelled in academics and became a genuine power broker in Washington, where he has chaired the Senate Finance Committee and is the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

It all means that Grassley is the kind of over-scheduled, overmeetinged politican who loves to get on an airplane because the flight gives him at least the hope of an hour or two of anonymity and peace.

Except on this day in July 2012, Lauver was on the same two-hour flight to Reagan National in D.C.

Great expectationsFaced with their own succession crises, ag businesses are drafting tomorrow’s star players, like Pioneer’s Andrew Lauver

By Tom Button, Editor

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Lauver, who admits to loving to talk ag policy, was on the plane as part of an Iowa Corn Grow-ers Association delegation. Shortly before, he had formed the first chapter of the association at Iowa State University, where he was studying agriculture on his way to a B.Sc. with distinction in 2012.

While at Iowa State he had been president of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity, growing its member-ship by another 25 per cent while also being named to the ag college’s Dean’s Strategic Planning and Bud-geting Committee, among other honours.

Lauver was on this flight because the corn asso-ciation wanted to take young voices with them to Washington to see decision makers including Grass-ley and talk about the aspirations and challenges of farm youth.

Lauver knows those challenges at first hand. He was born and raised on a corn and soybean farm near Rockwell City, a couple hours northwest of Des Moines. The farm, run by his grandfather Don Lau-ver and his father Kevin is 500 acres, and as with so many other mid-size farms, it would need to double in size for the next generation to take it over on a full-time basis. Yet the amount of capital that would be needed for such growth is beyond staggering.

So Lauver climbed into seat 12C, mentally rehearsing the kinds of messages he would try to spread in Washington, probably mainly talking to staffers and lower-level politicians while the big names in the corn association tackled the big names from Washington.

Except, the passenger in 12D was Grassley himself.Nothing daunted, when Grassley nodded hello and

said words to the effect of, “Where are you on your way to, son?” Lauver plowed straight ahead, engaging Grass-ley for the entire flight and taking full advantage of what seemed a too-good-to-miss lobbying opportunity.

It was the kind of chutzpah that needed to be played right. If too brassy, Lauver risked being obnox-ious. If too quiet, he’d risk equally fatal tiresomeness.

So how did Lauver do? Well, as they landed, Grassley leaned toward Lauver and said, in words to this effect, “Say, son, why don’t you contact my office about coming on board as an intern.”

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Continued on page 22Continued on page 22

Hand picked for the Ross internship, Lauver sees these western fields as the upcoming base for one of the world’s great revolutions

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That’s just where the following January found him, in Washington on Grassley’s staff. “I’d never seen decision-making that operated at such a pace,” Lauver recalls. It was an education in bringing together all the components of an issue — each with its supporters and detractors — and weaving them into a process that everyone could respect, even if they didn’t always love the final decision.

Perhaps equally valuable for corpo-rate life, it taught him that in large orga-nizations, change takes commitment.

That same winter, Lauver also applied to DuPont Pioneer for its Frank Ross International Business Emerging Leader program, named for the company’s former vice-president of global commerical busi-ness. After three rounds of interviews, Lau-ver was named its North American winner.

To a degree, it was an unexpected turn in his career. While the family farm in Iowa is based on corn and beans, Lau-ver had always leaned toward animal sci-ence, focusing on beef and livestock clubs during his many years with 4-H.

Early at Iowa State, however, he checked out a career fair on campus, where he was won over by the seed sector and how it was plunging into molecular science and new traits, and how it was building for new global markets.

Lauver knows Pioneer wasn’t his only choice, so while winning the Ross internship means that he has the personal qualities that DuPont Pioneer is looking for to build its own future, the vice versa is true too.

Lauver remains convinced he chose right — a view that is only reinforced by his posting to Saskatoon — and like young farmers who talk of farming these days as being at the beginning of a brand new era of better returns, new markets, and extraordinary opportunities, Lauver talks of seed as at a thrilling point for starting a new career.

In fact, it’s of farmers that Lauver talks first. During the first leg of his Ross internship, he worked from the com-pany’s Johnston, Iowa headquarters, assigned to conduct one-on-one inter-views with some of the biggest American farms as part of the company’s decision to expand its “strategic account man-ager” approach to these customers.

Large or small, today’s farmers are different, Ross now believes. They see management as their core competency, and their mantras are all about working

smart, instead of the older self-reliance, running lean or simply working hard.

“We have to supply value that advances their farms,” Lauver says of the seed sector.

Still, it’s one thing to say that a seed company needs to deliver value, not only in its genetics but in the entire relation-ship it has with a farmer. It’s something else to figure out what that value is, and how your company can use it to differ-entiate itself in the grower’s mind.

For Lauver, who is also enrolled in a master’s of agribusiness program at Kansas State University, it’s a case study come to life in the most real of ways.

Lauver also sees the seed sector as home to cutting-edge business think-ing about collaborations, as well as to research programs that can go far beyond what previous breeders could do, and that can be expected to soon sail past the limits faced by current programs.

Related to this, Lauver is using his spare time to learn conversational Portu-guese at the University of Saskatchewan. It isn’t necessarily that he expects to be

posted to Brazil some day, he says, but that as a millennial entering business, he knows he needs to not only adapt to, but thrive in a world where enjoying other cultures is a big part of life.

He is also intrigued by communica-tions and electronic technologies, and one of his jobs in Saskatoon is to help devise the company’s first five-year North American e-plan, not just to keep farmers in touch, but to enhance and sharpen farm decision-making. Such needs, it’s clear, call for world-class solu-tions, not just solutions that are good enough for the farm.

Still, such factors don’t totally explain the excitement of Saskatoon in 2014.

That, says Lauver, is corn and soy-beans. “We’re going to see these high-yield crops become part of the western rotation,” he says. If you look at it in terms of how the world feeds and fuels itself, he continues, “this is a big deal.”

None of it will be easy, but for a young agbiz student at the beginning of his career, it’s about as close to breath-taking as things get. CG

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January found him, in Washington on Grassley’s staff. “I’d never seen decision-making that operated at such a pace,” Lauver recalls. It was an education in bringing together all the components of an issue — each with its supporters and detractors — and weaving them into a process that everyone could respect, even if they didn’t always love the final decision.

Perhaps equally valuable for corpo-rate life, it taught him that in large orga-nizations, change takes commitment.

That same winter, Lauver also applied to DuPont Pioneer for its Frank Ross

“ Farmers have a progressive mentality,” Lauver says. “They are trying to build something that will last forever.”

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o one noticed,” author and historian Allan Levine says. “We’re talking about arguably the most important business institution in the city’s his-tory, and it barely ranked notice in

the city media.”For Levine, author of The exchange: 100 Years

of Trading grain in Winnipeg, it was the moment he realized the grain trade in Winnipeg just wasn’t what it used to be.

This particular moment was in 2007, when the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange morphed from a stand-alone open-outcry trading pit to just another part of the ICE online trading platform, a U.S.-based amalgam of various smaller exchanges.

The city barely cared, Levine says. “It was unbe-lievable.”

Agriculture had been at the core of Winnipeg, almost from the day the settlement began as a modest fur-trad-ing outpost populated by French and Métis traders and Scottish refugees from the highland clearances.

Through almost all of its existence, grain trading was what this city did.

The downtown core of the city bustled with traders for decades. The sidewalks and later the all-weather walkway systems were full of runners carrying cash tickets between the offices of the grain companies that dotted the downtown and the Cana-dian Wheat Board.

Traders from the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange were regulars in the taverns, and at lunch time it was all but impossible to sit anywhere without hearing grain prices talked about at the next table.

That’s not exactly gone, but it’s a lot more muted these days. The grain companies have amalgamated over the years, and Viterra, one of the biggest, is now headquartered in neighbouring Saskatchewan.

Yes, the Canadian Wheat Board is still around. Stripped of its single-desk powers, however, it’s a shadow of its former self. Ditto for the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange — that august institution de-mutualized and joined the much larger ICE Futures online platform a few years ago, ending more than 100 years of open-outcry pit trading.

In just a few short years, the grain trade has faded from in your face to tough to spot. And with every pass-ing year, the whispered question gets just a bit louder.

Is Winnipeg still heart of the grain trade?Geographically, it’s on the edge of the Prairie

region, so Saskatoon in many ways is seen as a

more logical hub, given its more central location. The direction of trade has also reoriented over the decades, with the emergence of major Asian custom-ers causing much of the grain to flow west through distant ports like Vancouver and Prince Rupert, instead of through Thunder Bay to the east.

Still beatingWinnipeg is still the heart of the grain trade,

however, and some insist it’s a heart that is still beat-ing strongly. On the face of it, there are a number of things that keep the trade off life support, Levine insists. Not least of these is that the remaining grain companies are almost entirely family-owned enter-prises — outfits like Paterson, Parrish & Heim-becker and the Richardson family, arguably the city’s first family of the grain trade.

“We’re talking about companies and families that have touched every part of the city’s social and cultural fabric,” Levine says. “They’ve made Win-nipeg much more important in many ways than its size might suggest it should be.”

That commitment has taken many forms, Levine says. For example there’s the city’s outsized cul-tural footprint as represented by institutions like the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the symphony orchestra and the well-supported local theatre scene. There’s also the city’s role as a financial centre — something that grew along with, and because of, its role as a grain-trading centre.

With these roots running so deep in the city, Levine says it’s unlikely most of the remaining com-panies will pull up stakes and leave.

Another source of Winnipeg’s incumbency in the industry is the role of various government-run or -funded institutions. For example, the Canadian Grain Commis-sion is headquartered just a few steps from Portage and Main. In the same building — at least for now — is also the Canadian International Grain Institute (Cigi).

For many years, Cigi was jointly funded by the fed-eral government and farmers, through the Canadian Wheat Board. It’s had to find a new path forward that involves more industry work following the death of the CWB’s single-desk powers, and in that process Cigi has bumped into limitations at its current location, where it’s been doing business since its inception in 1972, says Cigi executive director Earl Geddes.

“We were trying to build new industry relation-ships and we were finding we had to turn down business because we simply didn’t have the space

Grain drainWinnipeg has long reigned over Western Canada’s grain trade — but can it keep the crown?

By Gord Gilmour, CG Associate Editor

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and resources to take it on,” Geddes says. “That just didn’t sit right with me.”

That reality led to talk of finding new facilities, which placed Cigi at the centre of this emerging new dynamic. Almost immediately, representatives from the city of Saskatoon appeared, touting that city’s benefits and emerging status as a significant agricul-ture research hub. That’s hardly surprising — what was surprising is that a similar effort didn’t material-ize from the Manitoba and city governments.

Ultimately, however, Winnipeg still makes more sense, Geddes says, and he says it’s a view that’s been underscored by comments from Cigi’s interna-tional customers when they come to the city.

“What they’re telling us is this is something that’s entirely unique in the world,” Geddes says. “There simply isn’t another location where they can come and visit all of their major customers in one place.”

And while it may have taken time, the city did rise to the challenge, and Geddes says the local downtown business improvement zone and the may-or’s office have been spending a lot of time making sure Cigi’s next home is inside the city.

“I think they’ve really gotten it lately,” Geddes says. That power of incumbency also drew in another

major new player recently, as the industry organiza-tion Cereals Canada named Winnipeg as the loca-tion of its new head office. Cereals Canada, freshly organized in the wake of cereal market deregulation, joins other major groups like the Canola Council of Canada and Pulse Canada in calling Winnipeg’s downtown core home.

Cam Dahl, president of Cereals Canada, says the board members of the organization chose Winnipeg for good reasons, mainly relating to the concentra-tion of the industry, something he views as continu-ing even today.

“Traditionally Winnipeg has been the centre of the industry, and it does still have a major concen-tration,” Dahl says. “It makes so much sense for things like organizing meetings. The majority of the industry is still here.”

That’s not to say the city and provincial govern-ments can rest on their laurels though. Dahl explains that what he’s talking about is a question of critical mass — and what is uncertain is what the threshold is, and the effect of falling below it.

“Right now it’s obviously less than it was 30 years ago, but it’s still there,” Dahl says. “I would suggest that’s something local policy-makers would want to pay attention to.”

Author Allan Levine also says there’s another reality that colours this debate, because in some ways what’s happened is that the city has contin-ued to evolve and grow past its origins as a single-industry town. Today it has everything from a pharmaceutical and biomedical research sector to a major international currency printer.

“As the city’s business community has grown and evolved, it’s only natural the grain industry would appear less prominent,” Levine says.

Twin TracksIt’s impossible to crystal ball the future, but based

on recent trends Geddes hazards a guess that Saska-toon’s prominence in the lifescience and agricultural research sectors will continue to grow.

Evidence of that can be seen in the coming closure of Winnipeg’s Cereal Research Centre by Agricul-ture and Agri-Food Canada and the relocation of key research programs to the Saskatoon area. At the same time, Geddes expects to see the grain trade itself and organizations like Cigi continue to call Winnipeg home for the foreseeable future.

“We’ve been working closely with the city and with the SHED (Sports, Hospitality and Entertain-ment District) and I would say the lights have really come on in the corridors of power,” Geddes says. “They’re working to keep the industry here, and they haven’t had to before.”

If they can keep the critical mass in Winnipeg, it becomes a self-fulfilling cycle, as more players are attracted to the centre of the business. And while it may seem to an outsider that the business has become more muted, Cam Dahl says there’s still plenty of informal cross-fertilization that happens due to random run-ins over the lunch hour.

“I just went for lunch the other day and found it took me nearly 25 minutes to walk back, and it really shouldn’t have,” Dahl says. “I kept running into people.” cG

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The minute Cigi began to ponder new headquarters, Saskatoon was at its door with a pitch, says Earl Geddes, Cigi executive director


arm succession is never easy, but for the Johnston family, bringing the next gen-eration into the dairy business has meant extra challenges. You might even say it has meant miles and miles of challenges.

After their family had farmed near Brampton for 170 years, Frances and James Johnston figured the time had come. Toronto was looming over their fencerows, coming close enough so that while other Canadian farmers pull onto quiet country roads to go to town, the Johnstons had to dart into five choked

lanes of roaring traffic. And where other farmers can look across to their farming neighbours, the closest yard the Johnstons saw from their doorstep was a rail yard and distribution centre.

But those weren’t the only kinds of population pressure the family was facing.

Son Graham, daughter Mary Ann and her hus-band, Joe Doré, all wanted to be involved full time in the dairy operation, not to mention that Graham’s wife, Amanda, a medical imaging technologist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, and a third sibling,

Heritage on the moveHow to keep farm and family together when you uproot after 170 years on the same ground

By Helen Lammers-Helps

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Vital to the move’s success was the transition to the next generation, with Mary Ann, Nadine and Joe Doré, and Amanda and Graham Johnston.

PhotograPhy: DaviD Charlesworth

Claire, who works for a John Deere deal-ership in Nobleton, currently help out on weekends and wanted to maintain their connection to the farm too.

And on top of that there was the barn, which had last been upgraded in the early 1990s and would soon need more work.

With the evidence mounting, the fam-ily all agreed. It would make more sense to relocate and build new.

The question is, how do you go from a decision like that to actually carrying it out? What are the skills that will get you through it? What are the parts that are harder than you think?

For the Johnstons, the questions have some fairly simple answers, although that doesn’t mean that the solutions were always easy.

What was the most important skill? Hands down, it was — and continues to be — communication.

What was harder than they expected? Again, the asnwer is straightforward. In a nutshell, the whole process takes longer than you think — you can probably think in terms of five years to make a full change.

But there were victories too, such as agreeing on a name that they would all take as a sign that they had made the transition a success, keeping both the farm and the family intact, all wrapped up in a few simple words.

In fact, coming up with the name for

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With the family spread apart, making barn decisions demanded patience and sensitivity.

“ As the seventh generation,” said Mary Ann, “I felt so much pressure to get this right.”



the new farm was the hardest part of the whole process, says Graham with a chuckle. “We were looking for something that represented our family’s long history of farming in Canada, but also something that would tie it to the new farm.”

The eventual name — Heritage Hill Farm — scored on all those levels, with a view from the back of the barn that stretches for miles.

If the selection of that name capped the process, what it all began with was a family meeting with everyone sitting down together to develop a checklist of what they would want in a future prop-erty. Mary Ann says that while they rec-ognized they could go anywhere in the world, they decided they wanted to stay in Ontario to be near family.

Then, while the family looked for property and made plans for a new barn, Mary Ann worked for three years as a herdsperson in a free-stall dairy barn near Tavistock — an hour and a half west of Brampton in the heart of Ontario’s biggest dairy county — and Joe worked in service for Advanced Dairy Systems, a half-hour north of her at

Wellesley. Both gained valuable experi-ence they could put to use planning the new barn. They also did their research and visited many other barns too.

Communication flow was crucial. With Frances, James, Graham and Claire back on the home farm and Mary Ann and Joe living in Stratford, decisions for the new barn were made via email. “This way we could all have input and there was a paper trail for discussions,” explains Mary Ann.

Eventually they found a farm near New Dundee that met their criteria. Barn construction began in August 2010 and was completed in March 2011, with Joe and Mary Ann quitting their jobs so they could help during construction.

When it comes to making decisions, James has the final say but he carefully considers everyone’s input, says Mary Ann. For example, while James preferred building a tie-stall barn, he agreed to a free-stall design because that is what the others wanted.

All of the cows adjusted well to the new barn but there was tension between the partners during the transition period. Mary Ann uses a boat analogy to try to explain what was happening amongst the five part-

ners during this time. “It was like Mom, Dad and Graham were already in the boat but Joe and I were swimming in the water beside the boat. When we tried to get in it was a little rocky.” Now that everyone has adjusted, it’s smooth sailing again, she says.

One of the secrets to getting along is to realize that everyone is different and that your own way of doing things is not the only way, says Joe.

It also helps to keep in mind that everyone wants the same outcome, he says. For all of them, the farm comes first.

Joe, who grew up in the suburbs of Montreal, spent a summer working for one of the Brampton farm neighbours to see if he would like dairy farming. “I fell in love with it,” he says.

When it comes to getting along, it’s also important to understand that every-one has different communication styles, says Mary Ann who recommends family members go through counselling to learn good communication skills. For example, it’s a bad idea to start a sentence with “You never…” and it’s important to say “thank you,” she says.

Mary Ann says she has come to real-

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Carefully planned work schedules and job assignments keep the family working together, but not tripping over each other.

One of the unintended consequences of $7+/bu corn is that farmers have responded to market signals and been willing to spend ~$15/ac in an attempt to garner the last couple of bushels of yield. If they even 'thought' that an additional tillage pass would increase corn yield, they were often willing to do it. Our business has price cycles, and when we benefit from very robust grain and oilseed values, we need to be mentally planning for the inevitable downturn. We also need to be retaining more residue on the surface of our soil to reduce overland water movement during winter and spring, and into the growing season until a vigorous and fully canopied crop will absorb the impact of rainfall. Many of us have adopted no-till in our cropping systems and are willing to keep a high residue cover on the soil until it comes to growing corn. Often it is reasoned that we 'need' to perform tillage in a corn production system to incorporate a broadcast nitrogen fertilizer and/or high rates of liquid manure to minimize N volatilization. It has been suggested that corn 'responds' to tillage. Over the years however, many practitioners have discovered that the multitude of stresses in no-till corn can be managed alternatively, yet historically intensive primary and secondary tillage operations mitigated most of these stresses, substituting steel and fuel for management. The Innovative Farmers Association of Ontario sees the need to improve soil health through less tillage and greater residue cover. We also see the need to reduce the cost of producing corn as an equally important goal. The IFAO, along with Ontario's Corn Extension Lead, Greg Stewart, will be conducting a project over the next two years using one pass spring strip-tillage. The plan is to install strips into untouched residue from the previous fall, with strips running 90° to the slope of the field (where practical), and with most, if not all the fertility (N,P,K,S etc.) to grow the corn crop applied at the time of strip-tilling. This strip-tillage pass will also utilize active implement steering to demonstrate that the strip-tillage device does not have to be equal in size to today's increasingly larger planters.

During this exercise, we intend to define: a) How much N + K can be blended into the

spring installed zone? b) Can all the N be put down in the zone in the

spring? and c) If so, what proportion can be 'unprotected' N?

Depending on the answer to the last question, which determines the cost of the nitrogen portion of the fertility bill, this system has the potential to render a side-dress pass unnecessary.

The IFAO are grateful for the partners in this project, the Agricultural Adaptation Council, OMAF, Grain Farmers of Ontario and DAWN Equipment.

Can Ontario's growers produce corn more economically, increase year-around residue cover, AND improve soil health by refraining from full width tillage? Stay tuned.

www.ifao.com IFAO 1 Pass and Plant Corn Project

by Ken Nixon, IFAO Past President


ize that she is more verbal while the guys tend to process things first before they’ll talk about it. “I just have to accept that we’re different,” she says.

“Making assumptions is one of the worst things you can do,” continues Mary Ann. “We’re all getting better at talking about the things that are bothering us.”

As an only child, in the early days Joe found it alarming to watch Graham and Mary Ann interact at times. “One minute they’d be arguing and the next they’d be getting along great,” he recalls. Not having any siblings, he’d never seen this kind of dynamic before, he explains.

Now that they’ve been in the new barn for three years, they’ve developed systems that work for them, especially with multiple people working in the barns.

On weekdays Graham, Joe and Mary Ann are all in the barn for chores. They’ve each carved out com-plementary roles. While Mary Ann milks, Joe runs the skid steer and Graham feeds the calves. Graham makes breeding decisions with input from James. Joe looks after maintenance and Mary Ann does the bookkeeping. Cropping decisions are made by James, Graham and Joe with the help of neighbouring farm-ers — the Sherks, the McNabbs and Dan Shantz.

Since moving to the new farm, Joe and Mary Ann welcomed a new addition to the family. Two-year-old Nadine likes to help around the barn with the cleanup, says Mary Ann.

Being able to take some time off from chores is one of the advantages of farming together. One week-end Joe and Mary Ann do the milking, the next Gra-ham will do the chores with the help of either Claire or Amanda. When not in the barn, they are all able to relax. “Working by ourselves on the weekend makes us appreciate having the help the rest of the time,” says Mary Ann.

When planning the barn they intentionally included a kitchen so they could have breakfast meetings after morning chores. “This was something they had at the farm where I worked,” explains Mary Ann. They each take turns stocking the fridge.

Strategically placed whiteboards throughout the barn help them to keep track of what needs to be done. In the office there is a whiteboard with daily and monthly to-do lists. In the parlour there’s another whiteboard for milking communications such as information on fresh or sick cows.

In the vet room is another whiteboard with infor-mation on breeding and foot health. A smaller white-board has information on sick cow treatments, a list of vet supplies needed and a barn maintenance schedule. The final whiteboard shows feeding infor-mation for the calves in the corresponding hutches, numbered using ear tags.

The Johnstons are very pleased with the loca-tion of the new farm where there is a strong farm-ing community. The farm equipment stayed back in

Not on its own

Good farm communications don’t just happen. They must be planned for, says Ontario farm business management coach Richard Cressman, who special-izes in helping families sort through the complex relationship issues of multi-generation farms.

Communication is crucial to farm success, says Cressman. Farm families who do it right spend time talking with each other either in family meetings or in informal discussions or both, and they find out what each person is dream-ing about for their individual future.

“It’s imperative to put in place a system,” Cressman says.Face-to-face meetings, whiteboard notes, text messages, or phone calls all

work. But, says Cressman, “Asking someone to convey a message to another family member DOeS nOT work.”

Formalize as much as possible the frequency and the type of information that needs to be talked about, he adds. “nothing trumps a sit-down around the table face-to-face meeting with as many family members as is necessary.”

Transparency is also essential, says Cressman. “Perception is everything. If assumptions are allowed to fester they become very destructive.”

Once everyone understands where each family member is at, putting together a plan to make it all happen is much easier.

Most families who run into problems do so because of inaction, says Cressman. They are either too afraid to ask for help, or they fear making the wrong decisions.


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Brampton where the family still owns land so they have contracted with neighbouring dairy farmers for custom work. They are also centrally located to get quick service from their milking equipment suppliers.

At age 65, James is content to let the younger generation take over the milking. He is also turning over more of the decision-making to the younger generation to prepare them to take over.

With this in mind, the five partners have started succession discussions to map out the transfer of ownership. While it can be hard to talk about the tough stuff, by building on the communication skills they’ve developed while planning, building and mov-ing the herd to a new barn an hour’s drive from the original farm, this family is well positioned to meet this challenge.

Communications also facilitated using the move to improve the farm’s productivity. Although there is room for 94 cows in the new barn they are currently only milking 60 cows due to quota restrictions. Equipped with a BouMatic Double-8 Herringbone milking parlour, they are set up to handle the extra cows. They chose the parlour over a robotic milking system because they like to milk cows and feel this allows them to keep a closer eye on the cows. They

are expanding as they are able to purchase more quota but with the cap in place it’s a slow process, explains Mary Ann.

In fact, the whole barn project was a stressful time, but it was also deeply satisfying, recalls Mary Ann.

Cow comfort was a high priority for the new barn. The family is very proud of their purebred Hol-steins with two-thirds of the herd classified as Very Good or Excellent under the Jameston Holsteins prefix. The Johnstons also placed a great emphasis on energy and water conservation in the new barn.

In June of 2013 the family got a chance to wel-come the public to the new farm and they took it, hosting the first-ever Ontario Breakfast on the Farm sponsored by Farm and Food Care Ontario. Some 2,000 people enjoyed a free breakfast and toured the barn.

Growing up so close to the city meant that many of the Johnstons’ friends were not from farms. “We are used to talking to all of our city friends and fam-ily about farming and understand the concerns of the consumers; we wanted to make sure our new farm addressed those concerns,” explains Mary Ann. “We’re very proud of our new facility.” CG

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he area isn’t for everyone, Charles Forman tells me. Squeezed between three of Canada’s most densely populated urban centres —

Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto — farm-ing here is almost eerily anonymous.

Even other farmers across the province or all across the country easily overlook the farming that goes on in eastern Ontario.

Not that the farmers here complain about it. Much of the time, in fact, they’re happy enough to be a kind of island, hidden away on their own.

But it does involve some special tal-ents, and some special pride.

The rolling land and frequent out-crops of bedrock make the area extremely beautiful, with the region’s lakes making this one of the world’s top vacation havens. But eastern Ontario is home to only 15 per cent of all the farms in Ontario, and a mere 10 per cent of the farms that generate over $1 million in gross farm receipts.

Farmland sells here for less than $10,000 per acre — a potential bar-gain by Ontario standards. Some land, according to reports, even sells for as little as $2,000 per acre farther from sprawling urban centres.

But it is also extremely challenging to farm, and when visitors try to plot their way to Charles Forman’s farm at Seeley’s Bay, a half-hour northeast of Kingston, they often call en route to ask if they can pos-sibly still be heading in the right direction.

“Coming down our road off of High-way 15, you would think you were head-ing right into the middle of the Canadian Shield,” Forman explains.

Indeed, when he travels outside the region and tries to describe his operation to other farmers, Forman meets disbelief.

The more you learn, however, the more you become a believer too.

So cloSe, So farFarming in eastern Ontario takes a special breed

By Amy Petherick

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Forman Farms started as a mod-est 200-acre dairy farm in 1973. Now it includes 2,400 acres of cash crops, nearly 40 acres of field vegetables, a half-acre of greenhouses, a biomass pelletizing operation, land improve-ment services, custom farmwork for clients spread over as many as 12,000 acres, and a trucking business.

It’s taken the collective efforts of Charles’ wife Christine and two sons, together with a collection of full- and part-time staff to run it all. “We’re spread a little thin here sometimes,” Charles says. “We try to make sure everybody has a job 12 months of the year.”

That ability to successfully man-age such a diverse operation anywhere would suggest above-average skills, but in eastern Ontario, it’s downright inspiring.

Southwestern Ontario may think it would be easy, based on the less intense competition for land. But it isn’t all cake. In the east, a lack of crit-ical mass causes logistical nightmares.

“Where we are, we can’t just drive up the road to grab on to a five-tonne buggy of fertilizer when we want it,” Charles says, “so we figured out how to spread fertilizer on frozen ground.” All his lime goes on before spring thaw. He spent a small fortune and did it himself, but every piece of ground he owns or rents is tiled so that he can put anhydrous into the ground before planting with his RTS unit.

“We have that job all done before everybody else is using anhydrous,” Forman says. Sometimes it means he has to pick up supplies at 2 a.m. but maintaining a 15- to 20-year relation-ship with the same supplier for all his seed, fertilizer, and chemicals will get him that. “You have to figure out where the loopholes are and how to take advantage of them,” Charles says.

Besides, Forman knows that other farmers can have it even harder. The importance of logistics planning applies exponentially to farmers on the Frontenac Islands, for instance, such as Jason Pyke of Wolfe Island in the middle of the St. Lawrence, closer to New York state than to Kingston.


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Charles Forman’s farm was a typical 200 acres when he began in 1973. Now the farm is 2,400 acres, with grains, vegetables, greenhouse crops, a biomass pelletizing operation and more.


“It’s harder to farm… period… on an island because all of your inputs in the spring need to come to the island via ferry, and all your commodities in the fall have to leave the island via ferry,” Pyke says. In his case, supplies which classify as dangerous goods like propane and gasoline are only able to come to the island two days a week.

Pyke says competing with mainland farmers for services during peak seasons is also that much more difficult.

“If the feed or seed store can make two or three deliveries on the mainland in the time it takes to do one on Wolfe Island, sometimes they’d rather keep two or three customers happy,” Pyke admits. “We’re fortunate they do their best, but it does add another element to farming.”

Until commodity prices improved in recent years, Pyke says cash cropping alone wasn’t an option to make a decent living on their 600 acres, so they diversi-fied into bison. But it was spreading the family too thin getting to farmers’ mar-kets, even though demand was strong, and there were also safety concerns with such essentially wild animals.

The Pykes now farm 1,000 acres and also rely more on solar and wind energy, and he is grateful to be able to work on the island full time thanks to 300 to 400 acres of custom work for nearby farmers.

“Those who have to work off the island have to be to the ferry an hour before it leaves just to get a space in line, and on a Friday afternoon, when there’re cottagers coming, you could be

two hours or more waiting for the ferry,” Pyke says. “It’s a half-day event for us just to go and get parts.”

Pyke says one of the definite draw-backs of farming in eastern Ontario is that there are fewer farm machinery dealerships. Last year that one factor almost forced Graeme and Alex Brown to make a very costly decision on their farm at Belleville, an hour west of Kings-ton, where they work 1,600 acres and do custom on another 2,000.

“We put a bunch of precision-planting equipment on our planter last year, and we went through last season really getting nothing out of it,” Graeme says. This past winter, while at a conference on the other side of Toronto, he made a casual remark to a dealer about having wasted his money. The dealer wasn’t long in diagnosing that a critical component hadn’t been installed, and offered to come have a look. So now, one year after purchasing it, the Browns finally have their equipment set up right. “I’m positive that precision ag is going to pay back,” Graeme tells me, “but if we hadn’t found that dealer, we would’ve just taken it all off.”

To a degree, Graeme is sympathetic. The saying, “good help is hard to find,” also seems to go double here, he says. “If we don’t get the weather and we don’t have everything come into play, we don’t have the same yield potential. That leads to a lack of willingness to put money into things that might not pay back, forcing retailers into paying low wages and not necessarily having the right support for guys who do want to be on the cutting edge of things.”

But farmers have avoided investing in more than retail services. Brown says he almost had to beg a company to come out and take a sizable chunk of money to grid sample his farm, and still they wouldn’t come until six other farmers got in the line too, just so the company had enough total acres to justify the trip.

Charles Forman says sometimes, you just can’t get any service at all. “When we bought the greenhouse, we didn’t know a thing about it so my wife got on the phone to OMAFRA (the Ontario Agriculture Ministry), who told her they were definitely not coming down this way to ever talk to us.”

Forman says it didn’t matter how many eastern-based greenhouse opera-tions they named, the province’s advisers continued to insist there were no green-houses in the area and offered zero help.

“We ended up talking to our fertil-izer salesman who knew somebody, who knew somebody, who could get us hooked up with a crop consultant that we could pay to come down here,” For-man says, adding that in this part of the agriculture world, you need to figure things out for yourself.

“There’s a lot of things working against us unfortunately, but at the same time, that also works for us because if you are aggressive and business savvy, it leaves all sorts of doors wide open,” For-man says. Necessity has bred some pretty innovative farmers in the area he says, and it has produced a culture of strong farmers. Here, he says, you either sink, or you swim really hard. CG

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To feed a hungry world, you need to grow more each year while caring for and protecting your land. And to sustain your farming operation, you need to grow these crops more efficiently. But where do you go to find out the latest information on sustainable practices that increase yields?

The 6th World Congress on Conservation Agriculture in Winnipeg, Manitoba will present new ideas on how you can grow more, more efficiently. Innovative growers, cutting edge researchers, and technology leaders will share their success stories and tips. Be there June 22-25, 2014 for practical solutions to the challenges facing today’s agriculture.

Wring out more efficiency


amuel Allen was blunt. “Today’s world is filled with uncertainty — fiscal, economic, and political uncertainty — that breeds extreme caution, disrupts thoughtful plan-ning, and is generally bad for business,” the

John Deere chairman and CEO wrote in the com-pany’s 2013 annual report.

Those words from December of last year now seem profoundly prophetic, given recent events in Ukraine and their potential impact on global trade. The question for ag equipment manufacturers such as John Deere that have made substantial invest-ments in Russia is how they proceed from here on.

Until Putin went rogue on Crimea, Russia was seen by ag equipment manufacturers as a land of opportunity. Russia was the “R” in the BRIC group of countries that also includes Brazil, India and China, and it was expected that its economic growth would be on a massive scale.

According to John Deere’s latest market analysis, average GDP growth in the CIS states including Rus-sia in 2012 was 3.4 per cent. It dropped in 2013, sinking to 2.1 per cent, but had been forecast to jump again this year.

While not anywhere near the 8.2 per cent in Brazil or the 6.0 per cent that China chalked up in 2013, growth in the former Soviet states still outpaced the 1.9 per cent the U.S. experienced. So the whole region remained a market with above-average potential.

Plus, from an agricultural perspective, there are other bullish statistics. Here’s a big one. Of the 1.96 billion hectares of arable land in the CIS, only 560 million are currently being utilized.

Here’s another. “Western-style” farm equipment is currently being used on less than 25 per cent of CIS farms.

It’s easy to see why farm equipment manufactur-ers are champing at the bit to get into these markets.

Germany’s ag manufacturing sector has so far taken best advantage of the opportunities, becom-ing the largest exporter of farm equipment to Rus-sia. But recent events in Crimea have left German manufacturers on edge. A headline in the German ag engineering magazine Der eilbote in March seemed to sum up the thoughts of industry executives inter-viewed in the article: “This is poison for business,” is the English translation.

According to a 2012 report published by VDMA, the German Engineering Federation, that country sent 694 million euros worth of equipment to Russia, which meant a real boost for Germany’s economy.

The VDMA report also tallied the size of farm machinery exports to Russia from other countries. In that same year, it says, Italy delivered 82 million euros’ worth of iron, France 69 million, Poland 58 million, and the Netherlands 92 million.

North American companies were cashing in too, with U.S. firms sending over 215 million euros’ worth, and Canadian companies shipping farm machinery to Russia in 2012 worth 116 million euros (C$176 million).

Despite those numbers, foreign-based manufac-turers have faced problems in fully capitalizing on the potential in Russia as well as in Eastern Europe and the CIS states. Deere’s experience is a good example. In 2008 as the global farm commodity price boom kicked off, the brand realized net sales of US$1.9 billion in the region. Since then, however, sales have fallen off significantly, struggling to get back to just $1.6 billion in fiscal 2013.

The trouble in Russia, in part, is that despite its recent admission into the WTO, its leaders haven’t really been playing nicely when it comes to trade. Gov-ernment subsidies along with punishing import tariffs and quotas designed to promote domestic manufac-turing have taken their toll on ag equipment imports, even though they are still reported to account for more than two-thirds of all equipment sales there.

Despite protests from foreign governments and industry about unfair trading practices, Russian offi-cials haven’t given much ground.

To escape those excessive tariffs and take advan-tage of the built-in-Russia label that makes machin-ery eligible for a 15 per cent government purchase subsidy, many brands have invested in manufactur-ing facilities, announcing either sole or joint manu-facturing ventures with indigenous companies in Russia over the past several years.

Of the seven new factories John Deere opened in 2013, one is in Orenburg, Russia. It now churns out seeding and tillage equipment, adding its output to another Deere plant in Domodedovo that builds tractors and combines. Back as far as 2009, Deere announced its intention to invest US$500 million in facilities inside Russia.

In an investor relations document, Deere describes that investment as part of an effort “to capture antici-pated tailwinds by attracting more customers to the John Deere experience across our six key geogra-phies.” Russia is one of those “key geographies.”

In 2010 CNH, parent company of Case IH and New Holland, jumped into the Russian market with

RetuRn of the czaRsWill the Putin effect hurt global ag equipment manufacturing?

By Scott Garvey, CG Machinery Editor

m a c h i n e r y

an investment in a joint facility with the Russian heavy truck manufacturer KAMAZ. That effort, which created the CNH-KAMAZ company, represented a US$70 million investment designed to produce selected Case IH and New Holland tractors and combines.

In what might be the worst possible timing, AGCO proudly announced in late February it had embarked on a joint venture with Russian Machines (RM), an established farm equipment manufacturer, to introduce the Massey Ferguson brand to that country. The joint venture will see assembly of MF tractors start at an RM facility near Moscow.

“We expect to continue… devoting significant resources to enhance our presence in the CIS region, China and Africa,” said AGCO’s CEO Martin Richenhagen in the company’s fourth-quarter report for 2013, written well before the Crimean crisis.

With economic sanctions and counter-sanctions imposed, and others likely in future, the risk associ-ated with Russian investment is growing. But in a strange twist, one equipment brand may face a poten-tial risk if it does not move more assets there.

That is Winnipeg-based Versatile, whose majority owner is the Russian combine manufacturer Rostsel-mash Ltd. Versatile (Buhler Industries) has remained incorporated in Canada with its stock trading on the TSX.

According to a Moscow TiMes article, Putin has demanded Russian-owned foreign corporations re-register their operations in the Motherland and pay

taxes there. According to a Reuters report in March, he told corporate leaders, “this is also in your inter-ests” (although the Moscow TiMes translation differs slightly). Putin called it “deoffshorization” during a state-of-the-nation address in the State Duma, appar-ently preparing the country’s economy for a hunker-ing down in the face of western economic retaliation.

One of the long-running factors that had been lim-iting farm machinery sales growth inside Russia was the relatively tight availability of capital. With the Rus-sian stock market’s main MICEX index down 13 per cent the day after Crimean annexation, there is now even less capital available to finance purchases. And with the ruble hitting an all-time low, plus a sudden 1.5 per cent interest rate hike by Russia’s Central Bank to bolster it, financial conditions alone are likely to hurt farm equipment sale.

With all this, there is also now a growing anxiety among some of the country’s elite. A few editorials in Russian newspapers are expressing disapproval, despite a notoriously strangled free press.

Writing in the Moscow TiMes, Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, and now a political analyst, criticized Putin’s behaviour. “From now on, Russia’s entire policy can be summed up in a single word: unpredictable,” he wrote.

Deere’s Allen agrees, saying in February, “… it’s clear we live in an age of uncertainty.”

When it comes to Russia in 2014, that’s true in spades. CG

m a c h i n e r y


Russian farm equipment brands on display at Agritechnica in Germany in November. Photo: Scott Garvey


The Canadian-made bottleneckThe West’s grain paralysis was predictable. Canada has a Third World grain infrastructure, and it’s getting worse

By Gerald Pilger

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rom the headlines, it can feel like Cana-da’s grain transportation woes have sud-denly got worse. In fact, they’ve been looming for decades, or even longer.

Nor have its inadequacies come as any surprise to people in the know. For instance, in their paper “Grain Transportation in Canada — Deregu-lation,” transportation experts Joseph Monteiro and Gerald Robertson with Industry Canada, write: “The problem began before the turn of the 19th century and it has continued even into the first part of the 21st century.”

In their 1999 study of the Canadian grain-han-dling system for the Organization for Western Eco-nomic Cooperation, noted agricultural economists Graham Parsons and William Wilson said the sys-tem is “widely recognized as inefficient, with many bottlenecks and system constraints including multiple origins and destinations, car allocation, limited use of most efficient elevators and unit trains, grade mix-ups, excess tough and damp storage, impurities in grain, high demurrage.”

But despite a trail of such reports, there have been no fixes. In a presentation addressing “The Trans-portation Mess,” Paul Earl, ag economist at the Uni-versity of Manitoba stated: “History is littered with dead studies of grain logistics (seven major studies between 1950 and 1994; we are now on No. 10). Something is not working.”

Successive governments have lurched from one crisis to the next in the grain industry, hoping minor regulatory adjustments would fix a system that most observers feel is actually broken.

One reason why attempts to improve grain han-dling and transportation have failed is that most

of the studies only examine a sector of the system rather than the entire supply chain. The focus has mostly been on rail instead of the entire grain han-dling system. Short-sighted, ideological changes are introduced with little to no regard for the impact that those changes will have further up or down the supply chain. There is simply no long-term vision for the future of the grain industry in Canada.

We must look outside the box for a long-term solution. The problem is that very few farmers, and likely even fewer politicians know what the box is. There is a general lack of understanding of the grain industry outside the farm gates and how our system compares with our competitors.

How we compareIn any industry, it is important for participants

to understand the entire value chain and to identify any bottlenecks. Equally important is to know how your business compares to competitors within the industry.

In the Canadian grain system, we cannot do this. There are no recent studies which compare the Cana-dian grain-handling system to the systems of our major competitors.

Instead, what I found after weeks of interviews and research into grain production, transportation and handling in major exporting nations around the world is that Canada is an important, but relatively minor competitor in the global grains industry today.

Our reputation is struggling. In part, our impor-tance is ebbing due to the expansion of commercial agriculture in developing and Third World countries where climate and lower cost production favour pri-mary food production. In part too it’s because govern-ment and industry support of the agricultural sector has declined more in Canada than most other nations.

Most troubling, however, is the hit that Canada’s reputation is taking because of our aging and limited capacity infrastructure combined with unreliable service.

If we want to maintain our market share of global grain trade, we must fix the system. To do that, how-ever, we need to understand the constraints in our system and know how our system compares to our global competitors. We have to find a way to over-come the bottlenecks.

Successive governments have lurched from one crisis to the next, hoping minor regulatory changes would fix a system that is actually broken

So here is a quick comparison of our system with that of the U.S., Brazil, and Australia.

Between 2008 and 2012, Canadian farmers pro-duced an average of just over 50 million tonnes a year of wheat, coarse grains, and oilseeds. This compares to a 31-mmt average annual production of these same crops in Australia, 128 mmt in Brazil, and 464 mmt in the U.S.

Because of our relatively small population, how-ever, we export a large percentage of that produc-tion. In an average year, Canadian farmers export 70 per cent of their wheat, 55 per cent of their oilseeds, and 30 per cent of their coarse grains.

Other big producers are big exporters too, although not at those levels. For comparison, Aus-tralia exports 66 per cent of its wheat crop and 50 per cent of coarse grains, Brazil exports 46 per cent of the oilseeds it grows and 15 per cent of the coarse grains, and the U.S. exports 50 per cent of its wheat crop, 44 per cent of the oilseeds, and 15 per cent of the coarse grains grown.

This brings to light two very important points. First is that Canada, the U.S., Australia, and Brazil (along with many other countries) are competing to sell simi-lar commodities to the same importing countries.

Second is that, while many farmers believe mar-keting our grains to the U.S. is the answer, the U.S. is a much larger producer of grains than Canada is and, in tonnage terms, it is also a much larger exporter than Canada.

Unfortunately, the primary end-use consumers for

Canadian grain exports are found either in the Far East or Middle East. We need an efficient sales and logistics system to compete with other grain-export-ing nations in these markets.

From farm gate to portAll four of these exporting nations rely primarily

on bulk ocean shipping to move grain from port to the importing country. However, there are real differ-ences in how the grain reaches the port.

Canadian farmers move nearly all of harvested grain by truck to on-farm storage, and then by truck to inland commercial storage, from which it is moved by rail to port terminals.

In the U.S., only about 50 per cent of the harvest goes into on-farm storage. The other 50 per cent moves directly from field to commercial storage by truck. Grain then is moved by rail, river barge, and truck to terminal ports.

Australian farmers are now increasing farm stor-age, but nearly all of their grain still moves by truck either directly to port at harvest or by truck to a local collection facility which then either trucks or rails the grain to port.

Brazil relies primarily on trucking to move the entire harvest destined for export to port position with next to no on-farm storage. It is important to note Brazil is investing heavily in both rail and increased storage capacity.

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Commercial storageCloser analysis of the four systems highlights a

major pressure point in the Canadian system. The combined commercial elevator capacity in Canada (including port and inland) can store barely 20 per cent of our average annual production.

The U.S., by contrast, can store over 50 per cent of the crop in commercial storage, Brazil has 114 per cent storage capacity, and Australia has storage for 175 per cent of an average crop.

Instead of a system where most of the grain is in port and available for export at all times, as it is in Australia or Brazil, or even in the U.S. where half of the harvest is in commercial storage, Canada relies on just-in-time delivery from farm to port to meet export demand.

This system works only if buyers and sellers know exactly what is in on-farm bins, and if there is a co-ordinated effort to move the exact grain and grade from farm to port only when needed. Unfor-tunately, this pull system is exactly opposite of the push system that many farmers desire.

Canadian farmers want a system where they are able to deliver their grain whenever they want, yet in fact the commercial Canadian grain storage system can handle only a little more than 10 per cent of an average crop at any given time.

In other words, it is physically impossible in Canada for all farmers to move all their grain at harvest or in the fall period even if there was the customer demand for the multitude of grains and grades grown in any given year.

Transportation systemEven if Canadian farmers decided to deliver only

to match sales, we would still be left to face the restrictions of our transportation system.

Prairie farmers cannot deliver to port other than by rail. Our limited port facilities are not designed for receiving grain by truck. So we rely on a duopoly of two private, non-competing rail lines to move all of the grain destined for export.

There really are no viable alternatives, which means in turn that there are no competitive forces to control freight costs. As a result, a revenue cap was imposed to protect farmers from excessive rail freight rates.

The U.S. by contrast has four major rail lines, so there is more competitive pricing for rail movement of grain. More importantly, there are three major river systems bisecting the major grain-growing regions in the U.S., and the publicly supported river system also controls freight costs. Furthermore, U.S. port terminals are able to handle truck traffic.

As a result, even though the distances from farm to salt water are roughly similar, the U.S. system

is much more efficient and cost effective than the Canadian system.

Brazil also must move grain over long distances, but freight costs are minimized by the competition between truckers. This is not to say there are not problems. Harvest-time truck lineups at port facili-ties have occasionally been reported up to 80 kms long. Still, Brazil manages to move almost three times as much by truck in eight months compared to what Canadian rail moves in a year.

Australia, with a much shorter haul than any of the other three nations, is in the best position, with both truck and rail capacity for moving grain from farm to port as well as having storage capacity for almost two years of harvests.

InvestmentOne of the most troubling comparisons may

be the lack of investment going into the Canadian grain system. We are not seeing the investment in Canada that is happening in other grain-exporting countries.

For example, while CN and CP have invested roughly $2 billion a year in track upgrades, expan-sion, and maintenance, U.S. railroads companies invest $7 billion a year, and in Brazil, the govern-ment has pledged $30 billion over the next six years for building more storage capacity to handle the ever-increasing production in this country.

This quick comparison identifies a host of bot-tlenecks in the Canadian grain system other than simply a rail problem. An apt analogy of the exist-ing Canadian system and the government’s attempt to address the problem might be a farmer who runs a class 10 combine but only has one three-ton truck hauling the grain a long distance on washed-out dirt roads to a six-inch auger filling a 1,350-bushel bin, and then blaming the lack of har-vest efficiency entirely on having one truck.

Legislating more rail cars will move more grain but only until other bottlenecks in our constricted grain-handling system override this quick fix.

As farmers, we need to ask why our system has so many constraints compared to our competitors. We need to look at the Canadian grain export sys-tem in its entirety and address all the bottlenecks if we are to successfully compete in the world grain game. We need to ask not only what the govern-ment can do, but what we as farmers need to do and what we expect industry to do. It has to be a collaborative effort between all players.

Fortunately, Canada monitors our grain system better than most countries through Quorum Cor-poration. While Quorum’s mandate is to monitor the transportation of grain, its reports do provide a look at the entire system. I believe that every farmer should review Quorum’s annual report to get a better understanding of our system. These reports can be found at www.quorumcorp.net/. CG

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By Lilian Schaer The many benefits of cover crops are attracting farmer interest – but there are still a lot of unknowns when it comes to getting consistent results. A multi-year research project underway in southwestern Ontario is hoping to find some answers by evaluating various cover crops to achieve the best results. Planting a cover crop after winter wheat is the easiest way to start including them in most typical field crop rotations. Options include oats, which provide a fibrous root to improve soil structure, take up nitrogen and return biomass to the soil; radish, which has a deep tap root to open up the soil and take up nitrogen; and crimson clover, which also has a tap root, fibrous roots and produces some nitrogen.

Some growers are also looking for ways to plant cover crops in other parts of their rotation.

However, establishing cover crops after grain corn is difficult in Ontario as there is little or no growing season remaining, so part of this research is also looking at the feasibility of seeding cover crops into standing corn.

How was the research conducted?Post-winter wheat harvest: Two cover crop mixtures were seeded in the second half of August (to mitigate concerns about radish potential infiltrating tile drains): radish variety Tillage and locally sourced oats at 30 pounds per acre, and radish variety Tillage, crimson clover and oats at 35 pounds per acre.

A third treatment consisting of six different cover crops - radish variety Tillage, oats, crimson clover, Austrian winter peas, sorghum sudan and sunflowers – was added to a number of plots at a rate of 40 pounds per acre.

Into standing grain corn: Three cover crops (annual ryegrass, red clover and an annual ryegrass/crimson clover mix) were seeded at the six leaf stage of corn at one site and then again just following tasseling.

At another site two cover crops (annual ryegrass and red clover) were seeded during corn tasseling.

What has the project found? “We found that it is important to leave cover crops on as long as possible to get the most amount of biomass, top growth and root growth,” says project lead Adam Hayes, Soil Management Specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food and Ministry of Rural Affairs (OMAF and MRA). “If you leave them over the winter, it helps provide further protection for the soil.”

Cover crops planted in the second half of August can produce a significant amount of biomass by the middle to end of November. The average biomass at October harvest was 1800 kilograms per hectare for the oats/radish mixture, 1850 kg for the oats/radish/crimson clover mixture and 2000 kg for the six-way mixture. As in the previous year, biomass increased significantly by November’s sampling, with the oats/radish and the oats/radish/crimson clover mixtures averaging 3600 kg per hectare and the six-way mixture averaging 3900.

Planting the cover crop at the correct depth is important to ensure the cover crop germinates rapidly. When the mixtures in a plot were planted too deep the crimson clover did not emerge and the radish was delayed so the oats grew to begin providing cover and helped fill in where the other species growth was poor or missing.

“We also found that if there is no or very little nitrogen in the soil, some cover crops that need nitrogen like oats and radish will not provide a lot of growth,” says Hayes, adding that it can be hard to see all the changes brought about by cover crops, especially in soil structure, in a short time span.

Dave Sherman has a cash crop operation near Thamesville and has hosted cover crop plots both after winter wheat and into corn on his farm for the past two years. There’s been little success with the corn plots to date, but the post-winter wheat trials have shown good results, he says.

“We had a lot of biomass cover. The good thing about the oats and radish is that they die over the winter so you don’t have to spray,” he says, adding that all three mixes showed similar results on his fields. “We also added nitrogen to half the plots, and with the oats and radish you could really tell where the extra nitrogen was, especially a couple of years ago when it was so dry.”

Additional plot trials will be planted in 2014, including on Sherman’s farm and work will continue on evaluating the 2013 crop in terms of worm count, infiltration, soil cover and crimson clover survival rates.

Earlier planting times and using mixes without radish to avoid the possibility of it getting into tile drains may be added this year.

Where can I get more information?More information on this project can be found in the Crop Advances section of the OSCIA website at http://bit.ly/QzzhtD.

How was the research funded?Funding for this project was provided by the OSCIA regional partner grant and the Southwest Agricultural Conference grant. OSCIA assisted with communication of research results.

Seeking conSiStent cover crop reSuLtS – after winter wheat and into standing corn

Spotlight on Crop AdvAnCeSCrop Advances is an annual report that summarizes applied research projects involving the OMAFRA Field Crop team, in partnership with commodity groups, industry and the OSCIA.www.ontariosoilcrop.org/en/resources/cropadvances.htm

ontArio SoiL AnD crop iMproveMent ASSociAtion

www.ontariosoilcrop.org/default.htm

Mission: Facilitate responsible economic management of soil, water, air and crops through development and communication of innovative farming practices

cover crop highlights:• Covercropsplantedinthesecondhalfof

AugustcanproduceasignificantamountofbiomassbyNovember.Thelongerthecropisleft,themorebiomass,topgrowthandrootgrowthwillresult.

• Nospecialseedingequipmentisneededasanythingfromdrillswithoutasmallseedboxto30’airseederswereabletosuccessfullyplantcovercrops.

• Covercropswillgrowwhenseededintograincorn.Annualryegrassandcloversseemtotolerateshadewellandseedingtheseatthesixleafstageofcornshowspromise.

4 2 c o u n t r y - g u i d e . c a j u n e 2 0 1 4

By Warren Libby, Savvy Farmer

Six questions for the ag entrepreneursSo you’ve got an idea that might make a great new product or service. Should you invest in it?

oday’s agriculture isn’t your grand-mother’s agriculture. While we still work the soil and practise animal hus-bandry, today we do so in wonder-ful ways that past generations could

never imagine. From lasers and GPS to genomics and drones, agriculture has become a hotbed of innovation.

Nor is ag innovation the exclusive domain of the major multinational companies. Farmers and non-farmers alike are dipping their toes into the ag-inno-vation pool with an endless array of novel ideas.

Even so, however, it can be a daunting experi-ence to try to convert an idea into an actual prod-uct or service, and then get that product or service into the marketplace.

Fortunately, budding entrepreneurs don’t have to take that journey alone. There are a number of ag organizations available to help aspiring entre-preneurs turn ideas into commercially success-ful products. Or, if necessary, these organizations can offer a bit of tough love. One that I have worked closely with for almost 10 years is Bioen-terprise Corporation (www.bioenterprise.ca) located in Guelph, Ont.

Bioenterprise is a not-for-profit centre whose sole purpose is to foster innovation in the agribusi-ness sector across Canada. Its team of agribusiness professionals provides entrepreneurs with early-stage feedback on the validity of its business idea. It also provides insight into areas that may need con-tinued work, and it helps to fill in the gaps.

Here’s how it typically works. At Bioenterprise,

if a business concept looks interesting and passes the initial evaluation phase, prospects are invited to expose their idea to an Entrepreneur’s Reality Check, a sort of friendly “Dragons’ Den.” Here, a group of senior industry experts will apply their skills and experience to give entrepreneurs a deeper evaluation based on the specific dynamics of the industry they plan to enter.

In this way, the Reality Check gives entrepreneurs direct access to industry-specific professionals that they would otherwise have little chance of meeting.

If the idea passes the Reality Check, the entre-preneur can continue working with Bioenterprise staff to receive help with writing patents, building a business plan, assembling financial forecasts, conducting market research, and of course, finding sources of seed money.

The best part is that there is only a nominal cost for all these services, in the range of $300 per month. You’d do well to get two hours of a consul-tant’s time for that kind of money.

But how do you know if your business idea is even worth giving Bioenterprise a call? Too often we fall in love with our own ideas, especially if well-meaning friends and family provide encouragement. Although their intentions may be genuine, rarely are these the best sources to ask for an evaluation of whether you should devote the next few years of your life and much of your savings to your innovation.

However, after working with dozens of ag entre-preneurs over the past 10 years, I have found six simple questions which, if answered honestly, can provide entrepreneurs with a good initial self-evaluation of whether their innovation is ready for the big stage.

Does my invention work? More importantly, can I prove that it works

using industry-recognized standards? The more third-party data you can generate to prove your product delivers on its claims, the better. If you can’t prove to the satisfaction of industry profes-sionals that your product works, there is no need

Innovators are notorious for overestimating their markets, and underestimating their costs

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to even consider the next five questions. As the saying goes, “Without data, you’re just another guy with an opinion.”

Can my invention be protected? That is, can my invention be patented, or is there some

other form of intellectual property protection that can be used to keep competitors at bay. If it cannot be protected, it will be copied. As well, without protection, you can forget about enticing a major company to ever make you an offer. Along the same line, an often neglected question is whether you have freedom to operate. In other words, are you sure you are not infringing on someone else’s patent? Many entrepreneurs for-get to check this, only to have the rug pulled from under their feet after they have invested a large chunk of their savings.

CAN I REGISTER MY INVENTION? Although not necessary with all products, many areas

of agriculture are highly regulated. Do you know how your invention will be regulated, what government agencies will be involved, and whether you will be able to satisfy their ques-tions? Some products, such as pesticides, food additives, or nutraceuticals can be very difficult to register and can cost sev-eral hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some technologies may not be registerable at all.

CAN I MANUFACTURE MY INVENTION?Making a prototype in your workshop is very different

from scaling up into mass production. Do you have the exper-tise and capital resources to construct a modern manufactur-ing facility? Are the raw materials readily available, and will the raw material suppliers sell to you? It is not uncommon for competitors to have exclusive contracts with suppliers of spe-cialized raw materials to keep others out of the industry.

WILL I HAVE CUSTOMERS?What makes me believe that customers will switch from what

they have been using for years and adopt my product? And how will I reach those customers? Distribution tends to be one of the

most difficult steps for entrepreneurs. The best distributors tend to be tied up with the best suppliers, and they may be unwilling to carry your product if it could put that larger relationship at risk. Plus, if your product is destined for the mass retail market, such as with a novel food, gaining shelf space with one of the major food companies can be a daunting task.

WILL I MAKE A PROFIT?After investing all my time, energy and money into this

venture, will the returns be worthwhile? Entrepreneurs often overestimate the market share they can obtain and underes-timate the total cost to bring an invention to market. Unless you have previous experience, you may be surprised by the cost of patent protection, regulatory compliance, third-party research, and marketing. Building an early relationship with your accountant can help avoid nasty surprises along the way.

It isn’t necessary to have full answers to all six questions right away, but eventually each must be addressed. In my opinion the first question, “Does my invention work?” is the most important. If you can honestly say that you have invented something new and useful and can prove it works, it may be time to engage the professional help available at orga-nizations like Bioenterprise and become one of Canada’s next successful ag entrepreneurs. CG

There are many There are many There are many reasons to rinse.reasons to rinse.reasons to rinse.There are many reasons to rinse.There are many There are many There are many reasons to rinse.There are many reasons to rinse.There are many reasons to rinse.There are many There are many There are many reasons to rinse.There are many

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Now, take your empty fertilizer containers along for the ride!Now, take your empty fertilizer containers along for the ride!

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10901A-CFM-5Reasons-QRTPage-CountryGuide.indd 1 4/8/14 4:47 PM


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sk anyone involved in identity-pre-served (IP) or non-GMO soybean trade, and there’s plenty to say in favour of Canada’s reputation abroad and its leadership in quality. Unfortu-

nately, they’ll also tell you that it’s been a tough go in the past two or three years.

Since 2010, as total soybean production in Can-ada has increased, the IP sector’s share of that acre-age has slipped, and slipped some more.

The reasons aren’t hard to understand. Round-up Ready varieties have become so convenient and abundant, many growers have abandoned the IP route, deciding to forgo sizable premiums in favour of an easier growing season.

Besides, a $1 or $2 premium for IP production looks more impressive on $8-per-bushel soybeans than it does with beans at $14.

That’s the hill that the IP sector has faced, and at the 2013 London Farm Show, one seed company representative tested premiums as high as $6.50 — at the time making a bushel of IP soybeans worth more than $20 per bushel — yet found no takers.

But that was March 2013. Today, in 2014, condi-tions in Ontario and abroad look markedly differ-ent, and interest in IP soybeans is showing signs of rebounding.

Even if these conditions last only for a year or two, the industry hopes it will be enough to build some long-term stability.

“Based on what we have contracted this year, and what we’re hearing from some of the competitors, I would say IP acres are up,” says Sue Robert, soybean and dry bean trader for Thompsons Ltd., in Blen-

heim, Ont. “The increase in acres has been tempered by the lack of seed in some varieties, but overall, grower premiums are slightly higher for 2014 than for 2013, which has certainly attracted growers.”

Plus, adds Robert, the spectre of Roundup resis-tance is contributing to some second thoughts by many growers about the wisdom of going completely with GMO crush beans.

“Many growers are saying that if they have to tank mix in order to combat glyphosate-tolerant weeds, they might as well get paid for it,” Robert says. “They’ve shifted back to conventional soy-beans, although we have to see if the shift lasts.”

The other part of the anti-GM sentiment is com-ing specifically from the European Union and, to a lesser degree from increasing consumer demand for labelling and traceability.

“Labelling and traceability will become manda-tory in the future, and all consumers want to know where their food comes from, and that it was grown in a safe and sustainable manner,” says Robert, add-ing it doesn’t mean they want organic or labelling of everything. “But they want assurances that if growers are using chemicals — whether it’s to combat an insect pest or weeds — the pesticide or herbicide is used responsibly, and that any residues are below Health Canada’s established minimum residue levels (MRL).”

Robert says the sophistication of Ontario growers and the network of elevators geared to IP handling should put the province’s IP soybeans at the forefront for traceability.

Contracts booked, looking to 2015

Premiums need to be attractive enough to bring growers back, but there’s a delicate balance that has to be struck. Global IP demand will absorb higher premiums, but only to a point.

“There are parts of the world that definitely want non-GMO, and they won’t take anything else,” says Bob Hart, president of Sevita International. “And there are a lot of parts of the world that would prefer non-GMO but if it gets too expensive, they’ll use GM. So we need to be careful not to price ourselves out of the market.”

On the reboundHigher premiums and strong global demand are rekindling interest in IP soybeans

By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor

P r o d u c t i o n

“ Grower premiums are slightly higher for 2014 than for 2013, which has certainly attracted growers.”

— Sue Robert, Thompsons Ltd.

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Japan and the European Union have been desti-nations of choice for Canadian IP soybeans. How-ever, Hart notes that in Japan, food retailers now have greater influence on pricing. Tofu-based foods are increasingly being used as loss leaders to entice customers, he points out. So tofu processors, along with soy milk processors, are getting squeezed, which explains Hart’s concern about pricing ourselves out of the market.

In the European Union, meanwhile, the U.S. is emerging as an aggressive price competitor. “What we’re hearing is that the Americans are trying to come in cheaper than we are. And in certain areas, their quality is good. Our protein tends to be a little bit higher but Americans can produce good quality.”

Low numbers point to opportunity

Martin Vanderloo, president of Huron Com-modities in Clinton, Ont., is the first to concede there have been challenges with establishing a stronger, more consistent presence for the Canadian IP sec-tor. In 2010, Canadian soybean production was 4.3 million tonnes, with 1.5 million tonnes grown as non-GMOs, or 34.9 per cent of total production. In 2012, overall production jumped to 4.9 million tonnes, yet non-GMO soybeans accounted for 1.0 million tonnes, or only 20.4 per cent.

Then, based on last year’s estimates, Vanderloo

says total production jumped to nearly 5.0 million tonnes, with just 875,000 tonnes of non-GMOs. That’s right around 18 per cent.

“We’ve had a shift upwards in soybean production, but a major decline in non-GMOs,” says Vanderloo. “But I think that here in Ontario, we’ll be back to 25 per cent of total soybean production going to non-GMO varieties, and it could be a little higher than that.”

The biggest change from Vanderloo’s perspec-tive — aside from South American production or a delayed start to the U.S. planting season — is the economic hangover caused by higher commodity prices in the last few years.

“The last few years, farmers would say to us, ‘I’m not going to bother growing non-GMO or IP varieties — it’s just more work, it’s more of a hassle, it’s a bit of a risk, and I’m making so much money growing soybeans, I don’t want to mess with what I’m doing now,’” says Vanderloo. “Then last fall, one of our growers came storming in the door after he finished taking his corn off, and he asked if we have any programs in 2014 for IP soybeans. When we said, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Well, I’m growing all soy-beans, I’m not growing any corn, I can’t afford to grow corn!’”

At the same time, Vanderloo maintains that many of the larger growers refuse to get caught up in the volatility of the commodity market. Year after year,


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Scott Sheppard, who farms near Selkirk, southeast of Simcoe, did a head-to-head comparison of 50 acres of IP soybeans and corn last season.



they stick to corn-soybeans-wheat, and rationalize it through the spreading of workload that the three require, or that there’s a consistency in yield with the three that they can’t afford to put at risk.

Closer to homeScott Sheppard is one of these growers who has

measured Roundup Ready soybeans against IP vari-eties. Sheppard works with his father and brother Trevor on the family’s Sheppland Farms operation near Selkirk, southeast of Simcoe, Ont. The Shep-pards work about 3,200 acres and have a three-year, two-crop rotation with 2,200 acres of IP soybeans for two years, and the other 1,000 planted to wheat. Depending on the economics and the year, they can also finish 7,000 and 7,500 pigs every 16 weeks.

Sheppard farms with a different eye on the IP sector. He’s certainly interested in the economics of growing IP soybeans, but not from the same perspec-tive on global supply and demand or trying to estab-lish greater consistency in Canadian IP production. Those matters fall more to Vanderloo, Hart or even the Grain Farmers of Ontario or the Canadian Soy-bean Export Association (CSEA).

For Sheppard and his father and brother, the con-cerns always land a little closer to home.

“It’s one of those things where you look back every year and it works. We seem to struggle with weed control some years, based on what we get for weather, but we’re always in that 2,000- to 2,500-acre area for IPs,” says Sheppard. Back in April, he was concerned with winterkill in his wheat, so there are challenges and decisions to be made from year to year. “But it comes back to the same thing, where we need so many acres for our nutrient management plan and there are other factors that come into play, and yet every year, there seem to be that same 2,000 to 2,500 acres of IPs.”

As for attracting and maintaining higher produc-tion numbers for IP soybeans, Sheppard points to the costs and convenience, as well as combining. When the price in Chicago is unusually high — on the plus side of $13 or $14 per bushel — and seed compa-nies are offering discounts for early payments with lower-cost chemicals, the advantage often goes to the grower with Roundup Ready soybeans.

Sheppard works with a computer spreadsheet that can compare the costs and revenues of GM soybean varieties versus IP production. The deciding factor is often wrapped up in the harvest.

“With IPs you want to combine your beans, and the guys with Roundup Ready are combining at 8:30 or 9 a.m.; there’s a little bit of dew but they can go, because mud-tagging or staining isn’t an issue to them nor is the moisture,” says Sheppard. “But for us, it’s usually 11 a.m. before we can start combining, because we have to let everything dry up. So it’s not just growing them and your input costs, now you’re going to be shipping them and they have to make grade.”

The first question Sheppard acknowledges when considering growing IP soybeans is, “How much is the premium?” That’s always first, and it’s almost always followed by, “Is the premium worth the effort?”

For the Sheppards, the important answer is to the second question, and the answer is “yes.”

“You hope at the end of the year that there’s more to your bottom line, but it seems that in the ag business, you get good corn prices, good bean prices or good wheat prices, fertilizer goes up $100 per ton, and chemicals go up or seed costs go up,” says Shep-pard. “And it seems at the end of the year you’re working with the same percentage or ratio that you had a year before.” CG

P r o d u c t i o n

The Sleeping Giant is awakeThe economic heft of China’s 1.5 billion people is undeniable, and maybe

unfathomable.Some six years ago, Martin Vanderloo, president of Huron Commodities in

Clinton, Ont., recalls going on a trade mission to China and speaking with a farm manager who was in charge of about 14,000 acres of farmland. Aside from learning that his 1,250 employees did everything by hand — seeding, weeding and harvesting — Vanderloo also learned their pay was roughly $50 to $60 per worker per month.

Vanderloo was also told — rather brusquely — that those wages were con-siderably higher than elsewhere in the country. And the money the employees were making on the farm was allowing them to eat better, purchase more home electronics and other luxuries, and generally live better.

now, however, those same workers in rural areas are making between $1,000 and $1,200 a month (in the cities, it’s closer to $2,000).

“When you consider that, and the buying power that’s created just in six years — from a rural point of view — that’s incredible,” says Vanderloo. “And eating more meat is their no. 1 priority, and from what I understand, China is concentrating on corn production, but they still need a source of protein. And that’s where a lot of these soybean imports are coming from.”

It’s why Chinese demand for soybeans in the past couple of years has been very brisk.

But another indicator of just how massive the Chinese economy is came in a news report from Reuters last February. The Chinese government announced it planned to spend $330 billion (two trillion yuan) to solve its water pollution issues. Although the country holds 20 per cent of the world’s population, it has just seven per cent of its water resources. The situation in the north, stated the report, was particularly worrisome, with less water per capita in some regions than in the Middle east.

no specific details on timing or where the money was coming from were available in the February report. But the money pledged to solve the country’s water woes was (in addition to) the $277 billion (1.7 trillion yuan) set aside by Beijing to battle its widely publicized problem with air pollution.

But that’s still $607 billion budgeted for pollution — and that’s the power of China.


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n Ontario alone, farmers are now facing three different weeds with resistance to glyphosate, and a considerably longer list of those that are resistant to Group 2 chemistries.

No one is blaming farmers, or saying today’s farmers aren’t as sharp as their parents. After all, today’s farmers have had to learn about new pests, new diseases, new electronics, new marketing tools… the list is endless.

But it’s undeniable that with the rapid uptake of Roundup Ready and Group 2 use in the past 17 years, some of our weed-control knowledge has ebbed away, including some knowledge that we may need.

Group 2s still usefulFor Steve Johns, the issue is partly terminol-

ogy, including whether a herbicide is truly systemic. “That gets into marketing and I think it’s been a bit misleading.”

Some products like glyphosates and phenoxy herbicides can get inside and move around in a weed. Others may be called systemic, but they may actu-ally only be trans-laminar, meaning they may only penetrate into the leaf, says Johns, agronomic sales manager with Syngenta Canada.

The difference for growers is in whether they can rely on large droplets to disperse within the plant, or whether they need finer droplets for more complete coverage.

Nor is that the only concern for Johns who also farms just outside of Seaforth, Ont. where he has employed a diverse rotation of chemistries, depend-ing on whether he’s growing corn or soybeans.

Group 2 resistance, he says, isn’t as simple as the phrase might suggest. “Particularly in Group 2 resistance and IP soybeans, I can take you to fields where ragweed is resistant to two of three families of Group 2s yet still seems to be taken out by the third family,” says Johns. “So we have weeds that are resistant to imidazolinones (imis) and sulfonyl-ureas (SUs), but triazolopyrimidine chemistry, like Broadstrike, still seems to work.”

Johns adds that University of Guelph weed scien-tist François Tardif has published a lot of work on nightshade populations which are highly resistant to imis, and one SU that can’t be used on soybeans. But the nightshade is still sensitive to primisulfuron and pyrimadine chemistries such as Broadstrike.

“In fact, my advice to a lot of retailers and grow-ers is that with Group 2 resistance, we’re not doing the subject justice,” Johns says. “A weed could be clearly resistant to imis such as Pursuit, or sulfonyl-ureas like Classic, and you still may have a viable tool with something like Broadstrike or FirstRate. And there’s value in rotating within those chemis-tries, of the three families of Group 2s.

“One of the primary things I talk about with guys, is always at fall harvest, when you combine your crop, what do you see for weeds?” Johns says. “That tells you where you need to start adjusting your pro-gram. Guys who weren’t using that much residual, they’re saying, ‘I have nightshade and lots of it!’”

Fine tuning for weedsWith more resistance, it’s time to be sure we’re using the right words the right way


P r o d u c t i o n

Sometimes ragweed may show resistance to some Group 2 products but be taken out by others.

P R O D U C T I O N

Three issues for glyphosateWith glyphosate, it’s been easy to feel that farm-

ers are becoming too reliant on the chemistry, yet Johns says this is really only part of a much more complex issue. There are now three shortcomings with glyphosate: weeds that germinate outside of their window (seedling dandelion, Eastern black nightshade), weeds that are not affected by glypho-sate (tufted vetch, nutsedge) and weeds that glypho-sate should work on but which are now resistant (Canada fleabane, giant ragweed, common ragweed).

Johns has also been intrigued by the latest research by University of Guelph’s Clarence Swan-ton, to redefine the critical weed-free period. That work shows that your weeds need to be dead the day your corn plant emerges from the ground. That means dead, not just sprayed, and it means there should be no sign of green tissue on the weed.

Swanton’s work indicates that emerging crop leaves can sense that surrounding weeds are not of their species. It is, says Johns, an important discovery.

Education is a good thingRob Miller, technical development manager with

BASF Canada, cites another example with Group 14 PPO (Protoporphyrinogen oxidase) inhibitors, where a product such as Eragon (pyrimidine) is a pre-plant product whereas Reflex (fomesafen, a diphenyl-ether), is the same class of chemistry, yet it can be used as a post-emerge in soybeans.

“In general, there always needs to be some educa-tion around the different modes of action and the different groups of chemistries,” says Miller, based in London, Ont. “Even within the same group of chem-istry, the products are different.”

On a positive note, Miller believes there’s some-thing to be learned through the increasing challenges of Roundup Ready systems. Now, with the risk of resistance, farmers are seeing they need to focus more on the different modes of action and the dif-ferent types of herbicide chemistry, making sure they rotate their chemistry both within each crop and across all of the other crops in the rotation as well.

“It’s the responsibility of the whole industry to pro-vide the proper education and proper awareness on the best management practices,” Miller says. “And I think farmers are starting to adapt to that, they’re starting to listen and pay attention. They’re looking at it more from the business side, and if they want to have good yields, then they need to have good weed control.”

Simple is bestDave Kloppenburg is witnessing the same trends

and the refamiliarizing with technologies and chem-istries that Miller and Johns are seeing. But he still wants to keep things simple.

“For practical purposes, a knowledge of her-bicide groups is a good place to start,” says Klop-penburg, row crop segment manager for DuPont Pioneer. “People need a good knowledge of herbi-cide groups, that you have multiple groups in the program, and that those groups are based primarily on mode of action. The site of action is interesting, and it does have real impacts in the field, where you might have a pigweed population that is resistant to one type of Group 2 but still susceptible to another type, where the imis bind in one place and SUs bind in another place on the enzyme but they both have the same mode of action.”

With terms such as “contact” and “systemic,” Kloppenburg wonders if the industry couldn’t do a better of job of standardizing the terminology. Some would call glyphosate a contact product, yet it’s actually a systemic. Then there are products with contact activity which are also non-systemic.

“It’s almost like a subset, and then there are products that have contact activity that may or may not be systemic, but then combined with soil activ-ity, that becomes important as you look at resistance management,” says Kloppenburg.

Kloppenburg says there’s a need to start simple and build from there, but that there’s also a sense of urgency.

“The lesson is that we have to continue worrying about resistance and the most important thing is to have diversity,” Kloppenburg says. “That’s going to be the reality going forward.” CG

P R O D U C T I O N

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he battle with weeds just never seems to end, and now, as if resistant weeds, dandelions or Eastern black nightshade don’t provide enough challenges, there’s some concern that tufted vetch will be a

growing issue for an increasing number of farmers.To be fair, Canada fleabane, giant ragweed and

common ragweed are still the “Big Three” when it comes to problem weeds in Ontario, mostly by virtue of their resistance to glyphosate. But tufted vetch (as opposed to the hairy vetch varieties grown as a forage) has captured the attention of farmers and researchers.

Anecdotal reports out of Lambton County refer to the binding action the weed can exert on harvest-ing equipment, and research by François Tardif at the University of Guelph indicates glyphosate is no longer effective in controlling vetch.

At 1.0 and 2.0 l/ac. (the typical rates for Roundup Ready soybeans) glyphosate only provided 57 and 72 per cent control, respectively. Although 3.0 l/ac. pro-vided 85 per cent control and 4.0 l/ac. provided 98

per cent, neither rate is registered for use in Roundup Ready soybeans.

“Vetch as a weed has been around for decades,” says Darren Robinson, associate professor and horticultural weed specialist with the University of Guelph’s Ridgetown Campus. He recalls learning about tufted vetch while a student in Clarence Swan-ton’s classes.

“I do think growers are finding it more and more in fields, associated with no till and having winter cereals in the rotation,” Robinson says. “It’s build-ing up, but I don’t think glyphosate resistance is the problem, I think it’s more that it’s a perennial weed that produces seeds that can remain viable for years, and it has that horizontal root system. It can become really persistent, especially in no-till situations.”

What makes it difficult?Known as a “creeping” perennial, vetch can

reproduce not only from seeds but from the hori-zontal root buds. It’s also tolerant to a variety of herbicides or unaffected by others including thifen-

Tufted vetch takes offTufted vetch not a new weed, just a different weed challenge


P r o d u c t i o n

“�Although�vetch��can�be�an�issue��in�wheat�fields,�particularly�at��harvest,�it’s�also��a�challenge�in��soybean�fields.”

Photo courtesy of Mike cowbrough, oMAf

p r o d u c t i o n


p r o d u c t i o n

sulfuron methyl/tribenuron methyl (Refine Extra) and bromoxynil/MCPA (Buctril M). The weed also emerges late, usually after the window for effective herbicide applications.

As Robinson notes, vetch can often be found in soybeans or corn, but it seems to have found its niche in winter wheat.

“Part of it has to do with the timing of when you can apply certain herbicides in winter wheat,” says Robinson, adding that using a fall-applied herbicide is a logical idea. The problem is finding the right herbicide; there aren’t active ingredients that can be safely applied in the fall that give commercially acceptable control of vetch. With that in mind, Rob-inson says he has seen better control from fluroxypyr plus MCPA (Trophy).

“I know Peter Sikkema has looked at it, and optimally, you want to time your applications for plants that are at the two- to four-leaf stage,” says Robinson. “I don’t think it’s possible in all situations with vetch because of when you can actually apply Trophy. But definitely it’s very good, and it will give you commercially acceptable control. So with winter

wheat, it has to be at the three-tiller stage. And we’re talking about 90 per cent control.”

In soybeans, Robinson has seen research that indicates S-metoloachlor (and R-enantiomer) and metribuzin (Boundary) would be the best pre-emerge for IP soybeans. But that would also require a fol-lowup with fomesafen (Reflex) and thifensulfuron methyl (Pinnacle). In corn, he says, dicamba, and mesiotrone (Callisto) are good options. Robinson adds that he hasn’t heard of the same issues with vetch in corn as in winter wheat, and he believes that may have something to do with tillage practices employed in corn.

As for yield losses, again, the research isn’t exten-sive. Robinson has seen figures that cite yield reduc-tions of 60 to 70 per cent, but those are in mixed weed populations with vetch as one of the species. He says he wouldn’t be surprised to see yield losses of between 30 and 40 per cent.

“But it’s not just yield losses,” says Robinson. “I know it can really cause problems with running equipment through the field. It’s not bindweed but it can really bind around equipment.” CG

Table 1. TufTed veTch conTrol in winTer wheaTProduct* (ranked from 1 to 12) (active ingredient)

Product rate/acre (a.i. rate/ha)

Average control (%) (6 to 8 weeks after application)

Range in control (%)

# of Trials

TROPHY1 (TROPHY A plus TROPHY B) (fluroxypyr plus MCPA)

0.24 l/ac + 0.45 l/ac (108 g/ha + 560 g/ha)

99 99 1

BANVEL II or ORACLE (dicamba)

0.12 l/ac. (0.139 kg/ha)

87 81-96 3

2,4-D amine (660 g/l) (2,4-D)

0.52 l/ac. (850 g/ha)

85 75-94 2

DYVEL (dicamba/MCPA)

0.5 l/ac. (0.525 kg/ha)

84 59-98 3

TARGET or TRACKER or SWORD (dicamba/MCPA/mecoprop)

0.6 l/ac. (0.6 kg/ha)

84 64-99 3

2,4-D ester (660 g/l) (2,4-D)

0.52 l/ac. (850 g/ha)

81 58-100 3

ESTAPROP or DICHLOROPROP D or TURBOPROP (dichloroprop/2,4-D)

0.7 l/ac. (1.017 kg/ha)

78 40-100 3

MCPA ester (600 g/l) (MCPA)

0.56 l/ac. (850 g/ha)

77 74-82 3

LONTREL 360 (clopyralid)

0.22 l/ac. (0.2 kg/ha)

76 76 1

MCPA amine (600 g/l) (MCPA)

0.56 l/ac. (850 g/ha)

72 54-89 2

REFINE SG plus non-ionic surfactant (thifensulfuron-methyl/tribenuron methyl)

12 g/ac + 0.2% v/v (15 g/ha)

54 34-80 3

BUCTRIL M + REFINE SG (bromoxynil/MCPA + thifensulfuron-methyl/tribenuron methyl)

0.4 l /ac + 4 g/ac. (560 g/ha + 5 g/ha)

52 52 1

BUCTRIL M or BADGE, LOGIC M, MEXTROL (bromoxynil/MCPA)

0.4 l/ac. or 0.5 l/ac. (0.56 kg/ha)

51 40-63 3

* Last revised April 2011. • 1 Indicates product sold as a co-pack containing the herbicides listed in parenthesis.

SOURCE: Dr. P. H. Sikkema, department of plant agriculture, University of Guelph (Ridgetown College)


P R O D U C T I O N

leaning the sprayer is a critical part of every spray day. Pesticide residues clog and corrode equipment and can injure crops. So what is the best process for sprayer cleanout?

Operators should clean out their sprayers every time they switch pesticides, but respondents of a sur-vey conducted by Colorado State University in 2013 said they only did it 60 per cent of the time. Opera-tors should also clean out the sprayer when changing sites (e.g. moving from corn into soybeans) but only 31 per cent did so.

Finally, operators should clean out the sprayer at the end of the day, even if they intend to spray the same product the next day. Again, however, only 18 per cent did so.

These relatively low figures might partially account for the fact that 16 per cent of operators admitted to seeing off-target damage in recent years.

So, why aren’t producers cleaning their sprayers more frequently?

Respondents indicated that the biggest constraints aren’t time or cost, but the lack of a suitable place to clean the sprayer, the limited availability of clean water and limited places to put the rinsates.

Ideally, the sprayer should be cleaned at the site where product was applied. The location should not contaminate water supplies or nearby sensitive sites and should not be readily accessible to people,

pets or livestock. The easiest way to do this is to have rinse water available in the field (e.g. on the sprayer or a support vehicle) so the rinsate can be applied back onto crop. Alternately, the sprayer can be cleaned at the loading area, but there should be a pad impervious to water with a sump to catch wash water and rinsate.

A review of several recommended protocols for tank cleaning reveals four key steps:1. Avoid having excess spray mix left over (except

for the unavoidable volume in the ballast);2. Perform a low-volume rinse of the tank;3. Use some form of tank cleaner (as indicated on the

pesticide label) in a second low-volume rinse, and; 4. Finish with a third low-volume rinse.

According to the results of this survey, the size of the tank being cleaned was not a factor. Perhaps sur-prisingly, the impact of cleaning agents was unclear. What was obvious was that the more rinses, the more effective the cleanout. Further, as long as the volume used to rinse cleared any baffles in the tank, and was sufficient to rinse all surfaces, volumes as low as 10 per cent of the overall tank volume were able to clean the tank by 99 per cent when triple rinsing. CG

This is an edited version; the full report as shared with COUNTRY GUIDE can be found at: http://spray-ers101.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Sprayer-Cleanout-TPSA-presentation-2014-Walker.pdf).

What is the best way to clean your sprayer?

# PestPatrol with Mike Cowbrough, OMAF and MRA Have a question you want answered?Hashtag #PestPatrol on twitter.com to @cowbrough or email Mike at [email protected].

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n recent years, Canadian producers have significantly increased their use of genetically modified crops. At the same time, a growing number of farms are obtaining organic certification. The concurrent expansion of these two practices will almost inevitably lead to GM and

organic fields being adjacent. What are the legal implications when GM products drift onto a neighbour’s field?

Particle drift can have serious repercussions. Organic farm-ers may lose their certification, which can take years to obtain again. Non-organic farmers can also be affected, since certain importers have strict rules about GM content and may close their borders if GM particulates are detected in any shipments.

Many countries in Europe and South America have set out legal regimes apportioning liability when GM particles travel. A test case went to trial in Australia in February; the judge is expected to release his decision shortly. How would a Cana-dian court tackle this issue?

One possibility is that a court would compare escaping particles to escaping cattle. Courts have long held that you must pay your neighbour for losses suffered at the “hooves and teeth” of escaping cattle. The underlying principle is that when you keep animals — which have a propensity to escape and cause harm — for your own benefit, you must bear the risk of the damage they could cause, and compensate others if that risk actualizes.

A court could expand this principle to cases where a farmer plants GM crops, as seeds or particles may drift and can cause harm to non-GM growers. Under this analogy, producers who grow GM crops for their own profit could be liable for dam-age caused to neighbours’ fields, including the losses suffered if they lose access to organic or other markets.

Policy considerationsBefore making the jump to a new liability regime, a judge

will consider whether there are policy reasons not to expand the law to the new situation.

There are some policy reasons that might prevent such an expansion. First, courts are reluctant to put someone in a posi-tion where they could be liable for an “indeterminate amount for an indeterminate time to an indeterminate class.” Since GM particles can travel long distances, and could have serious finan-cial and international trade implications, imposing liability on GM producers might create too much risk and uncertainty.

Second, courts are cautious not to make someone liable for following ordinary business practices. As common farming practice evolves to include the use of GM crops, the law may well evolve to embrace that practice.

Third, there may be nothing that a farmer can do to pre-vent the escape of GM particles. Unlike cattle, which can be contained with fencing commensurate with animals’ abilities, GM particles may escape regardless of the protections used.

Holding a farmer liable for any drift, even if all precautions were taken, would contradict the law’s long-standing support for coexistence of different practices where possible.

Best practicesWe do not yet know if a court would consider any of these

policy reasons in deciding whether liability for escaping cattle might be extended to liability for escaping GM particles. The legislature may also step in and codify responsibilities. Until then, there are some ways that both GM and organic producers can protect their interests.

First, if you use GM seed, follow the licensing agreement of the crop developer. For example, Monsanto’s Technology Stew-ardship Agreement requires a five-metre buffer zone around any GM field. Compliance with these terms will not be a full defence, but failing to follow them will almost certainly be negligent.

Second, where there are options for planting GM crops, choose the one that best protects your neighbour. If only some fields will have GM seeds, choose fields away from a sensitive neighbour where possible. When harvesting, swathing can result in more drift than direct heading, so it may be necessary to direct head to protect a neighbour.

Organic farmers should also take precautions. First, know the governing regulations for your organic organization. Some organic classifications disallow produce from a field where pro-hibited products were “applied,” but accept crops if prohibited products arrived by “environmental contamination.” Ensure you understand your vulnerability and risk.

Second, if you suspect contamination, keep records. Docu-ment what was discovered, where, when, the prevailing winds, and what you have observed of your neighbour’s practices. Take photographs where possible (this advice applies to any type of legal dispute: the person with best records almost always has the upper hand).

The last two pieces of advice apply to both sides of the dis-pute. If you seek the advice of an agronomist or other expert before planting, disclose all relevant information to your adviser — including knowledge of your neighbour’s practices — and follow the advice received or document why you acted against it. Failure to share all the facts or ignoring your advisers could be used as evidence of unreasonable practices.

Finally, talk to each other. Explain what you are doing, what concerns you have, how your neighbour’s actions might affect you, and suggestions for accommodating each other. In many cases, the conversation could prevent the problem. In every case, it will demonstrate that you tried to be reasonable, and judges always try to find in favour of “the reasonable person.” CG

Naomi Loewith is a business litigator at Lenczner Slaght in Toronto. Naomi represents clients across a range of sectors in civil litigation, administrative disputes and regulatory proceedings.

L e g a L

As the wind blowsThe legal implications of particle drift

By Naomi Loewith, lawyer at Lenczner Slaght

w e a t h e r


June 15 through July to August 9, 2014

COOL WITH WET SPELLS JUNEWARM WITH T/STORMS JULY/AUGUST

WARMWITH NEAR-

NORMALRAINFALL

Hot spells

Scattered

T/storms

WARMWITH NEAR-

NORMALRAINFALL

HotT/storms

July/Aug.

Hot

T/storms

July/Aug.

CoolShoweryJune

CoolShowery

June

WarmShowery

ONTARIOJune 15-21: Sunny and mostly seasonable but showers or heavy thunderstorms on a couple of days. Cool, showery northwest.June 22-28: Warm and mostly sunny but hotter, muggy days set off some locally severe thunderstorms in the south. June 29-July 5: Warm, sunny and hazy most days with scattered heavier thunder-storms on a couple of hotter, humid days.July 6-12: Generally sunny and often hot, humid. Expect scattered heavy thunder-storm activity at times. July 13-19: Passing thunderstorms occur on a couple of occasions, otherwise sunny, humid. Warm to hot temperatures. July 20-26: A chance of a few heavier thunderstorms in places this week, other-wise mostly sunny with seasonal tempera-tures.July 27-Aug. 2: Sunny with comfortable temp. Scattered shower or thunderstorm activity on a couple of days. Blustery.Aug. 3-9: Changeable temperatures and blustery. Sunshine alternates with some rain. Cooler northwest.

QUEBECJune 15-21: Generally sunny aside from showers or heavy thunderstorms on a cou-ple of occasions. Seasonal to milder. June 22-28: Sunny and warm on many days but expect showers or heavier thun-derstorms on hotter, humid days. June 29-July 5: Humid and quite warm in the south with scattered, heavy thunder-storm activity. Showery, warm north.July 6-12: Mainly sunny and often hot,

humid triggering heavy thunderstorm activity on two or three occasions.July 13-19: Sunshine and hot temper-atures dominate but look for scattered thunderstorms possibly heavy in a few localities.July 20-26: Seasonable temperatures with isolated showers but warmer, muggy on a couple of days resulting in thunderstorms. July 27-Aug. 2: Pleasant temperatures under considerable sunshine. Shower or thundershower activity in a few areas.Aug. 3-9: Sunny, warm overall but cooler, blustery on a couple of days bringing some rain or showers.

ATLANTIC PROVINCESJune 15-21: Seasonal to occasionally cool. Blustery. Scattered showers, thun-derstorms west with occasional rain, fog east.June 22-28: Pleasant, warm days are interspersed with cooler, rainy days east and thundershowers west.June 29-July 5: Mostly sunny with coastal fog. Scattered showers and seasonal east, a few thunderstorms and warm west.July 6-12: Warm to occasionally hot under considerable sunshine. Scattered shower or heavier thunderstorm activity.July 13-19: Pleasant with seasonal tem-peratures. A couple of humid, hot days set off showers east and thunderstorms west.July 20-26: Warm temperatures on most days with sunny skies and coastal fog. Iso-lated showers or thunderstorms.July 27-Aug. 2: Seasonable temperatures

and generally sunny but showers occur on a couple of occasions.Aug. 3-9: Changeable temperatures and blustery. Sunny skies most days but a few showers at a few localities.

June 15 through July to August 9, 2014

NATIONAL HIGHLIGHTSCool and often wet conditions are expected in June over most of Central Canada from the Prairies eastward to Ontario and Que-bec. In July, however, a warmer and drier regime should return. Look for normal shower activity in all of these areas through-out the summer although we expect to see occasional thunderstorms with local hail, strong winds and heavier downpours. On the opposite sides of the country, in Brit-ish Columbia and the Atlantic provinces, look for pleasant summer weather under an upper-level high-pressure area. This should result in warmer-than-normal temperatures and near-normal rainfall in these areas.

Prepared by meteorologist Larry Romaniuk of Weatherite Services. Forecasts should be 80 per cent accurate for your area; expect variations by a day or two due to changeable speed of weather systems.

NEAR NORMAL MILDER THAN NORMAL


n the early days of European settlement, churches played a pivotal role in rural Canada. In fact, says Rev. Dr. Cam Harder, an ordained Lutheran minister and theology professor at the University of Saskatchewan, churches were

the key to the cultural life of a community.The same was true in the East, where traditionally

the church was more than a place of worship, agrees Dr. John Young, a United Church minister and pro-fessor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. The church was often the only meeting place in town and was used not only for church functions but also as a meeting place for non-church groups.

But now, those churches are under increasing threat.

It isn’t new. Rural depopulation has meant that many churches, once the hub of the local community, have closed, with the outlook made worse by the fact that between 1960 and 1975, church attendance dropped from 60 per cent to 30 per cent, according to University of Lethbridge sociology professor, Dr. Regi-nald Bibby in his e-book, A New DAy — The Resil-ieNce AND ResTRucTuRiNg of ReligioN iN cANADA.

The mainline Protestant churches — United, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Anglican — were the hardest hit, Bibby writes.

Yet Bibby’s research shows some other interesting trends. While the proportion of Canadians identify-ing as Roman Catholic has remained stable at 40 per cent for the past 70 years, the percentage of Canadi-ans who are evangelical Christian (such as Baptist, Pentecostal, Mennonite, Nazarene and Alliance) has increased from eight to 11 per cent (with most of the increase taking place in the last 15 years) and the percentage of those of non-Christian faith (e.g. Muslim, Sikh, Hindu) has increased from three to eight per cent.

The biggest change, though, has been in the per-centage of Canadians claiming “no religion,” which has jumped from one to 25 per cent.

Mainline Protestant churches also tend to have older congregations than the Roman Catholic and evangelical Christian churches.

Church attendance is determined by three factors: natural increase (births minus deaths), migration (to and from other groups) and finally performance (how well the church meets the needs of its members).

Before 1950, people would attend church out of obligation, explains Bibby, but today many will only attend if they feel they get value for their time spent.

Churches which work to identify and address the specific needs of their members are the most success-ful, says Young. “You have to meet people where they’re at,” he emphasizes.

For example, many evangelical churches have seen their attendance increase because they have hired youth pastors and offer youth programming, says Young. They have been innovative and they have reached out to the community, he says.

While there has been a hollowing out of rural institutions with the closing of post offices, schools and local stores, in general rural churches have shown more resilience than their suburban or urban counterparts.

Those moving into rural areas tend to have a strong sense of community, explains Young. And those with deep family roots tend to value tradi-tion, which means they are more likely to attend the church of their ancestors.

Despite the downward trend in church atten-dance, religion is definitely not dead in Canada, say Bibby. “What transpires in Canada as far as the “religion/no religion” balance will depend largely on the collective performance of its religious groups,” he writes.

Bibby encourages people to work together, to seek out like-minded individuals and to build bridges within the same denomination or other denomina-tions with shared values.

Many churches in rural Canada are doing just that.

New life for rural churches

By Helen Lammers-Helps

These rural churches are finding strength and a new sense of mission in their rural communities

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To better prepare ministers and priests of all denominations for rural ministry, Rev. Harder

has established the Centre for Rural Community Leadership and Ministry (CiRCLe M) at the Uni-versity of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. The centre hosts an annual conference and provides training, mentoring and resources to help rural clergy better serve their rural congregations and contribute to the development of healthy communities.

In addition to their focus on meeting the congre-gation’s spiritual needs, church leaders are trained to assist in times of crisis, provide rituals to process life

events, and have skills in caregiving and reconcilia-tion, he continues.

Churches which meet the needs of their con-gregations and look for innovative ways to build bridges within their communities, will continue to flourish in changing times.

Although cars and technology mean that people aren’t as tied to their local community today as they once were, churches can still provide important services to the community, Harder asserts. “They have buildings, committed volunteers, leaders, fundraising structures and a focus on building hope and human capacity.” CG

In Plaster Rock, a village of about 1,100 in the woods of New Brunswick, the Anglican and United

Church congregations are taking turns holding Sunday services. Each church has a half-time minister, says the United Church pastor, Amanda Longmoore.

“It’s going really well,” says Longmoore. “People are attending each week. There’s a new energy and it’s better for community outreach.” If things con-tinue to go well, they will look at closing one of the two church buildings. “That will be hard,” admits Longmoore. “People are really attached to their buildings. People have to be ready, but if they are ready, you can do a lot.”

When the Loyalists settled the southern St. John River Valley in New Brunswick following the Amer-ican Revolution, they built an Anglican Church every few miles along the river. With an aging and

declining population, it was no longer sustainable to keep all of these churches open, explains Rev. Michael Caines, the current rector of the Anglican Church of the Resurrection in Grand Bay-Westfield.

A decade ago the seven small congregations were combined into one parish. The churches were decon-secrated and the proceeds from the sale of the church properties were used to build a new modern church, which was completed three years ago. “They took their time, collected pictures and made archives of the old churches,” explains Caines. Every stained glass window from the old churches was saved and hung in the centre of the new church to preserve the history. “There were hurt feelings and feelings of loss. It was rocky at times, as expected,” says Caines. But, he emphasizes, everyone was consulted and had a chance to say their opinions.

In the tiny hamlet of Kinkora in southwestern Ontario the parishioners of St. Patrick’s Roman

Catholic Church rallied to raise $2 million to restore their 1882 church and build a new parish hall. The money was raised through fundraisers such as galas, auctions, recycling drives, bake sales and garage sales, says Francis Ryan, the church caretaker.

Not only did the congregation of 200 families raise

the money needed, they also pitched in to do much of the work. For example, to remedy a mould problem caused by the damp crawl space beneath the church, a crew of 30 volunteers with wheelbarrows filled the crawl space with stone and poured a concrete floor.

In 2007 the Architectural Conservancy Association of Ontario, a non-profit organization, recognized the quality of the St. Patrick’s restoration with an award.

Located in the tip of southwestern Ontario, three Roman Catholic churches, two in Wallaceburg

and one in nearby Port Lambton, were successfully clustered 10 years ago due to a shortage of clergy. Where there were four priests there are now two, but each church has remained open and “does its own thing,” explains Father Greg Bonin, the pastor of the Holy Redeemer cluster.

Today, with the aid of an associate pastor, a dea-con and several lay staff including two youth ministry co-ordinators and a pastoral minister, each church is a vibrant community with many active youth. Many of the children who grew up in the faith are return-ing with their own children. With fewer priests to say Mass, the Mass schedule had to change, says Fr. Bonin. “People don’t like change, but we persevered.”

In the southwestern corner of Manitoba, not far from the Saskatchewan and North Dakota

borders, lies the little community of Goodlands, population 25. Here the evangelical Fellowship Community Church is thriving. Originally a United Church, 22 years ago the church switched alle-giance to the Congregational Christian Church in order to have more independence. Pastor Glen Whetter says the church has worked hard at being a church that’s relevant to young families. They offer a play group for parents with young children and have involved young families in their planning

process. “We’ve made efforts to build relationships with the community,” he says.

In particular, Whetter has set his sights on reinvent-ing what he calls kitchen table ministry. He laments that even in rural Manitoba nobody seems to take the time to visit with their neighbours anymore. While people may be connecting through Facebook, he says they are missing the face-to-face contact. Research has shown that despite technology, people in Canada are lonelier than ever, he says. His congregation is mak-ing a concerted effort to help people figure out how to make casual visiting a part of their lives again.


h e a lt h

Digestion 101

igestion occurs automatically, so you probably don’t even think about it unless you are bothered by a com-plaint like indigestion. Coping with digestive complaints, however, is a

multimillion-dollar business, and the products avail-able are numerous.

Your digestive tract begins at your mouth and ends at the other end with your rectum. It is respon-sible for the absorption of water, nutrients and min-erals. Food is chewed and swallowed in the mouth, and then it is digested by enzymes in your stomach. Further breakdown and absorption occur in the small intestine, which is from 18 to 23 feet long in adults. The “leftovers” pass to the shorter large intestine (about five feet long), where more absorp-tion occurs, mainly of water.

Finally, anything remaining is excreted. The whole process takes four to six hours with varia-tions depending upon the type of food you eat and your health.

Poor nutrition can be related to your diet, but it can also be the result of factors that reduce nutrient absorption. Such factors can include inflammatory bowel problems (such as Crohn’s disease), low levels of digestive enzymes, low stomach acid, gluten intol-erance (i.e. celiac disease), and lactose intolerance.

Canada’s Food Guide is a great place to begin for good nutrition, but check for any of these other prob-lems if your nutrition is poor regardless of your diet.

Indigestion may be merely bothersome if it only occurs occasionally. If it becomes chronic, however, it can affect your overall health. Gastrointestinal esophageal reflux or GERD is the term used when indigestion, along with burping and heartburn, seem to occur daily. About a quarter of Canadians are bothered.

Between the various sections of the gastrointesti-nal tract, sphincters prevent food material from mov-ing backwards. With GERD, the sphincter between the stomach and esophagus has lost its “elasticity” meaning it doesn’t close properly.

If you have indigestion, check first to see if you can identify any foods that are especially problem-

atic, for example fatty foods, chocolate, or spicy foods. Keeping a food diary may help pinpoint the offending foods which then can be avoided. Some drugs such as alcohol, caffeine, iron, some antibiot-ics, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen and naproxen can cause stomach irrita-tion, which adds to the problem.

Smoking increases stomach acid, relaxes the sphincter, and reduces saliva production which also can contribute to indigestion.

Pregnancy, being overweight, psychological con-ditions (such as stage fright), diabetes, and gall blad-der disease are other contributors to indigestion and GERD. With diabetes, the problem may also be a slowing of peristalsis (i.e. the intestinal contractions that move food through the system). Drugs such as metoclopramide or domperidone may improve the movement of food.

Antacids neutralize acid in the stomach. Although they are fast-acting, however, they are also short-acting and can absorb medications that then pass through you. Acid blockers such as ranitidine and famotidine block the release of stomach acid, thereby relieving symptoms. Many are available without prescriptions, but if you find yourself using them on a regular basis, you should have your symptoms checked to make sure there is nothing more serious happening.

Proton pump inhibitors or PPIs such as omepra-zole and rabeprazole stop cells in your stomach from “pumping-out” acid. They are longer acting, and generally they are more potent acid reducers, but they may interfere with calcium absorption as well as the heart medication clopidogrel.

Gas can be an embarrassing problem. Burping or belching is known as eructation, and if the gas is expelled rectally, flatulence. You normally have gas about six to 20 times each day. It is the result of swallowed air, for example when chewing gum, eat-ing too fast, or drinking carbonated beverages. If you think you have more gas than normal, keep a record and note your diet and foods. You may be able to pinpoint the problem.

Good digestion is the starting point for good nutrition, but you need to eat a balanced diet, avoid-ing foods that may be problematic. Also, don’t rush your eating. Chew your food about 20 times for firmer foods and five to 10 times for softer ones. It turns out your mother was right, so do as she said. Sit down, eat more slowly, and chew!

Marie Berry is a lawyer/pharmacist intersted in health and education.

The newest anticoagulants seem to be advertised heavily in American media, and with the aging of the population more people are using them, especially for atrial fibrillation. next issue, we’ll have a look at the older anticoagulant warfarin and compare it to the newer ones.

By Marie Berry


“�I’m�getting�old�but�I’m�not�old�yet�I’m�already�worried�that�I�might�forget�How�to�laugh,�how�to�love�How�to�live,�how�to�learn�I�want�to�die�with�a�smile�when�it�comes�my�turn.”

David Myles, a folksinger from Nova Scotia, wrote “When It Comes My Turn.”

He says he wrote it during his “quarter life crisis.” It is not so much a song about growing old, he says, as it is about staying young.

Myles wrote the final verse after watching his aunts, uncles and parents “doing all the things they do to keep themselves happy as they grow older.” “�Maybe�I’ll�start�bowling,�maybe�I’ll�play�bridge�Maybe�I’ll�join�a�band�with�my�own�grandkids�I�don’t�care�if�it�kills�me�I’m�gonna�do�what�it�takes�To�keep�some�warmth�in�my�heart�and�a�smile�on�my�face.”

Myles reserves bowling and bridge for the second and third stages of life. I suspect many young people feel the same. Join-ing organizations and participating in group activities seems the domain of those more advanced in life.

American political scientist Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone — The CollApse And RevivAl of AmeRiCAn CommuniTy observed that the highest level of participation in clubs, churches and community events was in the early 1950s. Only 10 per cent of homes had television. By the late 1950s most homes had television sets and membership in organizations had dropped 90 per cent.

Putnam chose bowling to illustrate. While the number of people who bowled increased by 10 per cent, the number of bowling leagues decreased by 40 per cent. More bowling — fewer leagues. Putnam sees shared activities, joint projects and volunteering as sources of strength for communities. He defines these assets as “social capital.” Connections function as “social glue,” and help people co-operate with one another for the benefit of all.

Andrew Heywood, a British writer, describes social capital as the level of trust and the sense of social connectedness that help promote stability, cohesion and prosperity, “what turn the ‘I’ into ‘we.’”

Putnam’s research indicated that one in four Americans vol-unteered in groups and organizations in 1974. Yet 25 years later only one in five were joiners. Putnam says “… we have been pulled apart from one another and from our communities… ” I suspect the trend to individuality is similar in Canada. My Uncle LaVerne bowled in the same league for 50 years. Josh, a Gen-Y flight instructor, says, “Occasionally a few friends get together to go bowling, but people in my age group don’t join leagues.”

Peter Ashton, another British writer, argues that “the growth in individualism in an increasingly materialistic society means that most people are only concerned with themselves, their family and to a cer-tain extent their friends, rather than with society and other people.”

Conference organizers plan coffee breaks to allow time to chat and develop networks. Is that what happens? Coffee breaks provide an opportunity for checking email and communicating with people not at the meeting. Do social media such as Face-book and Twitter lead society to become averse to human inter-action?

Singer David Myles is determined to keep warmth in his heart and a smile on his face as the aging process advances. A life con-nected to other people, while building a better society, promises huge rewards… rewards for individuals and rewards for society.

Suggested Scripture: Proverbs 22, Colossians 2:1-6 Rod Andrews is a retired Anglican bishop. He lives in Saskatoon.

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hen Elaine showed him the cracked windshield on Monday afternoon, Jeff didn’t know it was only the first straw.

“I was over as far as I could get without sliding into the ditch,” Elaine said when she came home with their son from playschool grad-uation and Jeff inspected the shiny new crack that zagged from one side of the glass to the other, right at the driver’s eye level. “What could I do?”

Jeff bit his tongue and left for the field quickly, before he asked her exactly how fast she’d been driving when she met that semi on the gravel road, and before he could also ask why on earth she needed to drive a foreign SUV when everybody knew the replacement windshields were $800 a pop.

Jeff suspected it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been driving, but he could hardly bring that up, see-ing that he’d skipped playschool graduation to get the last of the wheat seeded.

“We’ll have to take it in and get a new wind-shield,” Jeff said. “We can’t drive it like that.”

On Tuesday it was the sprayer. Jeff answered his father, Dale’s call for help and rushed out to the field, where he found Dale looking like a duck that had crawled out of the Gulf of Mexico. Dale was covered in oil from cap to boot, and the hydraulic hoses were still spraying oil two feet in every direction.

This could have happened to anyone. But Jeff couldn’t help but notice that it hadn’t happened to him. Jeff made his father take off his jeans and shirt before he got into the truck to go home for tools.

On Wednesday it was the lawn mower. Elaine was half-finished with the front lawn when it quit running. Jeff had been meaning to change the oil, but when Dale mentioned he might do it, Jeff had forgotten all about it. Jeff didn’t think he deserved all the blame for this, but he wasn’t completely in the clear. “First the $800 windshield. Then the sprayer. Now this,” Jeff muttered.

Leeann Minogue is the editor of GRAINEWS, a playwright and part of a family grain farm in southeastern Saskatchewan

Just one more fi eld to goIt wasn’t anybody’s fault, except maybe the fella with the grin

a c r e s

Thursday was the most expensive day. It should have been the last day of seeding, and when Jeff’s grandfather, Ed, came out from town to take his last turn at the wheel for the year, he brought his new girlfriend, Helen, along with him. “Get on in!” he’d told her, holding her cane while she eased her bad hip up the ladder and into the tractor cab. “Let me show you how it’s done!”

After a few minutes things seemed to be going well, so Jeff had gone back to the yard for more seed. Dale was in the yard too, and Ed and Helen were enjoying the summer scenery from the trac-tor cab, so there were no witnesses when the wheel rolled right off the air cart.

“Get out here!” Ed said over the phone. “We’ll need your truck to drive around and find the damn wheel. Good thing I made it to the corner on the dual.”

Jeff sighed. “Bring some tools. And maybe the loader tractor.

That auger’s really dragging on the ground.” Jeff thought Dale had changed out those wheel

bolts for some stronger ones. Dale thought Jeff had done it. Ed wasn’t taking any responsibility, which he made pretty clear when he said, “I don’t know what kind of show you guys are running. You’re just lucky Helen wasn’t hurt. I don’t know what she’s thinking about us. We’ll be lucky if she decides to stick around. Especially if you both keep cursing around her.”

Jeff spent half the day on the phone, trying to track down a replacement tire rim and some new bolts. He finally found what he needed, but some-one had to go all the way to the factory to pick it up — a good five-hour drive from the farm.

“I’ll take Helen up to see the sights,” Ed said. “She’d probably like to see more of Saskatchewan. But you guys will have to put us up in a nice hotel for the night.”

On Friday morning Jeff’s mother, Donna had been at the wheel of the old grain truck, bringing it home from the field — since seeding was out of the question for a few days — when the truck brakes went. Luckily Donna realized what had happened before it was too late. She managed to roll to a stop on the road right in front of the Hansons’ yard.

“Good thing I didn’t meet someone at the cor-ner,” she said. “I was going a pretty good clip.”

Jeff and his dad moved the truck into the shop, and got to work on the brakes. They spent more time under the truck than they had in a while. One thing led to another until they had a list of seven or eight things that needed fixing before they could feel good about taking the truck out on the road again.

“I didn’t know this thing was in such bad shape,” Dale said. “And how have we been running it without replacing those signal lights?

“Good thing Grandpa didn’t see this,” Jeff said, mentally adding up how much all of this would cost.

“Time for a break,” Elaine said when she came out late in the morning and dragged Jeff into the house. “Have a shower, then we’ll go to town. We’ll have some lunch and pick up Conner.”

Jeff agreed. They needed to look at lawn mowers before the yard was completely overgrown anyway.

Elaine was right. It was a nice break. After they wrote a cheque for a new mower, Jeff and Elaine ate pizza while the baby snored and drooled in her car seat on a third chair. Between interruptions from neighbours stopping by to take a look under the pink blanket, Elaine had a chance to tell Jeff about a conference call she’d been on earlier in the week. Jeff told Elaine how Helen had packed Ed a picnic to take to the field. “In one of those wicker baskets! Like in those old Yogi Bear cartoons! Grandpa talks like he’s worried she might change her mind, but she’s not going anywhere.”

After lunch, they picked Conner up from his last day of preschool. The little boy was thrilled to see Jeff. “This is my daddy!” he told the playschool teacher, the receptionist, nine other kids and the janitor.

They stopped at the glass shop. The windshield on the SUV was already replaced, so Jeff went in to pay the bill while Elaine drove the kids home.

Jeff was already slowing down to turn into his yard when he met the semi. He pulled over as far as he could. The semi driver waved and grinned as they met. Then his trailer sent a stream of rocks up into the air.

“What’s that boy doing?” Ed asked Helen as they approached the yard, home with the new tire rim and bolts.

“Looks like some sort of dance,” Helen said, puzzled. But why is he jumping up and down in the middle of the road? Is he shouting something?”

Ed snorted. “Kid gets stranger every day. He’s yelling about ‘800.’” CG

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“�What’s�that�boy�doing?”�Ed�asked�Helen�as�they�approached�the�yard.

“�Looks�like�some�sort�of�dance,”�said�Helen,�puzzled


really enjoyed reading in Country Guide all the articles about opti-mistic young farmers excelling in their operations. Tracy Court, Gary Lenderbeck, and Tyler Devloo have

passion for agriculture and are great exam-ples of the opportunity available in our industry for young people.

Then I read Gerald Pilger’s “A farmer’s rant,” and I found it to be full of pessimism and negativity. It bothered me for days.

I agree with Gerald. There definitely is anger building out in the country cof-fee shops as each contract month goes by and grain hauling gets further and fur-ther behind. We are victims of our own success, harvesting the largest crop in history across the whole of the Prairies, and everyone — including myself — was hoping for that “holy grail” event of high yields and high prices.

I am not going to get into a discussion about why the grain movement is so bad. It is obvious from what has been said so far about railroad capacity, oil shipping, weather, and grain companies, but I would like to think that we all have experienced poor shipping before and what has hap-pened shouldn’t really be such a surprise.

The biggest crop in history, you might expect, would have the worst shipping in history.

At another time I would love to dis-cuss whether maybe the rail system should be operated in the greater interest of the public good rather than the share price of CP or CN, but that is a whole other dis-cussion. The main point is that we should have seen it coming and protected our cash flow in some way. Even though its response is maybe symbolic, I commend the government for coming down on rail-ways and passing some legislation.

I also take offence at the notion that we are unable to compete in a free and open commodity market. As far as I can tell, canola, peas, lentils etc. have been free for a long time.

I would argue that the Canadian Wheat Board prevented a lot of new entrants from thriving in our environ-

ment and created an oligopoly of indus-try giants that benefited greatly from the guaranteed income that the CWB gave them year after year. Our big farmer-owned co-ops became stagnant and uncompetitive under this system, forcing them to replace their facilities in a very quick period of time when transportation reforms were introduced in the 1990s.

Undercapitalized and under mounting debt, they were forced into the mergers and privatization that happened over the last 20 years. Independent companies are also being sold off because the CWB pre-vented them from competing in an open and free environment.

Building new facilities and additional storage is not going to solve the problem either. We can easily turn the facilities we have many more times if we can drive some more efficiency and accountability into the system.

I also object to the suggestion that our current industry associations have been ineffective in advocating for farmers. There has been a tremendous amount of effort put into lobbying this past winter and the government has listened to them. Great young and old farmers have been stepping up and having their voices heard with a lot more legitimacy than a very political CWB had.

I believe our industry groups have a great future and with open markets, a lot of optimism abounds among those who choose to get involved.

Canadian agriculture is entering a period of great generational change, and with it are coming new ideas and tremen-dous innovation.

The old ways of doing things are being questioned, and farming is definitely changing its structure as rationalization continues as well. One of the sad facts is that there will be fewer and fewer of us as time continues, but a new batch of innovative people are taking over and it will be exciting to see how they respond to these challenges. Some will transition into niche markets and direct markets but there is definitely a future for those who

remain in commercial large-scale com-modity agriculture as well.

Perhaps a different model — one that is more capitalized and more sophisti-cated in planning for problems like the one we are currently in — will become the new normal.

I also wanted to address a very ram-pant culture of cynicism that still seems to be alive and well in some older circles. New and innovative ways of doing things are too often met either with an unwill-ingness to explore them or with negative comments in the coffee shop predicting failure. I visit with Americans from time to time and I believe we can learn some-thing from their entrepreneurial spirit.

Too often we are unwilling to take risks or chances to invest in ideas. We need people to not only innovate but to attract capital and to promote new efforts to enhance our commodity pipe-lines, taking pressure off the rail system and creating jobs here rather than in China.

This requires not only leadership, which I think we have in abundance, but also some more support from our com-munity of farmers to make things happen and not just pessimistically dismiss them because ideas were tried and failed 25 years ago.

Maybe Gerald was having a bad day when he wrote his article, but I believe we are the greatest country to farm in and will remain so for many years to come. A new group of business-savvy professionals are moving in, a group that certainly cares every bit as much for their communities and neighbours.

Gerald, let me buy you a drink some-time, one that is half full. CG

The other viewAlberta grain grower Michael Kalisvaart says it’s time to trust our young farmers

By Michael Kalisvaart

o p i n i o n

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COVER CROP TILLAGE DEMOS

SILAGE BAGGING/BALING DEMOS

UN’S INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF FAMILY FARMING

SKID STEER RIDE’N’DRIVE

NEW FUELS / NEW TRUCKS EXPO

BRITESPAN DAIRY INNOVATION CENTRE • Featuring Lely & DeLaval

GROBER YOUNG ANIMAL DEVELOPMENT CENTRE

ALLTECH DECK

HORTICULTURE PAVILION

CANADIAN ENERGY EXPO • Presented by Faromor Energy Solutions

BIOMASS EQUIPMENT DEMOS

CORN STALK BALING DEMOS

TEMPO PLANTER DEMOS

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Front-folding Performance to the

P.O. Box 357 • Kalida, Ohio 45853 • (419) 532.3121 • 1.800.322.6301

The Unverferth® X-TREME™ grain cart delivers unmatched grain-movement performance with more outward, upward and forward reach than any other front-folding single-auger grain cart! All X-TREME models feature a patent-pending auger design that allows the upper portion to store diagonally along the front of the cart for extreme auger reach. There’s also the Dyna-Torque auger drive with a 22” sump-mounted auger with leaned double flighting that feeds into the 20” unloading auger for optimum unloading efficiency – 620 bushels per minute.

• Capacities of 1,300, 1,100 and 1,000+ bushels

• Vortex downspout with 60° rotation for precisely controlling grain fl ow

• Undercarriage choices of high-fl otation singles, walking-tandem duals, or tracks, depending on model

Move your harvest efficiency to the extreme. See your Unverferth dealer today for complete details about the X-TREME grain cart, check our website at umequip.com or call 1-800-322-6301.

Unloading speed of 620 bushels per minuteUnloading speed of 620 bushels per minuteUnloading speed of 620 bushels per minute

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a new venture - agcanada · 2014. 6. 3. · publications mail agreement number 40069240 + s wring...

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