1. business and industrial
2. agriculture and forestry
3. crops and seed

country-guide.ca
Western edition
February 17, 2015 $3.50
food
fight
get that
MiDAS
Touch
how the u.s. is winning,
and sometimes losing
its biggest battle Pg. 20
OYF president
Jack Thomson
joins our
panel on top
farm traits
Pg. 30
+PLUS
build an advisory
team for your farm
CROPS GUIDE
 which special crop is right
for your farm in 2015?
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Contents
february 17, 2015
BUSINESS
8
ciao bellissima!
Italy’s farms were failing. Today, more are on a solid business
footing, with little government help. Here’s how they’re doing it.
12 reading the basis
Our final column in this series with market analyst Errol Anderson
looks at basis marketing, and how it can help in 2015.
16 team work
The Tilstras wanted a succession plan to strengthen their family,
not jeopardize it. Now, their advisory-team strategy is helping.
19 Guide HR — doctor, give me some ritalin for my husband!
Entrepreneurs are at four times the risk of ADHD among adults.
20 food fight
Our associate editor Gord Gilmour talks to top Americans in the
winner-take-all debate over the ethics of food production.
26 tipping point
It can seem the Americans supersize everything, including their
farms, but there are signs the trend to big is slowing.
29 FINANCE METRICS — OPERATING EFFICIENCY
Run these numbers on your farm, with help from AME experts.
35 EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE
In industry at large, the proof is in. High CEO pay often leads to poor decision-making. What about on the farm?
37 HUMAN RESOURCES — THE NEW FRONTIER
Every farmer wants better HR results. Here’s how to start.
40 WHO NEEDS EQUIPMENT?
Fiete Suhr crops 7,000 acres in Ontario with only a pickup truck
and a cellphone. The rest is custom — and it pays.
PG. 30 Unleash your midas Touch
Our panel of Jack Thomson, Jerry Bouma and Rob Saik
talk to associate editor Maggie Van Camp about the
common traits they see in top farmers. What emerges
may be your checklist for improved farm performance.
44 MORE TO MARKETING THAN PRICE
When our Gerald Pilger set out to find who is marketing Canada,
not just selling grain, he wasn’t impressed by what he found.
48 MANUFACTURING TALENT
Here’s how machinery makers are growing their own leaders.
64
g
uide life — LIVING WITH DEMENTIA ON THE FARM
No one wants an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, but do see your doctor.
EVERY ISSUE
6MACHINERY GUIDE
They don’t seed, spray or harvest, but these tools can boost your farm efficiency.
63 GUIDE HEALTH
Everybody gets a nosebleed. But when is it more serious?
66 HANSON ACRES
Dale takes his grandson to the rink. But that’s only half the story.
CROPS GUIDE
50 STACKING THE DECK
A new generation of stacked herbicide traits is on the way to prevent resistance and control more weeds.
56 THAT SPECIAL FEELING
With grains and oilseeds falling from their market highs, the spotlight is back on special crops. Is one right for you?
58 BREEDING BASICS
Genetics is a key driver of cereal and oilseed productivity. The question is, are our breeders on the right track?
60 THE RIGHT TIME FOR SOYBEANS
The one variable that must be controlled in western soybeans is planting date. Late seeding is simply too much risk.
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february 17, 2015 country-guide.ca 3
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Editor: Tom Button
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Maggie Van Camp
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Production Editor:
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Tom Button is editor of Country Guide magazine
The point of the telling
I’m reminded of the old story of the
preacher who learned a valuable trick very
early in his career, although it was a trick
that he thought was a bit unchurch-like
and that he was careful never to reveal.
When he started his sermon each Sunday, this preacher would sneak his hand
into his pocket for a cough drop, and
discretely slide the cough drop under his
tongue. That way, when the cough drop
was finally gone, he knew it was time to
wind up his sermon so everyone could get
home just in time for lunch.
As tricks go, this one worked exceptionally well, except for that fateful last Sunday.
The preacher began his sermon as usual,
but lunchtime came and lunchtime went,
and then the afternoon came and the afternoon went, and even suppertime came and
suppertime went, and still he kept talking.
And he talked and he talked until 9:07,
when the congregation was suddenly awoken by a loud crash, and there lay the
poor preacher, dead in the pulpit where he
had talked until he had dropped in a heap.
It wasn’t until they got him to the
undertaker’s that the quizzical discovery
was made, for in the preacher’s pocket
they found a cough mint, and in his
mouth a button.
I know I should apologize for telling
such a story, especially because it builds
up such a great sense that somehow there’s
some great insight or some powerful
meaning at its core.
If there is a point to its telling, how4 country-guide.ca ever, it’s only that you can get anyone
to listen to almost anything if you put it
inside a narrative. How else would I get
you to listen to me talk about church life
75 or 100 years ago?
And it’s also that narratives are the
way we understand the world.
In agriculture we’ve started to embrace
the idea of looking at budgets as the narratives of our farms. In agriculture too, we
see the arcs of each other’s careers in terms
of family narrative.
But the secret behind the picture that
associate editor Maggie Van Camp portrays
so well in her story “Unleash your Midas
touch,” is that today’s top farmers understand this better than any of the rest of us.
It’s a commonplace but it’s nevertheless
true that if you can visualize where you
want to go, you vastly increase your odds
of getting there. And you increase those
odds all that much more if you can articulate the story of how you can do it.
The stories of these farms are incredible, and I urge you to read Maggie’s story
slowly, always looking for quotes that you
can ruminate on through the day. Here’s
just one, this time from Jerry Bouma when
he is talking about how this next generation will prove to be a generation to
watch. Says Jerry, “Their objectives are
a lot bigger, grander than we ever could
have imagined a decade ago.”
This issue of Country Guide is packed
with stories. Are we getting it right? Let
me know at [email protected].
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Vol. 134 No. 3
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ISSN 0847-9178
The editors and journalists who write, contribute and provide opinions to
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february 17, 2015
WE’RE
FARMERS,
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the best stand establishment possible. You want the most profitable seeding system. We know
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Machinery
By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor
With spring on the horizon, Country Guide is providing a quick update on new equipment that doesn’t plant or harvest,
or haul or spray. Even so, these are innovative designs that can prove just as valuable in the broader scope of all that’s
happening on the farm these days. So have a look, and if you’re interested in learning more, check each manufacturer’s
website included at the end of each entry and, as always, be ready to do your homework. It will pay.
Bobcat S450 Skid-Steer Loader 
Billed by the company as “one tough animal,” the new Bobcat
S450 skid-steer loader pledges to improve performance with a nondiesel particulate filter (DPF) engine that nicely complements a
narrower width (under five feet) and a 20 per cent boost in auxiliary
hydraulic pressures. With its 49-horsepower engine and enhanced
capabilities, it’s easy to see why the S450 is replacing the K-Series
S130: there’s just more the S450 can do on the farm. Not only that,
6 country-guide.ca but operators won’t need to spend that time cleaning or replacing
the filter or engaging in the regeneration process — and the engine
still conforms to the Tier 4 emissions standards. Among its other
attributes, the S450 comes with a low operating weight and a better
reach, whether you need to load and unload items or materials, or
move that soil back in against a foundation. There’s even an optional
two-speed drive, capable of 10.4 kph (6.5 m.p.h.) in the low range
and nearly 15 kph (9.2 m.p.h.) on high.
www.bobcat.com
February 17, 2015
Sunflower (AGCO) 6631 Series
Vertical Tillage System 
With corn yields now well above 200 bu./ac. in many parts of Canada,
there’s growing concern about the amount of residue left on fields by that
high-density, high-intensity management. Sunflower Manufacturing, part
of AGCO, offers up a durable vertical tillage unit capable of managing
heavy residues. The 6631 series boasts seven new models, in widths
from 20 feet, five inches to 34 feet, nine inches. Featured at the 2014
Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show, the 6631 series combines its exclusive
Saber Blade disc blades with a staggered offset disc configuration which
enables the unit to easily slice through heavy corn residues, cutting them
down to size and knifing them into the soil. For farmers with uneven
fields, the 6631 series maintains Sunflower’s unique design, with 22
degrees of wing flex (10 up and 12 down) meaning better, more uniform
coverage. The frame is also longer, enhancing the system’s ability to do
everything it’s supposed to — without clogging.
www.sunflowermfg.com
Yetter 5000 Stalk Devastator 
Brandt 16HP Swing Away Auger
It’s one thing to have an aggressive implement that can knock
down those corn stalks, but it means even more when it’s adaptable
to as many as 10 different combines. That’s the advantage that Yetter
brings to the field with its 5000 Stalk Devastator, originally launched in
2012, but now capable of fitting more corn heads. The corn stalks on
today’s hybrids are more durable than ever, and can be a real threat
to tire life. But the Yetter 5000 Stalk Devastator bends, pushes and
breaks the stalks, allowing tires and tracks to roll over them with less
damage. Quick and easy to install, the Devastator can work on Case
IH eight-row combines, John Deere 16-row corn heads, Gleaner and
Gleaner Hugger, Massey-Ferguson and Challenger six- and eight-row
heads and Claas/Lexion eight- and 12-row corn heads. It also fits on
Drago and Geringhoff folding corn heads.
Brandt’s new 16HP Swing Away auger will be available for the
2015 growing season. With lengths of 85, 105 and 125 feet, this new
model can handle up to 23,000 bushels per hour, the company says.
At 16 inches in diameter, this auger has the power and capacity to
empty a Super-B trailer in just minutes. That means the trucks can
spend more time doing what they should be doing — moving grain,
not waiting to unload. The 16-horsepower auger comes with a reversible 1,000-rpm gearbox and a constant velocity PTO, so it can handle
the pressure of a busy harvest and large volumes of grain — and
do it fast. With its square connections, a four-inch core and a chain
coupler, there’s also less stress on the components, meaning longer,
smoother and more durable performance.
www.brandt.ca
www.yetterco.com
February 17, 2015
country-guide.ca 7
business
Ciao bellissima!
Italy’s tiny farms are clinging to life as tenaciously
as they cling to their hillsides. Now it appears
they may have found their road to success
By Marianne Stamm
he road to the farm called I Cianelli runs
out of the seaside resort of Andora, Italy,
through the basil fields behind it. Narrow at first, the road curves up the stony
hillside to a ledge overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, for it is here, from an impressive limestone
house surrounded by native brush and olive groves, that
Stefano Trevia and Rosanna Baggetta operate their small
farm and agritourism business.
At just under nine acres, I Cianelli is among the
73 per cent of Italy’s farms that are under 12.5 acres.
Only five per cent of Italian farms are over 75 acres,
although together they account for over half of the
country’s nearly 20 million arable acres. Most of
those larger farms, however, are in the Po Plain in the
north, producing rice, wheat, corn and sugar beets.
The rest of Italy consists largely of hills and
mountains, but it is here that Italy’s famous wines
and olive oil are grown, plus tomatoes and other
vegetables and fruit.
8 country-guide.ca Liguria itself is a narrow strip of mostly sparse and
stony pine, oak and chestnuts hills that fall steeply into
the sea. Every small bay hosts a coastal resort town,
among them such better-known destinations as San
Remo or Savona. Except for these towns, it’s wild
country, not prime farming by any description, except
for the small plain behind Albenga where greenhouses
cover the landscape with a flourishing floriculture.
The western section of Liguria is home to a much
smaller plain centred around Andora on what is
called the Italian Riviera, and it is here that, according to locals, the basil for the world’s best pesto is
grown. Beyond that plain, however, the remaining
farms hug the steep hillsides, terraced and planted
with mostly olive groves and a few vineyards.
This is the home of I Cianelli, a farm that takes its
name from the dialect word for the extra-wide terraces unique to that area.
Stefano and Rosanna came to farming late. In
2007, in their early 40s, they left their comfortable
February 17, 2015
business
With views of the Mediterranean, I Cianelli finds a way to value add with its stony ground.
jobs as auto mechanic and gym instructor and took over Stefano’s father’s farm.
Had they not, I Cianelli might have
given up, as one-third of Italy’s farms did
between the years 2000 and 2010.
Coming to the farm was a risk —
Rosanna and Stefano knew the land base
wasn’t enough to pay their bills. But, they
thought, “Let’s try it.” The government
was offering incentives for agritourism
— holidays on the farm. With that help
they built a new house with room for 12
guests, offering breakfast and a full dinner of traditional Ligurian food cooked to
perfection by Rosanna.
The small vineyard produces 1,000
bottles of wine annually of the local
Pigato grape. Most of the farm is in olive
groves, about 1,000 trees in groups of
100 to 200 trees, and 200 fruit trees
including cherry, peach, apricot, pear
and apples.
Stefano works full time on the farm
where he is responsible for all the cropping. Rosanna’s job is to look after the
guests, especially the kitchen, although
during the quiet winter season she continues to work as a gym instructor in Andora.
Ligurian olive oil, produced from the
Taggiasche olive, has a good reputation.
The oil is lighter, with a milder flavour
than that of southern Italy, and is wonderful with fish dishes. 2014 was a poor
year for olive production. The last two
years were too wet, unusual for this norFebruary 17, 2015
mally arid region. It rained during flowering, reducing pollination.
Recently an Asian pest has been troubling them too — the olive fly, which lays
eggs in unripe olive fruits. Stefano opens a
shrivelled black olive exposing a tiny white
larva. “In this last year the olive harvest
was terrible,” he says. “I only got 170
litres of oil.”
At 10 euros (C$14) for a one-litre
bottle, that’s not much return on a year’s
work, he knows. Normally the total
would be around 1,000 bottles.
Stefano prefers organic pest control,
even though he’s not a certified organic
farmer. Depending on the weather, he’ll
treat the olive trees with up to two applications of insecticide. He’s researching
an organic solution for the olive fly with
kaolin, a white clay, but it washes off
with rain, and is quite expensive. Another
option is the Dow AgroSciences product
“Spintor Fly” which is mixed with water
in bottles and hung in the trees as traps.
Small farms survive by offering a premium product to customers with whom
they have a close relationship. Stefano
is particular about the processing of his
crops. The friend who processes his olives
owns an old stone press but also a modern one that can manage the temperature
very precisely. Olives should be pressed
at a low temperature for best quality —
preferably 17 C but not more than 30 C.
They need to be pressed within 24 hours
Rosanna welcomes guests who come to linger
over I Cianelli’s homegrown food and wine.
of picking, faster is better, to reduce the
chance of fruit overheating or fermenting. Particular care must be taken with
hygiene to produce a premium oil without a trace of rancidity, which can happen
if equipment is not kept absolutely clean.
I Cianelli’s grapes are pressed in
the wine cellar of a friend in Imperia,
a nearby town. It’s these relationships,
knowing those who will do the best job,
that are so important to Stefano.
The olives and grapes thrive in the
arid climate, but the fruit trees are irrigated. I Cianelli’s small well cannot keep
up with the water necessary so Stefano
supplements it with a rainwater pool.
The house is supplied with council water
from an aqueduct.
It’s the agritourism which pays over
half the bills. Passionate about their business, Rosanna and Stefano have built up
a name. I Cianelli is open year round,
and summers are always totally booked
out. Breakfast, a wonderful affair with
Rosanna’s whole wheat bread, jam from
the fruit trees, local cheeses and a Moka
pot of thick black Italian coffee with hot
milk, is served on the patio with its lovely
view over Andora’s hills and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. Dinner is taken at the
large oak table inside.
Only environmentally friendly materials were utilized in the construction of the
Continued on page 10
country-guide.ca 9
business
At just under nine acres, I Cianelli is an average-size farm, worked mainly by hand.
Continued from page 9
house. The plaster is of natural hydraulic
lime with no trace of cement. Woodwork
and furnishings are of solid oak. Rosanna
takes care to source and use local organically grown products whenever possible,
such as the wheat for her whole wheat
bread and foccacia, and the cheeses for
breakfast. The majority of vegetables
come from her parents’ garden.
The European Union’s support for
agritourism is part of a strategy to halt
the exodus of youth from the farms.
Unemployment for youth under 25 in
the Andora region, which is heavily
dependent on tourism, was at an alarming 47 per cent in October 2014 and the
national average wasn’t all that much
better. The EU programs are geared to
younger farmers in poorer rural regions,
like Liguria.
Through agritourism, value is added
to farm produce by serving it as meals or
processing into oil, wine or jams sold to
the guests.
Even so, to qualify for the agritourism label, farmers must spend more hours
working on the farm than on tourism. Food
must also originate primarily from on-farm
produce or local sources, and traditional
culture and food must be promoted.
The concept took hold quickly among
Italians, for whom foods cooked with
local products have long been highly valued. Food for Italians is not just about
eating — it is about relationships, both to
the people sharing the food and to those
growing and marketing it.
These relationships are on display at
10 country-guide.ca “This past harvest
was terrible,”
Stefano says. “I got
only 140 litres of
(olive) oil.” At C$14
per litre, he knows
they need the inn
the local market where housewives seek
only the best-quality products. It’s also on
display when guests eat at I Cianelli. Dinner is not to be quickly eaten at Rosanna’s.
It’s a leisurely affair prepared with love,
beginning with an antipasto, followed by
the primo and second courses enhanced by
a glass of I Cianelli’s wine. The meal ends
with dessert, maybe Rosanna’s olive cake
dipped in Limoncello. By now everyone is
too full and it’s too late to drive the curves
down to Andora’s nightlife!
Now, Rosanna and Stefano are evolving toward a vegetarian menu, although
it will still incorporate eggs and cheese,
with fish and meat reserved for specific
events. This change, along with I Cianelli’s concern for the environment and the
warm hospitality of its owners, provides
the agritourisimo with a strong advantage.
Rosanna offers personal fitness lessons
and Stefano mountain bike tours. Both
are eager to recommend hiking and biking
trails off the beaten path, plus day trips to
one of the borgos (villages) tucked into the
hills, such as the medieval town of Zuccarello, or Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena
crowning the top of the mountain.
Their 20-year-old son Simone is home
for a year. He studied accounting but has
plans to become a chef, the kitchen being
his passion. Stefano and Rosanna hope
he will take over the farm. There is room
to grow — land is available next door.
Stefano would expand the vineyard and
add a processing and bottling plant. He
talks of greenhouses for vegetables. But
he’s 50 now, and unless he knows Simone
will come back to the farm, he’s not willing to work harder than he already does.
The steep hills leave little room for
machinery. Most of the work is hand
labour — weeds are controlled with the
string trimmer or rototiller. The olive
trees and grapes are pruned by hand.
Not all of the 1,000 trees get pruned
every year. Stefano is fit — he’s an avid
mountain biker. But it’s still hard work.
Their marketing could be improved,
Stefano admits. “Ligurians don’t market themselves well.” He says they are
not as aggressive as the people in the
Tuscany, who advertise in the newspapers and on the Internet. Rosanna says
Ligurians are more reserved. She thinks
it comes from their past, when Ligurians were continually attacked by pirates
and armies. They learned to retreat,
to say nothing, although they are very
friendly when spoken to.
“It was a big change for me,” Stefano says of becoming a farmer. For
25 years he was used to waking early
and going to work. One big challenge
for him was the winter, especially the
rainy days when he couldn’t go outside. Now he’s adjusted. “The lifestyle
is far more relaxed and rewarding,”
he says. The income is not as secure or
as high, “but it is worth it.” Rosanna
loves the farm and particularly enjoys
the agritourisimo. “The guests become
friends,” she says. “They send emails:
‘Ciao, Rosanna,’ they write in English,
French, Spanish and Italian.”
Stefano and Rosanna are aware that
their business depends heavily on tourism. Subsidies don’t contribute much to
their income. Italy’s volatile economic
and political situation worries them, but
they hope to increasingly draw foreign
tourists too. “I hope the economic crisis
will be better the next year,” says Stefano, noting that next October they will
build a swimming pool and add two
more rooms. “I want to survive.” CG
February 17, 2015
Live: 7”
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any number of environmental, disease and pest pressures. Individual results may vary. Multi-year and multi-location data is a
better predictor of future performance. Refer to www.pioneer.com/yield or contact a Pioneer Hi-Bred sales representative for the
latest and complete listing of results, traits and scores for each Pioneer ® brand product.
Roundup Ready ® is a registered trademark used under license from Monsanto Company.
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business
reading
the basis
Of all the signals the market is
always sending you, the clearest
can be the basis. Here’s how to put
that to better use in your farm’s
2015 marketing strategy
By Gord Gilmour, CG Associate Editor
If there’s a market signal farmers obsess over, it’s the basis. Not only can it make the difference
between profitability and red ink, it’s also set by your local grain buyers, so theoretically it’s the signal you
should hear the loudest.
But is the basis really well understood? Is it ever entirely clear why it’s moving the way it’s moving?
Often farmers scratch their heads, with the futures and basis seeming to scatter in different directions.
For this final column in our series with Calgary-based market analyst Errol Anderson, we look at what the
basis might be trying to tell you, and just what it could mean for your marketing success.
Country Guide: Let’s start right at
the start, with Marketing 101 because
I’m not sure I clearly understand all its
intricacies. What exactly is the basis?
Errol Anderson: The basis is clearly a delivery
signal for producers. The simplest definition is that the
basis is the difference between the futures market price
and the local cash price at various grain delivery points.
And because it can swing due to supply and demand,
basis levels can be viewed as either strong or weak. It is
made up of a number of factors including transportation
cost, buyer margin, storage costs and market risk. Local
buyers use it to either encourage or discourage deliveries
for any commodity. Generally, basis levels are quoted as
“under the futures” or a negative basis. But in times of a
market supply squeeze or buyers caught needing to cover
a cash sale, basis levels can turn positive and surge “over
the futures.” An example of this may be a unit train spot
that could create temporary hyped-up buyer demand.
This can trigger quick localized basis improvement until
the product is sourced to meet that particular sale.
Let’s say canola futures price is $400 a tonne,
and the local cash price is $430 a tonne. That’s a
positive basis of $30 a tonne over the futures. A
12 country-guide.ca negative basis reflects a cash bid under the futures.
Let’s say the futures remain at $400 a tonne, and
the local grain delivery point is now offering $370
a tonne. That’s a negative basis of $30 or what is
called $30 under. So, for example, a local grain
buyer may not have much room left in their facility and their next movement is not known. They
may adjust their basis wider or weaker to discourage immediate farm deliveries. On the flip
side, they might have a train arriving in a couple
of days and be a bit short. Buyers may begin to
strengthen their basis in order to attract grain
deliveries to fill that train.
Basis levels can vary significantly and the main
difference is the cost of freight, whether truck or
rail. Changes in the Canadian dollar can have an
impact too. For instance, the basis for No. 1 canola
delivered to an exporter fob Vancouver is really the
starting point for basis levels across the Prairies.
When supplies are abundant, exporters and buyers have added bargaining power over basis levels.
When supplies are tight, sellers or producers
have more impact on basis levels. So the strength or
weakness of basis offers important marketing signals
to the producer.
february 17, 2015
business
CG: So the basis is local demand, and
futures is global demand?
EA:
That’s probably the simplest way to think of
it, and those signals tell different stories, for different reasons. The futures are impacted by weather,
government policies and geopolitical tension that can
trigger aggressive speculative buying or selling. Commodity fund activity, which is primarily speculative
in nature, can push futures contracts either too low
or too high during a market correction or heated
rally. And a market that is becoming overbought is
one where the actual cash market is not following
the price firepower of the futures. This can cause
excessive futures price volatility. But this volatility
can offer producers excellent pricing opportunities.
The key, though, is being able to recognize these
opportunities when they occur.
A basis, on the other hand, reflects local conditions such as local supply issues, delivery space and
rail movement, for example.
CG: You’ve mentioned on several
occasions that basis is one of the strongest
signals for farmers trying to make a
marketing decision, if you understand
what it’s telling you. Can you run us
through a few scenarios?
EA: There are four key market situations that producers face when it comes to futures and basis. For
example, say you have a situation with strong futures
and strong basis — what’s that telling us, and what
should farmers be doing? When you have a strong
futures and basis it usually means something has
happened to spark the futures and local buyer interest. It’s the best of both worlds — for example, it’s
what we saw in 2012 during the U.S. drought. The
grain futures screamed higher and buyers were begging for farm deliveries. That’s a cash market sellsignal, all day long.
Under these circumstances, you don’t have to be a
particularly sophisticated marketer because everything
is running in your direction, and it’s easy to price grain
profitability. However, that’s not to say there aren’t
common pitfalls to avoid. It’s possible to make major
errors even in the best of markets, and the most common one under these circumstances is inaction.
You’ll often see producers holding out for more,
simply waiting too long. It’s a natural instinct, but it’s
also a case of letting emotions cloud what should be
an unemotional business decision. The truth is, no one
knows where the peak is until it’s in the rearview mirror.
And when bull markets are exhausted, prices
drop and drop quickly, just like an elevator. A helpful way to think about it might be to accept that
you’re climbing stairs up to that peak, and then riding the elevator down to the valley.
february 17, 2015
CG: So then, what are the market
signals when you see strong futures and
a weak basis?
EA: That’s a lot like what was happening with
wheat late this past year. We saw U.S. futures surge,
while the local basis weakened. The global cash
wheat market just didn’t reflect the strength of the
futures, which translates into a weakening basis. In
this scenario, this is your selling hedge signal. The
market is telling you now might be the right time to
lock in the futures, and worry about the basis later.
This could be through a futures-only or deferredbasis contract with your local buyer, or selling a
futures contract or by purchasing put option contracts
through a brokerage account. You can then lock the
basis later, once basis levels improve and narrow.
One of my favourite strategies in a heated futures
rally and widening basis levels is a scaled-up put
purchase program. As the futures move higher, producers can gradually scale-in and buy protective put
options. During weather markets in particular, no
one knows where a market top lies. All one knows
is that a market peak is near. Once the market finally
peaks and begins its steep descent, all the put options
regain their value and begin their job of protecting
prices. Put premiums increase as the market declines.
And there is no risk of margin call and no physical
delivery commitment. This can be an excellent strategy during a raging bull market.
CG: What about when futures are
weakening and basis is strengthening?
What’s that telling us?
EA:
This is a signal to sign a basis contract. An
alternate strategy is to sell grain on the cash market
to inject cash flow, then replace the cash sale with
a long futures position or call options to open up
the price upside. This strategy can allow the grower
to pay some bills plus take advantage of any rise in
the futures, should it occur. I prefer the use of call
options rather than futures ownership as the holder
of the call option is only at risk of losing the value of
the premium should market prices not recover.
Both of these strategies basically let you accomplish
the same thing, in different ways. This decision may
largely depend on the producer’s need for cash flow.
What you want to do is capture that strong basis,
which represents the local market calling for delivery.
But the lower futures represent the global market,
and if you’re expecting prices to rise in the future, you
want to be able to participate in that upside.
If you sign a basis contract, you lock in the strong
basis now, but have the futures portion unpriced,
waiting for an increase in value. A basis contract has
the advantage of being relatively simple, and you
Continued on page 14
country-guide.ca 13
business
Continued from page 13
don’t have to open a commodity trading account, since you do
it through your local grain buyer. A commodity trading account
is a more sophisticated approach, but it can offer more pricing
flexibility without tying the grower to physical grain delivery.
CG: What if both basis and futures are weak?
EA: This is the worst of both worlds. There is absolutely no signal
to sell there, although of course there are always other considerations
than price, such as the need for cash flow in order to meet debt payments, for instance, or a need to clear out some bin space.
Really all you can do, if you have the option, is to continue
to store your grain on farm, waiting for an improvement in
either the local or global market. It’s under these conditions that
you make your grain bins pay for themselves.
CG: We sometimes hear people express surprise
— and sometimes stronger emotions — when,
for example, the futures price is strong and the
basis is weak. These producers are wondering
if they’re getting ripped off. Are they?
EA: Yes, I occasionally hear the same things, and to me that tells me
they need to understand how futures markets work and what they
represent, and what the basis is and what it’s trying to tell them.
These price signals diverge for reasons, and when they do,
they’re telling you something.
If you understand them, you can understand what they’re
telling you and make better marketing decisions.
It’s not a buyer conspiracy to rip them off, or anything like
that. It’s just the market itself stating its need or lack of need for
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14 country-guide.ca february 17, 2015
business
a particular product and grade. But the bargaining power can
also shift toward the grower with buyers offering tremendous
basis levels and pricing opportunities.
CG: To manage risk, what about pricing
crop through production and delivery
contracts with grain buyers?
EA: Good point. To me the very first step in a new crop pricing
program may be use of a deferred delivery contract.
Here the key is balance. You can’t pre-price too much new
crop before it’s in the bin, because of the unknowns of weather.
If weather deals you a bad hand, meeting cash contract commitments might be a risk.
Payout penalties are never fun. So it is important that growers only contract up to their comfort level.
Beyond this, the use of tools such as put options can guard
the downside. A grower could lock up to 100 per cent of their
expected production without a delivery obligation just using
puts. It all comes down to the grower and their risk tolerance.
CG: Any other important issues
that should be noted?
EA: I think farmers should be salespeople. Show off their product. Then stay in touch with buyers, offer samples, and let them
know what you have in stock.
Too often I think farmers assume they’re the only customer
in these transactions when, in fact, they’re the ones selling a
product and the buyer needs attention as well. A little salemanship can go a long way in garnering you better opportunities and
ultimately, better prices. CG
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country-guide.ca 15
business
hen Ted Tilstra imagined his retirement, he knew that he wanted it
to continue to include having a
coffee around the kitchen table
with his brother and nephews.
Tilstra Bros. have been running their parents’
dairy farm in Dunnville, Ont., for nearly 25 years.
Together Don and Ted are milking 100 purebred
Holstein cattle and have often been scoring among
their county’s top 10 dairy herd managers. With their
wives contributing by working out and their kids
amicably involved in the farm’s routine, it’s a picture
of family harmony now and into the future.
But Don and Ted have been around long enough
to be wary anyway.
“You see so many farms and farm families trying to make the transition, where the wheels fell
out of the family affair trying to make the transition, and where they won’t talk to each other anymore,” Ted says.
So when Len Davies of Davies Legacy Planning
Group stood up two years ago to talk about multidisciplinary advising at a workshop in Vineland,
Ont., the Tilstra family was listening. “If you’re in
a farming operation, you use your accountant, feed
nutritionist, vet service, and agronomist,” Davies
reasoned. “You’ve got to use people who look at
your business with a different perspective than you.”
For the Tilstras, it was a process at first to hire
a succession planner, but in addition to hearing
from Davies in Vineland, two of Don’s sons had
also heard him speak while they were attending
Ridgetown College. Then there was Ted and Karen’s
own son, who was starting to show a keen interest
in farming himself. “Over time, we’ve watched the
kids, where their interests are, how they’re educating
themselves, integrating themselves into the farming
community, and they want to farm,” Karen says. “So
it’s become important to us that we get them started
reasonably young, when they have lots of energy to
work hard, because it’s a long haul.”
The whole Tilstra family agreed to meet with
Davies in the early spring of 2014 to start talking
about how Don, Jeanette, and their three boys might
possibly farm with Ted and his son, and if they
should be shopping for neighbouring dairy barns, or
16 country-guide.ca By Amy Petherick
building another facility completely and splitting the
milk quota the farm already had.
“I think you need to feel connected to the person
you choose, and we felt connected to Len,” Karen
says, “and we liked the idea of multi-involvement
from everybody.” It wasn’t long before the whole
family was sitting down at a table, working out the
early stages of a big plan, with Davies, their lender
Derek Emond, and accountant, Connor Keuning, all
weighing in as they went along.
Making it work
While graduating in 2013 from the Sauder School
of Business at the University of British Columbia,
Davies was introduced to the concept of multidisciplinary advising, which advocates having all of
a family business’s key professional advisers work
together in planning activities.
The concept wasn’t developed for agriculture, but
Davies, a member of the Canadian Association of Farm
Advisors, immediately sensed a potential fit. Having
worked in the farm community for over 45 years, he’s
seen how complex the business has become, and he
believes team advising produces the best possible results.
“You’ve got the synergies of the team working for
you,” Davies says. “Individually, advisers may not
think of everything, but as a team, one says something that gets another one thinking.”
Davies says his role is to “quarterback” the
efforts of the team and ensure everyone assembled
plays well together.
“You can have a very smart accountant who is
going to sit there and say nothing, but that’s no good
to you on a team,” Davies says as an example. So
he uses his best discretion to either work with the
advisers his farm clients have a history with already,
or they call in additional team players who will
strengthen any team weaknesses.
When assembling these teams, Davies says there
really are a number of qualities to look for. “You’ve
got to be an out-of-the-box thinker,” he says.
“You’ve got to be able to look ahead at where the
industry’s going, to be a kind of a futurist. You’ve
got to express yourself. And you’ve got to leave your
ego at the door.”
Fortunately, by all accounts, ego isn’t an issue
February 17, 2015
Photography: DEW Imagery
Team work
Getting their advisers to
meet and work together as
a team is helping drive the
Tilstras’ succession planning
business
with the team working for the Tilstra
family. Keuning tells me that he’s had the
opportunity to work with Davies before
and still hasn’t experienced a case where
one adviser decided to be a hero. In the
Tilstra case, he welcomes the opportunity
to work closely with their lender rather
than shy away from someone who may
question his financial statements. Instead,
he finds it feeds his ideas.
“You just have more brain power
working for you, coming from different
angles,” Keuning says.
For instance, if Keuning asks a question like: “What is the maximum loan
this operation could get on quota?”
Emond, as a lender from Farm Credit
Canada, can immediately answer them
because he’s on top of that discipline.
Adds Keuning: “Bankers also have other
analytical skills that are constantly being
updated and they know about policies that
change all the time, so I think it’s good to
have an individual like that on board.”
As long as there’s mutual respect
between the professionals at the table,
Keuning believes the approach is very
effective.
Similarly Emond, who has been the Tilstras’ lender for 18 years now and is very
familiar with Keuning’s work, appreciates
sharing the table with the farm accountant. “I find now, because so many families are incorporating or doing different
structures or implementing new creative
ideas, I don’t like to make a move without
talking to the accountant first,” he says.
Sometimes logistics prevent face-toface meetings at the kitchen table, but
technology makes it easy to copy in the
whole team. The beauty of all this transparency, Emond tells me, is that the clients always know what’s going on and
there are no surprises. Davies and Keuning know exactly what he’s doing, Emond
adds, “so if they see something wrong,
I’m hoping they poke a hole in it and say,
‘Derek, you can’t do that,’ or, ‘Derek, this
doesn’t make sense from our end.’”
But when everyone does get together
at the table, they all come prepared. “I
come in with the cash flows, Len’s doing
For Ted (l) and Don Tilstra, building an advisory team was key to their goal of creating
a harmonious, smart succession plan that works for the whole family.
February 17, 2015
Continued on page 18
country-guide.ca 17
business
Critical to the success of the advisory team is that it kept final control squarely in the hands
of Ted and Karen (l) and Don and Jeanette.
Continued from page 17
the family dynamics side of things, and
Connor’s looking at this from a tax perspective,” Emond says. “We each have
our own expertise and we respect that.”
The farmer in charge
Davies says this sort of role definition
is critical to making the team atmosphere
work. His job is also to maintain sight of
the fact that at the end of the day, the Tilstras are the ones in charge here. “I make
it quite clear that the advisers throw the
stuff out, but you as the manager get to
choose what you want to do.”
It’s the job of the advisers to look
for any holes in the plan, as well as to
suggest better ways to achieve the farm
family’s objectives, and also to explain
overall how the plan could be implemented.
For the Tilstras, it was important to
outline the goal, making it clear that
they wanted to be able to start the next
generation off in a way that would keep
everyone still happy to see one another
at Christmas. That in turn soon led to
a plan for Ted to cash out some of his
shares in the dairy business so he and
Karen could build a house and chicken
barn to get their son started in broilers.
The suggestion that the brothers’ cur18 country-guide.ca rent operation could afford that much
additional debt, without cash-strapping
the existing business, became a real
eureka moment for all of the family, and
came directly out of a meeting with the
advisory team. Emond says it was a contribution he was really proud to make.
“There’s nothing personal in this
for me other than seeing these people
I really like succeed,” Emond says.
“They recognize each other’s strengths
and weaknesses, they each have their
own specialty on the farm, and they’re
very courteous to one another, whether
it comes down to allowing one another
to take vacation time, or do their own
stuff separately, but they really respect
each other.”
Keuning says he has observed much
the same, and although this succession isn’t complete, he’s very optimistic
about it. He looks forward to one of the
final tests to the plan they’re generating,
which is when the Tilstras present everything for legal preparation.
“I’ve not been in a case where there
was a lawyer in place early on, but I find
they work as a sober second thought,”
Keuning says. “They come in at the end
and put it together, and do a lot of double-checking on things.” Because their
area of expertise is so different from the
other advisers on the team, he expects
any lawyer who’s on the ball will have
some more good suggestions.
Ted assures me the Tilstra succession plan is far from complete, so their
story is far from over. They are, after
all, only a handful of months into what
Davies tells me is a multi-year process
with an incoming generation that’s still
in school or only recently graduated.
But this is largely contributing to
the family’s conviction that Davies’
multidisciplinary approach was the
best decision they could have made.
“Len knows how to pull what he
wants from the kids,” Ted chuckles.
“You don’t have the knowledge to ask
the questions the way he would to get
the answers about their expectations
and where they want to be.”
Karen is quick to agree. “I’ve been
in business all my life, and Len just had
that next level of understanding about
business and farming,” she says.
When they started, they had no idea
that the process would be leading them
away from the dairy business, would see
them potentially move off of the family
farm, and what’s more, be comfortable
with that prospect. They couldn’t have
asked for more though, especially looking
forward to the day Ted sits down to have
a laugh about it all, over coffee, with his
brother and farming nephews. CG
February 17, 2015
hr
Doctor, give me some Ritalin
for my husband!
Entrepreneurs are four times more likely to suffer from ADHD
By Pierrette Desrosiers, work psychologist, business coach, and author
n order to be successful, entrepreneurs need
many qualities, including an adventurous
spirit, creativity, innovation, high energy levels, and resilience. In addition, they generally
need stimulation, and they are willing to take
risks. All of these traits are more often present in
entrepreneurs than in the rest of the population.
However, what if these characteristics also trend
towards ADHD?
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
is one of the most common childhood disorders and
can continue through adolescence and adulthood.
Symptoms include difficulty staying focused and paying attention, difficulty controlling behaviour, and
hyperactivity (overactivity).
Everyone knows a child who uses Ritalin because
of ADHD. Among affected children, 60 per cent will
continue to have some of the symptoms after they
reach adulthood. In fact, four per cent of the adult
population are affected to some degree.
But what happens when the ADHD adult is at the
head of a company?
“He runs like a dog chasing its tail,” says a spouse
who contacted me. “He starts something and never
finishes. He is scattered, has difficulty concentrating,
and suffers from insomnia. In addition, he consumes
more and more. I think it is to calm the nerves.”
Although some features of this condition can
contribute to an entrepreneur’s success (creativity,
great energy, overflowing passion, resilience in difficulties, risk appetite), the same phenomenon may
also contribute to loss or to great difficulties in the
entrepreneur’s life.
Looking at the trio of issues often associated with
ADHD (impulsivity, irritability and attention), problem behaviours are more frequent and more apparent.
The person has difficulty organizing and planning.
They are scattered in their thoughts; their actions and
their environment look like a battlefield. They are
always looking for things (because they never put them
in the same place), the bills are stacked or lost and thus
constantly paid late, they are often late and lack the
ability to plan and prioritize. They also tend towards
procrastination, yet they also have a propensity to
continually introduce new tasks that they never finish.
As you can see, it can be difficult to make sound
management decisions and run a business when
ADHD is untreated.
February 17, 2015
Here is a short list of symptoms with ADHD:
• Frequent forgetfulness and delays;
• Difficulty concentrating;
• Low self-esteem;
• Irritability, difficulty controlling anger;
• Impulsivity;
• Relationship problems (conflicts);
• Mood disorders (30 per cent);
• Substance abuse (25 to 50 per cent);
• Bipolar disorders (eight per cent);
• Anxiety disorders (30 per cent);
• Behaviour disorders (eight per cent).
Because impulsivity is usually present, the risk of
accidents on the farm also increases. As well, because
ADHD adults can act without considering the consequences, they often compulsively spend.
In adults, ADHD often goes unnoticed because the
person says it is their personality. When left unchecked,
however, it threatens the survival of the farm.
In addition, our modern life and the abundance of
information (Internet, email, texting, smartphones…)
coming at us from all sides tends to amplify ADHD in
those who already have a predisposition.
Many great business people have had ADHD
(Andrew Carnegie, Malcolm Forbes, Henry Ford). They
were able to seize the moment in the marketplace, see
things that others couldn’t, follow their instincts, and
reject “common sense.”
Yet many entrepreneurs do struggle and need
treatment, and in certain cases medication is warranted. Unfortunately, the diagnosis is often made
when the person is looking for a solution to another
problem, so damage has already been done. If you
believe you might be affected, see a doctor or psychologist. It may save your marriage and your business. Entrepreneurs can learn coping strategies: how
to slow down, relax, ask for help, and take advice.
They have to learn to get organized, make a plan and
stick to it… well, most of the time. By doing this,
they can take back their lives and their business. CG
Pierrette Desrosiers, MPS, CRHA is a work psychologist, professional speaker, coach and author who
specializes in the agricultural industry. She comes
from a family of farmers and she and her husband
have farmed for more than 25 years (www.pierrettedesrosiers.com). Contact her at [email protected].
country-guide.ca 19
business
Food fight
Your business could soon
be caught up in a public
relations battle. Based on
what we’re seeing south of
the border, are you ready?
By Gord Gilmour, CG Associate Editor
tsunami seems set to wash over Canadian
agriculture. No, the seas haven’t suddenly
shifted inland. This dangerous wave is
made up of public sentiment about the
way you conduct your business.
Just like a tsunami, you might not like it, you
probably won’t welcome it, but trying to resist it is
going to be futile.
Anyone who wants evidence of what’s coming only
has to take a look at our neighbours to the south. Over
the past few years, the U.S. food industry has found
itself under the microscope like never before.
From a push for GMO labelling to calls for the
end to “factory-farmed” livestock, the old way of
doing business is under siege.
Suddenly, bestselling books are deconstructing
meals. Entire television channels stoke a “foodie” culture. And New York Times opinion makers are writing about the evils of antibiotic abuse in large-scale
livestock operations.
Plus, of course, there are those hidden-camera
videos that go viral from inside livestock facilities,
highlighting alleged abuse.
Canada isn’t there yet. So far nobody’s using their
bully pulpit in the Globe and Mail to regularly beat
up farmers — but there is a growing list of American
farmers who are more than ready to tell us, based
on their experience, that we’d be fools to think we
aren’t on the same path.
A&W is suddenly promising their customers hormone-free beef in their burgers. The Canadian egg
industry is rapidly moving toward an enriched housing
model, spurred on by their customers in the fast-food
sector who don’t want to be accused of bundling
animal cruelty up into that breakfast sandwich. Plus,
P.E.I. residents are watching pesticide applications on
the island like a hawk. Some of the first “undercover”
animal videos have hit the airwaves. The list goes on.
Can Canada’s farmers do anything about this?
Should they even try? To answer those questions,
20 country-guide.ca Country Guide recently spoke to Americans on
both sides of the chasm about why they feel the way
they do, whether common ground is possible and
what the future might hold.
Good neighbor
On paper, George Zittel should be farming in the
middle of a war zone.
Zittel is a fifth-generation farmer mainly growing
vegetables both in the field and in greenhouses, and
he’s one of about 300 farm families in a 25-square-mile
chunk of upstate New York that’s traditionally been an
agriculture centre. That number includes a significant
contingent of dairy farmers, so it sounds like a pictureperfect American idyll.
Except these days, Eden, N.Y. has become a bedroom community populated by about 8,000 urbanites who work in the city of Buffalo, just 20 minutes
down the road.
It definitely sets the stage for a life full of conflict.
But an unexpected thing has happened. Zittel and other
farmers embraced the growth of their local town. They
got active in everything from the local volunteer fire
department to the chamber of commerce, and they got
elected to the town board.
They were determined to fly the agriculture flag.
Zittel says by doing so, he and other producers in
the area have managed to prevent the emergence of an
us-versus-them mentality on either side. And while he
freely admits it’s far from perfect, he insists that by doing
so, he’s become not “that farmer down the road” to his
neighbours, but instead is a real person named George,
someone they pick the phone up and call if they’ve got
an issue or concern.
In an era of heightened activist interest in food and
farming, that relationship may even eventually serve as
their first line of defence if outsiders decide to try to stir
up trouble, he says.
Continued on page 22
February 17, 2015
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business
Continued from page 20
“I really do think that if someone from
outside began to attack us, they would
defend us,” Zittel says of his neighbours.
“As a town board, we’ve done a lot of
work, everything from surveys to setting
up an agricultural board, and we know
they like having farming around, they like
to see it, they like that connection to it,
even if it’s just driving by the fields and seeing the crops.”
Zittel says there are two key elements
to the defence of farming in this challenging environment. One is a potent right-tofarm law, that clearly delineates just what
farmers can and cannot do. In the case of
New York state, those limitations are very
clear-cut, Zittel says.
“There are two things it has the power
to stop — if there’s a health issue or a safety
issue,” Zittel says. “If it’s just a bit of dust or
noise, or the inconvenience of slow-moving
equipment, they legally can’t stop us.”
That’s the stick the local agriculture industry holds, but Zittel cautions
the industry won’t get far just swatting
people with it. After all, it only exists
because politicians — and by extension
voters — have granted it. Elections still
happen, politicians can get fired by voters, and if agriculture plays it too cute,
it could find itself losing its most potent
defence. This is where the carrot comes
in, Zittel says. It’s in actually listening
to complainants, rather than simply dismissing their concerns.
The farm strategy was to build bridges.
“We set up an agriculture committee for
the town, and when there’s a problem,
it’s their job to go out, talk to the people
involved, and try to resolve the issue,”
Zittel says. “The people on this board are
farmers themselves, but it’s important that
they take these concerns seriously. We can’t
just give them lip service.”
Frequently the issues aren’t all that challenging, and the solution actually comes
from a bit of dialogue between both parties.
A neighbour might not object to manure
spreading from a dairy operation, for example, but just not want it to happen right
before the big picnic they’re planning on
Sunday afternoon.
When solutions aren’t possible, the issue
goes before the town council, and this is
where the right-to-farm law comes in. But
that’s a last resort.
“We encourage our neighbours to communicate with us, to tell us about things like
a picnic they have planned,” Zittel says.
22 country-guide.ca The activist
Matt Rice,
director of
investigations,
Mercy For
Animals.
For many in the agriculture industry, Matt Rice could be a poster
boy for all their objections about animal activists.
He’s director of investigations for Mercy For Animals, the activist
group perhaps best known for going undercover at animal agriculture
operations to shoot hidden-camera footage of animal abuse.
Rice is an urbanite who lives and works in Los Angeles, with an
office on the famed Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. He and the
organization he works for aren’t shy about harnessing the star power of
nearby Hollywood to push their viewpoint. He’s even a vegan.
What he doesn’t have are horns and
a tail, and anyone who’s expecting a
scatterbrained hippie is going to be
sorely disappointed. He’s also a U.S.
Marine Corps veteran, and he marshals
both passion and logic when the topic
of animal agriculture comes up, saying
it would be a mistake to simply brush
him and others like him off as irrational
radicals, especially since most of them
used to be customers of the industry.
“The truth of the matter is that most
of us used to eat meat and eggs, and
enjoy them,” Rice told Country Guide
during a recent conversation. “It was
only after we encountered information
about how they were being raised that
most of us made the conscious decision
not to consume them, because we didn’t
feel we could morally support how it
was being done.”
There’s little doubt Rice and others
like him aren’t popular in the agriculture industry, garnering everything from
straight-up criticism for presenting brief seconds-long video snippets
out of context, to a push for tough “ag-gag” laws that make their
tactics illegal. Despite this, however, Rice says the industry is likely to
find itself on the losing side of history if it continues its current tactics
of wrapping itself in the image of the kindly, stereotypical farmer in
overalls when they’re in public, but then treat livestock as nothing
more than cogs in a machine when they’re in the barn.
Rice paints a picture of a business that’s so convinced it and it
alone is right, it won’t even take the time to bother to listen to its critics, preferring instead to “educate” the public rather than engage it in
a constructive dialogue.
This, Rice says, is a crucial error, especially since the reality on the
farm is so far removed from the perception most Americans have in
their minds — a perception that the agri-food industry itself has been
known to promote when convenient. This growing disconnect is fuelling greater interest and oversight into how food is produced, Rice says.
“Seventy years ago, half the population of this country was living on
a farm, and I suspect the number wasn’t much different for Canada,”
Rice says. “Now it’s less than two per cent. For most of us the agriculture industry is out of mind. Then in the past few decades, animal
agriculture in particular has moved indoors, increasingly out of sight.”
As that’s happened, production practices have changed dramatiContinued on page 24
February 17, 2015
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Continued from page 22
cally, and some practices that the general
public finds offensive have crept in, Rice
says. He cites things like farrowing crates
or other close-confinement housing as
something most simply won’t accept.
“The pork industry has a problem
because it’s keeping very intelligent animals
in crowded conditions that have no enrichment. They’re treating pigs like machines,
not animals.”
Clearly, farmers have a different perception, and they resent being portrayed
as heartless when in fact they are the
ones with the best insights into animal
well-being.
Still, it seems another instance of a
trend any industry watcher knows too
well. Agriculture can be tone deaf. Or
perhaps it’s fairer and more accurate
to say, agriculture can find itself sitting
in a corner of a room where everyone
is talking, and not know how to get its
voice heard.
Rice also takes issue with those who
attempt to paint animal rights activists
such as himself as uncompromising ideologues, saying that when you toss such
accusations, you shouldn’t be too surprised to find the other side calling you
an uncompromising ideologue too.
Plus, says Rice, the industry may
not be helping itself by trying to always
defend everyone and every practice.
Mercy for Animals has, on occasion,
spent a lot of time and effort looking to
work with the animal agriculture industry to find a middle ground, only to
be disappointed in the end because the
industry closes ranks, and takes an “edge
of the wedge” approach that views even
the smallest concession as too much.
“Everyone has an agenda,” Rice says.
“Frankly I think it would be a mistake
to underestimate the level of knowledge
and intelligence we have on our side of
this debate.”
Because they have met stiff resistance
on the policy front, especially at the state
level where legislators have been loath
to legislate animal welfare, Rice says the
animal rights movement has taken the
debate public.
On some occasions that’s meant
releasing damning video. On others its
meant pressuring large corporate entities
like quick-serve restaurants into imposing
their own standards that go beyond existing legislation.
Rice isn’t apologizing.
24 country-guide.ca Defenders of the faith
If there’s a polar opposite of Matt Rice, it would be Kay Johnson,
president and CEO of the Animal Agriculture Alliance, an industry
group dedicated, in its own words “… to advocate for producer interests and help the public appreciate modern science-based practices.”
Country Guide recently spoke to Johnson by telephone from
her office in Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from
Washington, D.C. From there, she frequently criss-crosses the U.S.
for speaking engagements, meetings and other activities in her role
as industry spokesperson. Doing so causes her to have a lot of airplane conversations with seat mates,
and she mostly finds they are actually very interested, rather than hostile,
when they find out what she does for
a living.
“I find most people are actually
very interested in the industry, and they
might have concerns, but they’re willing
to listen,” Johnson says. “In the end
I always remind myself that less than
three per cent of Americans have a vegetarian or vegan diet. The other 97 per
cent, they want meat, eggs and milk and
other products of animal agriculture.”
For Johnson the problem is twofold. The industry needs to be prepared
to talk to the public and present what
it does fairly and without shying away
from the fact that it’s a business that
has evolved well past the mental image
most have of it. Ignoring this fact will
only have the industry out of touch
with current trends, she says.
Kay Johnson,
president
and CEO,
Animal
Agriculture
Alliance.
Times have changed, Johnson says.
Today, the riskiest ag strategies
are silence and inaction
“We have definitely seen an increase in interest in how food is produced,” Johnson says. From food television to celebrity chefs and food
bloggers, food isn’t just fuel anymore, it’s also become intertwined in
fashion and personal politics and broader social trends. It’s something
that’s only likely to increase in the future as well, since it’s something
that appears to resound most strongly with the millennial generation,
who are just coming into their own now and will increasingly drive
and influence culture.
But she also says it would be a mistake to get drawn into debate with
people who already have strongly held views they’re unlikely to be moved
from. Better, she says, is to engage members of the remaining 97 per cent
of people and show them what the agriculture industry does and why.
“Farmers aren’t going to just be able to rely on associations like ours
to do it, either,” Johnson says. “They’ll need to do it themselves. It’s the
farmers people want to hear from.”
That may mean anything from holding open houses at farms, to
simply getting out into the community and becoming community
February 17, 2015
business
leaders like New York’s George Zittel, she says. One interesting
effort her organization has been behind lately is bringing leading food bloggers to a large-scale animal operation to let them
see what happens behind the closed doors, then trusting those
bloggers to fairly present the information.
“It was a risk,” Johnson freely admits. “We couldn’t guarantee
what they would say. But once they visited the farm and saw what
was being done, they all actually gave us very favourable coverage.”
It all boils down to accepting that times have changed, Johnson says, and these days the greatest risk appears to be silence
and inaction, which allows others to frame the issue and sets up
great challenges for the future. Taking a more active approach is
going to be time consuming, but necessary.
Just two per cent
Back in New York, for George Zittel it all boils down to
simple electoral math, both at home in Eden and at the state
and federal level. Farmers just don’t have enough votes, and
they’re currently outnumbered by even vegans and vegetarians,
and Zittel says there’s no way he can see that trend reversing
any time soon.
“There are so few people farming now,” Zittel says. “You
say it’s about two per cent. I’ll be honest, I’m actually surprised
it’s that high. It certainly seems lower to me. And if you’re just
two per cent of the population, boy, you’re not going to win
much at the ballot box, if it comes down to that.” CG
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country-guide.ca 25
business
Tipping point
Can American farms keep getting bigger?
Now, even big farmers have their doubts
bout three hours north of the Gulf
of Mexico, Louisiana Delta Plantation was the largest U.S. crop farm,
working 100,000 acres. But that was
only until 2005. Then the farm was
broken up and sold.
During a decade of its dizzying climb, Eddie Davis
managed up to 34,000 acres for the company. It was
easy to buy into the philosophy, Davis now says.
Economy of scale means a farm’s cost to produce a
bushel of grain should drop as the farm gets bigger.
Partly, that’s from more efficient operations.
Partly too, Davis tells C ountry G uide , that’s
“When things go right on a very large scale, it can be very good,” Davis says.
“But when things go wrong…”
26 country-guide.ca By Amy Petherick
because of bulk buying. “When farming operations
get to a certain size, they can buy implements more
cheaply… sometimes much more cheaply.”
A large farm also seemed to have built-in sustainability that would carry it through times of low
grain prices, Davis says. “Even with small profits,
across large acres they add up.”
But economies of scale work both ways, Davis
says, and it turned out that their Achilles heel
was one they hadn’t anticipated. It was human
resources, both at the senior and at the field level.
“The ability to find a manager who will manage within their parameters might be a challenge,”
Davis says. “It may not be too troubling to go out
and find five good employees, but to find 10 good
employees may be three times as difficult.”
But there were other issues too. If you expand
too much and outgrow your suppliers, you can
quickly find yourself in a mess, Davis says. Take an
equipment dealer as just one example. A mid-size
farm might have a great relationship with a local
dealer so they get excellent, fast service. When the
farm outgrows the capabilities of the local dealer,
however, it either has to invest in its own shop,
or start looking for a dealer farther away. So even
though you get a volume break on the cost of the
equipment, keeping it in the field can introduce all
sorts of new costs.
“There are efficiencies of scale, and there are
also inefficiencies of scale,” Davis says.
It’s enough, Davis adds, to threaten the sustainability that the large farm was supposed to provide.
“When things go right on a very large scale, it can
be very good. But when things begin to go wrong
on a very large scale, it can begin to be very bad,
very quickly.”
Davis now believes many more farmers across
the U.S. are approaching a similar tipping point,
or rather, a series of tipping points. Things look
good now, he says, but as the number of acres goes
up, any of these tipping points can very quickly
eliminate the benefits of a bigger operation, especially tipping points centred on human resources
management.
In fact, there’s already a question about whether
the American race to bigger and bigger farms has
begun to show the first signs of cooling off.
Despite the popular image of the U.S. as a country
where everything about agriculture is supersized, including its farms, most operations there are incredibly small.
It’s a story that’s familiar in Canada, where the
February 17, 2015
business
squeeze is on mid-size farms. Most U.S. farms are tiny
and essentially non-commercial, generating under
$1,000 of annual farm sales. The only thing big about
these and other small American farms, according to the
USDA’s most recent census in 2012, is their number.
Of the more than two million farms in the
USDA’s 2012 Census of Agriculture, 55 per cent
had under 100 acres each.
Another 30 per cent of farms had between 100
and 500 acres which, depending on region, made
them small to mid-size.
Either way, however, the two groups that
accounted for a whopping 85 per cent of U.S.
farms actually farmed only about 20 per cent of the
country’s farmland.
By contrast, farms with more than 2,000 acres
represented fewer than four per cent of farms, but
they controlled 56 per cent of the farmland.
So although, the average size of a farm in the
United States is 434 acres, the overwhelming
majority is either much smaller or much larger.
While the number of very small census farms
continues to grow, James MacDonald, chief of the
USDA’s structure, technology, and productivity
branch tells Country Guide that the general trend
across the United States continues to be toward
larger farms.
“Production has been shifting steadily to larger
farms in just about all commodities, and all parts
of the country,” MacDonald says. As a result, a
small number of farms now accounts for a huge
percentage of agricultural production.
In 2012, the top 1.6 per cent of farms accounted
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Continued on page 28
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cereal crops
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Half of all American farm sales are generated by
a mere 1.6 per cent of the country’s farms
Continued from page 27
produced 75 per cent. This is particularly evident
in pork and cattle production, MacDonald says. Of
more than 900,000 farms with cattle and calves, 42
per cent of sales came from 0.1 per cent of farms,
which boasted over 5,000 head per herd.
At the other end of the scale, farms with fewer
than 100 cattle made up more than 80 per cent of the
total number, but generated just 10 per cent of sales.
Likewise, 4.8 per cent of farms with over 5,000
pigs held 67.7 per cent of all U.S. hogs and generated 65.4 per cent of sales.
In all, small commercial farms with gross incomes
under $250,000 accounted for 41 per cent of farm
sales in 1982, but then fell to 14 per cent by 2007.
In some regions in the U.S., this is partly due to
the land itself, MacDonald says, because it’s simply
become easier to farm on a large scale. “In the east, hill
country, you really can’t get or put together a field with
150 acres that is all flat so you can run giant pieces of
equipment over them,” says MacDonald. “Typically in
the high plains, farms are much larger.”
Todd Kuethe is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois and has spent a lot of time studying the USDA census data, which he says is really
the best way to get an overall snapshot of farm sizes
and the impact of economies of scale. “The most
recent census that was released last May, points to
something that’s really interesting,” Kuethe says.
“We all think of large farms dominating the ag sector generally, which is true, but we’re seeing this
bifurcation where you have a lot of small-acreage
farms, and also the consolidation of larger farms.”
But when he studies the size of farms and their
ownership, Kuethe says he finds there hasn’t been
a great structural change over the course of the last
15 to 20 years. “There hasn’t been drastic change
in farm size or number of farms,” Kuethe says.
One of the implications is that there’s a significant number of non-farming landowners who are
controlling farms in the U.S., who are likely becoming more removed from their agriculture roots.
28 country-guide.ca But there has also been real growth in valueadded and niche production.
“These folks who are operating in niche markets, with small farms that are finding ways to
target these markets, really seem to be growing,”
Kuethe says. Very small farms can also be very
profitable. Of farms under 100 acres, four per cent
had annual revenue over $100,000, and about one
per cent reported over $1 million. Something that’s
very high-value on a few acres, like strawberries
for example, can be very high in revenue but also
low in acreage.
Kuethe says these operations also seem to have
staying power. He points, for example, to a herb
farm he toured recently, which is demonstrating
remarkable earning power on a tiny land base.
“They sold to places like Whole Foods and
directly to restaurants,” Kuethe says. But it wasn’t
always simple, he adds. “It was very labour intensive, and those plants are way more delicate than
soybeans.”
Still, Kuethe sees a good future for operations
that are conveniently located close to urban areas,
whether selling mushrooms, herbs, or targeted livestock breeds. Small-acreage farms, considered to
be less than 10 acres, with sales over $500,000 are
most often specialized, single-stage livestock producers, usually operating under contract to a larger
company. In 2007, 75 per cent of small-acreage
farm sales were in poultry and eggs, hogs and pigs,
or greenhouse/nursery and were produced on only
15 per cent of small-acreage farms. Other very
lucrative small operations included just 25 shellfish
farms with combined sales of more than $36 million and 50 mushroom farms which sold over $147
million of produce.
MacDonald agrees. The future of mega-farms
may be uncertain, but the future of mid-size commercial operations seems altogether clear. “Forty
years ago, you might have made a living being a
corn and soybean guy with 400 acres plus raising
some hogs,” MacDonald says. “That’s really what’s
shrinking fairly rapidly.” CG
February 17, 2015
A M E - ma n a g eme n t
Finance metrics you may not have
thought of — operating efficiency
By Larry Martin and Heather Broughton
n good times or bad, there are some basic financial tools that allow farmers (and other managers) to gauge their operating efficiency, diagnose
where they have problems, and measure the
financial risk they are bearing or are about to
undertake when they make a substantial investment.
We find, however, that we hear very few people
talking about these tools or how to use them.
This is the first of a three-part series that will
address some of those basic tools. Because of space
restrictions, we need to limit the amount of accounting definition that’s included. Be sure to get detailed
information when you try this at home.
pare different years and, when appropriate, benchmark against other producers who may have very
different debt structures than ours.
After deducting depreciation and interest we get
earnings before taxes, and then we deduct taxes to
give net income after taxes.
The next-to-last line is an interesting one. This is
where you put all that stuff really not related to your
core farm operation. This would include government
payments, payments for driving a school bus, custom
work if it’s not core, and the expenses incurred to
soup up your pickup truck for racing on Saturday
night (as well as the prize money that you win!).
EBITDA
Operating efficiency
The financial measures discussed in these articles
are based in whole or part on the concept of Earnings
Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization
(EBITDA). This is a long-winded way of describing operating income, or what you have left after you pay your
operating expenses and before you deduct your cost of
capital. For some reason, this measure, used constantly
in business in other industries, is not talked about very
much in agriculture. It’s a pity, because it’s so useful.
Below is a 14-line representation of a farm’s
income (operating) statement. We divide costs into
six categories. Subtracting direct crop and livestock
expenses from gross revenue gives gross margin. Then
subtracting operating costs such as labour, machinery
operating expenses and land rent gives what we call
contribution margin. Then, by subtracting the farm’s
overhead expenses, we get EBITDA.
Gross Operating Revenue
(-) Crop and Livestock Expenses
(=) Gross Margin
(-) Labour, Machine Operating Expenses, Land Rent
(=) Contribution Margin
(-) Management, Office and Overhead Expenses
(=) EBITDA
(-) Depreciation/Amortization
(=) EBIT
(-) Interest
(=) Earnings Before Taxes
(-) Taxes
(=) Earnings After Taxes
(+/-) Non-Core Income and Expenses
(=) Net Income
Notice that all of the expenses deducted to get to
EBITDA are operating expenses; they don’t directly
include the cost of capital. We want to separate them
completely from capital expenses, so we can com-
This approach makes it relatively easy to standardize financial statements using the definitions of the
cost categories. Often with farm data, we can get good
benchmarks for well-managed farms. What is “well
managed?” It is an operation that is efficient at generating operating income. This gives rise to a very useful
ratio to measure “operating efficiency.”
If we simply divide EBITDA by gross operating
revenue, the ratio measures how many cents of operating income are generated by the farm per dollar of
gross revenue. Lots of data from both Canada and the
U.S. shows that for most crop and livestock farms, the
ratio should be 35 per cent or higher (usually averaged
over a number of years). In other words, after paying
all operating expenses, the farm should have $0.35 left
per dollar of gross revenue.
Work done several years ago by Al Mussel at the
George Morris Centre showed that there is huge
variation in this measure among Canadian farm
tax filers, but that the ranges aren’t much different whether they are beef, hog, cash grain or dairy
farms, or whether they are large or small operations.
The average was 22 per cent, far lower than our
benchmark. At the same time, all groups had a number of farms which were at or above the benchmark.
Farms chronically below 25 per cent are generally
not growing and not overly successful. Those with
ratios below 20 per cent are often in difficulty.
For farms that do not achieve the benchmark,
there are some further benchmarks to help diagnose
what the problem is. We will focus on these in the
second of this series of articles. CG
february 17, 2015
Larry Martin is co-owner and lead instructor in
AME’s management training courses. Heather
Broughton is co-owner and president of AME.
country-guide.ca 29
business
Unleash your Midas touch
Adopt these seven habits of Canada’s top farmers
By Maggie Van Camp, CG Associate Editor
Does it seem some farmers just have that touch? Anything they start turns into gold. Is it just timing?
Genius? Luck? Or do these farmers regularly do things that enable them to excel? Or do they cultivate skills
that the rest of us don’t?
Country Guide asked Jack Thomson, president of the Outstanding Young Farmer organization, Rob Saik,
CEO of The Agri-Trend Group, and Jerry Bouma of Toma & Bouma Management Consultants to share their
insights on the things that top modern farmers do that explain why they’re ahead of the pack.
Their list of seven top practices gives us a peek into a future where attitudes and aptitudes will come
1. Start every day with positive attitude
2. Plan, think and act like a CEO
These days, the stars are just starting to make
way for the sun to rise when Jack Thomson from
Antigonish, Nova Scotia comes in for breakfast. He
milks 120 cows starting at 3:30 a.m. so he can share
breakfast with his four children, and so they can
also have their evenings together.
Despite the schedule, Thomson’s energy and
enthusiasm vibrate through the telephone when he
talks about the common denominators he sees in the
participants in Outstanding Young Farmers (OYF). OYF nominees come from across the country
and from all sectors, but what Thomson sees in all
of them is positive attitude. “They are passionate,
and driven not just by profits but also by something
more,” Thomson says. “They want to make a difference, to make things better for their businesses, for
their families and for their communities.”
“They wake up and they go to bed always in this
right state of mind,” Thomson says. “If the situation
is not so good, then they turn it into an opportunity.”
Thomson knows about surviving challenges. In
2007, right after they had just finished remodelling
their barn and had remortgaged to do it, lightning
struck and the resulting fire consumed everything,
except 80 cows. And no… they hadn’t yet put into
place insurance for the remodelling.
They started over, slowly rebuilding the 120-cow
milking herd, West River Holsteins. Then, three
months later, an electrical fire destroyed their home,
right before Christmas.
“You are going to run into a challenge in this
business,” Thomson says. “If you are not optimistic,
you are not going to make it.”
Top farmers today focus on strategy and on
their goals, and on ensuring the resources are in
place to achieve these goals, says Jerry Bouma. In
2005, Bouma and his partner wrote a summary
of research called Best Management Practices of
Leading Farmers. The 158 leading farmers they
interviewed in Western Canada were fundamentally
good managers and were market focused.
The top farmers today are still good managers, and they understand marketing and risk, but
today’s leading farmer is more process oriented.
“They set the direction of the farm but they also
develop ways to achieve their goals,” Bouma
says. “These gifted managers have a systematic
approach.”
They build or access systems, including agronomic
information and custom services. They’re strong on
planning and strategy, but they’re also strong at finding people to do the production work and at setting
production plans. For example, to manage risk, they
have marketing plans and hedging strategies. These
producers set expected margins, and from there, they
create clear plans to make it happen.
Today’s younger successful farmers are more
likely to come to their work thinking about business
strategy and business principles, says Bouma.
And, says Bouma, this is going to be a generation
to watch. “Their objectives are a lot bigger, grander
than we ever could have imagined a decade ago.”
Bouma also says that two very diverse systems
are currently operating in farming, with small
intense producers focused on local food production
and larger commercial crop and livestock farms.
Yet both require CEO-type of leadership.
30 country-guide.ca February 17, 2015
Photography: john david photography
together to drive farm success as never before.
business
For OYF president Jack Thomson,
the key is to understand risk.
“I’d rather be stabbed in the
front than in the back.”
When Rob Saik, CEO of The Agri-Trend
Group, works with top grain and oilseed farmers,
he finds they have short- and long-term plans for
their farms and for themselves. These plans are
written down, and the plans give the farmers confidence in their decision-making, in addition to giving their bankers more confidence too.
“They plan where they want to go, and they set
strategies using outside help,” says Saik.
This is more involved than writing mission and
vision statements. It’s setting financial goals and
developing specific projects and production plans.
Importantly, says Saik, these farmers also coordinate complex businesses by preplanning for
potential hiccups, threats and growth opportunities.
This is thinking like a CEO.
February 17, 2015
3. Have a new set of boundaries
Today’s top farmers have burst through the traditional physical boundaries of farming and have a whole
new view of the limits of their farm, beyond geography.
In the past, farmers were very spatially bound, but
that’s simply no longer the case, says Bouma. It’s not
unusual now for the CEO farmer to be farming lands
or raising livestock across a wide geographical area.
It used to be 3,000 or 5,000 acres was a big grain
farm. Today some farmers work 10,000, 15,000 or
30,000 acres. To do it at that scale, they rent the
land, they lease equipment, they hire staff and custom work, says Bouma.
Continued on page 32
country-guide.ca 31
business
Continued from page 31
However, it isn’t just the scale of the farm.
It’s their approach to resources. These farmers
have worldwide connections at their fingertips
for everything from production to marketing, and
they leverage those connections. For example,
they text an engineer in Ireland about how a TMR
mixer works.
But perhaps most importantly, they also have
a new way of looking at their assets. Low interest
rates and more aggressive leveraging have stretched
their financial boundaries, says Bouma. The limitation is what can you obtain — what you can rent,
lease or buy.
The boundary is no longer what your bank will
lend you.
“Farms today can be operated under totally new
boundaries — or, perhaps more accurately, the lack
of boundaries,” says Bouma.
And they have their eyes on the future. With so
many Canadian farmers in their 70s, huge numbers
of deals are going to go down in the near term, says
Saik. “Very large farms of 30,000 acres are going to
be able to move to 50,000 acres fairly quickly.”
4. Network, network, network
Today’s top farmers network with other CEOs
from other farms and other businesses. Their
diversified networks help them understand how
to expand and how to find financing. “This is not
about size, this is the ability to accept knowledge
and put it into motion,” says Saik. “They (top farmers) seek a lot of outside help and are not scared to
put it into play.”
The top farms today are more complicated and
bigger, so farmers recognize they can’t do it all. Over
the years, Saik has seen that top farmers know how
to hire good people.
Saik was packing his suitcase while talking with
Country Guide on his ever-buzzing cellphone. This
guy’s the definition of busy. However, he is never too
busy to learn, and every 90 days for the last 21 years
he has hopped on a plane to attend a workshop on
business strategies. He’s the only aggie in the room,
and he invariably learns from the other participants.
More farmers are adopting similar strategies.
It’s all about being open to learning. Saik describes
today’s top farmers as being “coachable” and says
the ability and desire to learn is what divides the top
third of farmers from the lower two-thirds.
For Jack Thomson, one of the benefits of being
involved with OYF is interacting with the nominees.
Consistently, they’re intelligent, they’re never afraid
to ask questions, and they are open thinkers.
A side benefit to this sharing of ideas is that it’s
extremely motivational. In the decade since Thomson and his wife, Rhonda MacDougall, won OYF
nationally, they’ve stayed connected to the group
because of the energy and inspiration of the other
participants.
32 country-guide.ca Rob Saik, CEO of The
Agri-Trend
Group.
“This is not about size,” Saik says.
“This is the ability to accept
knowledge and put it in motion.”
“Not only are they good business people, they
have compassion and understanding,” says Thomson. “We (OYFs) all care. That’s what binds us.”
The need for networking goes beyond the farm
gate and social time. Top farmers are deeply connected to their markets, adds Thomson. With help
from their networks, they gain insights into the markets and their trends.
5. Understand risk
“If something’s going to go wrong, I’d rather be
stabbed in the front than in the back,” says Thomson. “At least then, you can see it coming.” Although
open to new ideas, top farmers look hard at whether
their finances and management can handle it.
Generally, younger people have a greater appetite
for risk than older ones. Even though the OYF nominees are brimming with optimism and passion, they
measure what difference any change is going to make,
and they understand that it’s got to be beneficial for
their life and the family and not just financial.
Part of making good choices is understanding
risk, says Thomson. You have to believe in your
decisions and not be consumed by the potential
of mistakes. “Risk is what you can’t control,” he
says. “And you just try to mitigate exposure to
those factors.”
Continued on page 34
February 17, 2015
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Continued from page 32
6. Experiment
Saik sees farms moving toward formalizing
research. With variable-rate technology it’s possible
to do strip trials in live field conditions. Yield monitors and well-designed strip trials allow for statistically significant data results. These long skinny
strips can be revolutionary, says Saik.
Besides, farmers can claim their research and
development budgets through SNRD credits.
“There’s no better data set for a farmer than
what happens on their own farm,” says Saik. “These
are ground truths.”
7. Use big data effectively
Many of today’s leading-edge farmers are taking
data use to the next level, says Saik.
They use and integrate the data they collect, linking production and financial.
This information needs to move seamlessly
between growing the crop, selling the crop and managing the farm business. Historically, we had very
disparate information from yield monitors to elevators to grain-trading companies to personal accounting programs.
Some of today’s top farms have a way to hook all
34 country-guide.ca their production information together in one place
so they’re able to see their whole farm. “Data is the
largest opportunity for farmers,” says Saik.
As farmers gather more data years for their
farms, their decision-making become more accurate,
says Saik. Eventually they can make production
decisions based on this data on the fly, and to do
that, he believes it’s imperative that farmers should
own and control their own data.
Back on the farm, Thomson isn’t fazed by the
onset and integration of technology. In the last 10
years, the flow of information has sped up and it has
become important for farmers to learn how to sift
through and manage it.
Access to information is also mobile, so Thomson can stay connected. But that means he can also
get sidetracked by data. “Farmers are farmers for
God’s sake, and you can get too much information
so you end up churning in it and it turns into nothing,” says Thomson.
The important thing, Thomson finds, is to
remember the purpose of information — to keep
improving.
“Top farmers in my father’s time —and now —
know what they are looking for,” says Thomson.
“They have the goals of trying to be the best farmers we can be, to be involved in the community, to
make it a better place.” CG
February 17, 2015
business
Executive privilege
The management performance of corporate CEOs falls when
they are overcompensated. Does the same apply to farmers?
By Scott Garvey, CG Machinery Editor
here is one undeniable fact underlying farm equipment sales all around the
world. When farm incomes rise, machinery sales numbers rocket right along
with them. Higher farm profits are reinvested, with producers willing to spend money and
even take on debt, especially on equipment.
Farm fleets do need to be regularly updated, of
course, but record farm incomes since 2008 have
fuelled unprecedented spending on new machinery,
just as they have also pushed farmland values and
land rental rates to record highs as well.
But farm commodity prices and farm incomes
are notoriously fluid.
So the question is, do those periods of high
incomes create a kind of euphoria or recklessness
that induces farm managers to make long-term
financial decisions that could seriously reduce profits in future years, especially if revenues fall?
A recent study suggests it may.
Michael J. Cooper of the University of Utah,
Huseyin Gulen of Purdue University, and P.
Raghavendra Rau of the University of Cambridge
in the U.K. looked at the link between the compensation packages paid to CEOs and their company’s
performance. They co-authored a report and published their findings in October, 2014.
The researchers surveyed 1,500 major corporations, analysed their financial performance and
correlated that to the amount of money their CEOs
pocketed in a year.
Granted, most farmers aren’t CEOs of structured multinationals, but all farmers get their compensation package based on the performance of
their operation, and they are the ones making
investment decisions. So there is a strong parallel.
And to add to that similarity, in recent times
most CEO compensation packages have been
linked directly to the performance of their company’s stock. The thinking is that this creates an
incentive to perform. The better their management
decisions and the higher dividends that stockholders see, the better the CEO’s paycheque.
It sounds logical, but apparently there is a
risk. When you overpay CEOs, they start to make
investment decisions that negatively affect the
future performance of their firms.
“We find evidence that chief executive officer
(CEO) pay is negatively related to future stock
returns for periods up to three years after sorting
on pay,” reads the report. “Our results appear to
be driven by high pay-related CEO overconfidence
that leads to shareholder wealth losses from activities such as overinvestment and value-destroying
mergers and acquisitions.”
Forbes annually surveys the top-earning CEOs in
the United States. It not only tallies up the pay packets each executive takes to the bank, it also looks at
Continued on page 36
Lower-paid CEO’s, including Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren
Buffett consistently outperform CEOs with the biggest total
incomes, new study finds.
February 17, 2015
country-guide.ca 35
business
What ag equipment CEOs are worth
36 country-guide.ca Continued from page 35
Photo: AGCO Corporation
One of the most controversial topics
in the relationship between corporations
and their shareholders in recent years has
been the compensation packages awarded
to senior executives and, most significantly, CEOs (chief executive officers).
With so many CEOs now raking in
incredibly large pay packets, a few investors
have asked if the term “corporate raider”
should take on a whole new meaning.
When it comes to ag equipment manufacturers, we took a look at the majorbrand CEOs to see where they land in the
world of executive compensation.
Starting with Samuel Allen, CEO of
John Deere, the company’s 2013 proxy
filing with the SEC (U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission) shows his total
compensation package for that fiscal year,
including wages, benefits and stocks,
netted him US$19,148,372. The other
four top executives whose salaries were
declared in the filing picked up in excess
of US$4 million each.
According to glassdoor.com, a website that lists pay scales, a middle-of-theroad engineer at John Deere gets paid
an annual salary in the mid-US$70,000
range. So in one year Allen makes an
amount equal to the combined annual
earnings of about 255 of his engineers.
Looked at another way, in one year
Allen makes the same amount that seven
engineers would earn in their entire
careers (at that constant pay rate).
To his credit, according to the Wall
S treet J ournal , Allen actually asked
for a 25 per cent reduction in his cash
bonus this year because of a tightening
up of market conditions. That dropped his
annual earnings by about US$1.8 million.
Despite that, his 2014 earnings still hit
US$20.3 million.
The paper cites a proxy filing by Deere
in mid-December as the source of that information. That filing wasn’t yet on Deere’s
investor website at the time of this writing.
Over at AGCO, its SEC proxy filing notified investors of a stockholder meeting held
in April of 2014, in which shareholders
would be asked to approve, among other
things, CEO, Martin Richenhagen’s 2013
pay packet. All totalled, his full compensation for fiscal 2013 fell in at $11,742,360.
That proxy filing contained a summary
of the brand’s “(executive) compensation
Earning $11.7 million in 2013, AGCO’s
Martin Richenhagen is far from the top.
philosophy and program design.” Here
is how the company says it structured its
senior executives’ compensation program.
“(It) is intended to support the
company’s business strategy and align
executives’ interests with those of stockholders and employees (i.e. pay for
performance)... The company believes
that as an executive’s responsibilities
increase, so should the proportion of
his or her total pay comprised of annual
incentive cash bonuses and long-term
incentive compensation, which supports
and reinforces the company’s pay-forperformance philosophy.”
That has become a relatively common
approach for major corporations.
Finally, CNH, which includes the New
Holland and Case IH brands. It’s part of
the Fiat Industrial group of companies. Its
2012 SEC filing shows CEO Sergio Marchionne took in “renumeration” of approx.
C$4.06 million and equity renumeration
with a “fair value” of C$8.72 million in that
year (making a total of C$12.78 million
with exchange rate at press time).
Despite the enormity of these numbers, the three ag equipment brand CEOs
actually earn modest incomes, relatively
speaking. They don’t even come close
to the top of the Forbes survey of highest paid executive salaries. Fashion icon
Ralph Lauren, No. 2 on the Forbes list,
pulled US$66.65 million out of his company in 2012. Even the head of Starbucks
doubles Allen’s numbers.
the performance of the company under
that person’s leadership, measuring it
against similar firms, and then giving the
CEO an efficiency rating.
The problem is, the pay and efficiency rates on the Forbes scale don’t
exactly mesh the way that the compensation theory would lead you to expect,
which seems to lend support to that
study on pay versus performance.
Here’s an example.
In Forbes’ 2012 top earners list, the
No. 1 wage-earning CEO was John H.
Hammergren of McKesson (a health
care and pharmaceuticals company). He
collected an eye-watering US$131.19
million. But the efficiency rating Forbes
gave him based on his company’s performance was a decidedly middle-ofthe-road 121.
On the F orbes scale 1 is best and
206 is the worst.
In contrast to that, you have to leaf
through to number 495 on the list to
find Warren J. Buffett, CEO of Berkshire
Hathaway. Buffett — if you really haven’t
heard of him — is considered by nearly
everyone to be an investment genius.
Buffett’s corporate compensation
package totalled a measly US$490,000
in the year of the survey. Of course, at
the time he owned what F orbes estimated was more than US$44 billion in
company stock, but either way, he gets
an impressive efficiency rating of 33,
despite finishing nearly last on Forbes’
top 500 earners list.
That CEO compensation study
should provide producers with a new
metric to consider when they evaluate their own management performance this winter, especially after
we’ve just gone through a few years
of record commodity prices — at least
in the grain and oilseeds sector. How
have higher incomes affected their decision-making? Have they taken more
high-risk financial gambles? Have they
overinvested in machinery, land or anything else that will drag down future
profits? How would they rate on something like Forbes’ efficiency scale? CG
February 17, 2015
business
Human resources
the new frontier
These HR concepts will help you develop and
execute an HR strategy for your unique farm
By Helen Lammers-Helps
armers have been very good at improving
their productivity by getting the most from
their land, animals and machines. Now, as
farms get bigger, farm advisers say more
farmers are looking to put that same attention on maximizing the people side of their businesses.
Human capital is often one of the biggest
expenses on the farm, yet it receives the least attention, says Michelle Painchaud, CEO of Painchaud
Performance Group in Winnipeg, Man. “Farmers
spend a lot of money sourcing the best equipment
and ensuring they have the best vets, nutrition, etc.
for their animals,” Painchaud says. “But what about
the people?”
As farms have grown, their human resources
component has often been overlooked, agrees Kevin
Kirkwood, a consultant with Backswath Management Inc. in Melville, Sask. Farmers are entrepreneurs who are good at growing crops but may not
have a lot of experience managing people, he says.
Business leaders in the ag industry are beginning
to recognize the importance of being able to attract,
engage and retain talent, says Painchaud. “Who would
have ever used the phrase ‘engage talent’ on a farm
before?” she asks. And more farmers are now realizing
it’s prudent to spend money on the hiring process, says
Painchaud. “A bad hire costs you money.”
Investing in your HR program can also have
intangible benefits on the farm by creating a more
positive work environment and reducing stress levels
for all, says Kirkwood.
As many farmers have discovered, finding good
people willing to work the hours required on the farm
can be tough. Farmers will need to work at finding good
employees, says Kirkwood. “It’s a competitive market
out there, and there aren’t enough good people.”
In order to attract the best employees, Painchaud
says farmers should first create an Employee Value
Proposition (EVP) to market their businesses to
potential employees. The EVP explains how your
farm business is unique and why an employee would
want to work for you.
Kirkwood agrees. When you understand your
farm culture, your brand and your mission, you’ll be
able to hire like-minded people who fit the operation.
“You’re selling your farm as a business to attract professional career-minded people,” says Kirkwood.
February 17, 2015
Writing a job description that outlines the
employee’s duties and responsibilities helps
ensure you hire the right candidate and also
avoids duplication.
When it comes to advertising for the position,
Painchaud encourages farmers to be more targeted
with their advertising instead of taking out an ad in
the local newspaper. She recommends making use of
websites devoted to agricultural jobs such as AgCareers or AgriStaffing. (A list of websites is found in
the resources section at the end of this article.)
Social media is a good way of attracting the 20to 30-year-old crowd, says Kirkwood. “LinkedIn is
becoming a useful tool for hiring.”
Farmers shouldn’t be afraid to get creative with
their advertising, says Painchaud. Get a table at
a trade show or put an advertisement in an association newsletter or conference program. “Or put a
sign out at the road,” she says.
And always be on the lookout for potential
employees, continues Painchaud. Have an open
house at the farm, for instance, and keep your eyes
open for potential candidates among the visitors.
One of Painchaud’s farmer clients found someone
while waiting in a restaurant.
After attracting the best potential candidates,
the next step is the interview process. Painchaud
stresses that farmers need to treat the interview like
a real interview. In the past too many farmers took
short cuts. “If you liked them, you hired them,” she
says. When interviewing, she recommends asking
open-ended questions that will require the potential
employee to elaborate on their experience rather
than asking questions with “yes” or “no” answers.
Many farmers could benefit from HR training,
says Kirkwood. Some farmers have very little experience with the interview process. For example,
if they worked all of their summers on the family
farm before returning to work on the farm fulltime, they may not have been through any job
interviews themselves.
Even after making the effort to hire good
employees, farmers are often disappointed with
employee performance. Painchaud says this may not
be the employee’s fault.
Continued on page 38
country-guide.ca 37
business
Continued from page 37
When there’s a poor performer, you
need to look at their manager, says
Painchaud. First of all, does the employee
have clear expectations, she asks. “If the
employee doesn’t know what to do, then
they will do what they think they are
supposed to do.”
Painchaud had one client who had
been through five farm managers. When
she contacted the former farm managers to find out what the problem was,
she discovered all of them said the same
thing. “The expectations weren’t clear
and they didn’t feel appreciated.”
Another question farm managers
should ask themselves is whether their
employees have the skills and resources to
do their jobs, continues Painchaud. A lack
of training for employees is a problem on
many farms. “Some farmers don’t recognize that they need to explain to employees what they need to be doing,” she says.
Painchaud sees an analogy to sports
where every aspect of a player’s performance is continuously measured. “If you
have a B player, you either train them or
get rid of them,” she says. “You want a
team of top performers.”
What does your team need? Do they
need coaching? Do they need better
tools? Or should you get rid of them?
Sometimes what’s needed is a change
YOU WON’T FIND
in leadership style. Painchaud says one
of her farmer clients was much more successful once he changed his own behaviour, but first he needed to understand
what he was doing wrong.
On some farms there is a lack of
consequences (positive or negative) for
employee performance. If an employee
isn’t performing well but there are no
consequences, what is their motivation to
change, queries Painchaud. On the other
hand, farmers are also famous for not giving praise when it’s warranted, she adds.
One way to get feedback from employees is by conducting a survey. When the
number of employees is small, this can
take the form of an informal discussion on
BETTER VALUE OR A
GRASSY WEED.
business
a rainy day, says Painchaud. She suggests
asking employees what they like and don’t
like every six months.
One farm Painchaud worked with had
about a dozen employees, and it started
having Monday morning meetings.
Employee retention went up drastically
as employees felt more valued and had
more exposure to the owners.
When managers ask employees for
their opinions and input, employees feel
valued and will take more ownership,
says Painchaud. Gen Y talks with their
feet, adds Kirkwood. “They’ll move on if
they are not happy.”
Work-life balance has become increasingly important to younger generations.
“They work to live and their vacation
time is very important to them,” continues Kirkwood.
With farm employees often working
long hours, it helps if managers take the
time to show their appreciation by celebrating milestones, such as an annual picnic or
barbecue, says Painchaud.
Many farms would benefit from better HR management. As one dairy farmer
quipped, the cows are often treated better
than the people on the farm. Maybe it’s
time for that to change.
Job descriptions may be the right
place to start. They're among the pillars
in a developed HR program, Kirkwood
says. “Understanding everyone’s roles
and responsibilities not only provides
direction for your employees but it will
make succession of the farm go a lot
smoother,” adds Kirkwood. CG
Resources
Websites for advertising farm jobs
www.agristaffing.com
www.agcareers.com
www.careersinfood.com
www.agcallhr.com
www.manitobacooperator.ca
www.jobbank.gc.ca (Federal Job Bank)
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40 country-guide.ca February 17, 2015
business
Who needs equipment?
The Suhrs are making it pay to crop 7,000 acres with
only a pickup. The rest is all custom
Photography: David Charlesworth
By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor
ome people look at conventional
farming and organic production
and they see oil and water. The
two just were not made to mix.
Not only are their production
methods about as different as they can be, so
too are their markets.
Fiete Suhr assures anyone who holds that
outlook that not only is it possible to combine the two, he’s been doing it successfully
for nearly 15 years.
What makes this story even more
remarkable, however, is that on the
conventional side, he’s been doing it all with
custom operators. He doesn’t own any of his
own equipment.
Suhr farms on different parcels of land in
Bruce County, with his home farm located
between Port Elgin and Paisley, Ont. along the
Saugeen River. It’s a parcel of 100 acres that he
purchased in 2000 after the farming operation
he worked for went into receivership.
“For what we were looking for, it had
everything,” says Suhr, who grew up on a farm
in Germany and then emigrated to Canada
in 1983. “It had water, a bush and beautiful
cropland, and we found it with a nice house
on it. So we bought that as a starting point.”
At first, Suhr and his wife, Irene Kollmann
considered starting a community-supported
agriculture (CSA) farm, where shares in the
operation could be sold and crops would be
grown to meet the preferences of the shareholders. For a small farm, Suhr says, a CSA
approach can be a good fit, but it’s also a lot
of work requiring a lot of organization.
Almost immediately, however, an opportunity came up to rent 4,000 acres of land
through some investors Suhr had worked
with from Europe. So instead of developing a
CSA, they headed into 2001 with a decision
to start cash cropping.
Through the years, he’s had a lot of help
from Irene, who acts as Suhr’s sounding board
and counsel on the crucial decisions pertaining
February 17, 2015
to the farm. Irene studied agriculture in Vienna,
Austria, and finished with her doctorate, so she’s
usually the first person he turns to for advice.
During peak times in the growing season, she
also helps with the day-to-day operations.
“With my previous job, I had a lot of connections to custom operators who could farm
it for me, because I didn’t want to invest millions of dollars in capital without being sure
that I’d have the land long term,” says Suhr,
adding that he is now at 7,200 acres of rented
land and 700 acres of land that is owned and
dedicated to organic production.
And on the conventional side of the operation, the only equipment he owns is his
pickup truck, and his phone.
As for soil types, Suhr says three-quarters
of the land he works is clay-loam, with the rest
being silt-loam or sandy-loam. About 30 per cent
of the land in total is systematically tiled, and that
can raise some challenges from year to year.
In terms of cropping, Suhr’s mainstays on
the conventional side are corn, wheat and soybeans — all grown under identity-preserved (IP)
conditions, so he plants no genetically modified
hybrids or varieties. Occasionally he’ll also plant
edible beans — usually white but he’s also tried
Continued on page 42
country-guide.ca 41
business
Continued from page 41
The challenges
black beans and adzukis in the past. And
he’s grown spring and winter canola as well
as spring wheat.
“On the organic side, it’s a little different: I grow corn, soybeans, spelt, oats,
sunflower, peas, some flax and hay and as
much as I can, utilize cover crops, as well,”
says Suhr, adding that from a machinery perspective in the organic side of the
operation, he owns his tillage and weed
management equipment. “And I do have
a small sheep flock with about 100 ewes.”
He’s trying to match the livestock
component to the acreage for the organic
production, adding that he may need to
expand in order to meet those nutrient
needs. He’s also purchasing organic compost until he has the flock built up.
Farming on its own is enough to create some rather imposing challenges. But
mixing conventional production with
organic — and then adding a reliance
on custom operators to that combination — would seem to risk a nightmare
of complications.
Yet Suhr takes these in stride, crediting his experience as a farm manager on
an operation which was also based on
custom operators.
“I’ve built that relationship over 20
years,” Suhr says, adding that he deals
almost exclusively with one custom operator. “I have a long-term relationship
with them that’s built on friendship and
trust, and they’ve built up to meet my
needs, so it’s a win for both of us.”
Business plans can reflect the farmer’s strengths,
Suhr believes. With his background in economics,
his plan is based on managing the numbers
From an organizational perspective,
Suhr doesn’t believe relying on custom
work to be any more difficult than buying the equipment and hiring the staff
he would need to operate it for him. He
suggests it might even be a little easier, as
long as you can create a relationship with
a custom operator who is reliable.
If he owned half of his acreage and
knew the long-term outlook, Suhr says
he would definitely have his own equipment. But such decisions have to be carefully calculated.
There’s the potential disadvantage
that if he supplied his own machinery,
he could be building equity, rather than
simply writing cheques. For now, though,
he’s content to maintain his current business model.
“The main challenge is the co-ordinating — that’s No. 1,” says Suhr. “It’s the
same with the big cash croppers.”
Looking forward, marketing is
another potential issue, “especially since
there’s more uncertainty in the market
now than there was maybe 20 years ago,”
Suhr says. “The fluctuations are higher,
the demand is changing so much quicker
— with China coming on so strong —
and the uncertainty is increasing.”
Attitude adjustment
Suhr sees opportunity in those marketing and organizational challenges.
In fact, he sees it as a core management
trait to search for the opportunity side
of situations as they evolve, and then to
adapt production and marketing to take
advantage.
For Suhr, you might think this would
be more difficult because of his reliance
on custom work. After all, if he is paying
custom for much of the work he needs,
then he has some limits on his ability
to totally manage his cost of production. (Of course, Suhr might respond
that no one has absolute freedom. If you
are leasing, or if you have title to the
machinery, you still need to make the
payments.)
But the bigger point may be this.
From his point of view, Suhr’s management system enables him to diversify his
cropping between organic and conventional, which in turn spreads his risks
and creates new opportunities to be
proactive.
“It’s opportunity, that’s the biggest
challenge,” says Suhr. “The organic gives
me some risk management — a second
leg to stand on. It acts differently than
42 country-guide.ca February 17, 2015
business
the conventional market, and it gives me
some flexibility and risk protection.”
One of the strengths required for production of this type, he adds, is patience,
especially working with custom operators. There will be the odd day, he says,
when he really wants to get the crop harvested, yet the combine might not show
up on schedule because the custom operator is a field or two behind. That means
it’ll be there the next day, and Suhr needs
the patience to work with that.
“I can be patient because I know
these people who are working with me
are doing their best to accommodate me,
and it’s a great relationship that has been
grown,” says Suhr. “I am patient with
them and they are patient with me — it’s
a give and take.”
The other unique quality that Suhr
brings to his farming operation is this oneof-a-kind business blend. With his experience in both conventional and organic
production, he’s impossible to pigeon-hole
as one or the other, because he’s both.
“I learn a lot — I go to all of these conferences as much as possible, and I go to
the same on the organic side, as much as
possible,” he says, noting it’s not a matter
of one or the other; there has to be room
for both. “There are strengths on both
sides, and it’s a synergy that helps me, and
I think it’s better because you get some of
the good of the conventional and some of
the good of the organic.”
On a personal note, Suhr views the
organic system as a better plan to follow,
in the long term. At the same time, he’s
not judgmental about that perspective.
The future will tell farmers which way is
the best, he says, and the voice of the consumer telling growers what they want will
create a sense of direction.
Whether it’s a consumer base that
demands an end to gestation crates in
sow barns or the end of neonicotinoid
insecticides in corn and soybean production, farmers need to be more open to
whatever kind of production practices
consumers demand, Suhr says. The only
stipulation is that farmers must be paid
for that value-added management.
“As a consumer, if you want to have an
impact on agriculture, buy or ask for what
you believe in,” says Suhr. “Don’t just
complain and still buy what’s provided.”
Should other farmers
go this way?
Asked if he advocates other farmers
trying his approach, Suhr responds that
success lies not only in diligence and attitude, but in your own skilset.
His background is in economics,
so he likes working with numbers. But
other farmers have their own individual
strengths, and those strengths have to be
woven into their business planning.
Above all, says Suhr, there has to be a
drive to succeed that creates an attitude
that success is achievable, if not inevitable.
“You sit down, you make your
business plan, and see what works for
you,” says Suhr. “The key is you have to
believe in what you’re doing. As long as
you believe in it and the numbers work
out, that’s the way you should go.”
“You need a strategy,” Suhr says.
“Then follow it and do it, and you will
be more successful, as long as you do it
and do it with passion.” CG
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February 17, 2015
country-guide.ca 43
business
More to marketing than price
By Gerald Pilger
ithout a doubt, the biggest fallacy
about Canada’s grain producers
is that they are good marketers.
I would argue instead that few
grain growers actually have real
marketing expertise, and even fewer actually market
what they produce.
Grain producers who have spent many hours or
days attending marketing groups, courses, and seminars along with the many farm advisers, brokers,
market specialists, and educators who offer them will
disagree. So will farmers who are inundated with
market information via online sources, from newsletters, subscription services, direct mail, on-air radio
broadcasts and even person-to-person contact with
buyers, brokers, and advisers.
It’s also true: most growers do follow the “market” closely. Successful farmers understand and
probably employ a host of marketing tools including
storage, contracting, futures, basis, targets, options
and deferred delivery. A percentage of producers
even sell and replace the physical commodities with
paper under the guise of marketing rather than realizing they are actually making an investment or
speculating (which is what such actions actually are,
and what they should be evaluated as).
The problem is that nearly all this effort is
focused almost entirely on capturing a price. But
price is only one part of marketing.
In fact, some business gurus argue that price setting is the least important component of marketing.
Your product’s qualities, how you make it available
to your customer and how they perceive your product are likely more important than price for longterm profitability.
True marketing consists of ensuring you are offering the consumer the right product, in the right
place, at the right time, at the right price. Marketing requires not only the setting of a price, but also
understanding and responding to the wants and
needs of the customer.
Is your farm business — and is the Canadian agricultural industry — actually offering the right product in the right place at the right time at the right
price? How well are we as farmers and as an industry actually marketing what we grow and produce?
Branding commodities
Unfortunately, nearly all Canadian farm production is in undifferentiated commodities. Farmers tend
to perceive little difference between a bin of a specific
crop that they grow and a bin of the same grain of
a neighbour, or of the same crop grown in the U.S.,
Brazil or Australia, for that matter. Wheat is wheat
44 country-guide.ca and corn is corn after all. They are relatively easy to
grow worldwide and similar types are used for the
same purposes no matter where they are grown or
where they are processed.
Unfortunately, producers of undifferentiated commodities have very few marketing tools they can use
to compete for sales and market share. In a free and
open market with a large number of sellers, price
becomes the primary way to market a commodity. As
a result, commodities are defined by prices continually trending down because producers not only compete on low prices but also increase production and
supply in an attempt to compensate for lower prices.
But growers have another option. Rather than staying on the commodity treadmill and continually chasing
prices lower, it is possible to differentiate a commodity.
According to Dave Dolak, a marketing expert
from Charlottesville, Virginia, “The answer lies in
first identifying or devising ways to create unique
attributes and unique promises of value offered
solely by you and your product offering.”
That sounds like a mouthful.
When asked if it is possible to do this for a commodity crop such as wheat, Dolak replies: “definitely!” He points to coffee as an example of a crop
where companies and countries have used differentiation and branding to increase their market share
and price. Columbian coffee and Kona brand coffee
have become recognized brands, and consumers look
for those labels when purchasing.
Dolak has written a short e-book entitled “How
to Brand and Market a Commodity” which gives
a step-by-step process that commodity producers,
companies, and countries can use to differentiate
a commodity and compete for market share on
something other than price. The e-book is available
through Amazon.com.
“Commodity marketers are often very surprised to
learn from customers that price is not the most important factor — let alone the only factor,” Dolak says.
Canadian wheat
A useful case study is Western Canadian wheat.
Dr. Rex Newkirk is vice-president of research and
innovation at the Canadian International Grains
Institute (Cigi) in Winnipeg. He explains that Cigi
has been instrumental in the development and maintenance of export markets for Canadian grain for
many years by providing buyers of Canadian wheat
with technical training on the milling, processing and
utilization of that wheat.
Cigi’s work was complemented by the analysis
and assurances of wheat quality provided by the
Canadian Grain Commission and the identification
February 17, 2015
business
of market and export opportunities by
the Canadian Wheat Board. Together
these three organizations created a brand
for Western Canadian wheat. That brand
identified Canadian wheat as very high
quality, safe, clean and wholesome grain,
and it assured customers that wheat from
Canada would meet or surpass their
expectations.
The effort succeeded, Newkirk says.
“Canada had a strong brand for its wheat.”
However, the change to the CWB in
2012 has had a negative impact on that
brand. There may have been expectations
that the private trade would ensure our
brand is maintained, but there have been
problems. Buyers have reported being
disappointed with cleanliness and quality
in a number of shipments. They had even
bigger concerns with the shipping delays
last winter. In a world of just-in-time
delivery, our brand was degraded by the
inability of companies to deliver on time
because of their difficulties in sourcing
the specific quality requested by a buyer,
rail movement problems, and delays in
loading vessels.
In order to rebuild the tarnished
wheat brand, Newkirk says, Team Canada was developed. Cereals Canada,
provincial grain commissions, exporters,
and individual farmers are now joining
Cigi and CGC in actively marketing all
grains. It is hoped by including people
from every level of the value chain on
trade missions to importing countries, we
can assure buyers in those countries of
the quality and value of Canadian grains.
Lynn Jacobson, a farmer from
Enchant, Alta., took part in the Team
Canada mission to Asia last fall. He
was very direct in his comments about
Canada’s wheat brand. “Over the last
few years, no one had been branding
Canadian wheat. Canadians had not
been making visits to millers and they
(the millers) were not happy about this.
You cannot sell wheat with just a phone
call… Skype is not a face-to-face meeting.”
Adds Jacobson: “U.S. Wheat Associates, the Australians and the Russians are
meeting with Asian buyers regularly, and
we have to go there too if we are to compete in those markets.”
Even more importantly, it is hoped the
Team Canada approach will provide better feedback of what our customers are
demanding.
Jacobson brought back an extremely
important message for producers. “MillFebruary 17, 2015
ers are now complaining about quality of
Canadian wheat,” he reports. “The only
advantage Canada has is our wheat’s quality. If we ever go away from quality we
will lose markets. If we don’t have quality,
even the U.S. market will disappear. We
will become a residual seller of wheat if we
do not supply what the customer wants.”
As an example, Jacobson notes that
buyers have been concerned about the
gluten strength of our wheat for the last
few years. He notes gluten strength varies between varieties, yet some of the
most popular varieties we grow have low
gluten strength. Even so, we continue
to grow these varieties because of their
agronomics and high yields.
The fact that these varieties are not
meeting the needs of our customers is feedback that farmers must get and act upon.
Jacobson hopes the Team Canada approach
will deliver this feedback to farmers.
Canada has worked hard to build a
very favourable brand for our wheat.
Until recently our wheat could be considered as Perrier compared to tap water.
But to maintain that image will take a lot
of work, especially by producers.
We cannot expect multinational
grain companies to spend money to tell
buyers that Canada has the best wheat
in the world when they are also trying
to sell wheat from other wheat-exporting nations. Branding of wheat ultimately falls on the producer, and it will
be the effort that producers put into
true marketing that determines whether
Canadian wheat maintains its differentiation as the highest quality in the
world, or if we lose this positioning to
lower-cost producers.
Interestingly, Dolak also points out
that countries like China, Korea, and
India are increasingly using branding
techniques to differentiate and market
the commodities that they produce. It
would be a real shame if Canada and
Canadian producers lose our Canadian
wheat brand to other countries because
they are better marketers than us.
Make no mistake, using all available
pricing tools to lock in a price is a critical,
necessary skill for farmers. But this alone
is not marketing. As farmers and industry,
we must do more to actually market our
grains rather than just price them. CG
The 4 Ps
Business theory breaks the job of marketing into four components, referred to as the
Marketing Mix or the 4 Ps. These components are product, place, promotion, and price.
Any business which does not address all four of these components is setting itself up for
failure in the long run.
If you are truly a good marketer you should also be addressing all four of these sectors,
and you should be able to answer the following questions for whatever you produce:
Product
• What does the customer want and need from what I produce?
• What specific features add value to what I produce?
• How will the customer use what I produce?
• What quality or factor is missing or lacking from my production?
• How is it different than what my competitors are producing?
Place
• How can a customer see and know what I am producing?
• How will I deliver what I am producing to the customer?
• Are there alternative delivery channels to get my production to the customer?
• Who will be my sales force and how will they meet with the customer?
• How are my competitors approaching and selling to customers?
• Can I provide better service or delivery than my competitors?
Promotion
• How will my production be promoted to customers?
• When will I promote my production?
• How do my competitors promote their production?
Price
• What is my cost of production, delivery, and service to customers?
• What is the value of my production to my customer?
• How will my price compare to competitors’?
• What impact will a small increase or decrease in price have on sales?
country-guide.ca 45
Ag Outlook 2015
Understand the trends, see the opportunities
Economy
Commodities
Weather
Boost your management knowledge at this half-day event with industry experts.
Hear the latest on economic trends, weather patterns, commodity markets and farm
management issues, and make more informed decisions for your business.
Thursday, March 12
1:15 – 4:30 p.m.
Vic Juba Community Theatre
Lloydminster
Ag Knowledge Exchange has over 100 events that anyone with an interest in Canadian agriculture
can attend, free.
Presented in partnership with Country Guide.
Seating is limited – register for free today.
fcc.ca/AgOutlook | 1-888-332-3301
J.P. Gervais
FCC Chief Agricultural Economist
J.P. Gervais has over 15 years of experience in domestic and international analysis of agricultural
policies and markets. He’ll provide insight into major economic trends that shape the Canadian
agriculture industry today. Learn how they could impact your farm in the coming year.
Appearing at: Regina, Medicine Hat, Lloydminster
Drew Lerner
President, World Weather Inc.
A favourite among the agriculture industry, Drew’s daily assessments of crop and weather
expectations support commodity market trade and help many companies make better
agricultural business decisions. Hear how weather trends and global climate change could
affect your operation in 2015.
Appearing at: Regina, Medicine Hat
Mark Robinson
Meteorologist, The Weather Network
Mark has been storm chasing since 2000, sending on-the-ground reports to The Weather
Network. He has intercepted 15 hurricanes and over 30 tornadoes across North America,
including the most destructive hurricane in U.S. history, Katrina. He will discuss the weather
trends we could expect to see in 2015.
Appearing at: Lloydminster
Mike Jubinville
President, Pro Farmer Canada
Mike is lead analyst and president of Pro Farmer Canada, an independent market analysis
and advisory service he started in 1997. Benefit from his experience as he explains current
and future trends in agriculture, the current state of commodity markets and what we can
expect next.
Appearing at: Regina, Medicine Hat, Lloydminster
Lyndon Carlson
FCC Senior Vice-President, Marketing
Lyndon has 30 years of experience in several areas of agribusiness and marketing. He’s been
named the Canadian Agri-Marketing Association’s Agri-Marketer of the Year and presented
with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his contributions to 4-H Canada. He’ll
help you see where Canadian agriculture is headed and provide insights to improve your farm
management skills.
Appearing at: Regina, Medicine Hat, Lloydminster
machinery
Manufacturing talent
Executives at the major equipment manufacturers know their
brands can’t succeed without the right people on the payroll
By Scott Garvey, CG Machinery Editor
mong the Big Four farm equipment
brands, John Deere owns the largest
slice of the North American market,
and the bosses at its world headquarters
in Moline, Illinois, have no intention of
letting that change any time soon. In December they
revealed their updated, long-term corporate strategy to
investors, outlining how they intend to keep the green
brand out in front of the pack.
That strategy includes the usual. It promises to
keep inventory costs down, to keep earnings ratios
up, etc., etc., etc.
But it also includes a core focus that might not
seem so expected, i.e. recruiting, developing and
retaining the right people.
Nor is this just a tip of the hat to make the company’s workforce feel valued. Instead, it is a plan,
and the objective to “grow extraordinary global talent” couldn’t be given higher profile, being identified
as one of the four key factors that John Deere must
score big on in order to achieve its overall long-term
strategy.
Deere isn’t alone. In fact, if you talk to any senior
executive at any equipment brand, you’ll find they
are working as hard at innovating how they recruit
and develop the skills of top-notch employees as they
do with their machinery. They all know that no business can succeed without talented people from the
factory floor to the executive boardroom.
Still, Deere is a good example, and its CEO, Samuel
Allen, even devoted a considerable portion of his February 2014 shareholders’ meeting speech to the need to
grow the company’s human resources. Here is what he
said, in a longer extract than Country Guide would
normally print because of the insight it may give farmers into how such a company thinks about the kind of
HR issues that are increasingly affecting farmers, both
in terms of their hired and family staff:
“There’s nothing that will have more impact on
John Deere’s future than a supremely talented, committed and motivated workforce, such as our 65,000
employees and leaders. Everywhere we operate, we
seek to attract the best talent, then to develop and
deploy that talent for the ultimate benefit of our cus-
Abe Hughes,
vice-president
New Holland,
North America.
48 country-guide.ca February 17, 2015
machinery
Finding talented employees, grooming and retaining them to work in positions all the way from the
assembly line to key executive positions are key priorities for ag equipment manufacturers.
Photo: AGCo
tomers and investors. We’ve adopted disciplined processes to accomplish this aim
and exacting metrics to stay on track.
“There’s always room for improvement, of course. But we’re making further progress in categories such as hiring
preferred candidates, finding challenging
developmental assignments, and building
employee engagement. Engagement is
a particular priority, because it is a key
driver of performance, innovation and
growth — all essential to carrying out
our strategic plans.
“We also stress developing the right
kind of leaders, those who share our values and have the drive and determination to help fulfil our mission of serving
those linked to the land. That’s why we
take leadership development so seriously
and do everything possible to assist our
people in making the most of their skills
and realizing their potential.
“Among other steps, we’ve added
rigour to our succession planning processes to ensure we have talented leaders
in place throughout the world for our
present and future needs.
“A major objective is developing indigenous, or regional, talent to help manage
our non-U.S. operations and extend the
John Deere brand to a wider global audience. I’m proud to note that, partly as
a result of this emphasis, Deere has an
increasing number of extremely capable
nationals serving in key management roles
across Asia, Europe and South America.
“The way we see it, bringing more
February 17, 2015
diversity to our workforce, including our
leadership ranks, makes our business goals
that much more attainable. It fosters a
richer global mindset and helps us achieve
a deeper understanding of our customers
— a group that itself has a wider range of
backgrounds and needs than ever before.”
At New Holland
Then, when I spoke to Abe Hughes,
vice-president of New Holland North
America last July, I asked him not only
how he finds candidates with the right
combination of education and experience
to take a position on his executive team,
but how he allows them to develop.
Again, this is a longer transcript than we
would normally include. But again too, the
insights that it reveals into how to make an
HR goal actionable are impressive.
“It’s a very complicated question,”
Hughes said. “It’s a good question. It’s
hard to get people in a rural economy. A
lot of people will leave the farm, go get a
college education and they won’t come
back. We need people that are college
educated for this business.
“What we’ve got to help us with that is,
No. 1, we’re trying to build our brand early
on. We have partnerships with colleges and
students. We have a pretty robust internship
program we’re running. We want to get
engineers and people from ag economics,
pull them in and get them accustomed to
our business. See them for a couple of years
and then give them an offer.
“And then once we’ve got them in,
Samuel Allen, CEO of John Deere.
once they’ve been working with you for
five or 10 years, how do you keep them?
So I’ve created here a talent development
program, where we identify our 12 or 15
stars every year. Then we’re deliberately
putting them through a six-month program where we tell them you’re a star,
you’re valued here. Then we get them into
specific skill development. And then they
have to work on a key problem we want
to solve. They work on this together as a
team, so they develop teamwork skills.
“Then out of those groups there are
some keepers. We take those guys and
we are deliberately putting them in key
assignments to take them to the next
level. It’s experiential, you know.
“But you’ve got to find the right
people that probably come from a farm
background that are doing ag economics
or ag engineering and then develop and
foster them from there.”
Even though Hughes says he’s looking
for candidates with ag backgrounds, he
doesn’t restrict his recruitment to the traditional agricultural colleges in the big ag
regions, even recently hiring a Harvard
graduate who had other job offers from
competing industries.
“With that guy we had to compete with Wall Street and the Internet
companies, we had to convince him he
could have a wonderful career here and
be around the things he loves,” Hughes
explained. “He wanted to work in this
(ag equipment) business. I mean, who
wouldn’t? It’s fun being around farm
equipment.” CG
country-guide.ca 49
CropsGuide
By Richard Kamchen
stacking the deck
Next-generation herbicide stacks are on their way to help
fight not only weed resistance, but more weed species too
number of next-generation herbicidetolerant crops are in the pipeline for
soybean and canola growers, but the
offerings won’t include any magic bullets. Instead, what we’re likely to see
first are more stacked tolerance traits.
It’s because life science companies have their own
kind of stacking to deal with. Their new traits are lined
up, waiting for the green light from government regulators before they can be released to eager farmers.
Monsanto is among the companies working to
get a new soybean offering into the marketplace.
“We are certainly hoping for sales in the fall of
2015 for seeding of Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans in the spring of 2016,” says Joe Vink, weed
management technical lead with Monsanto Canada.
Monsanto Canada has received full regulatory
approvals in Canada, and got U.S. approval in January, but the launch of the new technology will
depend on completing the regulatory process in key
export markets.
Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybean is tolerant to
both glyphosate and dicamba, and Vink says its value
will be in how those two herbicides complement each
other in controlling tough broadleaf weeds. The addition of dicamba could be particularly useful for weeds
that glyphosate has traditionally been a little slower to
control, like lady’s thumb and wild buckwheat.
Two modes of action on broadleaf weeds also
represents good herbicide stewardship, Vink says.
“The goal is to minimize the selection for glyphosate-resistant weeds or herbicide-resistant weeds in
general. When you have two highly effective modes
of action like glyphosate and dicamba together, that
goes a long way in keeping these new tools for farmers available for many years to come.”
Just as important is the fact that dicamba has
residual activity in soil, Vink adds. “If you have the
two together in a pre-emergence or pre-seed application, for example in a no-till-type of situation, we
observe short-term residual on broadleaf weeds, like
lamb’s quarters, pigweed, and several other broadleaf
weeds as well.”
Getting soybeans off to a good start free of earlyseason weeds maximizes yield potential. Monsanto
has run the same experiment at nearly 40 test locations over seven years and says it has found an average 2.4 bu./ac. yield advantage when dicamba was
“When you have two highly
effective modes of action
like glyphosate and dicamba
together, that goes a long
way in keeping these new
tools for farmers available for
many years to come.”
— Joe Vink, Monsanto Canada
included in early weed removal timing compared to
glyphosate alone, Vink says.
“Dicamba is not a full-season residual herbicide,
but there’s potential for it to provide enough residual
activity on broadleaf weeds so that you can buy
yourself some time,” Vink says. “If it is raining or
you have a lot of acres to cover, those extra days are
a big difference in the spring for many farmers.”
Continued on page 52
50 country-guide.ca February 17, 2015
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CropsGuide
Continued from page 50
Confused yet about stacked technologies?
By Richard Kamchen
W
ith an influx of stacked herbicide-tolerant technologies in the
offing, there’s the potential for
confusion among farmers and advisers.
“Certainly, more education and awareness of growers by both the private- and
public-sector researchers and extension
specialists is required to minimize any
confusion,” says Hugh Beckie, a research
scientist with Agriculture Canada and professor at the University of Alberta.
Oilseed specialist Murray Hartman
at Alberta Agriculture adds there could
be some confusion over herbicide modes
of action, best timing, specific weed
strengths and weed resistance.
“I suspect that initially industry will take
the charge on educating, since governments tend not to focus on management of
individual products,” Hartman says.
“A lot of it is going to depend on the
extension effort,” adds Robert Gulden,
professor in the University of Manitoba’s
plant science department. “There are
venues where that information could be
relayed. Certainly, academics have their
role to play in that, as does industry, as
do provincial extension services.” It’s a
topic that will come up at winter meetings, especially as these products get
closer to release dates. “And there’s
going to be a learning curve,” Gulden says.
Christian Willenborg, a professor at
the University of Saskatchewan’s department of plant sciences says that the more
traits that are present in a variety, the
more likely it is to add confusion.
“Having said that, the extra confusion comes with added benefits, namely
improved pest management of some
form. So growers will have to weigh the
cost of acquiring new information about
stacked traits versus the benefits they
confer in the field,” Willenborg says.
There could be an impact on stewardship if growers aren’t fully aware of the science governing the utility of the traits and
the requirements surrounding their use,
Willenborg says. “A breakdown in stewardship could lead to increased pesticide
resistance if traits are not used properly.”
Willenborg believes it’s incumbent on
growers to familiarize themselves with the
technology they’re using in their systems,
but adds it’s also critical agronomists and
52 country-guide.ca industry personnel work with them to manage the technology and encourage stewardship of the traits.
“No one knows their fields like a grower
does, and they are aware of the specific
problems and should therefore choose
their seed accordingly. However, a more
concerted effort on the extension front is
required as seed technology evolves into
a more complicated array of traits,” says
Willenborg, adding this will require a joint
effort between industry, government extension personnel, and scientists.
Agricultural technology has advanced
at a dramatic pace over the last decade,
and Willenborg believes public institutions
need to invest more in extension efforts
to address growers’ issues. Still, he adds
that during the same 10 years “exponential growth” of highly qualified agronomists
has occurred, and they’ve been able to
share their knowledge with farmers on
technical and practical levels.
Gulden stresses that even with these
new technologies, farmers are still going
to have to think about integrated weed
management.
The systems will present opportunities
for greater herbicide use, herbicide mixtures and using a broader array of herbicides within a crop — which theoretically
are good management tools to mitigate
herbicide resistance — but “we need to
think bigger than that with all technologies
that we use in terms of weed management, and strive to aim for more of an
integrated approach to suppress weeds.”
Gulden adds that while stacked traits
open opportunities for more than one
mode of action, that doesn’t necessarily
mean farmers need to spray all the herbicides a seed is resistant to in one year.
“Weed spectrum and weed control
needs should drive some of that, and not
just a blanket application of everything all
the time,” Gulden says.
Another concern may be that a doublestacked HT in the best genetics could
become so popular that a couple of varieties would dominate the marketplace, says
Hartman.
Not only would that limit market competition, but it could also limit diversity
in farm fields and thus make them more
prone to biotic or abiotic shifts.
Monsanto plans to offer the stacked
trait in a broad maturity range for East and
West. While waiting for export countries’
approval can’t be counted as a boon, Vink
says it’s giving the company more time to
test its germplasm pool.
Meanwhile, Eastern and Western Canada will also get a soybean — and corn —
offering from Dow AgroSciences with its
Enlist Weed Control System based on new
traits and a new herbicide called Enlist Duo,
which will include a blend of glyphosate
and the new 2,4-D choline formulation.
“The system will allow the farmer
to continue to grow corn and soybeans,
with an additional herbicide mode of
action which is an effective tool to manage hard-to-control and resistant weeds,
especially the broadleaf weeds,” says
Enlist marketing leader Jeff Loessin.
In Eastern Canada, that will mean
effective control of all biotypes of Canada
fleabane, common ragweed, giant ragweed, and waterhemp, along with activity on weeds like lamb’s quarters and
pigweeds that are difficult for glyphosate
to control. In Western Canada, Enlist will
be effective on key weeds like volunteer
canola, wild buckwheat, smartweed, lady’s
thumb, lamb’s quarters, and kochia.
“(Lamb’s quarters and pigweeds) are
a couple of weeds in Eastern Canada that
if you spray straight glyphosate on them,
the control is sometimes less than perfect. Same as wild buckwheat in Western
Canada, plus smartweed and even lamb’s
quarters,” says Loessin. “Just having that
additional mode of action with the 2,4-D
in the Enlist Duo herbicide boosts the level
of control.”
Dow AgroSciences continues to monitor approval of the Enlist traits in importing countries, but it expects to launch
Enlist soybeans in 2016 in Eastern Canada
and 2017 in Western Canada, while Enlist
corn is targeted for release sometime in
2015 in the East and 2016 in the West.
“The differences between Eastern and
Western Canada are based on the breeding programs, and availability of hybrids
and varieties,” says Loessin.
Another stacked herbicide-tolerant
trait will be coming from Bayer CropScience and MS Technologies, which collaborated to develop Balance GT.
Balance GT soybeans will be tolerant to both glyphosate and isoxaflutole,
Continued on page 54
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CropsGuide
Continued from page 52
the active ingredient in the new Balance Bean herbicide. The herbicide’s
intended targets are broadleaf weeds and
grasses, including eastern black nightshade, waterhemp, ragweed and Canada
fleabane. Balance Bean also provides a
reactivation feature for coverage from
application through canopy closure.
“The Balance GT soybean performance
system will give growers a new herbicide
mode of action and resistance management
option in soybeans, especially for glyphosate-resistant and hard-to-control weeds,”
says David Kikkert, business operations
manager for soybean seeds and traits.
Balance Bean is registered for use in
Eastern Canada and B.C. only, and Balance
GT is expected to be available for planting
in Canada by mid- to late mid-decade.
The companies are planning to provide additional herbicide trait stacks in
the future to allow growers to use three
modes of action on one soybean, the
first of which will provide tolerance to
glyphosate, Balance Bean, and Liberty.
By the end of the decade may come
MGI soybeans, which provide pre-emergence exposure to herbicides mesotrione
and isoxaflutole, and post-emergence tolerance to Liberty.
Bayer and Syngenta are co-developing
MGI, which they consider an important
new tool for producers facing challenging
weeds like waterhemp, Palmer pigweed
and lamb’s quarters.
New for canola
Another Monsanto product focuses on
canola. TruFlex Roundup Ready allows
farmers to apply Roundup WeatherMAX
rates at about double those of first-generation systems, and offers better control of
annual weeds and tough perennials like
dandelion, foxtail barley and wild buckwheat, plus a wider spectrum of weeds
including yellow foxtail, biennial wormwood and common milkweed.
The application window will also
extend past the six-leaf stage to the first
54 country-guide.ca “I think it’s safe to say the industry is somewhat
perplexed with the China regulatory approval process
for biotech traits. It’s gone from being quite predictable
to being more unpredictable and so we are incurring
some delays with China’s approvals.”
— Neil Arbuckle, Monsanto Canada
flower, or 10 to 14 days longer than current technology.
“TruFlex has a higher application rate
with a wide application window to provide growers with more flexibility,” says
Neil Arbuckle, Monsanto Canada’s strategy lead. “It just provides more flexibility
for farmers to ensure that they’ve got
good weed control.”
Farmers can use existing applications
rates, but as the window gets larger and
weeds grow, they have the option to
increase the spray rate.
Right now, Monsanto is working through the global regulatory process, and Arbuckle says Monsanto has
approval from Canadian regulatory agencies, as well as the U.S., Korea, Japan and
Mexico, but is still awaiting approval
from Europe and China.
“I think it’s safe to say the industry
is somewhat perplexed with the China
regulatory approval process for biotech
traits,” Arbuckle says. “It has gone from
being quite predictable to being more
unpredictable, so we are incurring some
delays with China’s approvals.”
T h a t ’s n o t u n i q u e t o c a n o l a ,
Arbuckle says.
Arbuckle hesitates to put a date on
when TruFlex will be commercially available, as previous estimates have come
and gone. “Let’s just say we hope to be
in the marketplace within the next few
years. Ideally before 2020.”
Looking ahead, there’s also work
being done on both the existing Roundup
Ready trait stacked with Liberty as well
as a TruFlex Liberty Link option. Beyond
that, Monsanto has plans to stack
dicamba tolerance with TruFlex.
A non-stacked product will be coming from DuPont Pioneer, which plans on
introducing Optimum GLY canola in the
next few years.
“DuPont Pioneer anticipates commercialization of this trait later this decade
in key canola-growing geographies, specifically Western Canada and Australia,
pending key regulatory approvals from
export markets globally,” says spokesperson Tara Moir.
The glyphosate-tolerant canola is
intended to provide farmers greater marketplace choice, a wider application window, and increased rate flexibility due to
higher crop tolerance, Moir says.
In November, Cibus Global and
Rotam announced their U.S. launch of
non-transgenic SU Canola, which is resistant to Group 2 herbicide sulfonylurea.
“SU Canola offers farmers a new
alternative for weed control in canola that
will provide sound stewardship options to
deal with the management of glyphosate
weed resistance,” Cibus’s vice-president
of commercial development Dave Voss
said in a statement. “SU Canola is an
optimal fit for rotation with glyphosatetolerant soybeans, reducing weed pressure
caused by volunteer glyphosate-tolerant
canola in soybean fields.”
The product also addresses growing
demand for non-transgenic food ingredients, Voss said. But it might not make a
widespread commercial splash in Canada
for several years due to ongoing regulatory hurdles. CG
February 17, 2015
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CropsGuide
By Gord Gilmour, CG Associate Editor
That special
feeling
For a few years specialty crops were a tough
sell to Prairie farmers. Now with lower grain
prices, there’s a renaissance in interest
igh grain prices send a very clear signal. Basically, it amounts to “get in
while the getting’s good.” Nobody
knows how long those high prices
will last, and everyone is loathe to
leave dollars on the table.
In the field, it means a lot of inputs and crop
protection products get applied where they might
not be in a year of tighter margins. Rotations also
get squeezed just a bit tighter to take advantage of
favourable market conditions. And rotations get
simpler too, in favour of efficiency and productivity.
So it’s no surprise that in the last five years, we’ve
seen more canola and wheat, and fewer special crops,
including big-acreage crops like some of the pulses.
Take the case of field peas in Saskatchewan. In
2008 (the year grain prices really began to spike) that
crop saw over three million acres seeded. By 2011, it
had sunk to 1.7 million. Other crops show similar patterns, though, of course, they vary a bit in the details.
But that was then. Now, wheat and canola prices
have fallen and, suddenly, interest in special crops
has rebounded as farmers start to do some hard penciling to find profitability.
“The phone has definitely been ringing,”
says Manitoba Harvest’s Clarence Shwaluk.
“I really think we’re going to see more interest
in some of these more minor crops.”
This past season saw field peas in Saskatchewan
leap in popularity, with an estimated 2.6 million
acres going in the ground, a 21 per cent increase over
the year before, according to StatsCan. Those same
estimates showed the trend continuing to the west in
Alberta, where the crop was covering just over 1.2
million acres for a 25 per cent increase over a year
earlier. Likewise Saskatchewan, the biggest lentil producer by far, saw an estimated 2.8 million acres of
that crop sown, a jump of 21 per cent.
Clarence Shwaluk knows this first-hand. This winter his phone has been ringing a lot, and at the other
56 country-guide.ca end are farmers interested in learning about opportunities to grow one of the region’s newest specialty crops,
industrial hemp. The calls themselves are nothing new,
says the director of farm operations for processor Manitoba Harvest. They’re typical of the time of year when
growers ponder their seeding options. What’s a bit
atypical for a processor like Manitoba Harvest, which
has a solid grower base that’s remained largely stable
over several years, is who’s on the other end of the line.
“The phone has definitely been ringing a bit
more, as it does every year at this time, but I am
getting more cold calls from producers wondering if
they can get into hemp production,” Shwaluk says.
“I really think we’re going to be seeing more interest
in some of these more minor crops.”
In the end, Shwaluk says, it’s economics driving
that interest. At the same time, Manitoba Harvest
specifically and the hemp industry generally are
beginning to enjoy the first benefits of critical mass.
The company and others have clearly established an
end-use market for the product, and in Manitoba
Harvest’s case, they have also built a brand with
growing popularity, providing growers with a stable
outlet, something that’s not always possible with
small-acreage emerging crops.
Meantime, growers have also done their job,
tackling many of the most thorny production questions for the crop, serving to both increase production and make it more stable. In fact, it’s this success
that Shwaluk says may limit opportunities for new
entrants for a season or two. Plainly put, the company doesn’t want to oversupply the still-developing
marketplace, and there’s a clear trend towards higher
yields as growers really figure the crop out.
“I think at least part of any growth in demand
will be met from increased production through
higher yields from established growers,” Shwaluk
says. However, he’s quick to add he expects this
to be a short-term blip in what he sees as a longer
trend towards higher hemp acreage and more growers in the coming years.
Another observer says this heightened interest in
special or new crops is definitely happening. Scott
Chalmers, an agriculture diversification specialist with the province of Manitoba, says he’s seeing
growing interest in all sorts of new and emerging
crops — including some like corn and soy that are,
February 17, 2015
specialty crops
of course, only minor crops in the Western Canadian context.
“There seem to be emerging crops
that are competing with spring wheat
and canola,” Chalmers says. “It has to do
with wheat and canola prices in this area,
with a bit tougher times.”
In particular, the emerging dynamic
appears to see soy replacing canola, especially in areas that are prone to wetter
conditions and flooding. Soybeans tolerate wetter conditions and bounce back
more readily from them.
Add that to their lower production
costs, mainly because the crop fixes its
own nitrogen, and you have a potent
combination that growers have a hard
time ignoring, Chalmers says. There’s also
the benefit of a break in the disease cycle
for some common crop ailments.
“It increases the rotation options and
the length of time between canola and
wheat crops, which helps with disease
pressure for things like fusarium in spring
wheat and blackleg in canola,” Chalmers
says. He also notes that while clubroot
isn’t a major concern yet, growers are
well aware of the threat and view soy-
beans as a potential alternative crop that
would help prevent the problem, or cushion the blow if it does crop up.
Chalmers says corn is also another
crop that many cereal farms are eyeing
with interest as it begins to creep out of
the Red River Valley, where growers have
a long history producing it.
How big could this production get?
Nobody’s sure, but one champion of these
crops says they could become a big deal
on the Prairies. Monsanto Canada is predicting between eight and 10 million acres
of corn, and six to eight million acres of
soybeans in Western Canada by 2024.
With Manitoba soybean acres sitting at
1.3 million in 2013, however, that’s going
to be a tremendous growth curve.
Chalmers also cites hemp as another
crop with elevated grower interest, noting that conventional contracts provided
the potential for profitability and organic
contracts looked particularly tempting,
given lower prices for other crops.
“Organic production contracts are ranging around $1.50 a pound,” Chalmers says.
With the best organic growers reliably
getting 600 to 800 pounds of seed an
acre, those numbers have drawn considerable interest, he says.
Other crops being eyed for acreage
expansion include flax, which saw nearly
1.5 million acres sown in Saskatchewan
in last year’s StatsCan estimates. (Final
figures will be released later this winter.) Despite that increase in acres, prices
stayed solid at around the $11 mark.
Yellow and oriental mustard are getting some interest because prices have
held up, but oversupply has pressured
brown mustard prices downward.
Both Shwaluk and Chalmers say that
for growers, it’s going to boil down to a
combination of biology and economics,
as anyone who’s been paying attention
to the industry probably already knows.
Growers select crops over time that can
do two things for them: thrive under local
growing conditions, and reliably return a
few dollars to the operation.
The tough times in the ’80s and ’90s
generated game-changing new industries
like canola and lentils, with more and
more farmers noting the success of early
pioneers of these crops.
Are we starting another cycle? CG
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country-guide.ca 57
CropsGuide
By Gord Leathers
breeding basics
Plant breeding is a key driver of crop agriculture — but
it’s even more complex than might first appear
he Italian pasta industry sent a ripple
through Canadian agriculture a few
years back when they changed the
way they dry their noodles. Traditionally, pasta makers had hung the noodle for 15 hours or more at temperatures between
60 C to 70 C.
Although this produced world-class spaghetti, it
also took a fair amount of time, so Italy’s pasta sector
sped up the process in the 1990s when they adopted
high-temperature drying at 60 C to 120 C.
The noodles were ready to go in just two to 10
hours. But there was a catch. It only worked with
semolina that had the gluten strength to withstand
the higher temperatures.
Italy is Canada’s biggest customer for Western
Amber Durum, so when their protein requirements
changed we responded by changing durum’s protein
content. The old stalwarts such as Stewart, Hercules
and Wascana were no longer up to the job, so Canadian wheat breeders went to work and developed
Avonlea, Navigator and Commander.
In 2004 they released Strongfield, a variety with
high gluten strength and a low cadmium uptake. Its
agronomics also pleased the growers, and the Italian
pasta industry was happy with the quality.
Thanks to plant breeders, Canadian farmers
continued to deliver a product perfectly in tune
with its market.
But it’s not an easy fix. Developing a new variety
is a time-consuming and complicated business that
involves rejigging a plant’s genetic makeup so that it
performs the way we need it to. To do this, a breeder
first takes a long look at what we demand of that
plant from the time it germinates to the time it’s
swallowed by a satisfied diner.
“It’s all about goal setting,” says Agriculture and
Agri-Food Canada wheat breeder Ron DePauw.
“That revolves around gathering intelligence from
the entire value chain, the producers, the consumers,
the pathologists, the entomologists… and all of that
information has to feed into what is the ideal plant
for meeting the requirements of that value chain.”
Even then, it’s a tricky job to get one plant to satisfy so many different players. First the new variety
needs to make the cut with farmers. The ideal plant
must grow quickly over the summer and be ready
for the combine before the first frost. It needs to be
thrifty with nutrients, too, and resistant to lodging. It
also should compete with weeds and cope with disease and insects, producing a profitable yield.
Next it must please the processor. The key here is
that this year’s crop should go through the mill, the
press, the bakery or the factory the same way it did last
year, with a minimum of recalibration. Most important,
what moves from there to the grocery store has to cook,
feel and taste exactly as it always has, even though it
came from a new strain of plant. If the consumer won’t
eat the product, it’s right back to square one.
“You cross the best with the
best and you hope for the
best. But now you need a
sterile lab facility with the
artificial ability to grow cells
and you also need the ability
to isolate DNA, clone it and
purify it.”
— Peter McVetty,
University of Manitoba
58 country-guide.ca February 17, 2015
Plant breeding innovation
parental line development streams, one
for the female stream and one for the
male. It’s a continual process — you’re
always developing new female lines and
new male lines with all the desirable
traits and then crossing those to see what
hybrid progeny they produce.”
This gives us the first crossed generation, which breeders refer to as F1. If the
mature plant fits the requirements of the
ideotype, then we move onto the next
step, the evaluation and assessment.
tion will be highly variable, but if he
plants enough of them, there’s a very
good probability that he’ll find something in there that he can use. Since his
sample size is related exponentially to
the variability, his sample population gets
pretty big pretty fast. In order to find
“The One,” he has to sort through thousands of plants every year, which requires
an eye for detail, tremendous focus and a
good nursery.
“You’ve got to have super good nurs-
“All of that information has to feed into what is the ideal plant for meeting the requirements — Ron DePauw, AAFC
of that value chain.”
There’s nothing new about this.
Today’s plant breeder follows in the
footsteps of the very first farmers who
learned that productive offspring rise
from two productive parents. As the yield
and quality increased, the early farmers
started trading their surplus seeds, which
means the selection and breeding continued on a larger and larger scale.
Thousands of years later, pioneers like
Henry Wallace and George Harrison Shull
took plant breeding to the next level and
began developing the high-power hybrids
that farmers use today. Crop breeding
moved out of the field and onto the research
plot where we apply modern techniques to
develop the next generation of seed.
“You still cross the best with the best
and you hope for the best,” laughs University of Manitoba senior scholar Peter
McVetty. “But now you need a sterile lab
facility with the artificial ability to grow
cells and you also need the ability to isolate
DNA, clone it and purify it.”
Today’s breeder starts by drawing up
an ideotype, the ideal form of what you’re
developing. This ideal plant should satisfy
all demands put on it by all the players in
the value chain. Once that’s established,
a breeder looks at different genetic lines
and decides what may go together to produce the ideotype. The trick is to find or
develop two parents whose genes will
come together and complement each other.
“In terms of a hybrid crop you have
to develop the parental lines,” McVetty
says. “There are two parents used for
every hybrid, and you need separate
February 17, 2015
“And when you’re doing that assessment, you’re looking at whether or not it’s
suitable for release,” DePauw says. “If it’s
not, then you have to go into this whole
cycle of hybridization, evaluation and selection, and I would say that’s the loop where
the vast majority of breeding effort sits.”
The F1 generation is bred to the next
or F2 generation. Wheat self-pollinates
but that doesn’t mean that it’s cloning
itself. There’s still variation within all
that pollen and seed and it expresses
itself in the F2 generation.
This leads to the fundamental problem that breeders have with genes —
they don’t stay put. Organisms like to
shuffle them around so that subsequent
generations are made of different gene
combinations. This makes sense in a
wild ecosystem, where an environmental
change may favour one combination over
another so the more suitable type will
survive and pass on its genes.
In agriculture we’re not interested in
variability. We like uniformity, and one
truckload of durum from Midale, Sask.
had better be like another truckload from
Pipestone, Man. That Italian factory
wants consistency. Domestic plants may be
tightly bred to produce uniform offspring
but early in the breeding cycle their wild
heritage will out. The next generation or
F2 is where the fun begins.
‘That’s the generation at which you have
the greatest variation and you start practising selection,” DePauw says. “Every plant
in that group will be different.”
DePauw knows that the F2 genera-
eries as well as top-notch technical support to run a good nursery,” DePauw
says. “If you don’t run a good nursery,
you’re not going to find the genes.”
These nurseries serve another important purpose. They act as an agronomic
“sieve” where breeders subject their
developing varieties to the hazards of
the commercial farm field. This is where
they’re subjected to diseases and insects,
with DePauw selecting the best survivors.
They’re the ones that jump the next
hurdle and contribute their genes to the
next generation. All the while that same
hybridization, evaluation and selection
keeps going until the plant breeds true and
the progeny are uniform. This usually takes
until the F6 or F7 generation. As soon as
they have a “meritorious” generation they
can prepare it for commercial release.
Plant breeders sometimes lament the
fact that 99 per cent of their cultivars will
never end up in a commercial field. On the
other hand, when they win, they win big.
Canadian agriculture has quite the list of
successes such as sawfly-resistant Rescue
wheat and Strongfield durum.
Breeding is a cat-and-mouse game.
When a new industrial process demands
different protein content, the genetics
must be adjusted. When a new strain of
rust appears on the horizon, the genetic
resistance must be found or production
may fall. The changing face of agriculture
and the new curveballs that both Nature
and industry throw at us will keep plant
breeders busy for as long as we’re growing crops. CG
country-guide.ca 59
CropsGuide
By anne cote
The right time
for soybeans
If there’s one thing soybeans won’t tolerate, it’s late planting
he optimum seeding time for soybeans
throughout most of Manitoba is the
end of May. It isn’t a date you want
to miss, but you’ll also want to get the
right seed. Whether you’ve grown soybeans before or are planting them for the first time,
you’ll have the most success if you choose carefully
among the different varieties that are available from
your seed dealer, says Dennis Lange, farm production adviser at Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural
Development (MAFRD).
“First and foremost is variety selection,” Lange
says. “If you plant a short-growing-season variety
in a short-season zone, you can maximize the yield
potential of that variety,” he explains. “If you plant
a long-season variety in a short-season zone, then
that variety doesn’t have the opportunity to reach its
potential yield and full maturity… Know your zone.”
Kristen Podolsky, production specialist at Manitoba Pulse Growers, looks at days-to-maturity as
the single most important factor when choosing a
seed variety. The short-season zone in Manitoba is
in the southwest and northwest, both areas where
acreage for soybeans is expanding. The long-season
zone is generally in southeast Manitoba, south of
Highway 23. In between those zones is classified as
mid-season.
With soybeans, these zones are rated on heat days
rather than sunlight hours, rainfall or soil type. It
means that if you choose a variety simply for its yield
potential without paying attention to the number of
days to maturity, you’ll put your crop at risk of fall
frost damage.
But if you’re running out of time to get those
acres in, it is possible to plant the long-season varieties on the first seeded acres and a mid- or short-season variety on the last acres, says Lange. Optimum
planting times in Manitoba are between May 10
and May 30 with the soil at 10 C. At this temperature the seeds will take two or three weeks to
germinate. If the temperature rises to 13 C or 15 C,
seeds will germinate in as few as seven days. But if
the temperature is below 10 C, the seed will sit in
the ground and when it finally emerges, the plants
won’t be as vigorous as those planted at the warmer
temperature.
The length of time between planting and maturity (i.e. when 95 per cent of the pods are brown),
varies between 113 days in short-season varieties up
to 121 days in mid- to long-season lines. Lange says
once the plants have reached maturity, frost isn’t a
major issue but a heavy frost before then can damage the yield.
Lange says that’s why it’s important for growers to know their region, their capabilities and
the weather outlook. Flexibility is key. When the
weather and calendar are working against you, he
suggests planting the long-season varieties on the
first fields and then using the mid- and short-season
varieties on subsequent fields.
Flexibility extends to equipment as well. Lange
says it’s a matter of choice but a first-time soybean grower can use the same planting equipment
they have for cereal crops, whether it’s a planter
or air seeder. He says there’s no reason to go out
and buy additional equipment when you already
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markets with functioning regulatory systems. Any crop or material produced from this product can only be exported to, or used, processed or sold in countries where all necessary regulatory approvals
have been granted. It is a violation of national and international law to move material containing biotech traits across boundaries into nations where import is not permitted. Growers should talk
to their grain handler or product purchaser to confirm their buying position for this product. Excellence Through Stewardship® is a registered trademark of Excellence Through Stewardship.
ALWAYS READ AND FOLLOW PESTICIDE LABEL DIRECTIONS. Roundup Ready® crops contain genes that confer tolerance to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup® brand agricultural
herbicides. Roundup® brand agricultural herbicides will kill crops that are not tolerant to glyphosate. Acceleron® seed treatment technology for canola contains the active ingredients difenoconazole,
metalaxyl (M and S isomers), fludioxonil, and thiamethoxam. Acceleron® seed treatment technology for soybeans (fungicides only) is a combination of three separate individually registered
products, which together contain the active ingredients fluxapyroxad, pyraclostrobin and metalaxyl. Acceleron® seed treatment technology for soybeans (fungicides and insecticide) is a combination
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February 17, 2015
production
have reliable planting equipment on
the farm. Lange notes growers all have
their own preferences on what’s important on their field and most are great
at modifying the equipment they have
to meet their needs. “Once you figure
out what place soybeans have in your
crop rotation, it always comes down
to the nut behind the wheel. By that
I mean the person driving the equipment,” Lange says.
Lange says row spacing is also a matter of individual preference. Wider rows
require less seed than narrow rows. In
a 15-inch or eight-inch row, the target
is to get 200,000 to 210,000 seeds in
the ground to ensure 170,000 plants
develop. With 22- to 30-inch rows, it’s
possible to seed 180,000 plants and still
have as many as 160,000 reach maturity
because the germination rate is usually
higher in these rows. There’s really not
a significant yield difference between
row choices but weed control is more
difficult and takes more attention in the
wider rows while quicker row closure in
the narrow rows can reduce weed control work, he says.
“Ideally, if you have between 140,000
to 165,000 plants established… you’ve
got the ultimate range to maximize your
yield,” Lange says. Even if early damage
on seeds reduces the final plant count to
80,000 plants, it’s not a crop failure, just
more weed control work. The important
thing at this stage is to have a good hard
look at what caused the low germination
rate and learn from it.
Podolsky says seeding rates for soybeans should be calculated by determining the risks for failure to emerge
including germination rates, presence
of soil pathogens, possible insect damage, and damage to seed that may have
occurred due to handling and seeding
equipment. She says to achieve a target
plant stand of 150,000 plants per acre,
for example, the seeding rate should
reflect the expected survival rate of the
seed once all the risk factors have been
calculated.
Manitoba Pulse is conducting onfarm studies to create a data base that
will provide growers with more precise
information on these risk factors, Podolsky adds. “In the past three years, over
60 on-farm research trials have been
conducted and some of these trials have
looked at seed survival rates in air seeders and planters.”
Plus, adds Podolsky, “There’s a 65 to
February 17, 2015
75 per cent seed survival rate with an air
seeder… not as high as we’d like to see.
That’s just what the reality is.”
Lange notes the reduced germination
rates when seeds are planted with an air
seeder is likely due to damage on seeds
that are already dry.
“First and foremost
is variety selection,”
says MAFRD’s Dennis Lange. “Know your zone.”
However, Podolsky says, there’s a
higher survival rate with planters —
72 to 82 per cent. Another benefit to
using a planter is improved seed placement and depth control. The target
plant stand of 140,000 to 160,000 or
more plants is the same across row
spacings.
But soybeans are adaptable so using
an air seeder and adjusting the seeding
rate from that of other crops is feasible.
“Many studies show the yields on narrow rows planted with a drill or seeder
are the same or higher as those done
with a planter,” Podolsky says.
Proper inoculation to induce nitrogen development in the soil is another
factor vital to the health of the soybean crop, Lange adds. Over time he’s
noticed some growers lay a granular
inoculant down through a separate
tube, placing it a bit over from the seed
to provide a little extra yield insurance.
The granular inoculant becomes available later in the growing season when
the pod is filling and can make up for
deficiencies earlier on.
Both Lange and Podolsky note the
number of acres given to soybeans in
Manitoba has been expanding in recent
years. Podolsky says the Red River Valley has been growing soybeans for a little more than a decade, but the acreage
has doubled in the past four years with
most of the expansion coming from the
mid- and short-season zones. CG
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country-guide.ca 61
w e at h e r
Changeable
Occasional
snow
S
ra ca Mild
in tte
/ s re
no d
w
MILDER
AND
DRIER
THAN
NORMAL
NEAR-NORMAL
TEMPERATURES
AND PRECIPITATION
NEAR NORMAL
Oc Co
ca ld
sn sio
ow na
MILDER THAN NORMAL
ld
Co owy
Sn
l
COLDER THAN USUAL
NEAR- TO BELOW-NORMAL SNOWFA LL
E
N
ES
R
U
AT N
R
PE TIO
M
A
TE IT
L CIP
A
M E
R R
O DP
-N
R N
A A
S
at torm
Sn tim y
ow es
/ ra
in
COOLER THAN NORMAL
February 22 to March 21, 2015
BRITISH COLUMBIA
Feb. 22-28: Variable from cool to mild.
A few highs could hit double digits in the
south. Windy at times. Generally fair other
than intermittent rain on the coast and
occasional snow inland.
Mar. 1-7: Seasonal temperatures with a
couple of milder days bringing thawing to
higher elevations. Occasionally blustery.
Fair apart from a couple of wet days in the
south, snow in the north.
Mar. 8-14: A disturbance threatens to bring
heavier precipitation to many areas with
rain on the coast and snow mixed with rain
elsewhere. Blustery with fluctuating temperatures from mild to cool.
Mar. 15-21: Moderating temperatures boost
readings to double digits in the south and
well above zero in the north on most days.
Fair with periodic rain in the south, rain to
snow in the north.
ALBERTA
Feb. 22-28: Seasonal temperatures but a
few mild days bring melting to southern
regions. Bright skies at times but snow or
rain in the south on a couple of days, heavy
snow in the north. Blustery.
Mar. 1-7: Temperatures vary but end up
near normal. Windy with thawing taking
place in many areas. Fair overall, aside
from intermittent heavier snow or rain on a
couple of days.
Mar. 8-14: Look for changeable conditions
this week as sunny, pleasant days alternate
with occasional rain or snow. Chance of
heavy precipitation in places. Seasonal to
mild at times.
Mar. 15-21: Temperatures swing from
mild to cool through several windy days.
Some highs could hit double digits south.
62 country-guide.ca Sunshine interchanges with occasional
heavier snow to rain.
SASKATCHEWAN
Feb. 22-28: Seasonal to cold this week
although some thawing occurs in southwestern regions. Fair and bright but with
a couple days of snow, drifting and higher
wind chills. Often blustery.
Mar. 1-7: Disturbances bring a variety of
weather ranging from bright, mild days to
snowy, colder days. Chance of heavy snow
or rain in the south changing to heavy snow
in the north. Windy at times.
Mar. 8-14: Temperatures vary with some
highs well above zero in the south but with
sub-zero lows. Sunshine interchanges with
heavier snow, risk of rain in the south.
Windy. Cold east and north.
Mar. 15-21: Seasonal to cold but with
thawing at times in the south and west.
Sunny on many days but periodic heavier
snow on a couple of occasions. Chance of
rain in the south. Often windy.
MANITOBA
Feb. 22-28: Brisk winds bring drifting snow
and changeable temperatures this week.
Seasonal to cold with some higher wind
chills. Several bright days exchange with
some snow. Blustery.
Mar. 1-7: Unsettled as disturbances bring
snow, drifting and higher wind chills on a
couple of days this week. Chance of heavy
snow and a risk of rain in the south. Seasonal to cold. Windy at times.
Mar. 8-14: Temperatures lean toward the
cold side although some melting takes
place in southern regions. Sunny days alternate with periodic snow and a chance of
rain in the south.
Mar. 15-21: Temperatures vary from
ing to sub-zero lows in the south.
windy. Sunshine alternates with
heavier snow or rain in the south.
snow and cold in the north.
thawOften
some
Some
February 22 to March 21, 2015
NATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
Longer days will combine with milder southerly winds to lessen winter’s grip on Canada
in this period. The warming is expected to
be most noticeable on the west and east
coasts where milder-than-usual temperatures are anticipated. However, storminess is
likely in the Maritime provinces from time to
time as disturbances moving up the Atlantic
seaboard bring unsettled conditions to the
east. In the West, some of the milder air in
British Columbia is expected to slide onto
the western Prairies at times, bringing occasional melting by late February and early in
March. Nevertheless, cold Arctic air is likely
to continue its grasp across the eastern Prairies, northern Ontario and northern Quebec.
Near-to-normal snowfall will accompany the
colder air in these central areas of the country.
Editor’s note:
Where’s my weather page?
Look in every second issue for your month-long
Country Guide weather forecast during the winter
months when we’re publishing every two weeks.
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.
February 17, 2015
h e a lt h
Bloody noses —
when should you worry?
By Marie Berry
nosebleed can be both bothersome
and alarming, even if you don’t know
its technical name is epistaxis. Most
people have at least one nosebleed
between the ages of three and 30.
Children younger than three usually do not have
nosebleeds because they do not often experience
nasal damage, and older people may have nosebleeds more often because of medical conditions
and/or the medications they take.
The nose is responsible for the intake of air into
the lungs, but it is lined with a rich supply of blood
vessels that warm and moisturize the air along the
way. The septum which separates your nasal passages is especially rich in blood vessels and most
nosebleeds result from damage there.
An obvious cause of nosebleeds can be trauma to
the nose, such as a blow to the nose, nose “picking,”
or a foreign body lodged in the nose. Dry nasal passages because of low humidity during winter months
may also contribute to nosebleeds, as can upper
If a nosebleed lasts over
20 minutes, or if you get
several, see a doctor
respiratory tract infections like the common cold, or
inflammation on nasal passages due to conditions
like allergies or hay fever. A deviated septum may
also be involved.
If you take any drugs that can thin the blood,
the risk for bleeding including nosebleeds can rise.
Acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) and other non-steroidal
anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen and naproxen
are common culprits, but anticoagulants like warfarin
and clopidogrel also may be implicated. A dosage
adjustment may be needed. Indeed, sometimes a nosebleed is the first sign of too high a dosage.
In older people, kidney disease, atherosclerosis
(hardening of arteries), and high blood pressure can
contribute to nosebleeds, but often nosebleeds start
on their own without any obvious cause.
About 10 minutes of direct pressure on your
nose, usually just below the bridge of your nose,
will help stop a nosebleed. You will want to remain
upright, so sitting down is fine, but not lying down,
and remember to keep your nose higher than your
heart. Also remember that bending your head
slightly forward will prevent your swallowing blood.
A cool compress applied to the bridge of your nose
may also help reduce blood flow.
If your nosebleed lasts for more than 20 minutes
without any slowing of the flow, or if you have
several nosebleeds without any specific cause, you
need to get them checked. Some people use a nasal
decongestant to shrink blood vessels, but if you are
resorting to this measure, you also should have your
nosebleeds checked.
When a nosebleed has resulted from trauma, an
examination of the nose is usually recommended to
rule out internal damage and any potential for infection. You will want to seek medical attention if a
foreign object is lodged in your nose (or your child’s
nose). Poking at the object or attempting to remove
it may push it farther into the nose and increase the
risk for inhaling it.
After a nosebleed, don’t pick at your nose or
blow it hard because it could bleed again. Bending
over, vigorous activity, hot or spicy food, or even
smoking could also restart your nosebleed. If cold,
dry air is problematic, lubricating your nasal passages, especially your septum and increasing the
humidity at home or work will reduce your risk for
nosebleeds.
Don’t ignore nosebleeds or take them for
granted. Your blood loss could be significant,
leading to anemia, or your nosebleeds could be a
sign of an underlying cause. A bloody nose can be
bothersome, but it could be the sign of something
else as well.
Marie Berry is a lawyer/pharmacist interested in
health and education.
Although you’ve probably heard about the increasing rates of tuberculosis, you may think you don’t have to
be concerned because you aren’t at risk. While it’s true that tuberculosis does spread in close quarters, the
incidence is increasing and everyone needs to be aware of the disease and its risk factors. Next issue, we’ll
look at why tuberculosis seems to be making a comeback, and who is at greatest risk.
February 17, 2015
country-guide.ca 63
life
Living with
dementia on the farm
Alzheimer’s is a frightening diagnosis,
but these strategies can maximize your control
By Helen Lammers-Helps
etting a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s can
be devastating, especially for farmers
who want to stay active on the farm.
Even if you’re afraid of bad news,
however, it’s important to seek a medical diagnosis as quickly as possible.
Memory loss or problems with cognitive function
may be caused by treatable conditions, explains Lisa
Loiselle, the associate director of research at the University of Waterloo’s Murray Alzheimer’s Research
and Education Program (MAREP). Such conditions
can include vitamin deficiencies, stress, depression,
anxiety or alcohol abuse.
The sooner you get checked out by your doctor
after you start experiencing symptoms, the sooner
you can get the right care.
There are also medications that can slow the
progression of dementia but, again, these need to
be started early, says Dr. Debra Morgan, professor
at the Saskatoon-based Canadian Centre for Health
and Safety in Agriculture.
Early diagnosis also makes it possible to make
plans for the future while the person affected by
dementia can still participate in the decision-making
process. Some of the arrangements to be considered
include transfer of farm management and assets,
updating wills and powers of attorney for property
and health care, and planning for medical care and
living accommodations.
Horse farmer Bill Heibein was working as an
accountant in the Thunder Bay area when he was first
diagnosed 15 years ago with early onset Alzheimer’s
disease at the age of 59. He took early retirement from
his accounting job right away but has remained active
on the farm since his diagnosis. Now 74, he still keeps
horses on the farm and only stopped training and
showing his quarter horses a few years ago.
“Getting a diagnosis can feel like a kick in the
teeth,” says Heibein, “but putting off seeing a doctor
is one of the worst things you can do.” Getting educated can help you and your caregivers cope, he says.
He recommends contacting the Alzheimer’s Society,
which has a wealth of useful information.
Heibein says that reducing his stress level by retiring from his accounting job was a good move. He also
thinks that remaining active on the farm where he per64 country-guide.ca forms repetitive tasks has also been good for him. Heibein heats with wood and gets lots of exercise cutting
firewood. For many years he has played in a Dixieland
band which performs at area senior’s centres. “Playing
a musical instrument is good for the brain,” he says.
Heibein has developed systems that help him cope
with his short-term memory loss. He uses a large
calendar and prompts on his Blackberry smartphone
to keep him on track. He also uses a GPS navigation
system in his truck to keep him from getting lost when
driving. Heibein is also active on various Alzheimer’s
Society committees and is involved in a research program at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay.
“It’s important to stay involved,” says Heibein, who
was upfront with friends and family about his diagnosis.
“I’ve been fortunate that people have treated me the
same,” says Heibein, who acknowledges that stigma can
be a big problem for those suffering from dementia.
Heilbein also points to the support of his wife of
52 years, Heather, and he says a local support group
keeps him up to date on research developments and
helps him to not feel alone.
Like Heibein, Loiselle says it’s important to
reduce your stress level if you’re suffering from
dementia. “Slow down, take your time,” she says.
“Frustration makes confusion worse and increases
the risk of an accident happening.”
Older farmers are already at a much higher risk
of having an accident on the farm. One study shows
farmers aged 70 to 79 are four times more likely
to be killed in an accident on the farm than 30- to
39-year-olds, and it stands to reason that dementia
would only make that worse, says Morgan.
While continuing to work on the farm can help
those afflicted with cognitive problems to feel useful and valued, families need to be aware of the
person’s limitations. Unfortunately, there aren’t any
guidelines to help family members make those judgment calls, says Morgan. What is safe changes day
by day, she continues. “Dementia is progressive and
it’s hard to predict how the disease will unfold.”
Loiselle has other advice for people diagnosed with
dementia. It’s important both for those experiencing
dementia and for their caregivers to let others know
what they need. “Communication is absolutely essential,” she says. Other strategies help too: try to stay
February 17, 2015
life
“Getting a diagnosis
can be like a kick
in the teeth,” says
Bill Heibein, “but
putting off seeing
a doctor is one of
the worst things
you can do.”
positive, keep doing the things that interest you, rest
when needed, stick to a routine, and don’t be ashamed.
Family and friends should learn about the disease so they will be more accepting and sensitive to
the needs of the person with dementia, continues
Loiselle. Too often those with dementia and their
caregivers become isolated, she explains. Family and
friends can also offer respite care. The primary caregiver may need a break from time to time.
Loiselle also urges family members to include the
person with dementia in the decision-making process. “It’s dehumanizing to exclude them,” she says.
Finally, make sure you give yourself enough time
to process the diagnosis before making any decisions.
Heibein agrees. He’s glad he made the decision to
rebreed their mares, figuring they would be worth
more in foal. “It was a good decision,” he says since
he was then able to continue training and showing
horses for several more years.
Unfortunately, it can be tough to get access to
specialists in rural areas. After a successful five-year
pilot project, Saskatchewan’s Rural and Remote
Memory Clinic in Saskatoon has become a onestop interdisciplinary clinic for those suffering from
dementia. The clinic is particularly good at diagnosing the less common and more complex forms of
dementia, says Morgan, the clinic’s director.
About 65 per cent of dementia cases are the result
of Alzheimer’s disease, but altogether there are 100
different causes of dementia, says Loiselle. Since
there is no one test for dementia, patients see all of
the necessary doctors and have the necessary tests in
one day at the Saskatoon Clinic. By the end of the
February 17, 2015
day, patients have a diagnosis instead of spending
months travelling to various doctors and hospitals
for tests, says Morgan. Patients also receive ongoing
followup support through both video conferencing
and in-person appointments at the clinic.
As Canada’s population ages, and the average
age of farmers continues to climb, the number of
farmers with dementia will increase. Today, threequarters of a million Canadians are living with
dementia but in 15 years, that number is expected to
double to 1.4 million. CG
Resources
• Alzheimer’s Society of Canada
(also has many local chapters across the country)
www.alzheimer.ca
• Murray Alzheimer’s Research and Education
Program (MAREP), University of Waterloo
uwaterloo.ca/murray-alzheimer-research-and-education-program/MAREP
www.livingwithdementia.uwaterloo.ca
• Kate Swaffer is a person living with Early Onset
Alzheimer's Disease. She is committed to meaningful dialogue with a wide range of stakeholders about
the critical issues impacting a person living with a
diagnosis of dementia and their loved ones. Check
out her blog here: www.kateswaffer.com
• In Saskatchewan, the Rural Dementia Care Centre
cchsa-ccssma.usask.ca/ruraldementiacare/
country-guide.ca 65
acres
By Leeann Minogue
It’s a rink out there
When Dale takes grandson Connor to the arena,
all sorts of things begin to slip
ale Hanson and his son Jeff were
out in the shop, trying to fix the electric tarp on their semi trailer. They’d
hoped it was just a bad switch, but by
mid-morning they’d figured out that
the electric motor was seized. They were going to
have to go to Regina for a new one before they could
finish the job.
“Just as well. It’s too cold to work out here today
anyway,” Dale said. “I’ll just change my clothes and
get my truck out of the shed. I’ll pick you up in front
of your house.”
“I can’t go, Dad,” Jeff said. “Connor has hockey
practice this afternoon and Elaine asked me to take him.”
“I thought she said she’d be home all week,” Dale
said.
“She’s here, but there’s some online web presentation she wants to watch on her computer after lunch.
It’s about strategy, or planning or something like that.”
“Huh. I would’ve made fun of you for that,
but she’s learned a thing or two about negotiation,
watching those damn webinars.” Dale had been
impressed when Elaine had managed to get an extra
set of concaves thrown in when the Hansons finalized the deal to buy a second combine earlier in the
winter. “Who would’ve thought it would be smart
to take a woman along?” he’d said on the trip home.
But then he’d added, “I just hope the neighbours
don’t find out.”
“Wish I could go to Regina with you,” Jeff said.
“I wouldn’t mind picking up some shelves at Home
Depot.” Jeff and Elaine had only been in their house
a little over a year, and he was still spending most of
his winter evenings finishing the basement.
“You go ahead,” Dale said. “I can take Connor
to hockey.”
“That’s OK Dad,” Jeff said. “Remember? Mom went
out cross-country skiing with some friends. She probably
won’t be home before Connor’s practice at four.”
66 country-guide.ca “Are you kidding? Do you think I can’t take my
grandson to the rink unless your mother comes along
to hold my hand?”
“Well…” Jeff said.
“Cut me some slack,” Dale said. “I can tie skates
onto a five-year-old!”
“They need a lot of equipment. And he’s pretty
young. He needs a lot of help.”
Dale just snorted. “Your generation thinks you
invented everything. I was putting shoulder pads on
you before the Internet existed. Connor and I’ll get
along fine. Go to the Home Depot.”
So Jeff went to Regina on a parts run, and a little
after three o’clock, Dale picked up his grandson for
the trip to town for hockey practice.
“Let’s go Connor,” he said.
“Good luck,” Elaine said, handing Dale a hockey
bag almost twice as big as the boy.
They got to the rink and found the right dressing room. Dale was a little concerned when he first
unzipped the bag, but as he pulled each piece of gear
out, he soon remembered where everything was supposed to go.
“Your dad thought I wouldn’t know how to do
this!” he said to Connor. “But it’s like riding a bike.
You never forget.”
“I think that’s the elbow pad for the right arm,
Dale,” said Karen Avery, as she helped her daughter
into shoulder pads.
Damn, Dale thought. Then he whispered into
Connor’s ear, “Do you know when I was growing
up, they didn’t let girls play hockey?”
“Neat,” Connor said.
Dale took the elbow pad off Connor’s left arm
and started again.
When Connor was ready to hit the ice, Dale left
him in the dressing room with the rest of his team
and the coach, then went to the rink lobby. He took
a look around for the first time in many years, wonfebruary 17, 2015
dering why he and Donna never took the time to go to hockey
games. Then he headed over to the concession to get himself a
coffee. Rich Walker joined him in the short lineup.
“Hear you got yourself a new combine,” Rich said.
“News travels fast around here,” Dale said.
“The story is that your daughter-in-law talked Greg into
throwing in a set of concaves.”
Dale snorted, then pretended not to hear this. Rich saw he’d
hit a sore spot and changed the subject.
“With these new low prices, maybe the oilpatch will slow
down a bit around here. You might even be able to hire somebody to run that new machine,” Rich said.
“Could be,” Dale said. “There’s already a lot less oil traffic
on the road by our place. A few guys who know how to run
machinery could end up out of work.”
“Things can change quick in the oil business,” Rich said.
Rich bought Dale’s coffee, and the two men were still standing not too far from the counter when Ron Friesen came to get a
cup of his own.
“Heard you got a new combine to use on that land you’re
renting from me,” Ron said.
“That’s right,” Dale said.
“Maybe I should’ve waited. If the oilpatch caves in, maybe I
could’ve hired somebody and kept farming myself.”
There was a silence. Dale took another sip of coffee, and was
relieved when Ron said, “I’m just kidding. I’m done. I could
grow the wheat, but I couldn’t get anybody to agree to let me
sell it to them.”
And then the men were off on a 20-minute retelling of local
elevator company horror stories, each man sharing a worse story
than the next about “terrible grading,” or a company not taking
contracted grain on time. Soon two more farmers joined in, and
Dale remembered how much he’d always loved bringing Jeff to
the rink.
Before Connor’s game was finished, Dale had eaten a hotdog, bought a handful of 50-50 tickets, joked with Karen Avery
about how tough it was to figure out all the new kids’ equipment and got a line on someone who might be looking for work
when seeding time rolled around.
“That was a lot more fun than I thought it would be,” Dale
thought to himself when he was back in his truck and on his
way home. He was on the edge of town and happened to be
driving by a police car when his cellphone rang, so he didn’t
even think about answering. Then the phone beeped. “Must be
a text. I should figure out how to get this damn thing working
through the truck speakers,” he thought.
When he got home, he parked his truck inside the heated
shed, then walked to the house. Donna wasn’t home from skiing
yet, so he took a look in the fridge to see if there was anything
he might want to cook for supper before he thought to check his
phone.
It was Elaine who had called. And she’d sent a text, too. It
said: “Never mind. Karen Avery took Connor home with her. I’ll
pick him up later.”
As he was looking at his screen, cursing himself, his phone
beeped and another text appeared. This one was from Jeff.
“Next time, you can go to Regina, Dad. Maybe you’d have more
luck with a trip to Home Depot.”
Leeann Minogue is the editor of Grainews, a playwright and
part of a family grain farm in southeastern Saskatchewan.
february 17, 2015
“There was a very cautious man
Who never laughed or cried, He never cared, he never dared, He never dreamed or tried. And when one day he passed away, His insurance was denied. For since he never really lived, They claimed he never died.”
— Author Unknown
I arrive at the conference feeling a bit grumpy. Traffic was
tied up at rush hour. The leader gives directions while I am
hanging my coat. “Take 20 minutes and list your three most
life-changing experiences.” After catching my breath I begin
to write: train ride to college in a strange city, first solo in an
airplane, falling in love and more. The leader summarized
the responses. Something was common to all the lists. Every
life-changing event meant taking risks, stepping beyond usual
boundaries, trying something new.
I reflected that we are exposed to risks every day. An oncoming
driver may swerve and hit you. The food in a restaurant may contain a deadly virus. A man with a rifle may shoot at you in a mall.
You may go to church and your heart will stop before the service
is over. We are not God. We do not know about tomorrow.
In her book God, But I’m Bored, Eileen Guder writes,
“You can live on bland food so as to avoid an ulcer; drink no
tea or coffee or other stimulants, in the name of health; go to
bed early and stay away from nightlife; avoid all controversial
subjects so as never to give offense; mind your own business
and avoid involvement in other people’s problems; spend
money only on necessities and save all you can. You can still
break your neck in the bathtub, and it will serve you right.”
You cannot avoid risk even if you want to. Our plans
for tomorrow’s activities can be shattered by a thousand
unknowns whether we stay at home under the covers or back
out of our garage.
The biblical writer James gives practical advice: “Now listen
to me, you that say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to a
certain city, where we will stay a year and go into business and
make a lot of money.” You don’t even know what your life
tomorrow will be! You are like a puff of smoke, which appears
for a moment and then disappears. What you should say is
this: “If the Lord is willing, we will live and do this or that.”
Sherlock Holmes and Watson were camping. In the middle of
the night Sherlock Holmes awoke and looked up at the stars. He
asked, “Watson, what do you see?” Woken from his sleep Watson looked up and said “stars.” “Yes, but what do these stars tell
you?” Watson said “Cosmologically they tell me that we are part
of a large universe — that we are one of billions and billions of
planets. Theologically they tell me that we have a great God who
made all of it. Meteorologically they tell me that the sky is clear
and we will have good weather tomorrow. Temporally they tell
me that it is the middle of the night and we should be sleeping!
Sherlock, what do they tell you?” “Well,” he replied, “they tell
me that someone has stolen our tent.”
The Swiss philosopher and poet Henri Frédéric Amiel
wrote this blessing: “Life is short and we do not have much
time to gladden the hearts of those who travel this journey
with us, so be swift to love and make haste to be kind.”
Suggested Scripture: Psalm 147, James 4:13-15
Rod Andrews is a retired Anglican bishop. He lives in Saskatoon.
country-guide.ca 67
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