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

country-guide.ca
eastern 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. 11
+PLUS
build an advisory
team for your farm
CROPS GUIDE
 Electric meters for
your planter. They’re
catching on fast
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and crops containing Enlist herbicide tolerance traits. The information presented here is not an offer for sale. Always read and follow label directions. ©2014 Dow AgroSciences LLC.
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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.
16 team work
The Tilstras wanted a succession plan to strengthen their family,
not jeopardize it. Now, their advisory-team strategy is helping.
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.
27 FINANCE METRICS — OPERATING EFFICIENCY
Run these numbers on your farm, with help from AME experts.
28 EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE
In industry at large, the proof is in. High CEO pay often leads to poor decision-making. What about on the farm?
30 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.
34 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.
38 MANUFACTURING TALENT
Here’s how machinery makers are growing their own leaders.
46 Guide HR — doctor, give me some ritalin for my husband!
Entrepreneurs are at four times the risk of ADHD among adults.
48
PG. 11 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.
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.
47 GUIDE HEALTH
Everybody gets a nosebleed. But when is it more serious?
50 HANSON ACRES
CROPS GUIDE
40 ELECTRIC METERING FOR YOUR PLANTER
Among the hottest new innovations for corn, these meters are catching on fast. The secret is out!
42 A COVER CROP THAT BUZZES
Phacelia opens new cover crop and rotation possibilities, and is a bee magnet with few rivals.
Dale takes his grandson to the rink. But that’s only half the story.
44 PEST PATROL
9 to 5 is the best time to kill weeds, writes OMAFRA’s Mike Cowbrough. Just watch that wind speed.
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february 17, 2015 country-guide.ca 3
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EDITORIAL STAFF
Editor: Tom Button
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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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reproduced only with the permission of the editor. Country
Guide, incorporating the Nor’West Farmer and Farm & Home, is
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Vol. 134 No. 3
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ISSN 1915-8491
The editors and journalists who write, contribute and provide opinions to
Country Guide and Farm Business Communications attempt to provide
accurate and useful opinions, information and analysis. However, the
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Business Communications assume no responsibility for any actions or
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information provided.
february 17, 2015
THE ONTARIO AGROLOGIST
A conversation with Lianne (Lia) Appleby P.Ag.,M.Sc., B.Sc. (Agr.), and
Associate Editor with Annex Business Media based in Simcoe, Ontario.
Q: You’ve built quite an impressive
Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation. I
work and experience resume over
volunteer as Assistant Race Director for
slightly more than a decade. Can
the Annual Trillium Races every May
you give us just a brief synopsis
in Mount Forest, and I try to volunteer
of your career to date?
with the Canadian Warplane Heritage
Lia: Well, some would say that I came
Museum as much as possible.
into agriculture by accident. After being
And there’s my membership with the
told that policing was ‘too competitive’
OIA. I received my P.Ag. designation
plus a stroke of luck in my teen years,
back in 2008. I joined the OIA as
I landed a job in agricultural research.
an Articling Agrologist, shortly after
I went on to do my B.Sc. (Agr.) at the
graduating from university. I served
University of Guelph, then I completed
on the Board for four years, and I’m a
my Master’s in poultry nutrition.
former Vice-President with the Institute.
After graduation, a passion for writing,
Q: Why did you want to go
to continue to learn about the industry
a knowledge of poultry and also
after a P.Ag. accreditation?
so that the industry will keep growing.
knowing the right people landed me
Lia: Someone I have a lot of respect
a communications job with Chicken
And I think the OIA, through its
for had his P.Ag. designation. He
Farmers of Ontario. Then I moved
membership, can provide the Ag
convinced me to go after it. I was lucky
into public relations with the Ontario
industry with another supportive voice.
to have a former general manager
Cattlemen’s Association for 5 years. But
You tend to hear about problems in the
at Chicken Farmers of Ontario mentor
the poultry industry drew me back so
agriculture and agri-food sector like
me in my first job after graduation.
food recalls, animal welfare issues and
Q: What value do you think the
other things, so I think it’s important for
Ontario Institute of Agrologists bring
the people in this industry to stand up
to the industry and marketplace?
and say ‘look, we’re professionals, we’re
service support. Then in January
Lia: I think it’s a way to show there
ethical - and we’re doing our best to
2013, I got my dream job as an editor
is an organization that brings real
help bring healthy food to the table’.
with Annex Business Media and its
pride to the agricultural industry. The
Canadian Poultry Magazine. Last
OIA’s accreditation process gives you
year I accepted a broader role at as
something that you carry with you all
The Ontario Institute of Agrologists
the Digital Editor working with all of
the time. Your P.Ag, or T.Ag. or A.Ag.
represents nearly 500 Professional
the Annex agricultural publications.
designation allows you to show that, as
(P.Ag.), Technical (T.Ag.), and
an individual, what you ‘do for a living’
Articling (A.Ag.) Agrologist
is not just your day job where, at the
members across Ontario’s
end of the day you just go home and
diverse agricultural industry. The
forget about it until the next morning.
OIA is based in Guelph. For a
The accreditation proves to our peers,
to the Board of Farm & Food Care,
current listing of OIA Members,
to the industry and to the general public
Ontario, for a one-year term and
events and information go to
that we give effort back, and I think, at
I’m a former Director for the Eastern
the website shown below.
least I hope, that it challenges others
I moved to Hybrid Turkeys’ marketing
department working on advertising
campaigns, website coordination,
corporate branding, sales and industry
Q: You’ve also had more
than a few extra-curricular
career activities, as well?
Lia: In the Spring of 2012 I was elected
www.oia.on.ca
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
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
together to drive farm success as never before.
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
February 17, 2015
Continued on page 14
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business
Continued from page 11
and larger commercial crop and livestock farms. Yet both require CEO-type
of leadership.
When Rob Saik, CEO of The AgriTrend 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.
14 country-guide.ca Importantly, says Saik, these farmers also co-ordinate complex businesses
by preplanning for potential hiccups,
threats and growth opportunities.
This is thinking like a CEO.
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.
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
February 17, 2015
Photography: john david photography
For OYF president
Jack Thomson, the key
is to understand risk.
“I’d rather be stabbed
in the front than
in the back.”
business
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 everbuzzing 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.
“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 marFebruary 17, 2015
kets, 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.”
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 their production information
together in one place so they’re able to
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.”
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
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
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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 largescale 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?
20 country-guide.ca Should they even try? To answer those questions,
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.
February 17, 2015
business
“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.
February 17, 2015
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 22
country-guide.ca 21
business
Continued from page 21
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.
22 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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February 17, 2015
country-guide.ca 23
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 Country Guide, that’s 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.”
“When things go right on a very large scale, it can be very good,” Davis says.
“But when things go wrong…”
By Amy Petherick
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
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.
Continued on page 26
24 country-guide.ca February 17, 2015
soil matters………..www.ifao.com
Long-time No-till Pro, Dwayne Beck, Offers His Top 10 List
written by Larry Dreiling
Dwayne Beck, Ph.D.,
and Manager of the
Dakota Lakes
Research Farm, in
South Dakota shares
what he's learned in
his 30 years of
researching no-till.
Dwayne Beck will be a speaker at the
Innovative Farmers Conference
on Feb 24 –25, 2015
Here is Dwayne’s "top 10 list" of the things
he learned in his years of using no-till.
1. No-till is just one tool to use to manage
the ecosystem. "It's not important to
focus on techniques. We need to focus
on results. People spend too much time
looking at small details and miss the big
picture."
2. Farmers and ranchers harvest sunlight,
carbon dioxide and water to produce
products they sell. "What percentage of
these resources was wasted when the
wheat-fallow system was in play?"
3. Weeds and diseases are Mother
Nature's way of adding diversity to a
system that lacks it. "Add beneficial
diversity to prevent problems," Beck
said. "Pesticide use decreases
diversity."
4. High disturbance techniques increase
weed pressure and weed persistence,
as well as cause more tillage erosion
when compared with low-disturbance
seeding. "Tillage erosion increases
variability in the field."
5. Sanitation, rotation and competition are
the predominant methods of pest
control. "Pesticides are only a means to
those methods. Fertilizer is part of
competition. Residue management is
part of rotation and sanitation."
6.
Proper nutrient cycling is an extremely
important factor. "Ecosystems that leak
nutrients for extended periods of time
become deserts," Beck said. "Salinity is
a symptom of improper nutrient and
water cycling. Nutrient placement is part
of proper cycling."
7. Learning proper water cycling
techniques is imperative. "Knowledge of
the soil's water holding characteristics is
necessary. Long-term rainfall data must
be used," Beck said. "A producer's riskreward preferences are important and
cover and forage crops are useful tools."
8. There should be no need to use a
ground engaging component to seed
and fertilize a crop. "Shoot seed stakes
into the soil or use seed coats."
9. Livestock integration will be needed.
"Livestock work for nutrient cycling and
rotational flexibility."
10. Long-term productivity will probably not
be maintained without the use of
perennial sequences in the rotation.
"Most of all," Beck says,
"I've learned humility in the face of the
tremendous ability of nature's
organisms. It's far better to have them
working for you than against you."
business
Continued from page 24
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.
Half of all American farm sales are generated
by a mere 1.6 per cent of the country’s 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
for 50 per cent of all sales, and the top 5.7 per cent
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
26 country-guide.ca 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.
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 highvalue 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
February 2015
More
+ More
for 2015
The chase is on
for more bushels
from more acres
PLus
• Shaw says: prices will be
good, for good marketers
• how to get better
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• Will the west‘s taste for
beans reshape the industry?
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February 2015
The road ahead
page
4
Inoculation gains ground
10
Disease risk high
14
Market outlook, 2015
20
Digging into food-grade soybeans
24
The West’s big challenge
28
Grain analyzer gets attention
32
Need to know
34
Taking pulse
39
The bigger crop
I
t seems clear now that the momentum for 2015 is with soybeans. Acres will
be up, and up, and up.
This is good news, but let’s admit that it isn’t as good news as it should
be. Soybeans haven’t had the political leadership they need in either the East
or the West. Both markets lack the dynamic processing sectors that are essential for exploiting the crop’s full potential.
It’s part of the unwillingness to invest and the overall short-sightedness on
infrastructure that we see in Canada, especially on the part of the Canadian
government. For a decade and more, we have pointed to South America with
almost a sneer, saying that it may have the acres to grow huge piles of soybeans,
but it can never move those piles to market.
Well, now it can. South America has invested, and while no one would say
it has solved all its challenges, it is definitely making progress.
Country Guide readers will know too, based on reporting by our Gerald
Pilger, that Australia has made great logistical strides in recent years, often in
ways that let farmers invest in and share the profits of greater exports.
In Canada, meanwhile, the federal Conservatives write a never-ending
series of welcome but very small and targeted cheques for one crop this week
and another crop next week, or for one region today and another region
tomorrow.
It’s part of a master plan to improve the competitiveness and the market
orientation of Canada’s ag output, and in that regard, it’s money well spent.
But make no mistake; the success of the Canadian farm requires processing,
and it requires efficient transportation.
2015 is an election year. You can bet that farmers will do their part, growing
their own huge pile of beans. But will the federal parties take hard stands on
their investments in infrastructure, or will we fall further behind?
Tom Button, CG Editor
[email protected]
Soybean Guide, February 2015 3
Soybean guide
The road ahead
What makes you so sure that
you can plant more soybeans
and still pull off good yields?
By Ralph Pearce,
CG Production Editor
Fertilizer strategies need a
serious rethink, agronomists warn,
especially on second- and
third-year soils.
4 S
oybeans, soybeans — and more soybeans. That’s the forecast from most
corners of the agri-food industry,
whether it’s based in Western Canada or
in the East. Soybean production in
Canada was big in 2014 and it’s on a path
to grow even bigger in 2015.
At the same time, that growth will
come at a cost for many growers, particularly in Ontario, where there are likely to
be more second- and third-year soybeans.
One forecast says at least one-third of the
acres planted in this province will be in
second-year fields.
Yet there are also some hopeful scenarios to be seen as the growing season begins
to unfold. Unlike 2001, 1993 or even 1988,
weather extremes have popped in the past
five years, yet crops have fared quite well,
with better yields than expected. It’s a testament to two developments: that timely
rains or warm spells really can make up for
an otherwise poor season, and the public
and private plant breeders are doing an
excellent job incorporating the right germplasm to handle stress.
Even so, opting out of standard rotations puts that progress at risk. Although
some in the industry are forecasting three
million acres of soybeans for Ontario, Pat
Lynch, an independent agronomist from
Stratford, Ont., believes this figure could
climb higher — maybe to 3.25 million.
A lot will depend on the influence of
other cropping factors. Corn’s pricing below
the US$4 mark at the end of 2014 together
with poor winter wheat plantings are likely
to drive more acres into soybeans for the
year ahead. Even the federal government is
projecting a production increase of 11 per
cent across the country, with domestic
crush to rise by four per cent and exports to
jump more than 20 per cent.
Against that backdrop, says Lynch, it
isn’t just the continuous nature of soybeans in the rotation, it’s the lack of a
break between soybean crops. Some areas
in certain counties have seen three years
of soybeans out of the past four, even
when corn prices were good.
“Some soils are just too heavy to grow
much of a corn crop,” says Lynch, who
happens to be the one forecasting at least
a third of Ontario soybean acres will be
second- or third-year fields. “The only
thing that had changed was soybean
prices being higher, so returns were better
the last three years.”
Soybean prices are likely to remain
better than corn for the time being, and
more growers are trying other practices to
help mitigate the effects of continuous
soybeans, adding applications of certain
fertilizers, planting earlier and ensuring
Continued on page 6
Soybean Guide, February 2015
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they have the best varieties to suit their
soils and farming practices.
Among the bigger concerns with continuous soybeans is the impact from diseases. (Read more about the situation on
soybean diseases for 2015 on page 14.)
White mould has become a particular
problem in the past two years in southern Ontario, the incidence of sudden
death syndrome (SDS) is also on the rise,
and soybean cyst nematode (SCN) continues as one of the more consistent
yield robbers across the province. With
that in mind, says Lynch, growers really
need to be more vigilant with certain
management practices.
“The weakest part of a soybean plant
is below ground, and if growers could
see how much disease is below ground,
they’d be appalled,” says Lynch. That’s
why something as simple as switching
varieties can help by providing different
genetic control of different diseases.
Lynch also cites use of a seed treatment, which he calls “a must.” For white
mould control, some suggest decreasing
population and widening the row
widths, but Lynch isn’t convinced either
measure is necessarily a benefit.
“In my experience, wide-row soybeans are just as prone where white
mould is severe,” says Lynch, adding that
wider rows on continuous soybeans tend
to yield lower. “There is also no doubt
that increasing seed rate is a good strategy. More years of beans means more
diseases and more seedling death.”
Fertilizer considerations
The big shift that Lynch believes we’ll
see in 2015 is in crop fertilization.
There’s been considerable discussion in
Ontario and the U.S. dealing with fertilizing soybeans. U.S. farm publications
have featured grower testimonials on the
6 For 2015, growers need to avoid planting soybeans to cool wet soils, if at all possible.
Otherwise, they increase the risk of diseases, particularly white mould.
practice, some from farmers with more
than five different in-season treatments.
As well, there have been urgent reminders from dealers and retailers, calling
attention to the fact that in Ontario, soils
in general are testing poorly, particularly
on phosphorus (P) and potassium (K).
“More farmers will look at fertilizer
but, unfortunately, too few will look at
the basics of pH, P and K,” cautions
Lynch. “They’ll be spending time and
money on ‘silver bullets’ that are foliarapplied. It’s good to look at some of
these products but it must be in a coordinated, well-thought-out fashion
after you have the basics of N, P, K, magnesium and manganese addressed.”
with corn and soybeans,” says Moloney.
“That’s not really a rotation; growers are
just alternating crops.”
Another problem that’s going to
really challenge growers this year will be
weed management. Moloney has seen
more eastern black nightshade in his
area, along with more pigweed. The herbicide resistance angle has not been a
huge challenge in midwestern Ontario,
says Moloney, but he’s seeing signs of
Group 2 resistance showing up with
greater frequency. And still another issue
that will further confound the weed
management situation is that of volunteer corn: there’s more of it and it’s getting harder to control.
“The weakest part of a soybean plant is below ground,
and if growers could see how much disease is below
ground, they’d be appalled.”
— Pat Lynch, independent agronomist
Weed control
Robert Moloney shares many of
Lynch’s obser vations, par ticularly
“breaking the cycle” that continuous soybeans doesn’t allow. Corn and soybeans
do a tremendous service in rebooting the
soils and adding an element of diversity
that doesn’t allow disease, pest and weed
cycles to become entrenched.
“Corn, with that one-year break in
there, pretty much resets everything, so
it’s not a big deal where it resets the yield
bar,” says Moloney, a certified crop
adviser with Boyd’s Farm Supply in
Fordwich, Ont., north of Listowel. “With
soybeans, you really do need that twoyear break away from the crop in order
to reset the bar back to its full potential
“We had a lot this year, we sprayed a
lot this year, and we should have sprayed a
whole lot more, but we ran out of time
and product, and it became a real challenge,” says Moloney.
Moloney also notes that one of the successes of late 2014 was communicating to
growers that with more continuous soybeans, cutting back on tillage might be a
means of reducing disease potential. But like
Lynch, he sees the whole fertility and nutrient situation continuing, especially where
many growers still believe soybeans to be the
crop that doesn’t need any fertilizer, a notion
that’s both stereotypical and inaccurate.
“Some still have a little bit of an attitude
Continued on page 8
Soybean Guide, February 2015
Continued from page 6
that you don’t need to fertilize soybeans, but
with potash in particular, because we’re
pulling 50- and 60-bushel soybeans consistently, so we’re taking out a lot more potash,
most of the time,” says Moloney. He’s even
boosted his potash recommendations in the
past couple of years. “We’re starting to get
through that cycle where the soil tests are at
best holding even and, in a lot of cases, are
starting to slip on potash, just because we’re
taking into account the yield and how much
potash we’re taking out.”
Considerable jump in yields
For Horst Bohner, a larger soybean
crop in the province carries some defined
risks, including diseases, weeds and the
overall impact on rotations. The state of
the winter wheat crop has been thrown
into uncertainty, and corn’s late harvest
and high drying charges through last fall
have highlighted its struggles. That’s why
the historical numbers on soybeans are so
gratifying to Bohner, the soybean specialist
for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture,
Food and Rural Affairs.
In 1984, the provincial average yield for
soybeans was 34 bushels per acre, and for
the first time in the history of agriculture
in Ontario, there were a million acres of
soybeans. In 1997, the province eclipsed
two million acres for the first time, with a
five-year average of 39 bushels per acre.
“Now the five-year average at 3.05 million acres is 46.5 bushels per acre,” notes
Bohner. “If you look at it that way, we’ve
made tremendous progress.”
Yet he concedes that the historical
record doesn’t help the short-term prospects for growers, especially those who are
facing second- and third-year soybean
crops and what that can mean particularly on the disease front.
“I do think that we need to stress that
the yield expectations have to be lower in
second- or, especially, in third-year soybeans,” says Bohner. “You just can’t expect
to get what you would if it was after corn
By the numbers
Sources including Statistics Canada and the Ontario Ministry of
Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA), indicate that production
and acreage values for most of the soybean-growing area in Canada is
on the rise. For 2014, Canadian production rose to 5.96 million tonnes,
up 13.5 per cent from 2013. In terms of area, there were 5.45 million
acres harvested nationally, an increase of about one million acres above
the previous year. Ontario is the leader in production and acres with 3.8
million tonnes, up 17.1 per cent from 2013, according to StatsCan.
Acreage in the province was set at 3.06 million acres.
Quebec’s and Manitoba’s numbers for production and area also
increased, compensating for yield losses in both provinces. In Quebec,
overall production rose to 898,000 tonnes, a six per cent jump, with harvested area up 20 per cent. Yields were down 11.6 per cent. In
Manitoba, production jumped 3.7 per cent, to 1.1 million tonnes, with
harvested area up 20.6 per cent, offsetting yield losses of 14.1 per cent
(to 32.3 bu./ac.) from 2013.
In Ontario, projections are calling for another increase in soybean production, in large part due to the wet and delayed fall conditions, which
curtailed winter wheat planting across most of southern Ontario. It’s estimated that only 600,000 acres of winter wheat were planted, and it
remains to be seen how the crop will fare by spring. With so many challenges getting corn out of the field — together with poorer pricing
expected for both corn and soybeans — it’s expected soybeans will take
up much of the acres not planted to the other two crops.
8 — it’s pretty hard to pull off a 55-bushel
field in second-year soybeans.”
In a stressful year, he adds, consecutive
years of soybeans fare much worse than
crops where rotations are maintained. In
stress-free years, where there’s adequate
moisture, sufficient heat, low pest populations, good weed management and adequate
fertility, second-year beans will do quite well.
But with the introduction of any moderate
to severe stresses such as excessive dryness,
high aphid counts or white mould in a wet
year, those second- and third-year soybean
fields will be the first to show the effects.
To mitigate those second- and thirdyear risks, Bohner preaches the fundamentals. Reducing tillage is one practice
which he believes can have an impact, and
Bohner believes that dropping the seeding
rate will create more air through the canopy, reducing diseases.
“There’s no question that lower plant
stands have an impact on the incidence
and severity of white mould, so the issue is
around row width also, and there’s some
evidence that wider rows play a role in
this,” says Bohner. “But the bigger factor is
the number of plants established per acre.”
Bohner also echoes Moloney’s concerns about weed control issues. Again, in
a second- and third-year soybean scenario, growers are getting into that established cycle which only helps weed species
become better-entrenched.
“Whenever you’re doing the same
thing over and over, it’s compounding
the problem,” Bohner says. “If it’s a
Roundup Ready field this year, and you
don’t have any glyphosate-resistant
weeds, obviously we would suggest that
you throw in some other actives to try to
reduce the likelihood of developing
resistant weeds, but there’s no reason
why you can’t have a clean field again.”
So the bottom-line recommendation
is to manage soybeans either for high
yield through earlier planting, long-season varieties with more inputs, or in fields
with a history of white mould, try a different strategy altogether. Select a variety
with excellent white mould tolerance that
is physically short, reduce the seeding
rate, use wider rows, consider planting
later and select a shorter season variety.
These factors will lower yields in years
with no white mould but can go a long
way in reducing white mould in a bad
year. The yield benefits from reduced
white mould will far exceed any losses
that come from thinner stands. A foliar
fungicide can also go a long way in reducing the impact of white mould. SG
Soybean Guide, February 2015
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Soybean guide
New product
for soys
Although the inoculant market is overwhelmingly based
on rhizobia bacteria, there is
one product new to Ontario
which is reportedly gaining
some traction. It’s a mycorrhizal fungi, classed as a fungal
inoculant (as opposed to a bacterial product). According to
Kate Bruinsma, sales representative with Premier Tech
Agriculture, Myke Pro L fits
with the technical definition of
an inoculant is a “beneficial
Inoculation
gains ground
micro-organism (bacteria or
OMAFRA’s Horst Bohner now recommends always
fungi) encapsulated in carrier
inoculating. “There are some real benefits.”
material and applied to the
environment for remediation
By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor
and enhancement of agricultural productivity.”
Available in Ontario since
2012, Myke Pro L is supported
by one-year data in the province that has found a three
bu./ac. yield increase across a
large geographic area, from
Oxford, Perth and Middlesex
counties as well as around
Walkerton to Beaverton, east
of Lake Simcoe. Again, it’s just
one-year data.
Two formulations were
used depending on the equipment employed by the farmer.
Roughly half used the Pur
Myke Pro L liquid product,
applied in-furrow through kits
on the drill or planter. The
other option was the Myke
Pro PS3 power formulation,
which can be mixed on the
seed at time of planting.
10 I
n the world of agriculture, there are
very few constants. Most practices
and standards last only until new
research shifts our thought processes, or
until a new challenge or a new opportunity changes the landscape.
There are plenty of recent examples.
Within the past decade, the hard-andfast rule of always planting corn first has
changed; sometimes it’s better to get the
beans in and go back to finish the corn
when the conditions are right. Another is
the rule about cold-water imbibition. As
recently as seven years ago, this was
something to avoid if at all possible.
Today we hear less about cold water
uptake, and maybe it’s because of the
hardiness of soybean seed or maybe it’s
because our weather is getting warmer.
Bottom line, standards are always
changing.
Now it’s happening with seed inoculant too. Until a decade ago the clear
consensus among agronomists was that
the only ground where it makes sense to
inoculate is in first-time soybean fields.
Why waste that money when soils that
have had soybeans in the rotation
already contain high numbers of the
nitrogen-fixing rhizobia bacteria?
Well, farmers spend it because it’s
inexpensive insurance and it guarantees
the right source of rhizobia in the ground,
helping to establish those nodules and get
the plant fixing its own fertilizer.
According to Horst Bohner, soybean
specialist with the Ontario Ministry of
Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs
(OMAFRA), inoculating — or pre-inoculating — soybeans is now just one more
function of treating seed or the soil during
the course of the planting season. It’s
becoming as automatic as other seed treatments, or the notion of fertilizing soybeans
with potash. Such practices may not have
been part of the plan 10 years ago, but
they’re becoming more front-of-mind today.
“We’re trying to make things as convenient as possible for the producer
because of acreage, speed, and size,” says
Bohner, who has completed a six-year
study on the impact of inoculants in soybeans. “So the trend to pre-inoculants
has been pretty good, and there are some
real benefits to that.”
T he more that’s lea r ne d from
research, the more often inoculants are
being recommended. In past, it was
enough to inoculate new soybean
ground. But as Bohner has found, soil
rhizobia on their own need a boost,
hence the current trend towards preinoculants as a seed treatment, even on
fields with a history of soybeans.
Soybean Guide, February 2015
MINIMUM DAMAGE
MAXIMUM
GERMINATION
Bohner adds that in 2014, there were many fields with poor
nodulation, mostly due to the cold spring conditions. Some producers he met had several hundred acres of first-time soybeans
with no nodules, even though an inoculant had been applied.
Some of those failures, he notes, could have been magnified by
the reliance on a single application such as a liquid inoculant or a
pre-inoculant. Generally, it’s been found that if two products are
used on first-time fields, there are fewer nodulation problems.
“It’s not just in those fields, and it’s not just the pre-inoculants,
but certainly it’s about getting the right bacterial numbers on the
seed,” says Bohner. “We need to be careful in first-time fields, and
that’s what we learned again (in 2014), that a single pre-inoculant
is not good enough; they need to put on two products to get
around the issue of nodulation failures on first-time fields.”
“I think every field in the province —
every year — should get an inoculant. It
doesn’t hurt, and there’s a small net benefit to the producer for doing that on every
field, every year.”
— Horst Bohner, OMAFRA
Despite the changing mindset in using inoculants and preinoculants, the bacterial strain used as an inoculant hasn’t
changed since the early 2000s. It was in 2002 that Dr. Dave
Hume, professor emeritus at the University of Guelph, was testing the addition of Bacillus subtilis to the standard inoculant
strain of Bradyrhizobium japonicum. On its own, B. subtilis is a
common, naturally-occurring bacterium, but added to the rhizobium strain, it acts as a plant growth promoting rhizobacterium (PGRP), which in some fields stimulates early growth in
soybeans. It is not, however, an inoculant by itself.
Bohner is aware of companies that are researching new
strains — some from South America — but none of those are
commercially available for use at this time. What he does see
coming in the future is an uptake in biostimulants, plus nematode control or other products to allow better nutrient uptake.
But his take-home message for the time being is that there’s no
reason not to inoculate.
“I think every field in the province — every year — should
get an inoculant,” says Bohner. “It doesn’t hurt, and there’s a
small net benefit to the producer for doing that on every field,
Continued on page 12
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every year. And 2014 was one of those
years where it was cool and wet in the
spring, and if you have an inoculant it
just puts the nodules on a little bit faster.
Is it going to change the world? No, it’s
about a bushel to 1.5 bushels per acre on
average, but it doesn’t cost that much to
put on, so why not do it?”
For Mike Verhoef, relying on inoculants is more one of those “getting back
to basics” approaches that are earning
more attention from farmers, agronomists, advisers, retailers and company
representatives. He confirms Bohner’s
statement about the companies being
involved in more research into newer
strains, but also the use of polymers,
colourants and seed application processes. And he echoes Bohner’s contention that we need to be more specific
with terminology and the differences
between the inoculant (Bradyrhizobium
japonicum) and the growth promoter
(Bacillus subtilis).
Instead, he wants to focus on the
farmer’s primary investment — the
high-value, “traited” seed.
“By putting an inoculant on that seed,
you’re guaranteeing that that seed has
instant access to healthy, robust rhizobia
and that it’s ready to start self-affixing
nitrogen through the production of nodules,” says Verhoef, national seed company manager with BASF Canada. “Even
though they’ve grown soybeans on that
field before, and there will be rhizobia
there, it doesn’t mean that there are the
healthy robust rhizobia that it needs.”
Verhoef adds that he’s glad to have
Bohner making the point about inoculation being an inexpensive form of insurance, and remembers his presentation at
the Southwest Agricultural Conference
in 2012. That day, Bohner spoke of his
six-year study on inoculants and how
there was little need for more study or
analysis, just that inoculating works, so
why not do it?
“If you ask any soybean expert, U.S.
side or Canadian side, what are a few of
the key things you must do on soybean
production, inoculant is in the top
three,” says Verhoef.
In Western Canada, where growers
are becoming more familiar with soybeans and corn, they’re already sold on
the benefits of inoculating. With a new
pea and lentil inoculant — capable of
boosting yield between seven and 11
per cent — most growers in the West
place inoculating on a scale of impor12 “If you ask any soybean expert — U.S. side or Canadian
side — what are a few of the key things you must do on
soybean production, inoculant is in the top three.”
— Mike Verhoef, BASF Canada
tance above seed treatments. So in that
sense, says Verhoef, Western Canada
producers are ahead of those in the
East, where he says the industry is still
encountering the notion that soybean
ground needs no inoculant, unless it’s
first-time ground.
“You could comfortably say that companies like ours are always looking for
improvements in strains, improvements
in formulation and improvements in
carriers,” says Verhoef. “To do that, we’re
always looking at new biologicals to add,
to make that whole process work better.
The biggest interest right now is this
whole ‘ease-of-use’ and on-seed movement and making it easier for the
grower, so we’ve put a lot of focus into
that in the last five years — hence the
whole pre-inoculant situation. But as we
do that, ease-of-use is also part of lowering the application use rates, longer days
on seed and the formulation processes.”
Research also continues into a formulation process to put more living bacteria
in a smaller amount of product. SG
East versus West
terminologies
A point of interest in the world of inoculants is the use of terms like
“double inoculation.” It’s used more in Western Canada, says Mike
Verhoef, national seed company manager for BASF Canada. In Eastern
Canada, the term is “full-rate” but in the final analysis, it’s the same thing.
In the West, half-rate is applied as a liquid pre-inoculant directly on the
seed. Then, farmers typically apply an in-furrow inoculant, hence the
“double” terminololgy. It’s actually the full-rate that some growers apply
in the East (a pre- and then an in-furrow inoculant).
In Western Canada, growers also use their “double-rate” inoculants as
a standard application.
Soybean Guide, February 2015
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Soybean guide
OMAFRA’s Tenuta calls white mould our most “fickle” disease
Disease risk high
With so many rotations
thrown out of sync, extra
disease vigilance is
essential for 2015
By Ralph Pearce,
CG Production Editor
14 T
here’s only one word to describe
the outlook for soybeans in 2015.
It’s “more.” With a reasonable
spring, Eastern Canada’s soybean crop
may hit an amazing 3.25 million acres.
But acreage isn’t the only number that
may be up. We’re also likely to see more
fields with second-year and some with
third-year soybeans.
Then, if the predictions hold true,
we’ll also see more white mould (sclerotinia) and sudden death syndrome (SDS).
That’s bad news our diseases are on the
move. White mould is usually ranked as
the biggest yield robber in eastern Ontario
and western Quebec, but last year saw it
become a bigger issue even in the southwest. SDS was seen in more growing
regions too, and in greater severity.
And soybean cyst nematodes (SCN)
remained a considerable yield robber, not
only across southern Ontario, but also farther east in the province as well.
Of course, Phytophthora root rot and
Pythium damping off should never be
ignored, wherever you are.
In other words, more regions are seeing more risks, and just about every farm
needs to be on the alert in order to ward
off a series of major threats.
Public and private agronomists are all
looking at a tough 2015. Diseases were a
problem last year, they say, but with an
increase in soybean acres — along with
more continuous soybeans — that trend
is expected to continue, if not intensify.
“White mould, sudden death syndrome, soybean cyst nematode, the root
rots and seedling diseases will be some of
the biggest ones there,” says Albert Tenuta,
field crops pathologist for the Ontario
Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural
Affairs. Tenuta adds that the threats are
compounded by one of the key management tools to drive yield upwards — earlier planting into cool, wet soils.
White mould
Tenuta calls white mould “the most
fickle disease” facing growers, but it’s also
Continued on page 16
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Continued from page 14
the most frustrating from an extension and
research perspective. Inoculum is often
present, but in order to thrive, the disease
requires very specific environmental conditions, particularly for moisture and temperature. In 2014, there were some
exhibitor plots at Canada’s Outdoor Farm
Show with visible symptoms of the disease.
“In the years where we have coolerthan-normal and wet conditions, we see
what can happen with white mould,” says
Tenuta. He notes that many producers
have all but forgotten how destructive
white mould can be and how it can
impact yield. “We have a lot more sclerotia left on the soil surface and in the upper
two inches of the soil profile, and those
are the most critical within a season for
developing the spores,” Tenuta says.
“They’re the ones that will cause you
problems. Anything below two inches will
remain buried and won’t germinate or
develop into the apothecia and then the
spores — they’ll just stay there.”
But surely, a grower might say, the
conditions that made 2014 such a bad
year for white mould aren’t likely to
repeat in 2015. That’s true, but Tenuta
points out that the inoculum load is that
much greater, particularly in fields with
beans on beans or beans on beans on
beans, and this will increase the risk. And
unfortunately, in no-till scenarios, those
sclerotia are ready to spring into life
within two inches of the soil surface.
So, would 2015 be the year for some
light or moderate tillage to prevent those
pathogens from developing?
Not necessarily, says Tenuta. Discing or
cultivating the soil in the spring might
just as easily bring any buried sclerotia
back to the surface. And even if you end
up with fewer sclerotia up where they can
cause trouble, there may still be enough to
create a serious risk.
The only way to really break the cycle
is to maintain rotations — which is a
challenge given the current pricing cycle.
“It goes back to all of these different
diseases, and one of the most important
things from an integrated pest management (IPM) standpoint is variety selection,” says Tenuta. “What growers do in
the winter cannot be taken for granted.
Planning is critical to a successful growing
season — and variety selection is the
most important.”
Understanding white mould pressure
16 White mould is moving south, SDS is moving east, and more fields face more threats.
from field to field is paramount, because
that’s how growers will be able to select the
right variety for those fields. There’s no
genetic resistance to white mould incorporated into current soybean germplasm or
varietal lines, only tolerance to the disease.
Tenuta is quick to point out that there are
also pre- and in-season treatments that
have not been available to growers in the
past, including biologicals that can be
applied pre-plant that colonize and disrupt
the sclerotia, plus newer in-season treatments that are being developed.
“We can often get some degree of control or suppression of white mould but
we can’t get rid of it,” says Tenuta, adding
that knowing which fields are susceptible
is the first line of defence. “It comes down
to genetics and germplasm and variety
selection. I can’t overemphasize the
importance of variety selection for the
specific needs for your specific fields.”
The frustrating part of white mould is
that unlike some other diseases or insect
infestations, it doesn’t have a visual
threshold that can be used for scheduling
a spray. Once the disease is visible in a
field, that field is infected and it is beyond
the point where it can be treated via a
chemical application, which becomes little more than revenge spraying. What’s
more frustrating is that many of the measures that promote higher yields, such as
higher plant populations, higher fertility
and narrow rows, can provide the right
microclimate within the canopy for the
disease to flourish.
“The key in 2014 was that optimal
environmental conditions stayed much
longer than normal,” says Tenuta. “In
most years, we end up with hot, dry conditions by the middle of July and into
August, and even though we have white
mould starting, it doesn’t spread any further. In 2014 though, even with a preventive fungicide application (at R1 or R2)
and even some later applications (around
R4 or R5) the extended fall seemed to
help the diesease. But Tenuta still says
those early applications are something to
consider, particularly if you have the
higher-risk situations.
Sudden death syndrome
According to several sources, sudden
death syndrome is another emerging challenge for growers, and 2014 was another
year of marked increases in the disease,
particularly in southwestern Ontario. For
the coming year, SDS may see another
jump in area or in intensity, given the rise
in acres and the increased frequency of second- and third-year soybeans.
“Again, variety selection is important
and soybean cyst nematode resistance is
important,” reminds Tenuta, drawing a
link between SDS and soybean cyst nematode, which he often referred to early in
2014 as well. “And unfortunately, with
SDS, it’s often our best fields that are
showing the disease. It’s the same thing
with white mould; high-fertility, highgrowth conditions promote white mould,
and the same things happen with SDS.
The good fields, the high-productive
fields are often the first to show SDS and
often see the most damage as well.”
Like white mould, SDS increases as
growers continue to plant earlier into
colder soils in an effort to push maturity
on their soybeans.
It’s not that early planting is a bad
idea, just that the risk of infection — and
from more diseases — increases. With
Continued on page 18
Soybean Guide, February 2015
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Continued from page 16
SDS, notes Tenuta, it’s cooler, wetter conditions, typically within the first two or
three weeks of planting, that are very
important to establishing the disease. It’s
at that point the disease pathogen will
colonize the roots and then wait until
stress conditions occur or until later in
the growing season when the typical SDS
above-ground symptoms start to appear.
Even in a good growing season, Tenuta
says, the disease can cause damage and
yield loss.
It’s all the more reason for growers to
know their fields and to understand the
disease species that are present. Only
then, Tenuta says, can they respond with
the right integrated pest management
strategy, including variety selection.
“Seed treatments are also important,”
adds Tenuta. “Fungicide seed treatments
are a necessity for soybean development
and for maximizing yields, and we must
not underestimate their importance.”
Tenuta has been working with U.S.
researchers in the north-central soybean
research program to look at sudden death
syndrome as well as seedling disease, and
also with the Grain Farmers of Ontario
through a Growing Forward 2-funded project. They’ve noticed that with sudden death
syndrome in particular, yield losses can run
as high as five to six bushels per acre. And
that’s just with normal planting dates.
In testing a new active ingredient seed
treatment, however, Tenuta says the joint
Canada-U.S. research project has found it
gives a yield boost of three to four bushels
per acre, even where the crop was planted
at the end of April under cool, wet conditions into soils with a high SDS.
“There are some good new tools coming down the pike that growers will be
able to integrate into their management
system, as well,” Tenuta says.
Soybean cyst nematode
A long-standing pest of soybean fields,
particularly in southern Ontario, soybean
cyst nematode (SCN) continues to be a
perennial leader in the “yield-robbing”
category. In spite of standard sources of
resistance (i.e. PI 78877 and the Peking
sources) incorporated into varieties, the
troubling issue with this disease pest is
that there are some new Heterodera glycines (HG) types and nematode populations that are putting pressure on existing
resistance sources.
In 2014, there were some resistant
18 Whether it’s nematodes, as above, or diseases, a good defence builds on genetics.
varieties that were more susceptible to
SCN than in the past.
The other concern with SCN is that it
is not as environmentally dependent as
other diseases. Tenuta says regardless of
weather or climatic conditions, there will
always be some level of SCN infection,
with consequences for fields. If it’s a
highly stressed year, then even at lower
populations there will be more potential
for damage. In some good years, there
may be little or no above-ground symptoms, but that doesn’t mean the damage
isn’t being done.
Phytophthora and Pythium
Of the prevalent diseases in soybeans
these days, Phytophthora root rot and
Pythium damping off are the most environmentally dependent. At the present
time, Phytophthora resistance is fairly
well entrenched, but Pythium is showing
signs of developing a more diverse
threat. Within the past decade, there
were only one or two Pythium strains;
now researchers are isolating nine or
more from different varieties.
Even if resistance to Pythium is lacking in soybean germplasm, there are good
seed treatments available, including
Metalaxyl and Metalaxyl-M. Yet Tenuta
says there are also signs of resistance to
those active ingredients beginning to
creep into fields.
“As our GFO-funded project has
shown, we’re seeing all of these disease
organisms get smarter and have the
ability to adapt to our management
practices,” Tenuta says, speaking specifically of Pythium but referring in gener al ter ms to al l of t h e d i s e a s e s
mentioned above.
Take-away message
Again, Tenuta says he can’t overemphasize the need for preplanning and for
farmers to know their fields. The work
done in the middle of winter will pay its
own rewards, he adds, especially if rotations are being sidetracked with back-toback, or back-to-back-to-back soybeans.
It is paramount to review field notes from
previous years, to map out parts of fields
where certain diseases may be a problem,
and to diversify those varieties, perhaps
planting five different varieties across five
different fields rather than opting for a
favourite or “workhorse” variety.
It’s also worth noting that these disease
issues continue to develop and diversify,
becoming part of the “normal” farming
landscape. There is no single silver bullet
solution, says Tenuta, and there is no single active ingredient that can be called
upon to solve every issue, be it a disease,
or a weed species or insect pest.
“We never had that (silver bullet) in
the first place, but the seed is now being
challenged by a more diverse pathogen
population,” says Tenuta. “We’re going to
have to depend on different active ingredients to hit those little niches of what
we’re missing. It’s going to become more
complicated in the future.” SG
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Soybean guide
Market outlook, 2015
W
Demand is keeping pace
with increased production,
but will that continue?
Here’s what to watch
By Philip Shaw
20 ith every new year come great
challenges. For Canadian
farmers looking out into their
2015 planning horizon, soybeans are
increasingly a large part of that. Where
once soybeans were relegated to the deep
southwest of Ontario, now there are three
million acres in Ontario and 836,000 in
Quebec, plus over one million acres in
Manitoba with continued expansion
expected every year in Western Canada.
For the soybean, it seems the best of
times. But will this continue? As we look
into 2015, what are the market factors that
will determine our price expectations?
It used to be said in southwestern
Ontario that all you had to do was plant
soybeans and wait. The conventional wisdom at the time was that you planted
them in a cloud of dust, tried to control
the weeds and eventually you would have
a crop at the end of the day. However,
over the years, with the expansion in the
acreage, management has also evolved.
There is no particular silver bullet to
increase soybean yields. It’s more of a silver shotgun involving many management
factors which help achieve that goal.
It is the same on the soybean marketing front. In 2015, producers will need to
consider many marketing factors that are
impacting the soybean complex.
In 2014, Canadian soybean farmers
watched from a distance as our American
friends produced a record crop. The United
States last year planted a record 84.2 million
acres of soybeans and harvested a record
yield of 47.5 bushels per acre. That was a
tremendous increase in acreage from the
previous year when U.S. soybean farmers
planted a crop of 76.8 million acres. This
record crop in the United States created
somewhat of a bearish environment where
prices moved down throughout 2014,
bouncing back to some extent into a rally
starting in late October. Of course the
question that has to be asked moving forward is how many soybeans will U.S. farmers plant in 2015, and what impact this
might have on price going forward.
According to many private estimates,
U.S. producers are set to increase the area
of soybeans to 88 million to 90 million
acres this coming spring, beating last year’s
record. If we put a hypothetical yield of 45
bushels per acre to that production, we’ll
be very close to the record production of
2014 of 3.958 billion bushels. At first
glance, it is certainly setting up as a year
where a lot more soybeans get planted and
if Mother Nature plays nice, there will be
great production in the fields.
Keep the $10 soybean futures mark in
mind. For instance, as the clock turned
over to January in 2015, the nearby
futures month was at approximately
$10.02 a bushel. This put cash soybeans in
Ontario at approximately $11.40 a bushel
when you consider basis. Needless to say,
the $10 mark in soybeans will always
serve as a litmus test for some producers.
The production in both North and South
American fields in 2015 will largely determine whether that price resides north or
south of the $10 mark.
The $10 mark will largely be determined by crop size but also by demand
and ending stocks. The projected U.S. ending stocks for soybeans in the 2014-15 crop
year are 410 million bushels. This is considered quite onerous, especially when last
year ending stocks actually dipped below
100 million bushels to 92 million bushels.
This was unprecedented at the time and
reflected an unusual shortage of old-crop
soybeans.
Looking ahead, if demand stays strong
and even climbs possibly to 3.85 billion
bushels in 2015, we may still end up with
ending soybean stocks over 400 million
bushels in the U.S.
Of course the United States always has a
tremendous effect on the price of soybeans, but our South American friends
now grow far more than the United States.
For instance, the December estimate from
USDA pegs U.S. production at 107.73 million tonnes of soybeans. When you combine Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay
together you get production of 157.2 million tonnes. Clearly, this production in
South America has a huge effect on the
price of soybeans looking ahead. Into our
mid-winter, South American weather has
been benign, which is positive for soybean
yields. This South American soybean crop
size will be a critical factor in determining
the price of soybeans.
Continued on page 22
Soybean Guide, February 2015
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The elephant in the room in any discussion with soybeans is China, which
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million tonnes in 2015 and this demand is
growing. There is always a lag time
between U.S. and South American supplies to China. This is likely to happen in
2015, just as it has happened in previous
years. Last year with old-crop supplies
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with the logistical problems in South
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For Canadian soybean producers, there
are two great production areas to look at,
the United States and South America. First
up is South America where soybeans will be
flowering and filling in January and
February with the main harvest commencing in March. Any weather issue in this time
frame will affect the futures prices. It will be
the same in the U.S. with the planted acreage figure being key to that equation. The
first clue to how many acres American
farmers will be planting will be announced
in the USDA report on March 31, 2015.
Any discussion regarding grain prices in
Canada must also include the value of the
Canadian dollar. The Canadian dollar has
dropped from par values in late 2013 down
to the low 80s in January 2015. Soybeans are
priced in U.S. dollars at Ontario end-users
and a simple currency exchange can add
large amounts on to cash values, especially
when the dollar is low. For instance, oldcrop basis values sit at approximately $1.15
a bushel over the March futures in early
January. A par dollar or the loonie at a premium means negative basis levels for soybeans. This movement in the Canadian
dollar must always be considered, as its
importance to cash prices to producers is
always critical. Hedging the futures and
considering the Canadian dollar go hand in
hand on Canadian farms.
However, it’s a two-way street. The
value of the Canadian dollar is directly
related to the value of the U.S. dollar and
to some extent to the price of oil. As the
Canadian dollar has dropped, the value of
the U.S. dollar in comparison has done
the opposite. It has been going up, acting
as a drag on all commodity prices. In
2015 it will continue as long as the U.S.
dollar shows buoyancy, and this will temper agricultural futures prices.
So as we move ahead into 2015, after
the South American crop is in, North
American acres will become very important. Along the way, USDA reports will
always serve as flashpoints for market
action. The March 31 USDA prospective
plantings report will be the first big
benchmark in the new-crop marketing
year. The June 30 USDA planted acreage
report will be the second big benchmark
for futures prices going into summer.
Producers will need to consider these two
reports when hedging soybean prices for
the new-crop season.
The road ahead in 2015 for soybean
farmers will surely be challenging. It is
often said that soybeans can be the great
liars, since their production potential is
often very difficult to measure in season.
With expanded acres this year and somewhat onerous ending stocks, pricing those
soybeans may add to their reputation.
However, at the end of the day, soybeans
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geopolitical events can always come along
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and that certainly is the case with soybean
pricing in 2015. SG
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Soybean guide
Digging
into food-grade
soybeans
This four-year study aims to exploit
the best traits and qualities in IP soys
By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor
A
Food-grade soybeans are sold to
processors and manufacturers who are
more sensitive to quality parameters,
and intensely concerned with changes
that might affect the consistency
of their tofu or natto products.
griculture often has to take a
look back in order to see what’s
ahead. Farmers do it with their
cropping plans and seed orders. Retailers
and suppliers do it too, using the previous year’s experience to improve in the
year ahead.
Now the food-grade soybean sector is
embracing the same strategy. Thanks in
part to a federal research grant and the
participation of three industry partners,
researchers at the University of Guelph
will identify the most desirable traits
from past and present varieties, and
build a process for incorporating them
into future seed.
The Guelph team is led by soybean
breeder Dr. Istvan Rajcan with grants
f r o m t h e Na t u r a l S c i e n c e s a n d
Engineering Research Council through
its Collabor ative Research and
Development fund (NSERC-CRD).
Other members of the team include
research associate Chris Grainger, PhD
candidate Robert Bruce, Dr. Milad
Eskandari from Guelph’s Ridgetown
Campus, and Dr. François Belzile from
Laval University.
In today’s environment, if a researcher
has industry support, they can leverage
matching federal dollars. “And that’s
what we did,” says Rajcan. “We worked
on that idea for a couple of years and
tried to find partners within the industry
who were willing to support it, and we
were successful.”
The result is a four-year program,
with support from Grain Farmers of
Ontario (GFO), SeCan and Huron
Commodities Inc.
In all, Rajcan and his colleagues have
received nearly $2 million in government
and industry support, with more than
$500,000 from the three industry partners.
“We can build this new strategy of incorporating
everything that’s positive for various traits into new
varieties that would be superior for more
than one trait.”
— Dr. Istvan Rajcan, University of Guelph
24 Soybean Guide, February 2015
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The project is looking into the genetics of various important traits for soybean breeders. Food-grade is the
primary focus at this stage, and the reason is simple: the private sector is turning out new crush varieties, but the
food-grade side is largely dependent on
public breeders, and varieties such as
OAC Bayfield, OAC Kent, OAC Wallace
and OAC Prudence are all examples of
the success of programs at Guelph and
the university’s Ridgetown Campus.
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Lots of variation,
lots of lines
In this second year of the project,
work is proceeding from a historical perspective. Most of the first accessions —
the ancestral lines — of soybeans grown
in North America originated in Asia,
specifically China, Japan and Korea.
Those first lines are still the foundational
genetics used in soybean breeding programs across the continent. By Rajcan’s
calculations, 35 ancestral lines account
for about 90 per cent of the genetics in
Canada and the U.S.
Fortunately, there’s considerable diversity within those 35 lines, and a lot of the
diversity has been already utilized in the
breeding of some 300 lines, representing
commercial and experimental cultivars, says
Rajcan. “About two-thirds of those 300 lines
come from the Guelph program and onethird are from the Ridgetown program.”
The next stage is very scientific.
Rajcan’s PhD student is working on
genotyping those 300 varieties using
sequencing methods. That creates a lot
of molecular marker data to characterize
those lines genetically and look for differences between them. Researchers are
also comparing those genetic variations
with the phenotypic differences to identify desirable traits such as yield, oil content, protein content, fatty acid profile
and isoflavones.
Ultimately, it’s hoped the research
will identify those similarities among the
best performers, with a final goal of
incorporating those common traits into
superior-performing varieties.
Continued on page 26
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Continued from page 25
“Once we figure out what is common
for each trait, then we can build this new
strategy of incorporating everything
that’s positive for various traits into new
varieties that would be superior for more
than one trait,” says Rajcan.
Early in the process
For the time being, this research is at
a type of “search and discovery” stage,
with the end-goal of having a better
genetic toolbox for Canadian soybean
breeders when its four-year run is complete. That would give them the molecular markers that are important for
developing a high-yield, superior quality
variety. And Rajcan emphasizes that he
and his colleagues are looking to
improve everything, not just yield: specific qualities and even disease resistance
traits are under consideration.
“The goal is to ensure that variety development down
the road isn’t missing out on variations that can improve
varieties for Ontario.”
— Dr. Josh Cowan, Grain Farmers of Ontario
“Some researchers would refer to this
as a certain kind of pedigree-based association mapping,” Rajcan says. “And I’m
aware of the private seed sector conducting association mapping studies, but I’m
not sure if they’re looking at a historical
perspective as much as we are. The benefit of looking at it from a historical perspective is that we can see what changes
in the genome have led to certain
changes in the phenotype of the plant.”
As it stands, public and private sector breeders have different objectives
that can vary greatly. The private sector
wants to quickly produce new varieties
with a focus on improved traits. The
public sector breeding programs on the
other hand, focus primarily on specific
traits, often related to those properties
most desired within the food-grade sector, and usually sought-after by the food
processors and manufacturers. It’s a
part of the food-grade industry that’s of
particular interest to the Grain Farmers
of Ontario. For years, GFO directors
and executives have been advocates for
more value-added opportunities to
boost net grower revenues.
“When you’re looking at food-grade,
it’s a market-driven entity, so the customer
gets familiar with the variety, and they’d
like to have the same variety for a long
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26 Less Fusarium & sprouting, better falling numbers
Soybean Guide, February 2015
Left: Researchers at the University of Guelph are
engaged in mapping the soybean genome in such a
way that it will enable breeders to select for more of
the desirable traits for future varieties.
time,” says Crosby Devitt, GFO’s vice-president of strategic development. “The customer understands it and they know how to process it properly versus a commodity where if you’re making meal
and oil, variety changes aren’t as significant to a crusher as they
would be to a tofu manufacturer where small changes can make a
big difference to their process.”
Devitt adds that with food-grade soybeans, there’s also the need
for a stable and profitable market. To develop that market, Ontario
food-grade varieties need to be able to compete with commodity
varieties. To look at that from a breeding perspective, he notes,
breeders like Rajcan must accommodate more targets for traits and
quality characteristics than a commodity soybean. Perhaps what
makes the food-grade sector more intriguing is the longevity of
some of the varieties that the public sector has developed. OAC
Bayfield, for instance, had a lengthy and productive history of combining good agronomics with consistent quality across a large geographic area, all the while managing year-to-year variability.
Another testament to the public breeding sector is news
from Martin Vanderloo, president of Huron Commodities. In a
message sent to Rajcan just before Christmas 2014, Vanderloo
spoke of the successful sales of quantities of seed of the varieties
OAC Madoc and OAC Prudence in parts of Russia and Ukraine.
Both are short-season varieties.
The right needle in the haystack
Dr. Josh Cowan is GFO’s new manager of research and innovation, and joins Devitt in praising this project and the work of
Rajcan and the team of researchers. He notes that this type of
mapping of the soybean genome is aimed precisely at developing the best varieties for Ontario conditions.
“There tend to be a lot more specific characteristics looked
at on the food-grade side of the soybean,” says Cowan. “So to be
able to understand what we have available to work with in a
breeding program in order to meet those end-user characteristics is important. And the food-grade soybean marketplace for
Ontario is key. From the project perspective, the goal is to
ensure that variety development down the road isn’t missing
out on variations that can improve varieties for Ontario.”
Underlying part of this project is a particular need for the
other two partners — SeCan and Huron Commodities. By participating in this research, the companies will benefit from
developing a breeding-and-traits pipeline for identity preserved
(IP) or food-grade soybean varieties similar in approach to
what some private-sector companies have been doing in the IP
sector for years. Sevita has been developing its varieties through
ProSeed, one of its parents, and the same was the case for
Thompson’s Elite IP program, which benefited from work done
by Hyland Seeds prior to its purchase by Dow AgroSciences.
Now with this University of Guelph project, SeCan and Huron
Commodities can benefit from the same type of opportunities.
“I think what we’ve seen as a strategy in a breeding program is
that you don’t target one trait; you want to keep variability in
your program,” says Devitt. “So every year, the material you’re
generating has a range of different traits in it. You don’t know 100
per cent what the market will want 10 years from now, but you’re
maximizing your chances of having something that fits.” SG
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27
Soybean guide
The West’s big challenge
Despite their province’s soaring soy acreage, Manitoba’s hog industry is still locked into
expensive imported soymeal. Worse, change may still be years away
By Ron Friesen
I
t was another banner year for
Manitoba soybeans in 2014 with production hitting a record 1.1 million
tonnes, up 3.7 per cent from 2013.
Figures from Statistics Canada show
that, although average yields dropped 14
per cent to 32.3 bushels per acre, a 21 per
cent increase in harvested area more than
made up for lower yields.
Since soybean meal is a basic ingredient in hog and poultry rations, you’d
think Manitoba livestock producers
would be rubbing their hands at the prospect of feeding their animals locally
grown soybeans instead of having to
import them.
Unfortunately, most soybeans consumed by livestock in Manitoba aren’t
grown in the province. Instead, almost all
the soybeans grown in Manitoba end up
being shipped out of the province for
other markets because of a lack of processing capacity.
Manitoba has only three small soybean
processors, one of them a roaster.
Although they do serve the local market,
they provide only a small fraction of the
soymeal fed to livestock in the province.
28 Nearly all soymeal used in Manitoba is
imported from feed mills in the U.S. or
Eastern Canada.
So, while soybean production in
Manitoba grows by leaps and bounds, livestock producers watch unit trains haul locally
grown soybeans to the West Coast and elsewhere, while soybeans from other regions
come in across the border to fill the void.
The industry is acutely aware of the
irony of shipping soybeans out of the
province while at the same time importing them to make up for the loss.
Officials agree it would make economic sense to process soybeans here,
given the extra cost of transportation and
a higher import price resulting from a
slumping loonie.
The industry sees real benefits for livestock producers. “Hopefully we will be
able to stop importing soymeal, start paying in Canadian dollars, avoid currency
fluctuations and pay less in transportation,” says Andrew Dickson, general manager of the Manitoba Pork Council. In
return, Dickson says, soybean producers
would gain from a large, stable market so
close at hand.
Soybeans make up a significant part of
hog producers’ feed requirements.
According to livestock analyst Janet
Honey, the Manitoba swine industry uses
almost two million tonnes of feed a year.
Rough estimates show soymeal represents
over 10 per cent of that amount. The volume of feed consumed annually, which
includes soymeal, would increase by 40
per cent if all the pigs produced in
Manitoba were fed to slaughter weight
instead of being exported as weanlings
and feeders, Honey says.
Soybeans are becoming a feed of
choice for Manitoba swine producers
because of their high meal and protein
content. According to the Canadian Grain
Commission, soybeans yield 80 per cent
meal and 20 per cent oil when crushed,
compared to 60 per cent meal and 40 per
cent oil for canola. Soybeans also average
40 per cent protein content, compared to
just 20 per cent for canola.
“I would say 100 per cent of rations
for pigs in Manitoba have soybean meal
in them. Producers feed wheat and barContinued on page 30
Soybean Guide, February 2015
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ley for energy and soybeans or canola for protein,” says Robyn
Harte, a Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Development
swine specialist.
As soybean production increases, and as more producers turn to
soymeal as a feedstuff, the need for more processing capacity in
Western Canada becomes more acute. But what would it take for a
major company to locate a soybean crushing plant here?
Unfortunately, despite more than doubling its soybean acreage since 2011, Manitoba still lacks the critical mass needed for a
major crusher, industry analysts say.
“These plants need economies of scale to be competitive,”
says Jonathon Driedger, a market analyst with FarmLink
Marketing Solutions in Winnipeg. “We don’t have the kind of
production that would come close to justifying the investment
you would need for a competitive plant.”
Chris Ferris, a market analyst with Informa Economics in
Winnipeg, agrees.
“At this point, I would say we’re probably not there yet,” says
Ferris. “But if we keep expanding acres the way we are, I would
see that it would probably make sense to throw in a crush plant
here at some point in the future.”
It’s a chicken-and-egg argument, according to Harte. Right
now, the soybean acres in Manitoba aren’t enough to lure a large
processor. “But unless you have a processing plant, what’s going
to entice people to plant more soybeans? It’s like the snake eating
its own tail,” Harte says.
That raises a critical question: How many acres of soybeans
would be needed to make building a crush plant in Western
Canada worthwhile? This is where analysts hedge their bets.
A recent presentation by Grain Farmers of Ontario noted
“huge momentum shifts in seeded soybean acreage” in Manitoba
and Saskatchewan. It cited reports suggesting that Western
Canada’s growers could seed as much as five million acres of soybeans in the next five to 10 years, most of it genetically engineered.
“With continuous improvements in genetics and production
technology, Canada will continue to see increases in yields across
the country in both non-GMO food grade soybeans and genetically engineered,” the report says.
Ferris says he has heard Monsanto officials privately suggest
seeded soybean acreage in Western Canada could hit six to eight
million acres in the next 10 years.
Assuming that’s possible (and it’s a big “if” because soybeans
are still a high-risk crop in Western Canada), would that be
enough to entice a multinational giant such as ADM to locate a
soybean crushing plant in the West? Or would small, locally
owned plants be better suited to the task?
Ferris says a lot depends on technology. Small plants are
cheaper to run and can break even on relatively low volumes,
while large plants in the U.S. and Ontario require major volumes
to be profitable. Also, crushers need to be competitive and willing to pay the necessary price to attract product. A low Canadian
dollar, which favours exports, could encourage soybean growers
to sell to a more financially attractive U.S. market instead of
marketing their beans locally.
“We’re not going to pay more for Manitoba stuff if we can get
it cheaper from the U.S.,” says Dickson.
Ferris suggests one solution could be to convert an existing
canola crushing plant into a swing plant which could also process soybeans. In that way, crushers can accept soybeans when
market conditions are favourable for them. The rest of the time
Soybean Guide, February 2015
they could concentrate on canola. But, again, it depends on the
technology. Ferris says swing plants work best when designed to
operate that way from the start. Retrofitting a canola plant to
also accommodate soybeans is more difficult.
In the meantime, it appears Canada will continue to be more
of a soybean exporter than a user. According to Grain Farmers of
Ontario, soybeans are the third-largest agri-food export in
Canada, totalling nearly 3.5 million tonnes in 2013 for a value of
$2.1 billion. Canada exports soybeans to over 50 countries. The
U.S. is the biggest customer, followed closely by China. The
Netherlands and Japan follow.
It’s difficult to say where soybeans from Manitoba end up.
Driedger says growers used to sell to elevators in northern U.S.
states. They still do. But major grain companies now report that
higher soybean volumes resulting from expanding acreages
enable them to assemble 100-car train units to ship to
Vancouver. That makes Asia a likely market.
However, there’s still a chance the livestock industry might
become a catalyst for processing more soybeans at home. Hog
producers are slowly beginning to rebuild their herds after several years of depressed prices and a recent outbreak of porcine
epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV). More pigs requiring more soybeans could encourage producers to grow their own beans and
have them crushed locally.
“If you saw a meaningful ramp up in those herds over the
course of a couple of years,” Driedger says, “that could increase
the demand for soymeal.” SG
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Soybean Guide, February 2015 31
Soybean guide
Grain analyzer gets attention
With more soybeans and corn stored on farm, this new analyzer is paying off
By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor
I
t’s easy to see why grain analyzers
and testers are garnering more attention in ag circles, from the farm all
the way up through elevators and even at
large-scale processors.
With tighter margins and a greater
focus on finding efficiencies, but also with
more focus on traceability, more interest in
new traits, and more markets for end uses
that have very specific quality parameters,
it all adds up to more potential payback for
knowing exactly what you’ve got.
In 2014, for instance, moisture
became the bane of many corn growers,
particularly at harvest, with plenty of
accounts of corn arriving at local elevators and getting tested at 30 per cent or
more before heading into the dryer.
Grain analyzers won’t tell farmers anything they didn’t already know about
moisture levels above 30 per cent. But in
the chase for margins, a little can go a long
way, says John Lounsberry of Champion
Industrial Equipment in Cornwall, Ont.
Lounsberry is an ag specialist, and sees the
need for more precise grain analysis, primarily from a moisture perspective,
although the future for grain analysis is
anything but limited.
“If you’re a grain buyer in the winter
months — spring and fall, too — to get
your tester to work, you do it usually by
warming it up in a microwave, on a hot
32 plate or just letting it sit out,” says
Lounsberry. “But all the time, moisture is
leaving the product, and that moisture is
the customer’s money — it’s still in your
sample.”
For the sake of argument, continues
Lounsberr y, say the moisture loss
amounts to just 0.5 per cent, which he
agrees doesn’t sound like a lot. However,
when that percentage is translated
throughout an entire truckload sitting at
the elevator, it’s money out of someone’s
pocket. And if the moisture level is too
high — as was often the case with harvested corn in late 2014 — some elevators
or processors would send truckloads back
to the farm, at the farmer’s expense.
One of the units that Lounsberry sells
is the Dickey-john GAC 2500 grain analyzer, a self-contained system that provides precise moisture and density results
at operating temperatures of -20 to 45 C.
It has a touch screen and a USB port for
portable data storage and it keeps a running Excel spreadsheet, enabling a buyer
to enter the ticket number on the sample.
The farmer can also enter the part of a
field where the load or the sample originated, and it can be interfaced with a
computer. Although corn was the hot
topic for late 2014, Lounsberry assures
growers and elevator operators alike that
the GAC unit can perform the same pre-
cision analysis on all grains and oilseeds,
including wheat/cereals and soybeans.
One other advantage is that it can analyze or measure ice as water — up to 19
per cent moisture.
It’s also certified by the National Type
Evaluation Program (NTEP), administered by the National Conference on
Weights and Measures.
More use, more value
The 2014 growing season marked the
first year for sales in Canada for the GAC
2500, and sales were shared almost
equally among growers and elevators.
Lounsberry suggests that since commodity prices are expected to remain low for
the foreseeable future, it’s possible that
more farmers might be in the market for
such analyzers as a means of reducing
operating costs and maximizing revenues.
The University of Guelph was the first
customer to purchase a GAC 2500 in
Ontario. Students are doing their plot
work and wanted to keep their own data
files on their results.
Some growers may view grain analysis
that is specific and accurate as the primary
value of such technology. And on a face
value, that’s very true. But the term “value”
is getting more exposure, both as commodity prices are pulling back from the
dizzying heights of early to late 2013, and
as processors and manufacturers continue
to find new uses, thereby requiring stricter
quality specifications. It isn’t just money
lost in dried corn or a rejected load, it’s the
value of that time on the road driving that
truck back home. Farmers are getting better at placing a value on their time, but it’s
still a part of their on-farm management
regimen that is seldom recognized.
“That’s usually what I point out — the
costs — and they realize that overdrying
can cost them a lot,” says Lounsberry. “For
one thing, the elevator will buy that moisture, and you will use a lot of propane,
and that’s a real cost. And the other way is
underdrying where the elevator may
charge you or possibly send you back.”
As for other functions, the GAC 2500
Soybean Guide, February 2015
is capable of performing grading on grains, specifically bushel
weight densities.
“We work with Canadian Grain Commission standards, and
this year (2014) has been a particularly critical year for grain grading, and I was told that it’s the difference between making money
and not,” states Lounsberry. “Your value drops as you go down the
chart. The growers say they can take a hit going from Grade 2 to
Grade 3, and that’s not so bad. But not from Grade 3 to Grade 4.”
The technology also has its applications with larger farming
operations that have followed the trend of the past five years that
has seen an increase in the construction of on-farm storage. At
the time, the word from engineers and extension personnel was
that farmers must be extra cautious about monitoring and managing their stored grains, and that part of what elevators charge
for storage includes all of the risk and liability that goes with that
service. When the grain is stored on a farm, that liability shifts
back to the farmer, meaning farmes need to ensure their quality is
maintained. And a grain analyzer can go a long way to providing
more information about the crop that’s in storage.
Upgrades or up-scale
Unlike a lot of other pieces of “precision ag” systems and
equipment that are purchased for on-farm usage, grain analyzers,
at least the GAC 2500, aren’t prone to upgrades or redesigns.
These units won’t be upgraded in a year or two or even three
years, but will be in the form of software enhancements, and
those are provided as part of the purchase.
“There are what I refer to as clear leaps in technology,” says
Soybean Guide, February 2015 Lounsberry. “And there’s a fair gap between the last analyzer,
which was on the market for more than 10 years. But this is a
clear leap forward and I think the manufacturer is going to stay
with this approach to the technology, and they may improve
some of its operation, but basically it’s going to be something in
the same nature of the current technology.”
It’s the type of precision that the GAC unit provides — plus its
ease of operations — that makes it as popular as it’s become with
farmers, elevators and large-scale processors. If more precision and
detail are required, Lounsberry points to the InstaLab 700 NIR —
also manufactured by Dickey-john — for measuring higher-value
traits and properties. This particular unit is built for crushers or
processors with the goal of selling to higher-value buyers and food
manufacturers — businesses that are looking for more qualityrelated information on protein, fat or oil constituents. SG
33
Soybean guide
It’s time to demand more
individualized agronomic help
and product support from
your input suppliers
By Ralph Pearce,
CG Production Editor
34 Need to know
W
alking around the grounds of
Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show
in 2014, one of the messages
that was shared among dealers and company representatives was this notion that
farmers are looking for a more focused
approach to boosting production and following practices that are more sustainable.
One theme that was touched on
repeatedly was that the days are long gone
of large groups of growers attending
launches and meetings to hear about “the
latest, greatest” new seed lines. Welcome
to the era of more individualized dealings.
It wasn’t a revolutionary concept
because it’s not as though dealers, agronomists and farmers were loathe to work individually in the past. There has always been a
united goal of driving yield and helping the
farmer succeed. After all, success of one usually translates into success for the other.
Yet something in the past couple of seasons has changed in terms of the approach
of dealers, retailers and company sales representatives. Perhaps 20 years ago the focus
was often on “the New” as opposed to
whether a variety, new active ingredient or
tillage implement was in line with any one
farmer’s management practices. In fact, in
the case of varieties and hybrids, the breeding and research pipeline has done such a
tremendous job that the sector is
approaching a level of parity that in the
past was unheard of. Today there are very
few of one company’s hybrids or varieties
that completely outclass those of another
— the playing field is becoming level.
The biggest change is the degree of
complexity that has become standard
operating procedure in farming today. It’s
not that it’s been a sudden departure from
regional promotion of one hybrid or vari-
ety. According to many company representatives, agronomists, dealers and retailers,
that process has been unfolding for at least
five years, and some might say longer than
that. But it’s the layers of information —
the maps, the fertilizer plans, the cropping
plans, the increasing attention to soil
health issues, crop protection principles,
the advent of complex machinery and
technology systems — that have changed
the way farmers are farming.
And that’s changing the way the agrimarketing sector is dealing with farmers.
A matter of efficiency
When you ask Wayne Black how he
views this shift, he likens it to advances in
television technology. As seed sales and
production specialist for Devolder Farms
of Dover Centre, Ont., near Chatham,
Black started his career with First Line
Seeds in Guelph, and remembers the
mass-appeal approach of selling one or
two varieties to farmers within a large
geographic area. He compares that practice of the 1970s and ’80s to the days of
the black-and-white television — everyone had one of those at least. By the
1990s, the varieties and hybrids were
more technologically advanced, particularly with the introduction of Bt corn
hybrids and glyphosate-tolerant soybeans.
Growers could also target individual fields
with those technologies. Enter the era of
the colour television.
“What we’ve got today is that we’ve
been able to pull that down into a highdefinition TV, to be able to sit down with
a grower and say, ‘You have this 50-acre
field, and on this particular section of
Continued on page 36
Soybean Guide, February 2015
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Continued from page 34
your 50-acre field, you’re going to plant at
a certain population and you’re going to
plant this variety’,” says Black.
Of course, the technologies by which
seed can be planted, measured (variable
rate), fertilized (split applications), tested for
nutrient levels or protected against disease,
pests and weeds have all changed as well.
All of these things are happening with
a narrowed focus on a much smaller
scale, such as just one part of a field
instead of the whole farm as in the
1970s. There’s more information to share
and to co-ordinate, says Black, with
greater specificity and a broader capacity
for capturing data points and details.
It’s not just the variety or the hybrid
that’s central to crop production. All of
the parameters, which might not have
been so accurately accounted for 30 and
40 years ago, are being precisely managed today, or can be. In fact, in his televison analogy, Black sees going a step
further to a three-dimensional, flatscreen colour TV. It’s not so much a different approach, says Black, as it is
learning to use different tools with a
clearer set of goals. It’s moving from
managing a 50-acre portion of a field to
a 50-square-foot parcel. It’s not there yet,
but it’s getting to that point.
“We’re closing in on turning Precision
Agriculture into Decision Agriculture,”
Black says.
The need for technology
Asked if he ever sees some level of
pushback, Black concedes that a technology or a new concept advances only as far
as individual farmers want to incorporate
it. Looking back at the early days of GPSbased technology, we can see how combines were outfitted with yield monitors
to mark the beginning of that trend, and
the early adapters were the ones to lead it
forward. But it took time for “everyone”
to join that wave.
When variable-rate technology (VRT)
was introduced a couple of years later,
there wasn’t the same eagerness to find
the early adapters — and for two reasons.
One, they were still engrossed in learning
and sharing the yield monitor wave. And
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Soybean Guide, February 2015
two, VRT was, in many ways, a step up from yield monitors and
maps. It’s taken the industry more than 15 years to reach the level
where VRT is beginning to show the same value as yield monitors
in the late 1990s.
That, says Black, is where there is a shift in the practical side of
farming. The technology has become so advanced, in concert
with a sharpened focus on agronomics, that farmers are increasingly relying on professional help to make the most of maps and
data points and the products of advanced breeding.
“Today we’re creating more accurate yield maps, and growers
are either doing it themselves, or they’re handing them off to
somebody else to overlay with other maps they currently have
from their farm operation, to start the move towards a prescription on an individual farm basis,” notes Black.
One of the advances that’s enabling efficiencies, and that “precision to decision” approach, is the speed with which information
can be transferred. Black states in many cases, by the time a dealer
drives out to the grower’s house or field, that grower can have the
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Soybean Guide, February 2015 data on their desktop computer or mobile device, and have it analyzed before the dealer can pick up the phone to call the grower
and set up a face-to-face meeting. It doesn’t always happen that
way but that’s the concept that’s in development right now.
“It’s recognizing what we’ve done in the past but not dwelling
on it, and being open to what the future provides,” says Black,
adding that people within agriculture will have to change as the
technology changes with it. “And it’s the same with the growers
— some of the growers who are adopting this technology are in
their 20s and 30s — some of them are also in their 50s and 60s.”
A difference among generations
That age factor and the ability to incorporate the changing
technology are also front-of-mind for Brandon Yott, product
development and marketing specialist with the Agromart
Group, based at Belton, Ont., north of London. Yott points to
the growing concerns surrounding retirement-age professionals
in the agri-marketing sector and believes that’s also influencing
how technology is adopted and how information is interpreted
and utilized.
In the past, it was easier to train a relatively younger workforce coming out of university and entering the agri-food
industry. But the prescriptive approach requires more knowledge, including historical references, and not just of the farmer’s
field, but of a particular variety’s lineage or its past performance. Yott doesn’t want to discriminate on age, but the fact
remains: older dealers, agronomists or sales representatives have
that long-term insight through sheer repetition and years of
experience. Yet all of that is changing as the old guard enters
retirement age, leaving this increasingly complex relationship to
a younger cohort.
“You already have this ‘new worker’ shortage, and unfortunately in our industry, it’s hard to bring in outside labour,” says
Yott, adding that such individuals may not have the same awareness of the market or growing conditions. “If they’re from outside
of the farm, the learning curve to get into the seed industry is
phenomenal. Your agronomic information and the genetics have
to come to a whole new level, and more information is needed
to help sell a specific variety on a producer’s farm.”
In any industry, it can take someone new to the job as much
as a year before they’re really up-to-speed with that particular
business or that industry, even with a core set of competencies
or skills. Yott contends that in agriculture, that process can take
twice as long.
What complicates matters even further is the depth of information that farmers are dealing with. Yott echoes Black’s contention about the complexities of change — of planting
multiple hybrids on a planter or using fewer nutrients or targeting them to a specific region of a field. Yott relates a statement
from a dealer he knows who said that in the past farmers came
to them for information; now they’re coming to them with
information. And they want help sorting through data points,
coloured maps, soil test scores, digesting that information and
finding those few nuggets they can use to drive production in a
sustainable manner.
“If Ontario’s average was 150 bushels for corn, there are a lot
of hybrids that can get you there without any issues,” says Yott.
“If you want to go to that 300-bushel level, well, now you need
to reach that top end, and there’s a whole bunch of factors that
are coming together. And to try saying, ‘Let’s look at it at a
Continued on page 38
37
Continued from page 37
much more prescription-based, field
level-based perspective, with precision
planting, prescription nutrition, soil
types varying across your field’ —
they’re all leading to this new world of
what’s right for my field, and sub-field,
as opposed to what’s the best hybrid
from Windsor to Ottawa.”
Yott says he often links this notion to
that of investing or insurance, where
diversity and recognizing certain conditions are key to reducing risk and maximizing performance. Maybe 2015 is
shaping up to be a dry year. If so, there
are some genetics that are going to perform better under dry conditions.
“The more specific you can tailor that
variety mix to your specific field and put
in different options in there, you’re
spreading out that risk,” says Yott.
the overall value of the spend instead of
seeing only the negative connotation.
“A lot of us aren’t looking at cost per
acre anymore but opportunity per acre,
and asking: ‘What’s the top end?’ or
‘How many bushels per thousand
plants?’” poses Yott. “It’s not just how
much did it cost, it’s determining the
value of that top-end. And if I can invest
a dollar more, can I get three dollars
back? If I can do that, then it’s a good
investment. That’s not always about cost
as much as opportunity.”
Some just want results
For all of these advances, Brian
Woolley contends that there are other
considerations to be made to the prescr iptive — or decision-or iented
approach of today. Woolley spent years
on the crop protection side. As an agronomic sales representative with Syngenta
In the past, farmers went to their suppliers “for”
information. Now they go “with” information.
That makes it a whole new world
Changing attitudes
Yott also sees a trend or a streamlining effect taking shape — one where
there used to be four or five types of
growers, including so-called hand-wringers or those who wanted only the newest
technology. Now, he says, conditions in
agriculture are causing a kind of distillation down to two basic approaches. The
first is made up of those growers who listen to the likes of Dr. Fred Below from
the University of Illinois, who advocates
investing in production through variety
selection, fertility plans and timely
applications. The second is that segment who want the best price, whether
they have a consulting agronomist to
help them with their cropping plan, or
they’ve done their own work and are
confident they can bring the crop along
themselves.
“And it’s not young versus old, it’s not
big versus small, it’s really ‘we’re going to
spend our way to reach the top end,’ or
‘we’re going to try to save our way,’” says
Yott. “They can be quite different in
mindset when they’re looking at that
value piece or that agronomic and solutions approach.”
It’s also a matter of wording: sometimes inputs, equipment — even the
seed — need to be regarded as an investment versus only being a cost. Look at
38 Canada, he’s had to immerse himself in
the seed side of the agri-marketing
sphere. And for all of the opportunities
that the technology and research are
pointing to for farmers, he concedes
there are those who just look at the latest
results from either the provincial performance trials or a company’s catalogue,
and default to what they want.
“It comes down to the conversation
with the grower, and let’s drill down to
what the grower needs and wants, and
what’s best for that farm,” says Woolley.
“Those are the conversations we want to
have. I don’t think this (prescriptive
approach) is all that novel an idea, it’s
more a case of maybe the terms are new,
and they envelop a lot of what’s going on
in agriculture today, where we have a
focus on the soil, a more prescriptive fertilizer blend, populations or row width.
There’s much more to it than just selecting the hybrid or the variety.”
Woolley also agrees that the days of
“mass appeal” product launches are a
thing of the past, and Syngenta is a perfect
example. Years ago, the seed division —
NK Seeds — was based north of London
while crop protection products came out
of the Honeywood Farm near Plattsville,
and product launches at either location
were treated separately. Today, the two
research facilities operate in concert.
“We don’t have these big launch
days, and when we do bring growers to
a plot, we don’t just have one or two
varieties at these plots. We have a myriad of selections, and we don’t talk
solely about the hybrid or the variety,”
says Woolley. “A lot of the time, we’re
joining that with a discussion about
fungicides or row width or population,
and really drilling down on the agronomics of a variety or hybrid.”
Even in discussions about the company’s plots, the focus isn’t always about
yield. Instead, it’s about working behind
the scenes on improving conditions in
the field, to figure out the best approach
before reaching the point of talking
about the variety with growers and
dealers. There’s more information
involved and more time spent in discussion with more people, be it sales reps
or biologists, with everyone working
together on a prescriptive approach that
really helps the grower.
Looking to the future, Woolley
believes the industry will see much the
same pattern of “introduction” followed
by “familiarization/incorporation” that
has come with GPS and other equipment trends.
The same was the case for Bt corn
hybrids and glyphosate-tolerant soybean
varieties, where introduction has given
way to familiarity and maximizing performance. He says we’ll keep seeing more
varieties and hybrids being launched,
followed by a learning curve with their
uses, and then the phase where growers
learn to manipulate the many different
parameters to improve production.
An example of this is seeing the rise
of fungicides as growth promoters in
corn and wheat. Yes, they do a very
good job in protecting against diseases,
but the delayed maturity benefit has
only come to light in the last five to
eight years, and there’s an ongoing
learning curve associated with that
practice (including the potential for the
development of resistance and new
active ingredients).
“If you get the chance to sit down
with the grower and talk varieties and
hybrids, there’s far more to what we’re
talking about,” says Woolley. “And more
growers are becoming in tune with
what they need. They’re getting their
soils analyzed or working with a consultant to really understand the potential
response in their fields to what they can
do with herbicide, seed, in-season protection and micronutrients.” SG
Soybean Guide, February 2015
Soybean guide
For soybeans to take over in the West,
they’ll need to nudge pulses aside.
Taking pulse
P
ulses are among Canada’s crop success stories, with strong
agronomics and dynamite market opportunities.
But a new challenger is trying to win acres away from
pulses, and yes, that challenge is extremely well established in
other parts of North America and around the globe, which means
this might become an interesting family fight.
But the pulse industry is confident it has what it takes to hold
on to its piece of the pie.
Although soybeans might be competing with pulses for acreage, their food use is not at all the same. And that makes all the
difference in the world, according to marketers.
Pulse crops hit the ground running in the 1970s. They filled a
need among farmers for a marketable crop that, when added to the
farm rotation, also helped in the battle against weeds, disease and
pests. Like soybeans, pulses are legumes, and farmers appreciated
their ability to fix nitrogen.
By 1995, some 2.5 million acres of dry beans, peas, lentils and
chickpeas were being seeded. Last year, the land seeded to all
pulses and special crops in Canada reached 8.5 million acres, or
about 13 per cent of total seeded acreage.
“We believe there’s room for pulses,” says Carl Potts, executive
director of Saskatchewan Pulse Growers, and he points to
expected strong sales growth owing to consumers interested in
healthy foods.
Potts’s organization is fixing its sights on new markets and
new uses for pulses in a bid to expand the market base and reach
the potential of 25 per cent of Canadian crop acreage. Canada
ships pulses to almost 150 countries, but a small few (India,
China, Bangladesh) account for a very large share.
Gord Bacon is chief executive officer of Pulse Canada, and as he
sees it, we’ve just started to scratch the surface of all that pulses can be.
“Our traditional markets for pulses and traditional forms of
consumption are of huge importance to farmers and the rest of
the Canadian pulse industry,” says Bacon. “Part of our focus is on
improving efficiencies in the system — making sure that what we
do now, we do really well.”
Bacon says tackling transportation issues is one example of
how Pulse Canada will continue to get involved in activities and
partnerships that assist the core marketing work headed up by
Canada’s farmers, processors and exporters. Through the
Canadian Special Crops Association, Pulse Canada aims to
address the significant transportation challenges that pulses, like
other crops, experienced this past year by monitoring and measuring system performance and improving the level of service.
The federal government is reviewing the national Transportation
Act, and pulse associations are involved.
But the focus that really lights a fire under Pulse Canada these
days is food product innovation. Bacon says this entails looking at
pulses from the perspective of both what the consumer wants and
what the consumer needs. Pulses have the science to achieve breakthroughs in nutrition, blood sugar health, allergenicity, and the
environmental sustainability of food products.
Soybean Guide, February 2015 These farmers say, don’t bet on it
By Pat Keena
Pulses are showing up in all kinds of foods, and that’s one reason why acreage is set to grow. In 2012, Bacon says, 304 new food
products were launched in Canada and the U.S. that contained
pulses, either in whole or in fractions or distillates. In 2013, there
were 709 new pulse products, and the number is expected to show
another increase when 2014 numbers are released.
Health Canada is said to be on the verge of approving a health
claim linking pulse foods to reduced heart disease and diabetes.
All of this is very exciting as the pulse industry readies itself
for the United Nations International Year of Pulses in 2016.
Still, Pulse Canada says it isn’t in competition with soybeans,
and Bacon says co-operation between the two crops will yield
benefits for both, so when Soy Canada, the new national association dedicated to soybeans, was announced in September 2014,
Manitoba Pulse Growers joined its board.
“We believe there’s room for pulses
to take 25 per cent or more of Canada’s
total seeded acreage.”
— Carl Potts, Saskatchewan Pulse Growers
Pulse research is trying to stay ahead of the curve so pulses
continue to be the crop of choice. Dr. Sabine Banniza at the
University of Saskatchewan notes that researchers have been
effective in dealing with canopy diseases, such as ascochyta blight
in chickpeas and lentils, as well as anthracnose in lentils. Research
is also looking at solving stemphylium blight in lentils by exploring a wild relative and understanding how its resistance genes
might be easily moved into cultivated varieties.
Banniza says researchers are also trying to create a better
defence against root rot in peas and lentils. Once infected, there is
nothing that can be done for the crops, nor can current seed
treatments prevent infection.
Perhaps not coincidentally, regions of southeastern
Saskatchewan have seen more acres turned over to soybeans. The
same is true in southwestern Manitoba where more soybeans are
being seeded because of earlier varieties. Ontario remains
Canada’s largest soybean producer but in 2014 Manitoba’s production grew to 18 per cent of the total.
But Canada’s buyers continue to be positive about pulses.
Margaret Hughes, co-owner of Best Cooking Pulses, with plants
in Portage la Prairie and Regina, says pulses are showing up in
more and more cereals, baked goods and pasta. Pulses are also
launching in grain-free pet foods with significant success.
“Funding from the Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta Pulse
Growers, in concert with the Canadian government, has
increased research into pulses,” Hughes says. “Pulse Canada now
has the marketing ammunition it needs to promote pulses
throughout the Canadian food industry.” SG
39
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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 27
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 the performance of the company under
that person’s leadership, measuring it against simi-
Lower-paid CEO’s, including Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren
Buffett consistently outperform CEOs with the biggest total
incomes, new study finds.
28 country-guide.ca February 17, 2015
business
lar 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
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
Photo: AGCO Corporation
What ag equipment CEOs are worth
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.
country-guide.ca 29
business
30 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
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.
Continued on page 32
Trait Stewardship Responsibilities Notice to Farmers
Monsanto Company is a member of Excellence Through Stewardship® (ETS). Monsanto products are commercialized in accordance with ETS Product Launch Stewardship Guidance, and in
compliance with Monsanto’s Policy for Commercialization of Biotechnology-Derived Plant Products in Commodity Crops. Commercialized products have been approved for import into key export
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
of four separate individually registered products, which together contain the active ingredients fluxapyroxad, pyraclostrobin, metalaxyl and imidacloprid. Acceleron® seed treatment technology for
corn (fungicides only) is a combination of three separate individually-registered products, which together contain the active ingredients metalaxyl, trifloxystrobin and ipconazole. Acceleron® seed
treatment technology for corn (fungicides and insecticide) is a combination of four separate individually-registered products, which together contain the active ingredients metalaxyl, trifloxystrobin,
ipconazole, and clothianidin. Acceleron® seed treatment technology for corn with Poncho®/VoTivo™ (fungicides, insecticide and nematicide) is a combination of five separate individually-registered
products, which together contain the active ingredients metalaxyl, trifloxystrobin, ipconazole, clothianidin and Bacillus firmus strain
I-5821. Acceleron®, Acceleron and Design®, DEKALB and Design®, DEKALB®, Genuity and Design®, Genuity®, RIB Complete and Design®,
RIB Complete®, Roundup Ready 2 Technology and Design®, Roundup Ready 2 Yield®, Roundup Ready®, Roundup Transorb®, Roundup
WeatherMAX®, Roundup®, SmartStax and Design®, SmartStax®, Transorb®, VT Double PRO® and VT Triple PRO® are trademarks of Monsanto
Technology LLC. Used under license. LibertyLink® and the Water Droplet Design are trademarks of Bayer. Used under license. Herculex® is
a registered trademark of Dow AgroSciences LLC. Used under license. Poncho® and Votivo™ are trademarks of Bayer. Used under license.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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February 17, 2015
country-guide.ca 31
business
Continued from page 31
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 identitypreserved (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 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.
The challenges
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
32 country-guide.ca 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
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
Wm. A. Stewart Lecture
An evening with one of the most
influential people in Canadian sport.
MARK COHON – 12th commissioner of the CFL
A Career in Leadership
7 p.m., Thursday, March 26, 2015
London Convention Centre
Tickets $100
Tickets available at bit.ly/StewartLecture2015
or by calling 519-826-4204
Presenting Sponsor:
The Wm. A. Stewart Lecture & Reception is partially funded by the
Wm. A. Stewart Endowment. Proceeds from this event support the
Advanced Agricultural Leadership Program (AALP).
41907StewartAd_CG 8.125x5.4.indd 1
2015-01-15 11:13 AM
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 long-term 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
and corn is corn after all. They are relatively easy to
34 country-guide.ca 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
Continued on page 36
February 17, 2015
business
Continued from page 34
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
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?
36 country-guide.ca Team Canada approach will provide better feedback of what our customers are
demanding.
Jacobson brought back an extremely
important message for producers. “Millers 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
February 17, 2015
See the lAteSt
in the FielD
Welcome to Ag in Motion –
Western Canada’s only outdoor farm expo!
16
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SASKATOON
July 21 – 23, 2015
15 min. NW of Saskatoon
Join us at Ag in Motion – the unique opportunity to get up close and personal with
today’s agricultural technology. Experience live demonstrations of field equipment,
crops, livestock and services all together on 320 acres near Saskatoon. Come to the farm
show where there’s room to see it all – and how it all fits together.
™
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tOUCh Innovation
™ Denotes a trade-mark of Canada’s Outdoor Shows Limited Partnership.
Be Empowered
www.aginmotion.ca
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.
38 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 39
CropsGuide
By ralph pearce, cg production editor
electric metering
for your planter
Among the hottest new innovations for corn, these
electric seed meters are catching on. The secret’s out!
recision agriculture just keeps getting
more and more precise. The industry has
seen the advent and refinement of yield
monitors and variable-rate application,
and now it has moved on to improved
singulation in planters, automated down-pressure,
and higher planting speeds.
Most of those innovations have come in response
to a growing time crunch. The windows for planting, spraying and harvesting are getting smaller and
tighter, partly due to climatic challenges in the past
few years, but also in response to the trends toward
expanded farm acreages and the size and complexity
of operations.
Now there’s a newer technology for increasing
efficiency for growers and for those with significant
contours on their land.
Electric seed meters have been around for about
three years. It was 2011 when Graham Equipment
first entered the market, and since then, Horsch has
made the technology standard on its units while
Kinze is adding them to the latest upgrades on its
4900 series planter. Precision Planting is also adding after-market kits (similar to Graham’s). And last
August, Case IH announced it would provide growers with the option of having Precision Planting electric meters installed directly at the factory.
For the proponents of electric metering technology, the advantages are numerous and far ranging.
One, the move towards widespread adoption of electronics is already taking shape. Two, in terms that
are specific to planting technology, electric meters
remove the clutches, chains and shafts of conventional systems. Three, singulation is a much simpler
matter, given the meter’s ability to handle any seed
size or shape or even speed. And the plant spacing,
no matter the curves or contours, is kept constant,
which, says Tom Snyder, is a huge benefit.
“Our whole challenge in the industry is to get
a meter that will properly singulate and distribute
seed across a wide variety of sizes and shapes,” says
Snyder, owner of Grand River Planters in Caledonia,
Ont. “If we go around contours with the planter with
the electric drives, every meter turns at the rate it
needs to keep your spacing consistent, whereas with a
shaft-type system, that whole shaft turns at the same
speed. It doesn’t matter if the planter is going straight
or around a contour, so you can end up with over40 country-guide.ca Within a very few years, electric meters are expected
to become standard equipment.
population on the inside rows and underpopulation
on the outside rows. And it costs you money.”
But that doesn’t happen with electric seed meters.
Now, more farmers are agreeing that if technology can save them from physically getting in and out
of the tractor cab, or if it ensures correct spacing,
it has to be worth something. With the Precision
Planting unit, the electric drive system — the eDrive
— is designed to work only with the company’s vSet
meter. That, says Snyder, allows for the installation
on almost any manufacturer’s planter. As long as the
seed tube can be lined up on the meter, everything
should work without any problems.
Admittedly, there’s some issue with so-called
“sticker shock,” and Snyder concedes there may
be some reluctance to invest that money in this
technology. But in comparing the two types, Snyder
points out that adding end-row shut-off clutches
and hydraulic drives for variable-rate technology
also adds to the price of conventional seed meters
and planter setups. Once those add-ons are taken
into consideration, the pricing discrepancy isn’t
so wide, he argues. Plus the trend is favouring the
move towards electronics in seed meters; in a few
years, it’s expected that electric meters will become
the standard.
february 17, 2015
PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
“When you think about electronics and what we can gain as far as the
torque of an electric motor over and
above what a diesel does running
through an engine, it’s huge,” says Snyder. “It might not come as fast as what
some want, but there are definitely
advantages to it. We’ve tried them on
our own farm and we’ve made a lot of
improvements on our own planter. There
are a few things I just wouldn’t budge
on, and one is that I wouldn’t go back to
a shaft and chain-type scenario; electric
drives are where it’s at.”
Electric has its
place, but…
For Kirk Van Will, electric meters
may be the way of the future, but for
now he sees a limited uptake in the
technology in his immediate area. As a
yield specialist for Lambton and West
Middlesex counties for Maizex Seed,
he admits his experience with electric
metering is limited. He does recognize
the advantages in relation to time saved
in mechanical maintenance and repairs,
not to mention the ease of operation,
especially as the trend in expanding acreages continues.
“If you look at farming today, there
are more of the larger farms, which indicates a grower is becoming more of a
manager, or at the very least, someone
who’s not quite as hands on,” says Van
Will, who’s based in Strathroy, Ont. With
electric metering, he says, “the hired
employees they have don’t need to worry
about all of those clutches that take time
to learn. This is more of a snap-it-in system, and away you go.”
The advantages to Van Will are obvious.
Beyond the time savings for learning and
repairs of conventional planter technology,
there are the contouring capabilities, matching turns with row spacing requirements.
That may not be a huge factor for a region
like Lambton, where a lot of fields are
squared off. But in regions where a stream
meanders through a field, or a tree lot isn’t
squared to the property line, this technology
is more likely to gain acceptance.
Yet Van Will maintains that the technology’s marketability will be challenged
by certain current realities. For instance,
those growers who are mechanically
inclined and are capable of working with
chains, clutches and hydraulics may not
be as quick to change. The counter to
that may be that growers are beginning to
february 17, 2015
understand the value of their time. They
may be able to fix things themselves, but
in recognizing how and where to better
spend their time, they may feel they’re
better off with a new planter and electric
seed meters.
Another factor that could slow acceptance is in diagnosing any problems. Snyder concedes that loss of the alternator
on an electric meter would create significant headaches for a grower, especially in
the middle of planting season. But Van
Will takes that one step further — to the
machine’s downtime.
“Running wires along the frame of a
planter and by row can be problematic,”
he says. “And when you store it in the
winter, there are rodents and other pests
that can get in there. Then you have a
grounding wire touching a frame or it
gets worn and touches a frame, it can
really create a lot of havoc.”
In order to avoid those issues, a
grower might just choose to rewire the
whole system.
Still, there’s a tone of inevitability
that Van Will agrees is hard to counter: the trend is already taking shape,
and electronics will become the new
standard. Even those growers who have
recently purchased a new planter will
reach the point in the next five years
when the technology has become more
widely adopted and prices have come
down because of the availability of the
technology.
At that point, it’d be a little easier for
the grower to make the decision to move
to an electric-metered system.
“I would wonder if you won’t see
those electric meters start to pop up just
because of that,” says Van Will.
It’s not really a matter of electric seed
meters increasing final yields. Much like
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or electronic soil analysis, the technology alone
does not make a farmer better simply by
owning or utilizing it. It only increases
efficiency in the hands of a knowledgeable user.
Increased yield still comes down to
what’s in the seed, how it’s planted and
how it performs in the field. Technology,
however, can improve efficiency, and on
more farms today, efficiency is getting to
be a bigger and bigger deal. CG
When comparing
MBA programs,
remember what field
you’re in.
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delivers a world class
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Or visit www.uoguelph.ca/business/mba
country-guide.ca 41
CropsGuide
By ralph pearce, production editor
a cover crop
that buzzes
Phacelia can fit a variety of cropping systems,
and it’s popular with bees
Phacelia is unlike
any other plant
species on today’s
farms, so as a
cover, it helps
break the cycles
of corn, soybeans
and even wheat.
here’s a new arrival in cover crops called
phacelia that has the compelling advantage of being neither a cereal nor an
oilseed. In fact, phacelia is a completely
new species in Canada’s agriculture,
which may prove to be a very good thing indeed.
Phacelia is a member of the waterleaf (Hydrophyllaceae) family. Unlike oilseed radish, its taproot
is not as robust, so it’s not an ideal candidate for
breaking through a compacted plow-pan. Instead,
it produces a diffuse mass of fine roots near the soil
surface that helps bind soil aggregates even after the
plant begins to break down with winter.
Friedhelm Hoffmann, the general operating manager at Exeter Produce in Exeter, Ont., is very familiar with phacelia. Before he came to Canada 16 years
ago, he grew it as a cover crop in Germany. To his
knowledge, phacelia has been used as a cover crop in
Europe for at least 40 years. In 2013, he grew a trial
plot and in 2014, he planted the first field-scale test
of the cover crop in Ontario.
In past, Exeter Produce would plant oats as a
cover, but lately they’ve been trying different cropping options, and from Hoffmann’s perspective the
important thing is to grow “something” after the
vegetable crops. He wants another crop to protect
the soil surface and to keep nutrients cycling.
“I know that phacelia is a good cover crop
because it takes up a lot of nitrate,” Hoffmann says.
“The questionable part is when it releases it. It takes
up a lot more nitrogen than oats, up to 90 lbs. of N
per acre, depending on the situation.”
42 country-guide.ca Secondary benefit
To anyone touring Hoffmann’s field-scale trial,
another benefit was obvious. Bees love phacelia too.
The controversy over neonicotinoid seed treatments and their potential effect on bee health has
agriculture looking for good news relating to bees,
and phacelia provides that.
“It flowers at a time when there aren’t a lot of
blossoms available,” says Hoffmann. “It’s a very
bee-friendly flower, and it flowers for a long time.”
Anne Verhallen likes phacelia for all the same
reasons Hoffmann does. “The timing for it would
be right because it doesn’t do well in the heat,” says
Verhallen, the soil specialist for horticultural crops
with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and
Rural Affairs (OMAFRA). “And I don’t know for
sure because I haven’t done the research on it but
I’m thinking it will need a bit of nitrogen or manure
or something to get the most growth out of it.”
That may be another management component
to watch for with phacelia. Wheat yields in the
past five to 10 years have advanced and there isn’t
a lot of residual nitrogen left behind, as was evident from the yellowed radish fields this past fall.
Because of that, growers may need a supplementary nitrogen application to give the phacelia crop
a boost.
But another intriguing benefit of phacelia may
be as a fall weed control tool. Specialists such as
Peter Johnson and Mike Cowbrough of OMAFRA
and researchers Dr. Peter Sikkema of University of
Guelph see a growing need to adopt a fall weed
management program.
Verhallen believes phacelia may help. It may
suppress weeds better than a fall burn-down with
its late-season canopy, she points out. Planting a
cover crop in late summer that provides late-fall
weed suppression would also reduce the complaint
that fall is already a busy season, and that time for
weed management practices is limited.
“It’s just as good if not better than a fall herbicide program,” says Verhallen. “There are fringe
benefits from a cover crop: the fall herbicide program kills everything there, and then it stops. But
the cover crop keeps giving all season.”
There are potential drawbacks to phacelia,
because seed costs are high and availability is limited. Both Hoffmann and Verhallen believe however, that those will be only short-term issues. CG
february 17, 2015
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#PestPatrol
with Mike Cowbrough, OMAFRA
ave a question you want answered?
H
Hashtag #PestPatrol on twitter.com to @cowbrough or email Mike at [email protected].
Working 9 to 5: What a way to kill those weeds!�
ompetitive broadleaf weeds, specifically
lamb’s quarters and velvetleaf, are easier to kill when herbicides are applied
during the day, generally between the
hours of 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Most will joke
that this is simply because civil servants like me do
not want to work before 9 a.m. and after 6 p.m. Touché. However, warmer air temperature, less dew, and
the orientation of weed leaves to intercept more spray
droplets are some of the factors that explain better
control when post-emergent herbicides are sprayed
during the day (See Figure 1).
there was a grower in the room who was using
the product and was pleased with its performance.
The product is called the “Pattern Master” by K-B
Agri-Tech (Figure 2), and prices for different booms
can be found at the company’s website (shop.kbagritechllc.com). My crude math puts the price per
unit at roughly $55. The manufacturer claims that
the Pattern Master will “reduce drift and increase
coverage” (Figure 3). The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers gave the Pattern
Master its AE50 Outstanding Innovations Award
for 2015.
Figure 1. The control of velvetleaf with glyphosate as
influenced by the time of day when glyphosate was applied
Figure 2. A close-up of the Pattern Master
100
90
% Control
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
6:00 A.m
9:00 A.M.
12:00 p.m.
3:00 p.m.
6:00 p.m.
9:00 p.m. 12:00 a.m.
Source: PH. Sikkema, University of Guelph (Ridgetown Campus)
A time-of-day response has been observed by many
scientists spanning several decades, so it’s not a fluke.
However, the major objection with daytime spraying
is that wind speeds are typically highest during this
time, increasing the risk of drift. Although there can
be days with high and gusty wind speeds, the risk of
spray drift is just as significant during periods of dead
calm which often occur in the early morning or late
evening. At that time the temperature is usually cooler
and the relative humidity is typically higher, which
can result in the spray droplets remaining aloft, like
fog. When the wind picks up, these spray droplets
can move away from the target area, possibly causing
injury to adjacent non-target areas. Off-target drift in
calm conditions can occur hours after the spray event
was completed*.
It is therefore more productive to focus on methods to maximize spray droplet coverage on the
target during the day when wind speeds aren’t
excessively high and gusty. During the 2015 Southwest Agricultural Conference in Ridgetown in January, I sat in on Jason Deveau’s talk on new sprayer
tools and was intrigued by one item, especially since
44 country-guide.ca If you’ve been struggling to get good consistent
weed control with post-emergent herbicides and if
inappropriate weed staging, poor environmental
conditions and herbicide resistance cannot explain
the poor control, it would be worthwhile to focus
on improving coverage, reducing drift and spraying
during the day. To see other sprayer tools and tricks,
visit sprayers101.com or view Jason’s presentation at
southwestagconference.ca.
Figure 3. Spray coverage on water-sensitive paper with
nozzles at two different water volumes comparing use of
the Pattern Master (“brush”) to without (“no brush”)
12.3 MPH
8006 Flat Fan tips
15 gpa
20 gpa
Brush
No Brush
* Taken from “Using Pesticides in Ontario” by Denise Beaton and Jason Deveau
(Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs).
February 17, 2015
w e at h e r
NEAR-NORMAL
TEMPERATURES
AND PRECIPITATION
Changeable
Occasional
snow
S
ra ca Mild
in tte
/ s re
no d
w
MILDER
AND
DRIER
THAN
NORMAL
ONTARIO
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 PR
O
-N D
R AN
A
S
at torm
Sn tim y
ow es
/ ra
in
COOLER THAN NORMAL
February 22 to March 21,
2015
February 22 to March 21, 2015
Feb. 22-28: Seasonal to cold temperatures with a few higher wind chills, but
some thawing occurs in the south. Sunny
skies alternate with occasional heavier
snow, at times mixed with rain in the
south.
Mar. 1-7: Pleasant overall with thawing
in the south on several days this week,
but a disturbance results in snow, mixed
with rain in the south on a couple of
days. Blustery. Often snowy and cold in
the north.
Mar. 8-14: Fair overall with a few milder
days and melting in the south. However,
periodic snow to rain in the south changing to heavier snow in northern regions on
a couple of days. Windy at times.
Mar. 15-21: Temperatures fluctuate and
at times reach double digits in the south
and above zero north. Sunny skies interchange, with some rain or snow in the
south with heavier snow in the north.
Windy.
QUEBEC
Feb. 22-28: Seasonable to cold but with
minor thawing in the south. Bright and
fair on most days apart from a couple of
colder, windy days with heavier snowfalls.
Chance of rain in the south. Blustery.
Mar. 1-7: Expect a few pleasant sunny
days with some thawing in the south, but
also look for a couple of unsettled days
with snow or rain in the south changing to
heavy snow in the north. Windy at times.
Mar. 8-14: Conditions fluctuate this week
February 17, 2015
with a few windy days. Temperatures
vary from mild to cold. Sunny days will
interchange with some heavier rain/
snow in the south and heavy snow in the
north.
Mar. 15-21: Sunny overall with a few
pleasant days and thawing in southern
regions. Sub-zero lows. On a couple of
days expect snow or rain in the south
changing to heavy snow in northern
regions. Brisk winds.
ATLANTIC PROVINCES
Feb. 22-28: Temperatures vary but average near normal. Fair but with a couple
of unsettled days this week, with occasional snow, heavier on windward coasts.
Some rain in the south. Windy at times.
Mar. 1-7: Disturbances result in changing weather as fair skies alternate with
snow, some rain. Chance of heavy precipitation. Temperatures run through the
freeze-thaw range in the south but cold
in the north. Blustery.
Mar. 8-14: Temperatures are seasonal
but with a few milder days and thawing. Fair days will interchange with snow
to rain on the coasts and heavier snow
elsewhere. Occasionally windy. Cold,
snowy north.
Mar. 15-21: A few unsettled days this
week with snow or rain in the south and
snow in the north. Chance of heavy precipitation. Windy days create variable
temperatures, at times leaning to the
mild side south but cold in the north.
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-tonormal 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.
country-guide.ca 45
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.
46 country-guide.ca 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].
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 47
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 per48 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 49
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.”
50 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 51
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