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April 2015 $3.50

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With Joint ventures, the McGregor family Takes on Succession, PG. 16

Check these five business tips to be a winner in 2015, pg. 12 CROPS GUIDE  Ralph Pearce asks, Can we afford to lose the neonic debate? pg. 38

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Contents

april 2015

BUSINESS PG. 16 Their Joint path to succession 8

star writer Jennifer Bain is the food columnist at the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper. Hmmm… maybe we should get to know her.

12 time to be a gamechanger

You’re the coach, and the year is approaching half-time.

Our Maggie Van Camp brings five strategies for a sizzling finale.

Joint ventures have been instrumental in letting the McGregors not only keep their family together, but also keep their farm growing while they negotiated their way to a healthy succession plan. Could this be the right strategy for your family too?

20 team building on the farm

It may seem the sort of idea that only an office worker could love, but you might be ready for team building too.

22 who are theY REALLY?

Personality testing is an essential management tool outside of agriculture. Now it’s moving to the farm too.

24 a place on the farm

Charlene Bradley’s story may be a new template for women wanting success on the farm and in agri-business.

28 the strategic approach to managing employees

HR is the least liked part of most managers’ jobs, which is too bad because the potential gains are so rewarding.

30 our other business

Farmers aren’t just producers. In effect, they run land investment companies too. But are you any good at it?

32 JBC builds market share

British manufacturer JBC used to build construction equipment.

Now it has its eyes on your farm, with some ingenious designs.

34 your value-added marketing plan

As these farmers tell Helen Lammers-Helps, your value-added work doesn’t really begin until you tackle your marketing plan.

37 Guide HR — don’t work harder, work smarter

We all want to be more productive. And here’s the good news.

Our Pierrette Desrosiers can help you get there.

EVERY ISSUE 6 MACHINERY GUIDE

Four new tractor series light up the 120- to 220-hp segment.

52 GUIDE HEALTH

Let Marie Berry save you from saying, “Could you speak up?”

54 HANSON ACRES Dale climbs back in the cab. That’s got to be good, right?

CROPS GUIDE 38 make the case

Can agriculture afford to lose the fight against the non-science being pushed by neonic opponents? Our Ralph Pearce interviews the people who know, and comes away with one very unmistakeable message: The stakes are even bigger than we thought.

44 PEST PATROL

Brown marmorated stink bugs aren’t major crops pests yet, but their numbers are building across southwestern Ontario.

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april 2015

country-guide.ca 3

desk EDITORIAL STAFF Editor: Tom Button 12827 Klondyke Line, Ridgetown, ON N0P 2C0 (519) 674-1449 Fax (519) 674-5229 Email: tom.button@fbcpublishing.com Associate Editors: Maggie Van Camp Fax (905) 986-9991 (905) 986-5342 Email: mvancamp@fbcpublishing.com Gord Gilmour (204) 453-7624 Cell: (204) 294-9195 Fax (204) 942-8463 Email: gord.gilmour@fbcpublishing.com Production Editor: Ralph Pearce (226) 448-4351 Email: ralph.pearce@fbcpublishing.com ADVERTISING SALES Sales Director: Cory Bourdeaud’hui (204) 954-1414 Fax: (204) 944-5562 Email: cory@fbcpublishing.com Lillie Ann Morris (905) 838-2826 Email: lamorris@xplornet.com

Tom Button is editor of Country Guide magazine

The question of growth It was a question that went all around the table. I was in Illinois with a group of Canadian and American farmers, and the discussion leader kept track of all their answers on a whiteboard.

Here’s the question. In the last 30 to 40 years, how much has your family expanded the number of acres you’re farming?

There’s a reason for the time frame, since 30 to 40 years is roughly equal to a career. So the question was really asking, how much did the last generation have to grow your farm in order to put you in the position you’re in today?

Naturally, there were some outliers, and there was some scatter too, but not as much as I would have predicted.

But before I go any further, take a minute to figure out the answer for your own farm. Then guess the group average.

Got your answers? In case you don’t, let me take an extra minute to do a job that I too rarely do. As you know, ag publications are about as cyclical as farming itself. It’s why, during the winter, I often explain I’m just trying to hold myself together through what, in its way, is both our planting and our harvesting season.

Still, if the busy season comes, it also goes, just as fall comes to the farm.

As on the farm, too, when it goes, we get a chance to think about what went right and what didn’t go quite so right, and to celebrate the goals we achieved and pause over those we missed.

4 country-guide.ca

What I wanted to acknowledge is that none of it would be possible without the active co-operation of the farmers who talk to us not only about their farms, but inevitably about their families too.

I try to avoid inflated words, but really, their openness is amazing. Believe me, they don’t come knocking at our door. It’s entirely the other way around, and their generosity and their interest in helping the industry move forward is nothing less than a model to the world. They deserve all our thanks.

Now, back to our answers. It turns out that when you add the growth of owned and rented acres, commerical farms over that generation generally grew by a factor of four to 10 times, averaging about six.

The next question is immediately clear.

Do we still have to be on that treadmill? Obviously, a lot of very bright farmers think so, and they’re developing business plans to help get them there.

They believe robotics, telemetrics and genetics will make it all possible.

As for me, I think many of them will succeed, but so will well-managed smaller operations, especially if they deploy their business smarts more variously, both on and off the farm.

This summer, we’re going to put more thought into describing the agriculture of 2025. Care to make some guesses? Let me know at tom.button@fbcpublishing.com, and as always, let me know if you think we’re getting it right.

Kevin Yaworsky (250) 869-5326 Email: kyaworsky@farmmedia.com Head Office: 1666 Dublin Ave., Winnipeg, MB R3H 0H1 Fax (204) 944-5562 (204) 944-5765 Advertising Services Co-ordinator: Sharon Komoski (204) 944-5758 Fax (204) 944-5562 Email: ads@fbcpublishing.com Designer: Jenelle Jensen Publisher: Lynda Tityk Email: lynda.tityk@fbcpublishing.com Associate Publisher/Editorial Director: John Morriss Email: john.morriss@fbcpublishing.com Production Director: Shawna Gibson Email: shawna@fbcpublishing.com Circulation Manager: Heather Anderson Email: heather@fbcpublishing.com President: Bob Willcox Glacier FarmMedia Email: bwillcox@farmmedia.com Contents of this publication are copyrighted and may be reproduced only with the permission of the editor. Country Guide, incorporating the Nor’West Farmer and Farm & Home, is published by Farm Business Communications. Head office: Winnipeg, Manitoba. Printed by Transcontinental LGMC. Country Guide is published 13 times per year by Farm Business Communications. Subscription rates in Canada — Farmer $41 for one year, $61 for 2 years, $87 for 3 years. (Prices include GST) U.S. subscription rate — $35 (U.S. funds). Subscription rate outside Canada and U.S. — $50 per year. Single copies: $3.50.

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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 editors, journalists, Country Guide and Farm Business Communications, cannot and do not guarantee the accuracy of the information contained in this publication and the editors as well as Country Guide and Farm Business Communications assume no responsibility for any actions or decisions taken by any reader for this publication based on any and all information provided.

april 2015

You might think that when nitrogen fertilizer is in the ground, it’s safe.

New research suggests you need to think again. When shallow banding unprotected urea less than two inches deep, researchers found that nitrogen loss due to ammonia volatilization can be even greater than unprotected broadcast urea. Protect your nitrogen while maintaining the operational efficiencies of side banding or mid-row banding at seeding by using AGROTAIN® DRI-MAXX nitrogen stabilizer. Whether you choose to band or broadcast, you’ll be confident that you’re protecting your nitrogen investment, your yield potential and your return on investment.

Ask your retailer to protect your urea today with AGROTAIN® DRI-MAXX nitrogen stabilizer.

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3/20/15 11:10 AM

Machinery

By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor

Only six months have come and gone since our last look at tractors in the 120- to 220-horsepower range, and yet the field of models, configurations and options has changed dramatically. In less than a year, three different manufacturers have launched new looks, new features and new designs in these smaller, yet durable lines. The other manufacturer is replacing an old favourite with a new series. In this size range, it’s increasingly a matter of looking for good things in smaller packages, with the four featured series displaying a full range of flexibility plus the capacity to deliver under almost any conditions on the farm. Even in April, there’s plenty to do that will keep these tractors performing above and beyond the call.

 Case IH Farmall 100A Series Non-farmers may look at value as a simple dollar figure. With the new Case IH Farmall 100A Series tractors, the company is promoting value as a total package proposition. Whether it’s for livestock or smaller-scale farming, the Farmall 100A boasts a redesigned cab, electronically controlled engine and a more economical drivetrain. According to the company, there are more standard features in this tractor than others in its class, including a faster throttle response, quieter operation and increased fuel efficiency, plus a Tier 4B/Final-compliant engine design. The new cab also comes with enhanced ergonomics and a new control panel, plus an available high-visibility roof panel that provides a clear sightline when carrying or moving loads.

www.caseih.com

New Holland T6 Series  With power and advanced technology, New Holland’s T6 allpurpose tractors series are manoeuvrable while providing superior comfort and visibility. Models in the T6 Series that fall within the 120- to 220-hp range, include the T6.155, T6.165, T6.175 and the T6.180. Two additional models (the T6.165 and T6.175) are equipped with the Auto Command continuously variable transmission. This series complies with the Tier 4B emissions standards, and its four-cylinder engine design means better performance with maximum power from each cylinder.

There’s also the option of augmenting the 52.2-gallon, high-clearance fuel tank with an auxiliary modular tank that gives you a total capacity of 58.6 gallons — enough for 12 hours of operation. The cab is also built for enhanced operator performance and includes improved visibility and a roof panel.

www.agriculture.newholland.com

6 country-guide.ca

April 2015

McCormick X6 Series 

John Deere 6R Series 

The new McCormick X6 Series tractor comes to market filling a very big space occupied by the successful X60 Series mid-range line.

It was launched at the 2015 National Farm Machinery Show, and has one of its two models — the X6.430 — in this small-but-effective horsepower range. With a Betapower 4.5-litre, four-cylinder diesel engine, the X6.430 can generate more power and torque, yet keep fuel consumption and emissions to a minimum. There’s also a fourwheel-drive front axle that comes standard, plus a fully locking front differential that engages simultaneously with the rear for true fourwheel pulling. And of course, operator comfort has been maximized, with an adjustable steering column, more comfortable seating and a window in the front roofline, improving visibility.

John Deere is once again refining its 6R Series tractors. With this launch, Deere is offering three small-frame models, with two of them falling within the 120- to 220-hp range. The 6120R and 6130R join this increasingly popular series, which builds on the premise of offering control and comfort combined with the compactness and agility to handle a variety of on-farm chores. These small-frame tractors also have additional selective control valves that have been moved further under the cab to improve visibility. Control components and the cab’s interior have been updated as well, making it similar to the environment inside the 7R, 8R and 9R Series. Other features include an IVT transmission, available premium lighting packages and increased service intervals.

www.mccormick.it

www.deere.com

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April 2015

country-guide.ca 7

business

Star writer Married to an Alberta bison farmer, Jennifer Bain is food editor of Canada’s largest newspaper

By Steven Biggs, CG Contributing Editor Bain’s passion is exploring food, cultures — and farmers. “I can write about anything I want to,” she says as she talks about subjects that tie into food. Her interest in farming surprised some farmers. When she called one farm to ask for a tour, the owners thought it was very strange. “Who are you?

You’re a food writer?” they asked.

I don’t realize until the talk begins and Bain gets on the stage that I walked straight past her at the door, thinking she was the librarian who organized the talk. She’s very low key. There’s no puffed-up talk of trendy recipes. And even though this talk is about how she got into food writing and wrote her cookbooks, she weaves in stories about people.

Buffalo Girl on farming Bain figures we’re riding a wave of consumer interest in farms and farmers, and she says it was about 2008 when it really took off.

Earlier, city readers didn’t want to hear about farmers, or read columns that linked to the farm.

Now, talking to her Toronto audience, she smiles as she describes a Lays potato chip press release that made an impression by talking about meeting a potato farmer.

She also knows her own transition is only partly complete. “I’m a city girl so I still stumble over the language of the ranch,” she says, and when she tells the library crowd about corralling bison, she can’t remember the lingo for males and females. “The girl ones,” she says.

Bain knows enough about agriculture, though, to recognize that not all farmers are interested in dealing directly with consumers. That’s the case for her husband, for instance. But she does see opportunity for better outreach to consumers. She is looking forward to the Ontario Bison conference this fall, where she will cook and do a book signing.

Conferences for farmers, she thinks, can be an opportunity for her to connect with producers.

It makes me think that with all the effort that farmers say they are putting into making connections with key consumer influencers, maybe it’s a surprise that the food columnist of Canada’s largest daily doesn’t have farmers lined up at her door.

8 c o u n t r y - g u i d e . c a Ap r i l 2 0 1 5

Photography: Anne de Haas

had to buy a chest freezer when we were dating,” says Jennifer Bain. She pauses while the audience laughs. Then she continues telling us about writing Buffalo Girl Cooks Bison, her latest cookbook. She is Buffalo Girl. Her introduction to bison came when she married Rick, an Alberta bison rancher.

Bain weaves her own stories into the book, just as she does in her talk. The first chapter starts with her photo, in a cowboy hat, looking out over bison grazing on rolling hills. She writes, “We called him Blue Tag 741, for lack of a more personalized name.

He was the first bison on our ranch in Alberta that I watched move from field to corral, then slaughter to freezer, and finally stove to stomach.” That was in 2008, when she spent her maternity leave cooking bison at the ranch.

Bain’s talk tonight at a Toronto library is called “Eating for a Living.” As the Toronto Star food editor (her column is called “Saucy Lady”) and the author of two cookbooks, she earns her living telling stories about food and the people who produce, prepare, and consume it. Tonight she weaves her own story into her talk, telling us of her time spent as a journalist in Hong Kong and of her interest in crime stories.

business

Books Bain’s first book was the 2013 Toronto Star Cookbook, in which she features people and recipes that have appeared in her column. “The thing I love about the book is that there are a number of people in it,” she says as she describes farmers, chefs, and people who appeared in her stories.

For example, Eli, who comes from a Mexican, Lebanese, Spanish, and French background, shares his recipe for beef kaftas. Brothers Haroon and Jameel share their recipe for Afghanstyle kabobs. And Bain gives readers three ways to prepare fried eggs, saying, “During my stint as a brunch columnist, I ate restaurant eggs in every guise imaginable.”

B uffalo G irl C ooks B ison tells human stories too. Sharlyn and Ivan have a ranch in Red Deer, Alta., and Sharlyn shares her recipe for bison peroApril 2015

gies. She loves this food, which makes her think of her grandmother and her Ukrainian heritage.

Bain also tells readers about her unusual bison-related travels. She visits Jim Sautner in Spruce Grove, Alta., who has a pet bison that he drives around in a convertible. Knowing first hand that bison are large, wild animals, she makes her kids stay in the car for most of the interview. As the interview concludes, the bison head-butts the convertible and another nearby car.

Bain dishes up bison in many guises, including burgers, jerk-marinated steaks, bison borscht, bison bourguignon, and bison brisket braised in pomegranate juice. There’s even a recipe for Great Bison Balls of Fire (testicles.)

Evolving Food Landscape Bain has no trouble finding food stories. “In food it’s endless,” she says, adding that she has ideas from 15 years ago

that she still hasn’t been able to use.

Bain’s first food series at the Toronto S tar was her 1999 “Food Sleuth” series that looked at food from different cultures: Persian, Sri Lankan, Cuban, Korean, Portuguese, Eritrean, Peruvian, Maltese, and Somali.

I ask which of these have become mainstream. “Persian took off,” she says. “Korean really took off.”

I trawl through Bain’s recent Twitter posts to see what she’s been eating: Anatolian Turkish food, Uyghur takeout food. But there’s also a recipe for cocktail crisps made with the ubiquitous Maclaren’s Imperial cheese.

I’m curious to know what her next book will be about, given the ever-evolving food scene.

“Crime is my first love,” says Bain, adding, “I think I have to go back to writing about murder soon.”

Continued on page 10 country-guide.ca 9

business Continued from page 9

Everyday food Bain tells the audience that she doesn’t read food blogs or watch food TV. With three children, a busy husband — and her own job — she’s too busy.

“I grocery shop more than most people,” says Bain, who shops seven times a week. Rick commutes between Toronto and the ranch in Alberta, something that is possible because bison don’t need constant attention.

Later, when I visit her office (which is also the Toronto Star test kitchen) Bain pulls up chairs for us around the kitchen island. As I pull out my notebook, she turns away and starts texting.

Sitting down, she apologizes, saying her husband is making bison stew, and she texted him instructions so that the meat won’t be tough, like the bison short ribs he recently cooked.

I don’t see any food pretence in Bain’s kitchen. (She studied journalism, not food.) “I take a lot of reasonable shortcuts for home cooks,” she says.

She points to the tinned beans in her cupboard, which she says are a shortcut compared to using dry beans. I also see tins of yellow and black NoNamebrand chickpeas in the cupboard. In her T oronto S tar C ookbook , Bain says that she adapts recipes by replacing rare ingredients with common ones.

We talk about how she thinks when shopping. “I’m not a nutritionist,” she says, adding that she doesn’t scrutinize the nutritional data on food labels: “Everything in moderation.”

More important to her is where food comes from — and coming from Canada is a good thing. She holds up a bag of lentils and says that what she would most like to know is where they were grown.

Bain’s kitchen Bain’s office (really, her test kitchen) is electric. When there was no budget for upgrades, she got a tin of hot-pink paint.

Another year she installed red and black floor tiles in checkered pattern.

In her Toronto Star Cookbooks, she says, “What my test kitchen proves is this: you don’t need a showroom kitchen to cook well. You need great recipes and great ingredients.”

Bain has the kitchen for testing those great recipes. She writes, “Readers wonder why we test and adapt recipes. They 10 country-guide.ca

For Bain, reaching consumers boils down to one rule: “There always has to be a story.” assume that recipes from famous chefs and celebrities work, follow them slavishly and blame themselves when they bomb. They don’t realize that many talented cooks aren’t always great at writing recipes.”

The walls around Bain’s office-kitchen are hung with framed copies of her newspaper stories. We walk around the room and she tells me about some of them. One has a picture of a man holding cobs of corn. She tells me that it’s a 2003 story she wrote. It was about sweet corn and Thanksgiving — but also about the Mexican farm workers harvesting the corn.

Food and people During her library talk, Bain tells us about her 2011 series called “What’s for Dinner?” The idea was to look at the weekday eating habits of ordinary Cana-

dians by visiting people’s homes for dinner. Bain laughs as she recalls the flak she took from some readers for including pet cats in the story of the Shine family and the dinner they cooked for her. But the cats took centre stage while she was there. They licked the dinner rolls and ate on the kitchen island where the food was being prepared, and the love of the owners for their pets was part of the human side of the story, she says.

“It’s another way to present a story,” Bain says of what she looks for in a recipe. For example, if she writes about a restaurant, she might cook with the chef.

Food alone rarely makes a story. “There always has to be a story. The recipes have to connect to a person,” she explains.

It sounds like a lesson for agriculture, I tell myself, realizing I have already decided to read her next book. CG April 2015

Greenbelt Fund Advertorial Series

Aroma of local hops growing stronger than ever in Ontario Local beer trend bringing back hop yards As Ontarians begin to recognize the value in eating and drinking locally, requests for a pint of locally brewed beer are going up.

“The resurgence of craft brewing is like a revolution,” says Nicholas Schaut, owner of Bighead Hops, a hop farm located near Meaford, Ontario. “Brewers believe in the local economy and they have been trying to break the system of large commercial control over their craft. By building a product chain that sources local ingredients they are demonstrating a cycle of integrity in their product and building a narrative which has resonated with the community.”

To meet this need, Bighead Hops started producing and supplying certified organic hops to more than five local craft breweries. Hops were introduced to Canada in the late 1600s, but eventually insect and mildew caused the market to collapse. Today, modified growing and harvesting methods mean hops grow well in southern Ontario. Grown in an orchard environment, hops require attention, diligence, physical labour and unique, capital intensive end-processing methods.

A team effort “Brewers turn hops into gold,” says Schaut. “Our hops have a distinct aroma due to the varied conditions and soil qualities in Ontario, so it’s our job to highlight that when we’re talking to brewers.”

Bighead Hops has secured long-term, multi-year contracts with local breweries, but they didn’t always have the connections to cultivate relationships with brewers, or the equipment to fulfill their supply needs. A $42,000 investment from the Greenbelt Fund helped close this gap.

“Our work is all about making sure Ontario and Greenbelt farmers and processors can do better, that farmers have access they didn’t have before, and processors can access local products,” says Kathy Macpherson, Vice President of the Greenbelt Fund.

Funding provided Bighead Hops access to the marketplace, equipment to cultivate and produce dry, wet and pelletized hops, and other support systems necessary in an incredibly labour intensive and capital intensive industry.

“As growers, we were all missing one thing: a processing hub for Ontario hops,” explains Schaut. “The industry required an end product that was pelletized, and we required a piece of equipment that could transform our product to meet their needs and grow our farm forward.”

The local hop growing community now ships their dried hops to Bighead Hops for pelletizing and packaging, giving growers the ability to focus on other important areas such as expanding their acreage.

Nicholas Schaut (right) and Andrew Bartle (left), brew master at Northwinds Brewery, celebrating their collaboration.

Photo credit: Shayne Gray

Think locally. Drink locally.

As a founding member and past president of the Ontario Hop Growers Association, Nicholas believes that working together with other growers, they can strengthen the entire industry by providing the required ingredient from within Ontario and the Greenbelt.

Each year before harvest, Bighead Hops hosts the Bighead ShinDig to show off their full bines to representatives from local breweries and food vendors. “We like to bring consumers into our environment,” says Schaut. “It gives us the opportunity to demonstrate the value chain that exists in craft brewing, the level of integrity and depth of quality in every pint.”

Finding an opportunity for hops Based on current global predictions there will be hops shortages for the foreseeable future due to the sheer volume of breweries that are opening and the shift to locally produced craft beer.

“There is so much more that could be grown,” explains Schaut.

With support from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) the Greenbelt Fund is investing in the agri-food system, not just in the Greenbelt, but across the province. It connects people throughout the food supply chain and makes investments at critical points to encourage more use of Ontario and Greenbelt-grown food. At nearly two million acres of protected green space and fertile farmland, the Greenbelt is a catalyst for strengthening the viability of agriculture across the province.

The Greenbelt Fund’s goal is to create systemic change to permanently increase the amount of local food consumed in the province. For every dollar the Fund has invested, seven more dollars in Ontario food has been purchased.

GB1513 Bighead Hops Adv#4_CGe_FPg.indd 1

2015-03-27 3:11 PM

business

Time to be a game changer

By Maggie Van Camp, CG Associate Editor

The year is at half-time, and you’re the coach. Most of the crop is in the ground, the spring rush is coming to an end, the team is winded.

It’s a time when you can make a difference. You can be in charge; you can draw up new plays, analyze your strategy and motivate your players.

You can be the game changer for your farm business, re-committing yourself to your game plan and picking the right business priorities for the second half of the year, starting now to take the steps that will make it all happen.

You can also be the one who observes, listens and notices.

Here are five big ideas for your clipboard this summer, and some preplanning tips and ideas to get you started.

In sports, they say championships get won in the off-season. Heck, in farming these days, it’s the playoffs all year long.

Match equipment to your land base Matching your equipment to your land base requires you to somehow balance the benefits of timely operations against the costs of excess capacity, all in the midst of fluctuating grain prices and unpredictable weather.

All spring, you’ve been walking this tight rope between efficiency and cost, so now is a great time to at least begin thinking about trading up or scaling down equipment, or even acquiring more land.

Before you make any decisions, though, it’s good to benchmark against other farmers and look at your machinery relative to your investment in land. When Ted Nibourg, Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development business management specialist in Stettler, analyzed Statistics Canada data for Alberta, he found Alberta farmers’ machinery investment as a percentage of total farm capital has dropped almost linearly from a high of 17.87 per cent in 1998 to a low of 10.45 per cent in 2013. Machinery investment as a percentage of land and equipment went from 24.81 per cent in 1998 to 12.36 per cent in 2013.

“I strongly suspect the percentage change can be attributed to increased land prices,” Nibourg says.

A better benchmark for managers to consider may be their machinery investment per acre divided by the long-term average gross revenue per acre.

This ratio is a good guideline to start sizing equipment to acres. Economies of scale and higher commodity prices help reduce the ratio, although poor weather can increase the ratio in the short term.

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The long-term average for Alberta farmers is 1.59 for crop producers, ranging from a high of 2.29 in 2003 to a low of 0.88 in 2012. This means the average farmer in Alberta has $1.59 to $2.29 invested in machinery for every $1 they receive in gross revenue annually.

As a guideline, your machinery investment should not exceed 2.0 times your gross revenue per acre, says Nibourg.

Nibourg also takes it a step further. The current average ratio of 1.59 with average gross revenues of $250 per acre means the machinery investment is $397.50 per acre.

When you include depreciation at 10 per cent, this results in a machinery fixed cost of $39.75/ acre.

Increased crop returns, the lack of systematic machinery replacement, and increased farm size have impacted this ratio, says Nibourg.

For livestock producers, the long-term average ratio is 1.09, ranging from a low of 0.8 in 2001 to a high of 1.28 in 2013. The overall lower ratio in the livestock sector can be attributed to a lower machine requirement, says Nibourg, who adds, “The ratio increase will likely reverse itself with the increased returns experienced by the livestock sector during the last two years.”

It’s important to consider your ratio over the long term because short-term variability can result in a misdiagnosis of machinery requirements. The overall ratio may also appear favourable but a weak link could show up in a critical operation.

“Machinery evaluation should be ongoing and done operation by operation,” says Nibourg.

April 2015

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Time to get to work on succession, instead of worrying about it Before you call the lawyers and accountants, before you change your will or form a corporation, and even before you have a big family meeting and bring in a succession planner, take some time to gather your thoughts about succession.

Make the transition from wondering about farm transfer to actually thinking about it. Maybe crunch some numbers and start talking with your family.

Grant Robinson, national director of BDO’s SuccessCare Program says it helps the process if you take some time to figure out what you’d like the future to look like. Then talk to your kids about your vision, and discuss some ways to resolve the factors that may stop you from achieving it.

Robinson suggests you start with a workbook he helped develop, which you can find under the succession/business transition tab at www.takeanewapproach.ca. It may help you formulate a vision.

Think about what you’d like to see for the business in 10 years (i.e. two truck-leases) for the ownership and for the family. Then write it down. Robinson has found that by getting farmers to think in these time frames, they aren’t too intimidated, but it still keeps the process going. It’s a short enough time to give it a sense of urgency, yet long enough not to stress it into a stall.

Besides, almost everyone has worked with five-year plans for their business, so they understand what these horizons might look like. A decade is a long time, and a lot can happen.

Start by figuring out what you need and want, and talk with your spouse about what you want that retirement to look like. Then, again, write it down. This will also help you get a good understanding of how much you’re going to want to live on in your retirement, Another part of that discussion is considering what role you’d like to continue to have on the farm, and how and when you’d like to transfer management and financial control.

Once you’ve sorted out what you want, you need to share this vision and receive feedback from all your children. “I am a believer in getting the stakeholders engaged and identifying what needs to be done before you start with the technical,” says Robinson.

State your vision. Then listen. Is it clear you want a common outcome? Does the next generation really want to farm, or do they really just want to maintain an emotional attachment to the home farm? Maybe they just want the assets so they are equal to their siblings. These are very valid concerns and can be resolved in many ways, not just via farm ownership.

Everyone also needs to understand the difference between estate planning and succeeding a business. “A business is not like my grandfather’s watch. I have my grandfather’s watch in a frame mounted on the wall. You can’t do that with a business,” says Robinson.

Next, it’s time to sort through the things that will stop you from getting to the outcome you want, and what needs to be done to get results. This introduces a dose of reality for many families.

After you explain your vision for the farm, ask what your children want for their future. What are their priorities? Do they just want the land or do they want to try a different production system? Their ideas, hopes and fears might surprise you.

You might want to share some cash-flow statements and the average over many years so everyone understands the reality of the farm as it April 2015

“ I am a believer in getting the stakeholders engaged and identifyng what needs to be done.”

— Grant Robinson, BDO stands today. One way to sort out the difference between emotions and thoughts is to ask your children directly. If they want the farm, would they be willing to buy the assets? What they can afford to pay for them.

Then you have a starting point unshackled from entitlement or guilt.

Although you love all your children equally, they’re not all likely to be equally good successors or to want the same thing.

This is a time to listen and look for solutions. These conversations should help you decide how you might make your vision a reality, or if you have to tweak it or start again.

“Always honour the family first, the relationships, the traditions and culture, before the business,” says Robinson. “The business is separate.”

Some children get stuck in what Robinson calls “the golden handcuffs,” inheriting a farm and traditions that don’t allow them to do what they want to do with their lives. They work on their parents’ farm for years providing sweat equity and giving up on other opportunities. And when their parents die, the farm is split up equally among the siblings. Bitterness eats away at the family. “If parents are going to make this decision, they need to talk about it with their children,” says Robinson.

Get better at communication Although communication between individuals can always be improved, the real goal, says farm family communication adviser Richard Cressman from New Hamburg, Ont., is to determine if your current communication level is acceptable.

For a farm business, Cressman says, communication is all about achieving the most effective movement of critical information needed for the business to profitably function. One way he assesses whether communication is working on the family farm is by asking if anyone feels or thinks that they do not know everything they need to know about how the business is running.

“Information must move amongst everyone who needs to know,” says Cressman. “Everybody in the business or in the family will tell you if they think this is happening effectively or if there are big gaps in the system.”

To drill down to the problem, he asks members of the family farm the following: • Do you feel you are being listened to?

• Is your input acted on?

• Are there decisions where you think you should have input and do not?

• Could you do a better job of sharing information?

The solutions can be as simple as organizing regular meetings, or as high-tech as accessing cloud technology on smartphones. Moreover, what works well in one situation may not be even tolerable in another. For example, Cressman knows of situations where the two farming principals get along very well, but their spouses haven’t talked for years. There are hardly any extended family get-togethers.

They lead separate lives away from the farm business. Yet it works.

Continued on page 14 country-guide.ca 13

business Continued from page 13 Each family is unique, and while there are strategies that will work across the board, they need to be tailored and customized for the individual nuances and the different personalities of the family and the business, says Cressman.

Phone calls and text messages also can exchange information effectively. Cressman has worked with two managers who exchange information using an Excel spreadsheet stored in the cloud. Each of the managers can access this information from their cell phones and move a lot of information back and forth without actually talking to or texting each other. They’ve also evolved this to allow specific outside advisers to access this spreadsheet.

If incorporation is in your future, start checking the grapevine now for the best lawyer to do the job A low-tech solution is a whiteboard on which different individuals can post information, without needing to talk to each other. For example, Cressman has worked with a family farm with three principals and they have six whiteboards scattered strategically around the buildings, throughout the barn, milking parlour and office area. On another farm a couple of decades ago, Cressman suggested putting a white board in place to track time off for the owners and employees. It’s still being used.

A common way to improve communication is with meetings, but their format can vary based on the situation. For example, Cressman will have some families sit down every four to six weeks for a business meeting. Another family he works with connects on three-way or four-way phone calls once a week. “There is no magic and there is no perfect way to have meetings,” he says.

Wondering about incorporating?

Before you jump on the farm corporation bandwagon next winter, you probably should take some time to think about how it might work on your farm, learn more about it and book some outside help.

To better understand the basics about corporate structure and to decide if incorporation makes sense for your farm business, check out resources such as the Ontario agriculture ministry’s factsheet called “Farm Corporations” at www.omafra.gov.on.ca/.

Farmers should be talking to their accountants to find out more about these technical issues and whether it makes sense to incorporate. “Things can get pretty complicated depending on the situation,” 14 country-guide.ca

says Tom Blonde, chartered accountant and partner in Collins Barrow in Elora, Ont. A financial analysis into whether the costs would outweigh the benefits of incorporation is key. To do this, you need to determine how much you are paying in tax now, including benefits like the Canada Child Tax benefit that you may not be receiving because your income is too high, versus how much you could save with a corporation net of the additional costs and complexity of having a company.

You’ll have the additional costs of more paperwork and filing corporate as well as personal income taxes. Also, after incorporation, you’ll need to contact all your customers and suppliers to ensure that payments and invoices are now made out in the name of your company rather than your old proprietorship or partnership. If invoices are not in the company’s name, the CRA may deny deductions to the company and/or include company income as personal income.

You might also find value in talking to a friend or a neighbour who has recently incorporated. However, every farm incorporation situation is different and your neighbour may have either a more complicated or a simpler corporate structure than you might need.

This summer might be a good time to ponder some of the logistics of how a corporation would work on your farm. “It is not always necessary or desirable to transfer all proprietorship or partnership assets to your company. This applies particularly to land, homes and marketing quotas,” says Blonde.

Now is a good time to get a grip on future plans for the properties. Before creating a plan to handle assets in or out of a corporation, know if you have used up your farm property capital gains exemption and if you need to roll properties in so you can write off interest and principal in the corporation.

If farm assets are put into a corporation, there’s less flexibility in transferring them to the next generation at less than fair market value and it’s more difficult to access your capital gains exemption in the future. Transferring these assets to the company could impact your personal income tax and any social benefits you receive, such as the Canada Child Tax Benefit. Also, if you transfer your personal home to the corporation, you will lose your principal residence capital gains exemption and be subject to a personal taxable benefit for the use of corporate-owned property.

However, these negative consequences may not matter in situations where you have maximized your capital gains exemptions or have no desire to transfer assets to the next generation. Also, if you want to transfer debt to the corporation, you’ll have no choice but to transfer enough assets to be able to assume this debt.

If you’ve decided to go ahead and incorporate your farm next winter, now is a good time to think about when you want to do it and who should do the legal part. You also might want to consider who would be your company’s directors and officers.

For more thoughts on considering incorporation check out Blonde’s article www.collinsbarrow.com.

April 2015

business Prepare for life’s inevitable changes When everything is growing in the field, the last thing that comes to mind is your death, but we all have expiry dates, we just don’t know when. The mess left to clean up after poor estate planning can leave children and surviving spouses battling, and all of their inheritances in jeopardy.

So the time to begin estate planning is now, no matter how old you are. If you don’t have a will or if your personal situation has changed, now is the time to think about it and take concrete steps.

Book an appointment with a lawyer next winter to get it done.

For many families, joint ownership and beneficiary designation, combined with a simple will, can do the job. Property such as bank accounts can easily be placed in joint title to pass to the survivor

automatically. Sometimes it can take more, but at least start with a basic will.

The hiatus between seeding and harvest is a perfect time to think about naming your beneficiaries, including charities that mean a lot to you, and how you’d like the assets handled. With business owners, it’s really important to select someone to be your power of attorney, which allows a selected person access to assets and bank accounts in case you’re alive but are mentally incapacitated.

Similarly, you can select someone to make health-care decisions. A preferred health care document, commonly (but not legally) called a living will, assigns a person if you’re incapacitated, although it’s handled and called different things in different provinces.

Although writing a will or thinking about your estate may not be your favourite activity for a summer afternoon, take some quiet time to think about how you’d want things

handled when you’re gone. Add in the complications of owning and operating a farm business, second marriages and blended families, because you need a plan worked out thoughtfully.

Then there’s the much-needed sharing information and other wishes with your family. Jolene Brown, a popular speaker, farm business adviser and farmer from Iowa, created a list of questions about how the farm operates and what the person wants. (whatever you do, write out your passwords and tell someone where this list is). For the full list go to www.jolenebrown.com.

Another idea to pursue this summer is writing an ethical will or a legacy letter.

It’s not a legal document, but rather a way to share your life lessons, hopes and love, forgiveness and dreams for the future. Some are read at funerals, others are distributed while alive or at death.

This can work really well with farm families, says Grant Robinson. For more on this, check out www.ethicalwill.com. CG

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April 2015

country-guide.ca 15

business

Their joint path to

succession

16 country-guide.ca

April 2015

business

By Maggie Van Camp, CG Associate Editor

“Succession planning here is like hitting a moving target,” says Jim McGregor, but it’s also the family’s greatest opportunity mile from the Ottawa River, the McGregor family has lived and farmed, and they have loved and built for five generations, to the point where their produce business has mushroomed to 15 stands, a pick-yourown business and four farmers’ markets.

Theirs is a story about embracing change, and about how, in the midst of all that change, to tackle the sometimes difficult challenges of succession planning.

That in turn means theirs is also a story of a deep commitment to family communication, and a story of tying it all together with business agreements.

“We are always looking at opportunities,” says Jim McGregor of Braeside, Ont., an hour up the valley from the nation’s capital. “We are ideas people.”

It’s that attitude that spurred his own succession back in 1977, when he and his wife Ann moved back to be near his parents’ 100-cow beef farm. That year their first child was born and the young family grew three acres of sweet corn.

By the 1980s, they were also growing strawberries and beans, selling wholesale and going to one farmers’ market.

Jim and Ann both worked off as well as on the farm, and they had their parents’ support, including from Jim’s mother, who worked in a legal office and always believed farming should be a business-like profession. So as early as 1979, they wrote formal work agreements, even when hiring other family members.

April 2015

Celebrating their joint venture, Ian (l), Jim and Cameron get ready for a new season.

It soon became a way of doing things that would carry them through the next generational turnover relatively unscathed.

Currently, Jim and his sons Ian and Cameron have a three-way joint venture agreement, with each owning separate assets. A joint venture is an undertaking between parties to pool resources and share in profits, so that with a clear agreement like the McGregors’, the individuals own the assets and share the revenues that are left over after expenses.

A joint venture doesn’t require a separate business number, however. Nor does it own anything, or require the parties to file income tax together. And unlike in a legal partnership, the parties can’t act on behalf of each other.

The joint venture agreement is simply the guideline for the parties to work together over a specific time, usually with shorter renewable terms that you might see in other agreements.

Increasingly, joint ventures are also being seen as a great way to bring in the younger generation without creating legal problems if it doesn’t work out.

The other core belief that has continued guiding the McGregors through this generation is that it is important for the next generation to get an education and work away from home for a while before coming back to the farm.

Ian and his wife Deb both have agricultural degrees from Guelph, Cameron has a degree in criminology and his wife Mandy is a nurse working off the farm at Hos-

pice Renfrew, and the McGregors’ daughter Sarah and her husband Randy Briscoe own and operate a dairy farm nearby.

Succession: Phase 1 Both Ian and Cameron worked off the farm for a year or two, with Ian coming home to farm in 2001, bringing with him a passion for production. After a few years of working on salary for the farm, Jim and Ian created a joint venture agreement so that each of them received half of the profits on the produce.

Also, Ian and Deb along with Jim and Ann bought Jim’s parents’ place, the home farm.

While making this transition, the three generations identified three objectives.

First, the grandparents needed to be paid quickly. Second, they all wanted to minimize how much Ian and Deb needed to pay for the land because, like most beginning farmers, they were short on that kind of cash. Third, Jim and Ann wanted to retain some ownership.

Their solution was for Jim and Ian to split the purchase 50:50. Jim and Ann paid his parents for half while Ian and Deb paid for the other half slowly over a set term with no interest.

Again, although they hashed out the ideas, they had a lawyer write up a formal agreement, which included a provision giving Jim and Ian first right of refusal if the other one decided to or was forced to sell.

Continued on page 18 country-guide.ca 17

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For the farm to be able to afford to support two families, the McGregors knew they had to expand. “You can’t take two salaries out of a business that grosses only $100,000 a year,” says Jim. “Our major objective then was to increase gross sales.”

So they started going to more farmers’ markets, they expanded the pick-yourown strawberry business and added raspberries and aspargus. They also expanded their rental acres, and Ian led the way into grains and oilseeds, which proved useful rotation partners.

As long ago as the 1990s, British researcher Matt Lobley looked at surveys from around the world and consistently found a phenomenon he named “The Successor Effect.” Having a successor provides incentive for expansion and forward plan-

ning, he discovered, and these changes are often driven by the new ideas and vision that the younger generation brings back to the business.

At the McGregors’ farm, Ian and Cameron brought home the idea of “plasticulture,” using plastic to extend the growing season and keep the weed population in check. Today they use black plastic to cover rows of strawberries and tomatoes and have adopted drip tape irrigation. They plant beans and corn through clear plastic, and use row covers to protect early crops.

The boys also encouraged Jim to invest in agronomic advice. At first he was reluctant to go for the additional expense, but he became fully committed when he saw the benefits.

Ian and Cameron also brought home the business-altering idea of hiring offshore labour. It was a difficult decision

There WILL be disagreements The reality is that you’re not going to agree all the time. In fact, says farm family communication adviser Richard Cressman, it’s actually important that you don’t all think alike.

Yet it’s essential that you learn to fight fair, says Cressman, based in New Hamburg, Ont. All discussions need to be transparent, respectful and confidential, and everyone needs to recognize, for instance, that nothing destroys trust like hearing from a neighbour what was talked about at a family meeting.

Cressman says adherence to the following principle may be the most important attribute of successful families: “Disagreements will happen. Someone may leave a meeting in a huff. That will happen from time to time. However, they’re all expected to come back to the next meeting willing to participate.”

There should be a clear distinction as to who has input into what discussions and decisions, yet everyone’s voice is important. “Cultivate an attitude that your meetings are an integral part of the future success of the business,” says Cressman.

And remember, if there’s stress and conflict in your family, Cressman says, it will almost inevitably have originated in a lack of effective communication at some point in the family system.

Communication, he says, is exactly that high value.

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at the time, says Jim, but a necessary one. Eight years ago they were depending solely on local help when in the middle of the season, one key employee family suddenly did not show up.

“We nearly killed ourselves working that summer… and we didn’t get all the work done,” says Jim. Today, they hire 20 Jamaicans and 30 local students. Ian’s wife, Deb, schedules this labour force and does the farm’s marketing.

And Cameron makes three In 2006 Cameron returned home to work with the business. McGregor’s Produce had grown and was selling at six farmers’ markets in addition to their successful stand at home. Once again, however, they knew they would have to expand to accommodate another family.

The next year, the McGregors started adding satellite stands in nearby towns, and today from mid-June to Labour Day, their crew of hired students drives their freshly picked produce to 15 locations throughout the Upper Ottawa Valley that sell directly to the consumer.

Cameron and Mandy bought the farmland surrounding Jim and Ann’s severed house. Again, Jim and Ann offered a break in the price and they hold the mortgage. Then last year, Cam and Mandy bought another farm where they live. It is being tile drained and they are planning to grow crops that will complement the current business.

Currently, McGregor’s Produce grows produce and crops on the two-thirds of their 1,000 owned and rented acres that are tillable.

In 2008, Cameron became an owner in McGregor’s Produce with the help of a new joint venture agreement, this time with 40 per cent of profits going to Ian, 20 per cent to Cameron and 40 per cent to Jim. In subsequent years, Cameron’s portion increased five per cent and Jim’s decreased five per cent until Jim reached 20 per cent.

Now, the written agreement will stay for the foreseeable future or until things change again.

As the next generation moved into ownership roles, sales increased dramatically, says Jim, who now is retired from the school system and spends a couple of months each winter in Florida.

Indeed, Jim now sees the arrangement as almost a magnet for opportunities, especially in the context of trusted, longstanding relationships in the community.

April 2015

Photography: Robin Andrew • unposed photography

Continued from page 17

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“ The three of us can do more by working together,” Jim says.

“There’s a synergy.”

“The enthusiasm and energy of the younger generation combined with the experience, financial stability and confidence of the older generation have allowed us to do so well,” says Jim.

Open communication The transfer of management within the McGregor clan has been fluid and ongoing. “The three of us can do more by working together than if we each worked alone,” says Jim. “I can’t explain it, but there’s a synergy.”

Ian is the keen agrologist of the family while Cameron is a real people person who enjoys working with the staff, yet all three owners can do everything on the farm so they cover for each other.

The emphasis, though, is on mutual respect. “The boys are quite capable of making decisions,” says Jim. “They have more knowledge about farming than I do.”

That also means meetings. The McGregors have formal family business meetings including spouses, plus formal farm council meetings with all family members including Sarah and Randy, as well as less-formal farm management meetings where the day-to-day decisions are made by Ian, Cameron and Jim. The management team also has periApril 2015

odic formal meetings where they review financial statements, dig into strategies, and look at ratios, cash flows and key costs in their operations.

Although they don’t always have the same ideas, they always are able to openly discuss each idea and agree on a decision in the end.

At least annually, the McGregors have a farm council meeting where they discuss bigger-picture decisions for the farm and family, such as risk management, wills, and medical coverage, and where they also celebrate achievements.

Len Davies, the farm financial adviser they hired three years ago to help them through the succession process, had the whole family take personality tests. This awareness has helped them communicate better. “The three of us are a lot alike but different,” says Jim. “Knowing our strengths and personality weaknesses can help the business and help each other by building on each others’ strengths.”

For the McGregors, having Davies at their formal meetings isn’t about keeping the peace, it’s about sourcing new ideas and tapping into his resources. “We discuss things thoroughly all right, but there’s never any shouting. That’s just not the way we operate,” says Jim. In that spirit, the McGregors also have

family business meetings several times a year which include the spouses. These meetings are for making more strategic decisions, such as creating a mission statement, deciding whether to go to a farmers’ market on Sunday or even whether to have the farm operating on Sundays, all to help maintain some family time.

Such discussions have shown Jim and Ann how committed their children are to family values, something they respect greatly. The younger generation wants to book time off to be with their family, whereas Jim says his generation thought they needed to stick close to home so they could be working all the time.

These meetings follow strict guidelines regarding frequency of meetings and who attends, and the family sets an agenda ahead of time and keeps minutes. For such meetings, the McGregors have a “no-children” allowed rule to ensure 100 per cent engagement from everyone.

Although sometimes it’s difficult to schedule these family business meetings because each family is so busy with three children, everyone knows how important it is to the business. “Talk face to face with all the players,” says Jim. “Spouses need to be a part of the business team, especially on the philosophical decisions.” CG country-guide.ca 19

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Team building on the farm It might seem something only office workers should waste their time on, but team building fits farming too

By Helen Lammers-Helps he options are endless. Companies send their employees out rock climbing. They hire fancy consultants to host trustbuilding days. They send their executive boards fly fishing, or arrange a day of more traditional community service work where everyone can work side by side and roles are often reversed.

Less adventurous businesses can even do the traditional with a golf tournament or company picnic.

But on the farm? Really?

Although it may seem very modern, the idea behind team building actually dates back to research from the 1920s. Over time, however, it has evolved from a general objective of improving interpersonal and social interaction among team members to paving the way for measurable progress on important goals and tasks.

Jolene Brown, a farm business consultant and farmer from Iowa who regularly speaks and consults in Canada likes to use a sports analogy when describing the ideal farm team. As she puts it, strong team performance starts with (1) a good coach, (2) having the right players in the right positions, (3) everyone knowing and sharing a solid game plan, and (4) regular practice.

Team-building activities are geared to optimizing all of these facets. They can foster team members getting to know each other better, and they can improve communication between team members.

They can also help employees work better as a team instead of individually, and help them adapt to change or simply boost morale.

Most importantly, the team must be built on a solid foundation of communication, trust and accountability, says Gordon Colledge, a farm adviser in Lethbridge, Alta.

Michel Painchaud, CEO of Painchaud Performance Group in Winnipeg says team-building exercises can be very useful if (and she says it’s a big IF) the exercise has a clearly defined expected outcome. “Don’t do a team-building exercise for the sake of building the team,” Painchaud says. For a team-building activity to be successful, you have to understand what it is that you are trying to accomplish, and you need to select the tool accordingly, she says.

“Each employee’s style should be taken into consideration before a team-building event is selected,” 20 country-guide.ca

Painchaud says. Otherwise some team members may not be receptive to the activity.

Some managers think a barbecue, bowling or a pizza party are great ideas but your employees may not agree, she explains. “What you think is fun may be painful for others.”

Besides, sometimes it isn’t team building that is really needed, she continues. Sometimes the problem is conflict, so what’s really needed is conflict resolution coaching. Or what’s needed may be a strategic planning session to get everyone on board.

Sometimes having a workshop using a personality assessment tool with a trained facilitator can be a good team-building exercise, continues Painchaud.

The important thing is to be clear on what you are trying to accomplish.

Wendy Sage-Hayward, a family enterprise adviser with the Family Business Consulting Group and a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business agrees that team-building exercises are useful when carefully chosen to match the goal.

Activities can vary from fun activities geared to create cohesion and connection between the generations to more serious developmental workshops, Sage-Hayward says. There are many activities available on the Internet, she adds.

It’s important to choose activities that are appropriate for the target group. “I wouldn’t use the same exercises to create cohesion among a multi-generational business that includes children as I would with a board of directors,” she explains.

For example, when Sage-Hayward was working with a multi-generational automotive family business that included children aged seven to 15, she had the family members break into teams to build a Lego car kit. It was an enjoyable activity intended to make meetings fun for the kids and to increase cohesion between the generations, she says.

One of the activities that Brown has used involves having participants work in teams to make the tallest tinker toy tower that they could make in seven minutes. The exercise demonstrates the importance of leadership, communication and teamwork, she says.

Some “grow” the tower too fast without building a proper base. Others spend so much time on the base that there is no time for growth.

Kristi Nylen-Burns, one of the owners at Windy Poplars Farm, a cattle and grain farm in Wynyard, April 2015

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Sask., uses team-building exercises at their quarterly owner-operator meetings. “We use the team-building activities to start the meeting off on a lighter note,” she explains.

One of the exercises Nylen-Burns created involves giving two equivalent sets of Lego blocks to each of two teams. The teams had to build a machine which was judged according to criteria such as: Does it do work?

Does it perform more than one function? How well did we work as a team?

Points were awarded for each category and each team voted on the criteria. This allowed for honest self-reflection as well as an opportunity to see the merit in someone else’s work (e.g. the creativity, esthetic appeal, functionality, etc.).

“It was both fun and engaging,” says NylenBurns who adds that it’s important to have a good understanding of the people who are participating so that the exercise is inclusive. “Ideally you want people turned on and tuned in, not feeling self-conscious or awkward.”

Other ideas and resources can be found on the Internet, including at www.mindtools.com, where you can search for team-building advice and techniques.

One tactic Colledge has seen work effectively

for team building is to take the annual meeting off site to a room at a restaurant or a hotel. “Providing lunch and getting away from the farm helps to develop a common approach with common goals,” says Colledge. It encourages people to work in a more professional manner than they would if they were sitting around the dining room table at home, he explains. One farm family, he says, had a successful team-building result when they took their annual meeting to a hotel with a water slide. They also included a family council meeting to deal with issues relating to the family as a whole.

Richard Cressman, a farm communications adviser in New Hamburg, Ont. finds the challenge when working with farm families is that the issues tend to be similar from family to family, but the uniqueness of the personalities and the situations almost always demands a unique approach for each family.

Cressman says he is always working on team building but it isn’t stuff you’ll find in a textbook.

“The central premise to everything I do with families is that you cannot make or hope that someone else is going to change,” Cressman says. “You first need to start with working on yourself and then start to address the big picture.” CG

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business

Who are they really?

Personality testing can be a surprisingly easy and useful tool in your farm business ave you ever wondered why one family member considers it the end of the world when another family member leaves an empty water bottle in the combine?

Or why, knowing this, another family member will check the cab and toss out the offending bottle in order to keep the peace, while another family member will dramatically throw up his hands during a meeting, as if to say, “Oh, brother, what a waste of time working with people like you who just don’t get it!”

In one version or another, these are scenarios that most farm families are familiar with because, according to Gordon Colledge, a farm adviser in Lethbridge, Alta., they demonstrate the different basic personality types.

Colledge uses personality tests like True Colors (www.truecolorsintl.com) to help families work together more effectively. In its approach, True Colors uses four colours to identify distinctive perspectives and personalities. Most of us have a dominant colour and are influenced or shaded by the other three colours, which gives us our spectrum.

bers also come to better understand each other, which in turn leads to better communication and less conflict, he says.

Doing the personality assessment as a group with a trained facilitator is even better, he says, helping everyone see the impact of personality on how different family members will react in different situations.

Boissevain, Man. farm family coach Elaine Froese agrees that these types of tests can be useful. She is certified to use the CRG Personal Style Indicator assessment tool. After using it with clients, she has heard them exclaim, “I wish I would have done this 10 years ago.”

According to its website www. crgleadergroup.com , CRG claims its 20-page Personal Style Indicator assessment will help you discover your inherent personal style and natural preferences towards time, people, tasks and situations.

The site says it will also help you become more aware of your typical reactions to stress, determine your preferred work environment, and know your strengths and challenges while also improving your understanding of others’ tendencies.

These are just two of the personality tests available for farm use. There are

Eliminate friction, connect the right people with the right jobs, and work better together “When I use it, there are fewer arguments,” says Colledge. Other family members learn that the “Gold” personality needs organization, lists, rules, and punctuality. The “Orange” likes to wing it, working out the details as they go along.

“Blues” are true and loyal, hate conflict, and will exhaust themselves trying to keep the peace or put out fires. The “Green” is like Spock in “Star Trek,” logical, pragmatic, and showing little or no emotion.

If it sounds like pseudo-science, Colledge begs to differ. He says that when working with farm families, the system helps him determine everyone’s personalities and their needs, along with the stressors and joys that go with each personality type. Family mem22 country-guide.ca

others too. Michelle Painchaud, CEO of Painchaud Performance Group in Winnipeg, Man. likes the tools that are based on a large pool of responses like the one offered by Profiles International (www.profilesinternational.com).

Painchaud says these psychometric assessments are a very valuable tool in understanding an employee’s thinking and learning styles as well as their behavioural traits. They are useful for hiring and also to help understand and build teams, she says.

“They can be really helpful because we all think differently; our brains are different.”

There are also self-reporting types of personality assessments that you can do yourself. Froese has one on communica-

By Helen Lammers-Helps tion styles that she hands out at her workshops. (It’s also available by emailing her at elaine@elainefroese.com and putting “communications style” in the subject line).

“Some people find them helpful,” says Froese. “It makes them become more aware.”

Mike Bossy, president of Bossy Nagy Group in Tillsonburg, Ont. uses the Kolbe A Index personality test (www.kolbe.com).

He first took the test himself when he was a participant in a coaching course. “It was a big aha! moment for me,” Bossy says. “It described how I took action perfectly.”

Like many of the personality tests, the results classify people according to their dominant personality style. In the case of the Kolbe A Index, the categories are Fact Finder, Follow Thru, Quick Start and Implementer.

Understanding your dominant action modes helps families work together, says Bossy. “By understanding your natural inclinations you can work around them.”

Bossy adds that it’s important to remember there are no bad scores: “All personality styles are equally valid. All kinds of people are needed on the team.”

Bossy also says there are many ways to use the test results. They can be used to reassign responsibilities according to each person’s strengths. For example, someone who is a Quick Start isn’t the right person to buy the tractor. That job should go to someone who is more analytical, he says.

If your books and files are a mess, likely the person doing them is lacking in the Follow Thru category. “Hire someone who will make up for this,” says Bossy.

By understanding your own natural inclinations, Bossy says you can create habits that help you overcome your challenges. For example if “Follow Thru” is not one of your strengths, create artificial deadlines for yourself, he says.

This insight can also be used to improve personal relationships. Bossy tends to be impulsive so he has put a habit in place to modify his instincts: “Now I always check with my wife before accepting a dinner invitation.”

Bossy has also used the personality April 2015

business assessment tool to help young people sort out their best career options.

Yet personality assessments have their drawbacks as well. Painchaud cautions there are many options available, and if someone doesn’t truly understand how to find a scientifically validated assessment, they may end up with a useless and potentially disruptive assessment.

Painchaud also has concerns about the self-reporting type. The problem with these, she explains, is that people may not have an accurate self-perception. She warns that if the self-reporting kinds of assessments aren’t handled appropriately, things can go bad. “They can create animosity,” she says.

Wendy Sage-Hayward, is a family enterprise adviser with the Family Business Con-

sulting Group and adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business. She also sits on the board and is a shareholder in a large multigeneration family-owned hog farm in Iowa.

She is certified to use the Insights Discovery Personality Assessment (www.insights.com) which she has used with people at all levels in business including front line staff, executive teams and boards of directors.

“The assessment gives you a framework and a language to talk about things,” Sage-Hayward says. “The downside is that labels put a person in a box.” The other problem, she says, is that no tool can describe the full complexity of humans.

The issue of creating labels for people is the reason Pam Paquet, a psychologist and

business coach in Port Coquitlam, B.C. has shied away from using them with groups.

“While they can be useful to help an individual become more self-aware and change their behaviour, when it comes to families or groups, people often use the results as an excuse for bad behaviour,” she says.

The purpose for the tests should be to create change but they don’t seem to work that way, she says. “Once people have the results, there doesn’t seem to be an impetus to keep going,” she explains.

Colledge agrees that the personality assessment works best when people look at the areas where they are weak and focus on those. “You can’t change your personality,” he says. “But you can change your behaviour.” CG

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country-guide.ca 23

business

A place on the farm

Is Charlene Bradley a template for a new generation of farmers?

orking in the grain industry had seemed an unlikely choice for Charlene Bradley. “If someone had said to me in Grade 12 that I’d be living on a farm and managing a grain elevator,” she now says, “I would’ve looked at them like they had three heads.”

After all, growing up in Edmonton didn’t provide much exposure to agriculture. Probably it provided even less exposure than farmers might think.

But Charlene surprised herself — and perhaps a

24 country-guide.ca

By Lisa Guenther, CG Field Editor

few others as well — by launching a career in the grain industry. And it turns out her life experience has given her a unique view of agriculture which has served both her and the industry well.

That’s why C ountry G uide caught up with Charlene earlier this winter at the Canola Council of Canada’s conference in Banff. With its theme “Set Your Sights Higher,” it turns out the conference couldn’t have been a better match for our discussion, starting with our wanting to know how a city kid morphs into a trailblazer in agriculture.

April 2015

Photography: Derek Stobbe

business

The first step

City to combine to boardroom

Charlene’s journey to the farm started with a fateful invitation from a college friend who hailed from rural Saskatchewan. The friend suggested Charlene visit her hometown one weekend. Through that friend, Charlene met her future husband, Scott Bradley.

While farmers might wonder how city people perceive them, Charlene says that in her experience, urbanites don’t spend much time thinking about or discussing farmers. “Maybe city people should take more of an interest, but it’s just not something that’s part of their day-to-day,” she says.

Charlene didn’t hold many preconceptions of what farmers were like, either. Things that might seem mundane to long-time rural residents were interesting to her. For example, it was striking, when she first settled in rural Saskatchewan, that there was this collective weather obsession. Producers were interested in not only their own rain gauges, but their neighbours’ as well. Knowing what she knows now, it makes perfect sense, she says, adding it was one of her first “ah-ha moments.”

Leaving the city did require some adjustments.

One of the biggest was letting go of the convenience of city life. Having to drive an hour round-trip was a contrast to urban living, where everything she wanted was at her fingertips, she explains.

Today, Charlene says her life is full and she’s very happy. “So that tells me my decision was a good one.”

The Bradleys grow everything from canola to lentils. Charlene describes the farm as a partnership, where she and Scott discuss decisions together.

They also have their own roles. Charlene focuses on the books and paperwork, and she’ll hop into the combine after work. Scott, who is the career farmer, does most of the marketing and handles agronomics, including crop planning and inputs.

Scott and Charlene have three children, and their oldest, a son, is set to graduate high school this year.

While he’s expressed interest in farming, Charlene doesn’t want her kids to feel obligated to farm. So she and Scott are encouraging them to go out and experience the world before they decide to come back.

“And this way when they do come back, everyone will know it’s because they truly love it.”

Working with Scott on the farm has given her a deep appreciation for agriculture.

“Feeding the world, as my husband says, it’s a great opportunity in life to be able to do that. And so I’ve had an even better opportunity, I think, than a lot of producers because I’ve had the farm education,” she says.

The conference agenda is packed here in Banff, but on the last day we have managed to carve out some time during a break. The other delegates have congregated in the foyer outside the conference room and their voices bounce off the Fairmont’s stone walls. We find a relatively quiet spot in a nearby ballroom, where hotel staff are finishing lunch setup.

The walls and ceiling are blue and gilded gold, in that style you often see in old railway hotels. In a modern hotel, it would be gaudy, but in the Fairmont Banff Springs, it evokes a historical luxury.

Charlene is comfortable in this opulent setting, and I get the sense that she finds a way to be comfortable wherever she is. If she has found a way to balance rural and urban, it isn’t the only kind of balance she has achieved, and it makes me wonder if she is a template for successful women in agriculture.

She’s easy to talk to. But she thinks about what she’s saying.

She’s not loud or brash. But she doesn’t come across as meek either. She radiates quiet confidence.

At the same time, she has a straightforward, down-to-earth manner that I’m sure serves her well in rural Saskatchewan.

The point, I think, is that it’s not only her knowledge that matters, although that’s obviously important too. It’s those personal attributes of attitude, poise, and self-assurance.

But even with those strengths, I can’t help wondering: how does a young woman from Edmonton adapt to life on a farm near Stranraer, in west-central Saskatchewan?

Ultimately, not having any preconceived ideas about the grain industry might have been a good thing, Charlene says. “I was told when it’s bad, it’s devastating, but when it’s good, it’s like you won the lottery.”

“We got through our tough years early on and things are going well now.”

They are simple words, and maybe not quite what you would expect from a woman who is a certified management accountant and who has had so much management experience. Shouldn’t she be telling me about business objectives and equity ratios?

But when I listen closely, there’s a different kind of precision.

I ask, didn’t she ever wonder whether moving out to the farm was the right decision?

Her answer begins with her saying that everybody wonders at times about the decisions they’ve made.

She’s had her moments too, she admits. But as her husband told her, “It’s only geography. And he’s 100 per cent right.”

Continued on page 26

April 2015

country-guide.ca 25

business Continued from page 25

Know the numbers Charlene has also spent 13 years working in the grain industry. An accountant by trade, she started out as chief financial officer with the nearby Prairie West Terminal, which at that time was an independent, farmer-owned grain handling facility.

The Bradley children were starting school at that time, and Prairie West was close and convenient, Charlene says. She soon found that working at an independent terminal offered unique benefits.

“Because we were an independently owned terminal, you learned the grain industry from start to finish as opposed to being in a mainline company, where you’re only seeing a small piece of a larger pie,” she says. Prairie West gave her the opportunity to work on many different, exciting projects, she adds.

In 2005, Prairie West was part of a consortium that bought a Vancouver terminal the Competition Bureau had forced Agricore United to divest. Charlene says learning about the port side of the industry was fascinating. How business dealings were run was interesting, she adds, and she compares working with the unions to the clash between urban and rural.

“It’s so much more than what we deal with just bringing your grain to the elevator and selling it at the farm gate,” she says.

After nine years with Prairie West, during which time she served as CFO and interim CEO, Charlene left to do contract accounting

for various agricultural companies. She then took a job as general manager at a Parrish and Heimbecker terminal near Biggar, Sask.

Today, her career has come full circle, as she’s back managing Prairie West, which was purchased by CWB in 2014.

“It’s been a wonderful experience because I’ve been sought out to do that,” she says of the move back to Prairie West. “I’ve been very blessed in my career.”

Moving from accounting to managing elevators hasn’t been without its challenges, though. Some areas in agriculture are approaching gender parity, or even have more women than men. But there aren’t many female elevator managers out there, Charlene says, and some people aren’t used to seeing a woman fill that role.

“You can see that there’s some uncomfortableness or awkwardness with others. So that did take some getting used to. But it’s not something that bothers me as much as I think it bothers other people,” she says. And, she adds, it’s exciting to lay the groundwork for future generations.

After serving on SaskCanola’s policy committee for two years, Charlene threw her hat in the ring for a seat on the board. She became a director in December 2014.

“I would like to think I bring a different perspective,” says Charlene of her role as a director.

And that she does. She gets to live and breathe the farm life, from seeding to harvest, she says. And she’s seen the industry “from farmgate to tidewaters.”

“I’ve had an enormous opportunity that a lot of people in the industry, as well as on the farm, don’t get exposed to,” she says.

There can even be an advantage coming from the city, Bradley says, since you arrive with fresh perspectives The future looks bright I talk to Charlene again after the conference, and she says that she’s optimistic about the future of agriculture. There’s more research and innovation happening now than ever before, she says, and many young people are gravitating towards agriculture.

When Charlene relocated to the farm, agriculture was in a downturn. But she and Scott toughed it out, and she’s glad to see younger farmers in her area thriving.

Young farmers in her area have taken advantage of local oilfield activity, she says, often doing both for a while. “What they do seem to do is they build up some wealth with the oilfield and then they gravitate to just farming.”

But she also knows that the game has evolved since she first joined the farm. In general, farmers have always known how to do business, but today they are even more business savvy, which should help given the current price slump.

Today’s farmers are also better planners than they were even five or 10 years ago, and with dual marketing in the West, they are even more on top of pricing and contracting, she says.

Coming from an urban setting, Charlene faced a steep learning curve, but it’s been a worthwhile education, and she never felt that her city upbringing would prevent her from being able to master it if she applied herself.

“Keep an open mind about life,” she now tells young women.

“You never know where it will take you.” CG 26 country-guide.ca

April 2015

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

Foliar fungicides can increase soybean yields when facing disease pressure

By Lilian Schaer

Applying foliar fungicides to soybeans can have a positive impact on yield. Field trials completed in Ontario show an average increase of 2.3 bushels per acre in response to foliar fungicide application – and an even higher response in fields where white mould was present.

The economic return of fungicide application, however, depends on the specific situations on individual farms, and doesn’t make sense for all growers.

“Overall, we found a yield benefit to applying foliar fungicides to soybeans, although not enough of a benefit to make economic sense in the absence of significant disease pressure,” explains Horst Bohner, Soybean Specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA). “But when white mould is present even in a moderate level, new fungicides do bring significant yield benefit to the table.”

How was the research conducted?

Many trials have been conducted in Ontario to assess the yield and seed quality benefits of foliar fungicides in soybeans, but little work has been done to evaluate in-furrow liquid fungicides.

In order to determine the best management practice for fungicide application timing, field scale trials were conducted at locations in Perth, Middlesex, and Elgin Counties in the 2014 growing season. Treatments were tested on two varieties at each study location in order to evaluate the use of foliar application timings and tank mixes, as well as in-furrow application of liquid Priaxor fungicide on soybeans.

What has the project found?

Muliti year field trials in Ontario have found that general application of foliar fungicide to reduce leaf diseases will provide an average yield benefit of 2.3 bushels per acre, and an

average of five bushels per acre on fields with white mould that were sprayed twice.

On the 2014 trials specifically, a positive yield response of approximately 1.8 bushels per acre was observed when Priaxor was applied at the R2 or R4 soybean growth stage, which is in line with previously completed research in Ontario that showed about a two bushel per acre average yield gain when using one application of foliar fungicides.

“In an average year, we would expect a higher yield response for the earlier application (R2) compared to the later spray window,” says Bohner.

For the fungicide application to make economic sense, however, Bohner says growers will need a response of well over two bushels per acre just to break even.

“As a general statement, for an average grower in an average year, the economics don’t make sense to spray fungicide in the absence of disease pressure,” he says.

“But the story changes very quickly if you have white mould or another disease, and even though the five bushels per acre is not a big economic win, it is reasonable.”

He adds the project found no evidence of benefit in Ontario from in-furrow application of liquid fungicide or to mixing a fungicide with a herbicide early in the growing season.

Where can I get more information?

More information on this project can be found in the Crop Advances section of the OSCIA website at http://bit.ly/1GsYD02.

How was the research funded?

The project, conducted in conjunction with Dr. Dave Hooker at University of Guelph Ridgetown Campus, was funded by an OSCIA major partner grant and Grain Farmers of Ontario. Material support was provided by Pioneer, Dekalb, BASF, and John Deere. OSCIA assisted with communication of research results.

ONTARIO SOIL AND CROP IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION

Foliar Fungicide Findings • Growers need a yield response of more than two bushels per acre for foliar fungicide application to be economically beneficial.

• In white mould situations, new foliar fungicides like Priaxor and Acapela can increase soybean yield an average of five bushels per acre or more.

• In-furrow application of liquid fungicide did not show increased yields.

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

www.ontariosoilcrop.org

A M E - ma n a g eme n t

The strategic approach to managing employees

By Julia Christensen Hughes f you own or manage an agricultural business of any size, you likely have a number of employees (family members or otherwise) working with you. And you have them for good reason. Employees come with many benefits, or at least they should.

Employees with specialized skills can provide missing competencies and networks, allowing the business to grow in new directions. Front-line supervisors and hourly employees provide the benefit of additional oversight and production capacity. They also provide significant operational efficiencies by allowing more highly paid talent to focus on running the business, analyzing results and making strategic decisions, rather than being perpetually caught up in the business of everyday “doing.”

Finally, as a business owner or senior manager with capable employees, the possibility exists for you to have a more balanced life: to take vacations, take care of your health, take care of your family and ultimately, ensure that your business continues to thrive.

Despite all these potential benefits, it may be surprising that one of the most disliked aspects of business is managing employees, according to research

by Berrett-Koehler in 2011. This may be especially true for first-time and front-line managers.

One study by the consulting group Development Dimensions International (DDI), found that the top reason why newly promoted front-line managers took the job was for more money (50 per cent), not because they aspired to lead others. The majority (57 per cent) learned their leadership skills by trial and error.

Of these, over one-third regretted being promoted, largely due to the stress of being ill prepared to manage others (www.ddiworld.com/DDIWorld/media/ trend-research/findingthefirstrung_mis_ddi.pdf).

Farm owners and senior managers participating in Agri-Food Management Excellence (AME) programs have similarly shared their reluctance for dealing with poor performers or for taking on additional tasks essential for managing others, such as: regularly and enthusiastically communicating the organization’s vision, values, goals and results; facilitating participative problem-solving and decision-making meetings; developing effective and engaged teams; and providing ongoing performance feedback.

In the HR section of the AME programs, I focus on 28 country-guide.ca

helping the participating managers and business owners reflect on their current strategies for managing others and identify specific opportunities to better align their approach with the strategic intents of the business. The framework used was first developed at the Harvard Business School by Michael Beer and Bert Spector in the early 1980s, in response to declining international competitiveness within the U.S. manufacturing sector.

The first area of the framework is known as “employee influence,” which is the extent to which employees are well informed about the business and have the opportunity to influence their own areas of responsibility. Seeking employee opinion when purchasing a new piece of equipment, for example, can contribute to a better decision and garner support for implementation.

As well, fostering a culture of employee engagement in which people feel respected and motivated to regularly go above and beyond generates proven positive bottom-line results.

The second area is “reward systems,” which include the wages, bonuses, and benefits employees receive in exchange for their labour, as well as the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes from a job well done. Taken together these rewards form the employee value proposition (i.e. what the organization provides in exchange for the heads, hands and hearts of its employees).

Organizations with a clear and competitive value proposition are better able to attract and retain employees with the skills and attitudes required.

The third area of the framework is “human resource flow” i.e. the practices that influence the flow of employees into, through, and out of the organization, such as recruitment and selection, training and development, and performance feedback.

Many employees today are looking for jobs where there is a commitment to ongoing training and development. They also want their work to be socially beneficial. Emphasizing these opportunities on the company’s website and in any job advertisements can help build a positive employer brand and attract greater numbers of applicants.

When assessing applicants, managers are well advised to augment their interviews (which are inherently unreliable predictors of performance) with tests that replicate typical job demands. Asking potential employees to use or fix a piece of equipment, to make a presentation, or to serve a customer, for example, can help to avoid costly selection errors.

Once hired, instead of the dreaded annual perforapril 2015

A M E - ma n a g eme n t mance review, research has found that it is far more motivating to provide ongoing performance feedback, ideally by putting in place a system that enables employees to monitor their own progress against agreed-upon goals, thus providing them with the opportunity to adjust their own performance as needed.

When employees consistently fail to meet expectations, managers must remedy the situation by providing additional training or support, adjusting the individual’s work responsibilities, or terminating the relationship.

Finally, we talk about “work systems” and the management of effective teams. People are inherently competitive and selfinterested. In order for a team to thrive, it is essential that its leader ensure certain attributes are in place, such as common goals, clear roles and accountabilities, effective communication systems, and a culture of trust.

Taken together, these four elements comprise an organization’s strategic approach to managing people. While much of this may seem like common sense, in practice, many of these suggestions are not common at all.

That is why, when done right, and once cemented in an organization’s culture, a competitive advantage can be achieved. CG Julia Christensen Hughes, PhD, is dean of the College of Business and Economics, University of Guelph and an instructor with AME. For more information on the University of Guelph’s MBA program in food and agribusiness management see: www.uoguelph.ca/business/mba. For information on AME visit www.agrifoodtraining.com.

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management

Our other business Farmers are land investors too, but are we any good at it? f course, farmers integrate their real estate into their production business, with land and buildings used for the growing of crops and production of livestock. Importantly, too, the asset value is used as collateral to secure financing.

As well, farm real estate is often the main retirement fund.

There is no question, too, that farmland has been an incredibly good investment in recent years. If you purchased farmland in Ontario for the average price of $3,000 per acre in 1994, that land would have been worth about $11,000 per acre by 2012, essentially quadrupling your initial investment.

With these kinds of returns to ownership of farmland, how can there be any question about the value of investing in it? But with any investment, past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

Instead we need to look to the fundamentals and at what gives land its value.

Is land still a good investment?

Dr. Michael Langemeier at Purdue University urges caution: “We are already seeing weakness in the farmland market in the U.S.” If cash rents go down because of lower commodity prices, there will be an impact on land values, Langemeier says.

In fact, Langemeier believes land values will go down faster and harder than rent.

As well, land prices may be sideswiped as the economy improves and interest rates inevitably go up interest rates can hurt land prices too.

Langemeier suggests farmers calculate a Price/cash rent ratio (P/rent) on land they are considering. In the paper, “Farmland: Is It Currently Priced As An Attractive Investment?” which Langemeier co-wrote with Dr. Timothy Baker and Dr. Michael Boehlje, the researchers say P/ rent over the past 50 years has averaged 18.2. This is relatively close to the average S&P 500 price/earnings ratio of 18.7 for the same time period. However, since 30 country-guide.ca

2004 the P/rent has been well above the average. Land prices peaked in August 2014 at 33 times rent.

The authors also compared a running 10-year average of the S&P 500 P/E and the P/rent and found that this ratio (i.e. P/rent10) now exceeds the peak S&P P/E10 recorded during the dot-com stock bubble in the late 1990s.

Their study concludes: “Land buyers beware… current farmland values are now extremely elevated in relationship to underlying economic fundamentals. If we are correct, this means that those purchasing farmland at current prices have a high probability of experiencing buyer’s remorse in coming years.”

Should you buy now?

For many farmers, owning land is more an emotional decision than an economic one. As long as they can make the payments, they are willing to purchase land. They justify their purchase, saying, “if I don’t buy it now, I will never get another chance.”

That may be true, but is ownership of that particular piece of property worth the risk that you will not be able to make payments if interest rates go up or commodity prices go down? Are you willing to tie up equity you already have in other owned land in order to secure an overvalued mortgage, especially since you will then not have that equity available for other needs? Are you willing to forgo the returns you are receiving on current investments which will have to be liquidated to meet the down payment for a land purchase? Can you live with the reduced cash flow?

Then there are also the “economic” arguments. We often hear that land has always gone up and it has outperformed the stock market. Lenders and those selling real estate or investments in farmland like to remind us of this, and over the long term it may be true. But like all investments, land appreciation is not smooth, constant, or guaranteed.

We have seen land drop in value, as happened in the early ’80s, after which prices took a decade or more to recover.

By Gerald Pilger

Unlike investments such as stocks, you cannot easily liquidate overpriced land if land values begin to fall. It is much harder to sell to cut your losses on land than many other assets. You are making a long-term ownership commitment, so you better be sure you are not buying at the market peak.

With a P/rent of 40 or more, as it is right now in central Alberta, is this a wise time to purchase? Would you buy a stock with a P/E ratio of 40? Maybe you would if you felt it had good growth opportunities and had safe earnings, but can you say that about land today, given falling commodity prices, the risk of rising interest rates, and record-high land values?

Not making it anymore Next there is the argument that “they aren’t making land anymore,” so it will always be worth more. But is that true?

U.S. farmers harvested 20 million more acres of corn and soybeans in 2014 than they did in 2005. A good portion of that land came out of the Conservation Reserve Program. We are also seeing large increases in seeded acreage in South America and Eastern Europe, and there is a large untapped potential in Africa.

But what about the two billion more people who will need to be fed by 2050?

Interestingly, CNBC reported FAO estimates that while there is 0.218 ha of farmland per person today, that ratio will only decrease to 0.181 ha/person by 2050. If this is true I wonder if increased efficiency and production could easily compensate for this reduction in land per person.

Finally, potential buyers will argue that if they own the land, they do not have to pay rent. But rent is actually the return on your investment in land. You should still be paying rent to yourself on owned land, at least on paper. You are fooling yourself if you are allocating all your returns on owned land to the farm operation and paying yourself nothing for your investment in land. CG April 2015

CHRISTIAN FARMERS FEDERATION OF ONTARIO 642 Woolwich St. • Guelph, ON • N1H 3Y2 Voice: (519) 837-1620 Fax: (519) 824-1835 Email: cffomail@christianfarmers.org Web site: www.christianfarmers.org

Advanced Agricultural Leadership Program Broadens Horizons

T

Paul Bootsma

he Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario is a supporter of the Advanced Agricultural Leadership Program (AALP). AALP is an executive development program for men and women who want to broaden their horizons and expand their networks to help shape the future of the agriculture and food sectors in Ontario. I have been participating in this AALP class since September 2013 and have enjoyed it very much; it has taught me a lot about myself and what it takes to be a leader in the agricultural industry.

On February 14, 27 AALP Class 15 participants got the opportunity to fly to South America for two weeks. Here is a summary of this trip to Chile and Argentina.

Chile is a dry country, particularly the central region.

Some areas have less than 10 rain days annually, so all the farmlands are irrigated. Citizens water their yards and flower gardens every night. Argentina, on the other hand, has ample rainfall; 14 days without rain is considered a drought. Both countries have an

Beef cattle in Argentina. intensive agricultural industry; both depend heavily on the export market and are successful.

Chile produces mostly fruits and vegetables, while Argentina produces mostly soybeans, corn and beef. Their production methods are very similar to ours; however, they have made the most of some of the uniqueness of the countries.

Ample sunshine and plenty of water from the mountains allows Chile to produce sweet large fruits and grapes for wine for the export market. Their vegetables are also large and full of flavour.

Most people eat lots of fresh food, so produce is harvested and

sold daily. Argentina has plenty of topsoil, rain and sunshine, ideal for growing crops and they can grow two crops a year.

After two weeks travelling and touring through Chile and Argentina, learning of their history and seeing how their society and governments are functioning, I have come to the conclusion that Canada is a great country to call home. Compared to many others, we have it pretty good here, with little to complain about. There will be many memories of this trip and as time goes by certain things will be remembered more than others. While we were a long

A general farm organization that is rooted in faith and guided by values

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

www.christianfarmers.org

way from home, the friendliness and technology similar to ours made it seem not so far at all. The mountains of Chile and the vast plains of Argentina reminded me of God’s majesty in creation and that we are in His hands at all times.

A professional organization of entrepreneurial farming families

business

JCB builds market share JCB used to be a construction brand. Now it is a farm brand too, with advanced materials-handling capability

By Scott Garvey, CG Machinery Editor n early March I spent a day in a Georgia field with a line of JCB equipment designed especially for the ag market, including the unique Fastrac tractor that is capable of breaking speed limits in the field.

Then that evening, I joined other ag journalists in Savannah for dinner with some of the U.K.-based brand’s executives. Naturally, the topic of JCB equipment, especially the Fastrac, came up.

Even JCB anticipated the question that I had in mind, with Richard Fox-Marrs, global managing director for JCB Agriculture, putting it into words before I could get it out. “Why would you want to build another conventional ag tractor when there are already a lot of other companies out there doing a pretty good job of it?”

Arjun Mirdha is president and CEO of JCB North America.

Photo: JCB

In fact, JCB doesn’t seem to want to be at all like other ag equipment manufacturers in any of its engineering or marketing efforts. It has found a niche in the North American equipment market, and it intends to makes its mark selling specialty products into that niche.

It’s why we were there in Georgia at the brand’s North American field day, an event that was previously limited to reporters from construction industry publications.

The brand is still much better known in the light construction sector. In the United Kingdom, the name JCB is synonymous with backhoe, in the same way Canadians often can say Ski-Doo to refer to snowmobiles. But if executives have their way, JCB will also become the generic name applied to the go-to machines that North American farmers will choose for moving heavy material on farms, like large round bales.

32 country-guide.ca

It’s a market segment that JCB executives refer to as “ag materials handling,” and it is a segment they are pursuing full throttle.

“That’s where we come in, because JCB is the global leader in agricultural materials handling,” explained Fox-Marrs in a formal address to media members earlier that day. “If you consider the overall scale of modern farming operations that have become so much more productive in recent years, you begin to really understand the vital role of materials handling.”

The line of machines the brand offers fits nicely into that description. The company is taking technology more often seen in the light construction sector and tailoring it to the needs of farmers, in some cases with specific agricultural option packages.

According to Arjun Mirdha, president and CEO of JCB North America, focusing on that agricultural niche has been good strategy for the brand. Perhaps, too, it has demonstrated that on-farm materials handling has been until now a relatively unexploited area in the equipment marketplace, at least here in Canada and the U.S. “Agricultural material handling, led by the telehandler, is pivotal to JCB’s future success here in North America,” Mirdha said during his presentation to journalists at the firm’s Savannah, Georgia, assembly plant.

“It’s a market that is changing quite a lot. Allow me to give you some context. Five years ago, in 2009, JCB sales of agricultural telescopic handlers were primarily to the three largest markets for these products, France, the United Kingdom and Germany. Now North America is emerging as another key market.

“Globally, the market for agricultural telescopic handlers grew by just two per cent last year, but here in North America, it grew by 17 per cent,” Mirdha continued. “However, relative to some other markets, North America is still quite small, as the tractor loader continues to dominate this market (in agriculture). But, in short, we’re witnessing a change in this market.”

Overall, JCB’s sales on this continent last year ran counter to the trendline that sandbagged the other major manufacturers. JCB’s sales jumped 23 per cent over its 2013 numbers. Even more remarkably, total sales have grown by over 193 per cent in the last four years, which means it has consistently outpaced the average growth rate in both the ag and in the light construction sectors where the brand does business.

“JCB Agriculture has doubled its business over the past five years, in terms of both volume and revenue,” said Fox-Marrs.

April 2015

business

Dan Schmidt, vice-president of agricultural sales for North America, introduces the Fastrac 4000 Series to journalists at a media event in Savannah, Georgia, in March.

Photo: Scott Garvey

“This outstanding performance means North America is now JCB’s third-largest market for machine sales,” said Mirdha. “And the good part is we’re just getting started, particularly in agriculture. We now have 97 dealers operating out of 300 locations, with plans to expand to over 500 outlets by 2018. Nearly one-third of our current dealers are dedicated ag distributors.”

To support those dealers and customers, JCB has doubled the size of its North American parts warehousing operations, and last year, it expanded its Canadian facility.

“One of the reasons I think we’re making inroads in agriculture in North America so quickly is JCB is designed around the owner operator,” added Dan Schmidt, vice-president of ag sales, North America.

“In Canada and the U.S., our owner-operators identify with creature comforts, safety and fuel efficiency as well as performance and productivity.”

Spearheading the brand’s stronger move into the ag market is its flagship product, the redesigned 4000 Series Fastrac tractor. Capable of 65 km/h with active four-wheel suspension and a rear deck that allows it to carry 4,400 kilograms, it’s definitely not the kind of me-too, standard ag tractor Fox-Marrs questions the wisdom of producing.

Although JCB has been selling the Fastrac in North America for some time, its popularity had been limited. But according to Schmidt, brand executives spent a lot of time asking farmers what they did and didn’t like about it ahead of the machine’s recent makeover. The result is the re-engineered 4000 Series version, intended to better fuse with farming practices on this continent.

“Here in North America and other regions with large-scale farms, such as Australia, the need for high-speed, high-performance tractors is also growApril 2015

ing,” explained Fox-Marrs. “And this is where the JCB Fastrac has really come into its own.”

The Fastrac isn’t the only machine to get new engineering in order to meet farmer demand. The two-model line of Telemaster machines — the blending of a wheel loader and a telescopic handler — were built primarily to fit into the ag sector. The goal is to bite into the market which is currently almost the exclusive domain of the loader tractor.

“The tractor loader has been the traditional method of moving materials on North American farms,” FoxMarrs added. “And that remains true today. In round numbers, in the 70- to 160-horsepower class, over 17,000 tractors fitted with front loaders are sold onto U.S. and Canadian farms every year. Sure, not all tractor loaders will be replaced by dedicated material handlers. However, the numbers indicate this is far more than just a niche opportunity.”

Executives are also hoping the different design of its skid-steer loader will find favour with farmers. Plus, JCB has ramped up production at its Georgia assembly plant to meet what Mirdha says is a substantially increased demand from both the ag and construction sectors.

“We’ve invested over US$60 million right here in Savannah to design a range of skid steers and compact track loaders for farmers,” Mirdha said. “We’ve also invested heavily in our Loadall (telehandler) production capacity by extending our telescopic handler assembly lines.”

“Over the past five years, JCB has strengthened and improved its entire product range,” added FoxMarrs. “We’ve strengthened distribution in key markets, especially here in North America, which is really starting to pay dividends.”

Said Mirdha, “As you can see, agriculture is a market we are very serious about at JCB.” CG country-guide.ca 33

business

Your value-added marketing plan Once you’ve got your value-added product or service ready to go, the hard part’s done, right?

By Helen Lammers Helps ot so fast. Chances are you are going to need to work hard to build product awareness. The experts agree you need a plan for how you’re going to let your potential customers know why they’re going to want to do business with you.

The marketing plan is a vital part of your business plan and should emphasize the five Ps of marketing. Product, positioning, place, price and promotion must be thoroughly dissected. But there also has to be more.

Five common mistakes Gary Morton, a consultant in Coldbrook, Nova Scotia, has been helping farmers launch value-added businesses for more than 20 years. Among the most common mistakes he sees value-adders make are: 1. Not defining their target market. Too many people think anyone who eats food is a customer, but that’s too general. Morton says you need to ask: “Who is likely to buy my product and how can I get to them?”

Often the market is not who you think it is.

2. Not budgeting enough for marketing. Morton says you may need to spend as much or more than what you spent on product development.

3. Ineffective package design. Here’s another area where farmers commonly don’t spend enough. The package must stand out and be recognizable.

4. Not giving out enough free samples. “When it comes to food products, it’s essential to give out samples,” Morton says. If your product is in a grocery store, give samples to staff so they can speak knowledgeably about your products to the consumer, he says. Value-added businesses have to have an ongoing commitment to marketing and building product recognition.

5. Doing only half the job. Too often, farmers think that once they’ve got the product onto grocery store shelves their job is done.

Morton emphasizes that although the store is providing space for your product, you still have to create the market demand.

Key elements include product differentiation, your “story,” and your customer profile.

Also never forget that your marketing plan is a way to focus both formal and informal market research to help you tailor your product or service to your target customers for maximum effect.

But how do you create your marketing plan?

Start with your customer. The value-added marketing gurus tell us consumers choose to buy directly from farmers for many reasons. Some people want to buy local, while others want to know where their food comes from. Still others may want to have a relationship with the farmer or they may simply enjoy the atmosphere of the farm or want to have a more intimate shopping experience.

Of course for many, the answer is some version of “all of the above.”

How do you market your product or service into that continuum? Which factor is most important for you?

It can help to start by listening to the real experts, i.e. other farmers who are succeeding at value adding.

“People buy food for many reasons, not just to nourish themselves,” says Cindy Wilhelm, owner of Dragonfly Garden Farm near Chatsworth, Ont. which sells 130 products online through its on-farm store and through various retail outlets. “Know your food and farm philosophy,” says Wilhelm.

“And don’t stray from it.”

“Make sure you have a unique quality product,” adds Jim Eby, owner of Eby Manor Golden Guernsey Milk near Waterloo, Ont. “Our Guernsey milk has a unique flavour and higher A2 protein content, so we felt direct marketing was the way to go.”

It all starts with the product, agrees Debbie Nightingale, owner of Haute Goat in Campbellford, Ont. which sells handmade skin-care products and chocolates made from their goats’ milk through both an online and on-farm stores.

“It’s about the passion you have for it, what makes it different and what your ‘story’ is,” Nightingale continues. “When we talk about our goats and our love for them, it’s contagious. People want to tell you their goat stories, hear more about ours, and just be part of the excitement.”

Jo-Ann McArthur, president and founder of Continued on page 36

34 country-guide.ca

April 2015

soil matters………..www.ifao.com

The best approach environmentally is also the best approach economically in the long run – Dr. Dwayne Beck written by Kate Proctor

“Tillage is to agriculture what fracking is to petroleum,” Dr. Dwayne Beck, from the Dakota Lakes Research Farm told the audience at the Innovative Farmers 2015 conference.

We have passed the time for incremental change – farmers must take bold action in order to recover from decades of soil degradation caused by extractive agriculture, he stressed.

“Our ancestors came to North America from Europe in search of resources to mine, and agriculture has predominately been an extractive industry since the development of tillage tools,” he noted. “Once we started plowing, we started seeing degradation – we were able to increase the speed and extent with which nutrients can be removed from a resource, but the resource has been degraded.”

The Dakota Lakes Research Farm is owned by farmers and affiliated with the South Dakota State University. It is located about six hours south of Brandon, Manitoba near the Missouri River and its primary goal is to identify, research, and demonstrate methods of strengthening and stabilizing the agriculture economy. The summers are drier and the winters colder than what we experience in southern Ontario, but there are lessons to be learned from Beck’s work.

Beck became interested in the effects of tillage on a non-degraded grassland soil and studied the soil for 20 years, looking at erosion and degradation. He and his team found that the best approach environmentally was also the best approach economically in the long run. They were able to conclude that 80 per cent of the total input costs incurred can be traced directly to outside energy inputs, mostly fossil fuels.

This discovery lead to setting a goal that the research farm will be fossil fuel neutral by 2026.

“We will no longer be miners but managers of ecosystems,” Beck said. We need to match the water and mineral cycles with natural systems.

This means considering transport, organic matter, productivity, not adversely affecting the environment, and not mining the soil of nutrients.

“Accomplishing the goal has forced us to think differently about the future – we need transformational NOT incremental change!,” said Beck.

Beck sees that improvements to farm ecosystem health and profitability can be made by doing a better job of managing rotational crops, eliminating tillage, and considering the system as a whole, rather than in small parts.

Beck stressed the importance of focusing on ecosystem processes – the water cycle, energy flow, and community dynamics. When considering the water cycle, look at what happens to the water on your farm. Does the rain feed the ground, or erode the soil? “We identified that the best way to make water go in the ground was to do no-till. “ When considering the mineral cycle – think about whether the minerals are available. Have the minerals been transported, leached, or eroded from environment? “I can capture carbon from the air, but I need to buy phosphorous if I’m going to send wheat to China,” said Beck.

While Beck acknowledged that there is a lot still to be learned about the dynamics of soil health, lack of commitment is the biggest threat to soil conservation. “The best time to have started this was 20 years ago. The second best time is today,” he said. It is vital to move beyond making incremental changes and stop constantly looking backwards.

Interested in hearing more?

Check out Dwayne’s complete presentation on the Innovative Farmers website at www.ifao.

business

Continued from page 34 Nourish food marketing, a Toronto company that specializes in all aspects of food and beverage marketing, agrees that telling “your story” should be a key part of your marketing strategy. “We are hard wired to respond to characterdriven stories,” McArthur says.

Peter Katona, sales and marketing manager at Martin’s Fruit Farm near Waterloo, Ont. also advises trying to see your product and retail space through the eyes of your customer.

That means getting to know your customer. To help you understand where urban customers in particular are coming from, Katona suggests reading popular food literature such as Michael

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Pollan’s, The Omnivore’s Dilemma or watching films like “Food Inc.” Also anticipate what your customers want to find. “Your product and property need to be visually appealing. Visitors may want to see the animals,” says Katona. “Clean up your barnyard, get rid of old, rusty farm equipment… look at it through the city person’s eyes.”

People are coming to your farm for the experience, Katona continues. “Give your potential customers a country welcome.

Remember, this isn’t farming, it’s retail. You need to be a people person, build relationships and be able to deal with complaints.”

Presentation is everything and includes your retail space and staff. Is your sales area organized so people can find what they are looking for? Is your staff well trained? Do they know the product, how it’s made and how to use it? Do they have uniforms?

You will also have to decide on the mix of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, and social media that you will use to promote your product or service.

Nightingale says they use various ways of marketing including their website, Facebook, Twitter, newsletters, online videos, a teeny bit of print, publicity (they were just featured in the LCBO’s Food & Drink magazine and got an incredible response), consumer shows, trade shows, farmers’ markets, through their on-farm store, and getting products to celebrities or opinion-makers so they can spread the word.

Jessica Kelly, direct farm-marketing program lead at the Ontario agriculture ministry says that one of the mistakes she sees people make frequently is to have too narrow of a definition of marketing.

“They tend to think of marketing as advertising and promotion,” Kelly says.

Instead, value-adders should look at the broader opportunity, Kelly says, and the message should be comprehensive and consistent. For example, if it’s a premium product, the packaging and the way you promote the product should fit.

Nightingale sought out the help of an experienced designer, Dana Harrison, to develop her logo. “We had a concept of what we wanted and she designed it,” says Nightingale. “She’s great for foodie startups and gets excited right along with you!”

Nightingale also hired Succinct Social Media to help with promotion.

She says the company has been great for getting their name out there, but she wonders if she should have spent more time and money on getting their website and Facebook page “right,” such as optimizing SEO. “It’s a delicate balance of all of these things,” Nightingale says. “You have to be patient and put in the time and money.”

In our next issue, Helen LammersHelps will conclude this series on building a value-added business with her focus on digital marketing and social media. CG

Best practices for direct farm marketing Dr. Andreas Boecker and his colleagues at the University of Guelph studied several value-added businesses and summarized their findings in the Direct Farm Marketing Business Resources available at www.omafra.gov.on.ca.

Below are recommendations based on their study of how successful valueadded businesses go to market: • Create a unique brand.

• Know the legal requirements.

• Network and collaborate with other local businesses. For example, sell non-competing products from other farms or collaborate on events.

• Get involved in regional publications such as local food maps and

local tourism offices that promote culinary or agri-tourism.

• Connect with local media such as newspaper and radio.

• Stay connected with your customers.

Build a customer database, send out an email newsletter, connect using social media, and use surveys.

• Offer value-added services. Hold special events, give out recipes, and suggest other local attractions to customers.

• Take part in off-site activities that fit your brand. Choose events that attract like-minded people.

• Prioritize your marketing channels, and know which ones are income earners.

April 2015

hr

Don’t work harder, work smarter We all want to be more productive, so here’s the good news.

You can be. Higher productivity is within your reach

By Pierrette Desrosiers, psychologist and coach

would do it if I only had more time.” We all want to be more productive and to perform at our peak every day. We all want to manage our time better, but guess what? If there is one thing that everyone has equally, it is time. We all have 24 hours each day.

What makes the difference is how you invest your energy during those 24 hours, and what you choose (consciously or not) to do, say or think about.

The first key is becoming more aware of your thoughts, actions and habits so you can choose the ones that help you achieve your goals. The second is to know how your brain works. The more you know about your brain, the more freedom you have. You can choose the best approach to improve your time management and get the best return on your time investment.

In the last six years, 98 per cent of everything scientists know about the human brain has been discovered. Moreover, 80 per cent of what scientists thought was true about the human brain before 1995 has now been found to be false or misleading.

We have a lot to relearn as we develop effective management approaches.

Here are seven tips to perform at your peak every day.

1. Don’t check your email first thing.

“Your ability to make great decisions is a limited resource,” writes David Rock in Your Brain at Work. Decisionmaking is a task that spends your limited resources. The more decisions you make in your day, the more you spend that energy. When your bucket is empty, you suffer from “decision fatigue,” compromising your ability to make good decisions. You become paralyzed or impulsive and less able to manage temptations.

The way you start your day is important.

Unless your task is to read and respond to an email, try to keep that for when you have less energy. When you read your emails first, all your good ideas, insights, priorities and objectives are set aside to take care of the objectives and priorities of others.

April 2015

2. Prioritize your top three goals.

If you don’t prioritize, you will just go with the flow. Choose your priorities first thing in the morning or the night before. Because we remember three ideas at a time, the rule of three is the best.

Set three goals for the year, the quarter, the month, the week and the day.

With more than that, your brain will not know what is really important; it will scan too many things and be bothered by too much information from outside.

3. Conserve your decision-making energy at every opportunity.

Because your ability to make great decisions is a limited resource, you should make discerning choices at every moment. So don’t pay attention to trivial, non-urgent or unimportant tasks.

Don’t check your email constantly “just in case”; concentrate on what you’re doing. Don’t overthink your projects.

4. Find and protect your quality thinking time.

Research shows that our ability to think deeply, reflect, have quality time, focus deeply on a task and be truly efficient decreases constantly. Many leaders admit that they have just a couple of hours of quality thinking time per week.

We need that precious time to solve complex problems or to be creative.

The best time for complex thought is when your bucket is full, in the morning. So protect yourself from all distractions: close the door and turn off all the alarms and alerts (emails, texts, phone calls). You will be surprised at how much you can achieve in a short period of time.

5. Don’t multi-task.

Can you really afford to multi-task?

Research proves it: Your brain can only do one conscious thing at a time. When you switch between tasks, everything is affected: your performance, speed and energy level all decrease significantly. You also increase the risk of accident. So don’t text while you drive your tractor.

6. Maintain a positive state of mind.

Your brain scans everything and classifies objects as threats or rewards. As humans, we stay away from threats and move toward rewards. We are more productive, creative and collaborative when we are in the “toward reward” mode. But how do you maintain a positive state of mind when you feel threatened?

• Identify how you feel.

• Put words on your emotions to reduce negativity.

• Reinterpret events. Don’t say, I will never be able to accept that, farming is so hard, or there is no future. Rather, look for opportunities to develop your tolerance or adaptation.

• Have a nap.

Your brain and your body both need rest. So have a nap after lunch or in the middle of the day. I know… “What if someone finds out?”

A short nap (20-30 minutes) is usually recommended. This type of nap provides significant benefits for improved alertness, creativity and performance for the rest of the day without interfering with nighttime sleep. Naps also reduce mistakes and accidents. A study at NASA on sleepy military pilots and astronauts found that a 40-minute nap improved performance by 34 per cent and alertness by 100 per cent.

So, to function at your peak, remember: “ Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.”

— Mahatma Gandhi 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 pierrette@pierrettedesrosiers.com.

country-guide.ca 37

CropsGuide

By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor

Even hive management may contribute to bee loss, although this too gets overlooked in many attacks on farmers’ use of neonic seed treatments.

Make the case Can agriculture afford to lose to the non-science of neonic opponents?

The costs would be even higher than you probably think ere in early 2015, it’s becoming a recognized pattern in agriculture: another day, another article, another proclamation and another call for action, all revolving around farmers’ use of neonicotinoid seed treatments and the alleged damage this does to bees and bee colonies.

To say there is an abundance of information on this topic is one of the biggest understatements in agriculture today. Arguably, the most challenging task is to sift through the reams of available research and findings, analyzing the current political posturing and recognizing the misinformation that’s funnelled through the mainstream media. That’s also what awaits anyone trying to arrive at a workable solution that will suit modern farming practices while satisfying beekeepers and the general public.

What’s at stake can be frightening. Conversations with members of the seed and chemical sector, researchers and involved stakeholders including beekeepers call up a scenario that some say could conceivably push farmers out of business, or at least backwards by several decades. Claims by industry participants go beyond the notion that Ontario’s environment ministry is targeting neonicotinoids, while the agriculture ministry sits on the sidelines.

Now there are rumblings that phosphorus fertilizer, herbicides, fungicides — even transgenics — are in the government’s crosshairs, any of which might render the province’s grains and oilseeds sector little more than an afterthought instead of one of its leading economic engines.

38 country-guide.ca

No one in agriculture is arguing there’s no room for improvement: that’s one of the hallmarks of the industry. Yet in spite of repeated pledges by Ontario’s agri-food sector to work collaboratively on finding workable solutions, it’s becoming evident that there is no room for negotiating in what began as a debate and now threatens to become a war. Even with the amount of information that’s available, activism and protectionism have polarized this issue. In many ways, it’s created a greater divide than the introduction of transgenic soybeans and corn, both of which came to market prior to the widespread adoption and subsequent reliance on the Internet and social media.

It turns out, however, that the neonic debate is unscientific from the very bottom. Bee decline isn’t an issue that can be boiled into a singular cause-and-effect relationship. Dr. Cynthia ScottDupree, a researcher at the University of Guelph who has studied this issue extensively since 1999, has referred to it as “a 1,000-piece puzzle.”

That’s why it’s exceedingly difficult for media outlets and concerned individuals to provide balance and accuracy in reporting the ongoing struggles of this puzzle: the issue cannot be condensed or distilled down to a 450-word newspaper story or a 90-second sound bite. As with most aspects of the agri-food industry, there’s a lot more to it, and it’s debatable as to whether most people are willing to invest the time and effort to sort through all of the details.

April 2015

the neonic debate Who’s involved?

As the Ontario Beekeepers Association (OBA) continues to ramp up its campaign against neonicotinoid seed treatments, the list of those advocating for sound science in dealing with the situation continues to grow. In 2013, when the issue of so-called “bee kills” began receiving more press, the seed and chemical companies were the first to respond, warning of conflicts and a potential return to the use of broader-spectrum pesticides. Prior to the growing season that year, government extension personnel and University of Guelph researchers began exploring different measures to reduce the impact of “fugitive dust,” which was identified as a significant threat to bee health.

In the time since, there have been numerous attacks by OBA board members and select beekeepers, and a successful bid to get the Ontario government to enact a policy that would see neonicotinoid seed treatments reduced by 80 per cent by 2017. Since the government’s pledge in late 2014, the Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO) has been one of the leading opponents of any ban on neonicotinoid seed treatments, with news releases, a cover story in its own publication and in early March 2015, a

pollinator health blueprint it has reportedly shared with the government.

Last November, the organization also joined Farm Action Now, a coalition with the Ontario Bean Growers (OBG), Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association (OFVGA) and Ontario Pork.

Joining the list of organizations standing alongside the GFO are the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association (OSCIA), the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA), Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists (CAPA) and the Canadian Seed Trade Association (CSTA). Statistics Canada, the Conference Board of Canada and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), have also authored reports that counter some of the numbers cited in OBA news releases and on its website.

There’s also been additional support provided by CropLife Canada, CropLife America, the National Farmers Union in Britain and other smaller organizations.

On an individual basis, Drs. Cynthia Scott-Dupree and Chris Cutler, Alberta beekeeper Lee Townsend — even media pundits such as Terence Corcoran from the National Post and Henry Miller from Forbes — have been speaking out in favour of modern farming and denouncing the abandonment of sound scientific principles.

Table 1. Production and value of honey (annual) Estimates 1, 2 Beekeepers

2010

3

Colonies 3 Production of honey, total (pounds x 1000) 4 Value of honey, total (dollars x 1,000)

5

2011

2012

2013

2014

7,403

7,713

8,312

8,489

8,777

620,291

637,920

690,037

667,397

694,217

81,672

79,824

90,759

76,468

81,556

114,197

150,691

176,206

181,283

201,620

Source: Statistics Canada Table 001-0007 (2014-12-09) 1. Figures are compiled by Statistics Canada from provincial data except for New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island where data are collected through a Statistics Canada mail survey.

2. Does not include Newfoundland and Labrador.

3. Beekeeper and colony numbers may include beekeepers that may not extract honey from colonies.

4. Production excludes inventory.

5. Value excludes inventory sales except for in Quebec.

Overwintering bee losses and winter temperatures in Ontario Winter

2009-10

2010-11

2011-12

2012-13

2013-14

Hive losses

22%

43%

12%

38%

58%

Average Dec.-Mar. temperatures (C)*

-3.0

-5.7

0.2

-3.2

-8.3

Source: Dr. Terry Daynard *Kitchener, Ont. (Environment Canada), used as a proxy for southern/southwestern Ontario.

According to statistics compiled from Environment Canada and hive losses reported by the Ontario Beekeepers Association, Dr. Terry Daynard created this table indicating the correlation between average winter temperatures and hive losses.

April 2015

Departure from ‘sound science’ So the good news is that agriculture is developing a united front in countering the OBA actions. The challenge, however, is that modern agriculture is short on time. And it’s that commodity that agriculture and science need more of with roughly 20 months before the government’s proposed legislation goes into effect.

“Good science takes time,” says Dave Baute, current president of the CSTA. Although he’s pleased with interim reports that have been supportive, he is also frustrated with the lack of political will. “I wish that politicians would place their trust in scientists, not rely on some loose and tainted interpretation of a precautionary principle. The media and the government of Ontario chose to pay attention to very select statements made in papers and studies, and chose to ignore the context in which they were made and the facts presented by Statistics Canada.”

Those particular numbers (Table 1) indicate beekeeping and associated production is on the upswing, not declining as has been the contention of OBA board members. Baute, who is also president of Maizex Seeds near Tilbury, Ont., cites another StatsCan report that indicates bee colony numbers and honey production have risen steadily since 2002 (Table 1).

“The PMRA’s recent update that showed the reduced incidents over the winter of 2014 was also positive,” says Baute. “Partly as a result of the efforts of farmers and the seed industry, the numbers of overwintering incidents reported to the PMRA were down significantly from 2013, and most of the incidents reported came from only three operations.”

In fact, the agency’s report, issued in November 2014, supports the original registration data and notes a 70 per cent reduction in reported bee health incidents during the 2014 planting season, compared to 2013. That, adds Baute, has given some comfort to the agri-food industry to see that decisions are being made using a science-based approach at the federal level. It also provides a confirmation that farmers’ efforts as “stewards of the environment” are effective.

Continued on page 40 country-guide.ca 39

CropsGuide The many facets of the neonicotinoid issue Whoever you talk to in agriculture today, most people agree this is not a one-issue, one-solution scenario. As Dr. Cynthia Scott-Dupree has stated this is more like a 1,000-piece puzzle.

The following are just some of the aspects involved in the neonicotinoid debate that may or may not have made it into media reports or websites: • Neonicotinoid-based seed treatments have been a staple for canola growers in Western Canada for longer than in Ontario, yet there has been less concern there about the use of seed treatments.

• Neonicotinoid-based seed treatments are highly specific, and safer than previously available foliar treatments.

• Use of neonicotinoids in Australia pre-dates that of Canada — without any negative impacts — nor is there an issue with varroa mite.

• Corn is cross-pollinated and contains no nectar, and soybeans and wheat are self-pollinating; the crops hold little appeal for bees.

• As far as quality of nectar and pollen protein levels are concerned, canola is one of the best forage sources but blueberry is one of the poorest.

• Ontario’s beekeepers have increased their pollination services by 200 to 300 per cent in the past 10 years, a period in which beekeepers claim honey production has dropped by 20 per cent.

• Is succession in the beekeeping industry affecting production?

• Use of formic acid with oxalic acid to control varroa mites is fatal to bees.

Continued from page 39

Collaborative effort important The notion that so many interests in agriculture — from the seed companies to the chemical companies to equipment manufacturers and ag retailers — have worked together to reduce any impact of seed treatments on bee health needs to be underscored. It’s no secret that agriculture is divided and representative of a very small segment of Canadian society (the “less-than two per cent” factor). Yet following the spectre of thousands of bee colonies “being killed” in the spring of 2013 by the use of an insecticidal seed treatment in use for nearly a decade, Bayer CropScience rushed its new fluency agent to market, replacing talc and graphite as a dry lubricant.

A French equipment manufacturer also made its deflector kit for negative pressure (vacuum) planters available to a Quebec dealer. And as Baute is quick to acknowledge, farmers do have the option of buying their seed without it being treated.

That option has sparked some concern within the seed and chemical sector, but Dr. Terry Daynard, a former University of Guelph professor, also sees that as a positive. He’s been approached by numerous farmers who have opted out of planting treated seed, only because they’re farming on harder clay soils and not finding the same insect pressure as those on sandier or lighter soils. That sort of scrutiny can only be a good thing, according to Daynard.

“The argument that not every acre of corn in Ontario needs to be treated is legitimate and it’s hard to argue with that,” he says. Daynard spends some of his time attending meetings and conferences, sometimes as a speaker but always

as an interested participant. “You can say that it costs you about $6 an acre for treated seed, and you perhaps have an investment of $600 an acre going into growing corn. So from a management standpoint, this is a reasonable insurance cost, and if that’s all you were looking at, that’s a fair thing to do, but if you start looking at the environmental implications, then it’s not a reasonable thing to do. So that’s one that we have to struggle with and figure out how to deal with.”

Above all, Daynard is interested in establishing the truth along with the best course of action. Obeying sound scientific principles is the only way to do that, he says, so he got involved in this issue when the bulk of the information that was coming out in news releases, media reports and general discussions proved too one-sided.

When he started doing some fact-checking of his own, including talking to those he knows in horticulture, he found the actual numbers didn’t jibe with the claims of the OBA and its supporters. As he’s learned more, he’s posted blogs on his website and taken to social media to provide balance and accuracy, and counter claims made by the OBA and its cohorts.

Much of the problem Daynard sees comes from the oversimplification of many of the points made by the antineonic side. For instance, there’s the belief that if neonicotinoids are banned, it would solve any problems surrounding bee health completely. Yet the exact opposite could occur. Without seed treatments, many growers could revert to using broader-spectrum pesticides that kill all insects, including beneficials such as ladybird beetles.

Varroa mites still a problem Another misconception from the antineonic camp is that disease management is no longer a concern. Daynard insists that is simply not true. When he began studying the different aspects contained in the issue, he was surprised to find that varroa mite infestations are still affecting the beekeeping sector.

“If you don’t manage varroa very carefully, you’re going to have lots of problems in the bee business,” says Daynard. “Dr. Ernesto Guzman, who’s at the University of Guelph, and a group of other bee researchers across Canada

Contrary to popular belief outside of agriculture, farmers and industry stakeholders are just as concerned about bee health and environmental impacts of modern farming practices.

40 country-guide.ca

Continued on page 42 April 2015

THE ONTARIO AGROLOGIST A conversation with William (Bill) Ungar, P.Ag., CCA-ON, and President of Ungar International based in London, Ontario.

The company sources, imports, markets and sells agriculturalgrade fertilizers, as well as automotive- and industrial-grade chemicals, with contacts and associates around the world.

Q: Why did you feel it was appropriate

that Professional Agrologists are not

to pursue a P.Ag. designation?

nearly as well recognized in Eastern

Bill: I wanted to be part of an

Canada as in Western Canada,

association that’s recognized and well

simply because in those provinces

regarded within its sphere of influence.

a practicing, consulting agrologist

An Institute of Agrologists brings a

cannot make certain recommendations

professional membership together

without holding something like a

who must follow guidelines set out

P.Ag. designation. Now that’s not the

through accepted and mandated

case here in Ontario, but my P.Ag.

standards of practice. Those standards

designation is required in the West for

continuous system. As an Agrologist

may be upgraded from time to

much of the work I do with customers

you are a steward for the agricultural

time for purposes on competence

and with the Ag industry. Quite frankly,

system, which is part of the broader

within an evolving field, but there is

I believe my P.Ag. designation, as it

food system which, in turn, is part

also a code of ethics in place that is

currently stands in Ontario, should be

practiced by members to ensure that

mandated as a licensed requirement

a level of objectivity is maintained.

just as it is in Western Canada.

Q: Do your customers and this

Q: Why do you feel an upgraded

industry expect a higher level

mandate is necessary?

of professionalism today?

of a much broader environmental system. This is an integrated system that just can’t be seen as piecemeal, or perceived as separate parts anymore. It is not seen that way by the production or processing industry

Bill: I go back to the complexities within

Bill:Yes, when you work with the

today, and it’s certainly not seen that

the industry, and also with the more

way by the larger general public.

public today in such a complex and

critical public that we’re dealing with

evolving business environment, which

today. The modern system we deal

is certainly the case in the agriculture

with today, that’s local, national and

The Ontario Institute of Agrologists

and agrifood industry, being part of a

global, is just too much to deal with

represents nearly 500 Professional

for someone without the ongoing

(P.Ag.), Technical (T.Ag.), and

training, experience, and the proper

Articling (A.Ag.) Agrologist

credentials that go with it. Agrologists

members across Ontario’s

work in every facet of agriculture —

diverse agricultural industry. The

and as individuals, an Agrologist goes

OIA is based in Guelph. For a

Q: What circumstances do

well beyond what many would view

current listing of OIA Members,

you encounter where a P.Ag.

as part of the traditional agriculture

events and information go to

designation is required?

and agrifood system. But it is all part

the website shown below.

Bill: My company does a lot of business

of a larger whole – when you see how

in Western Canada. I have to say

agriculture relates to a very long and

regulated body such as an Institute of Agrology is largely expected by many of the people I deal with at various levels, and in some circumstances it is required by someone in my position.

www.oia.on.ca

CropsGuide Continued from page 40 published a report a few years ago that varroa is directly responsible for 85 per cent of the bee deaths in Canada. To me, that’s by far the biggest problem that beekeepers have — if you don’t manage varroa properly, you’re just not in business.”

Lee Townsend, a commercial beekeeper from Stony Plain, Alta., echoes that statement. A well-known advocate for beekeepers and agriculture working together, Townsend has also constructed a website in an effort to inform people — and dispel claims made by the OBA’s directors and other supporters. Early in 2015, he posted a five-page dissertation that picked apart a media release from the OBA disputing comments and claims from various agricultural groups and companies. From Townsend’s vantage point, there simply isn’t enough factual information that’s cutting through the rhetoric, including the facts on varroa, which he calls a “gateway pest.”

“If you have a problem with varroa in your operation, it leads you down the road of all the other viruses and diseases that can affect bees,” says Townsend, who has been monitoring the neonic situation since its introduction in Canada. “We do have controls for varroa; the one effective synthetic miticide we have is Apivar (amitraz), which we’ve been using now for six or seven years, and usually it’s around year eight that we start to see resistance buildup.

We haven’t seen that yet, but we have no synthetic miticides in the pipeline ready to use if there’s resistance with Apivar.”

Another issue he has is with the reporting of colony health and deaths from the winter of 2013-14 (Table 2). On his albertabuzzing.com website, Townsend, who was once on the pesticide committee with the Canadian Honey Council, says that statistics on overwintering losses in Ontario are overblown. The stats are estimated via a voluntary survey sent out to the province’s 247 registered commercial beekeepers. Out of 247 in 2013-14, only 97 (or 39 per cent) responded — without a definitive statement on how many colonies were involved. And of those 97 producers, 50 (51.5 per cent) reported losses of higher than 50 per cent. Yet these producers that claimed losses of more than 50 per cent represent only 20 per cent of the commercial beekeepers in Ontario. So how OMAFRA arrived at the 58 per cent figure cited in the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists’ report is somewhat suspect, from Townsend’s perspective.

42 country-guide.ca

A look ahead to Part 2 in this series: Aside from monitoring for insect pest thresholds, can growers do more to help bee health with cover crops, including phacelia, a new arrival in Ontario?

What about management?

Townsend maintains there’s a considerable difference between hobbyist beekeepers and those who rely on bee and honey production as a livelihood. In Alberta, he refers to the ties between the commercial beekeepers and the farmers, as well as those in the seed and chemical sector: the retailers and researchers.

“We’ve been dealing with these companies for a very long time, we’ve been exposed to neonics for as long, if not longer, than Ontario — and at a lot higher dosage level just by the acreage of canola that’s grown out here, and by the number of hives — and we haven’t had any problems,” says Townsend. “But we had other issues a number of years ago with hive health and we’ve worked with all of our partners to find out why. Since then we’ve seen nothing but growth, so we learned very quickly that working with the parties involved works much better than annoying them.”

To be clear, Townsend left the Canadian Honey Council’s pesticide committee because of his frustration in dealing with OBA directors, not the members.

He stresses that there are some very good beekeepers in Ontario who have tried to distance themselves from the board, often because he finds the directors are fixated on the “one-issue, one-solution” scenario: ban neonics and all will be right in the world.

“When you try to bring up that (multi-faceted) approach with the OBA board of directors, it’s, ‘No, we know what we’re doing — it’s all the neonics,’ and that’s not the truth,” says Townsend, adding that media reports often unveil more information than intended. “Anytime I see the paper or TV reports, they show these beekeepers who are losing their bees and claiming that it’s neonics.

But you look at the equipment they’re using and the management practices they’re following, and it’s not a surprise their bees are dying.”

Cause and effect Management of bee health and the abandonment of sound science are also at the top of the list for Dr. Cynthia Scott-Dupree, who has been studying the effect of neonicotinoid seed treatments on canola. For her, there are two concepts involved with neonics and bees.

The first is that of residues in nectar and pollen of flowering plants grown from treated seed (which is part of the work she has done in canola).

“If you look at the Tier Three largescale field studies done on that — and even the Tier Two tented studies that have been done — you can see, repeatedly, there is virtually no acute impact on honeybees and there appears to be very little chronic or sub-lethal impact,” says Scott-Dupree.

The other part is the issue of contaminated dust that results during the April 2015

the neonic debate planting of treated seeds with negative pressure or vacuum-type planters. In 2012, when the reports of the first bee kills in Ontario came out, it was a perfect storm of conditions: the winter season was short and very mild, the start of spring was open and advanced and some farmers were planting in late March, in windy and dry conditions.

“Because it was warm the bees were out foraging and there were bee losses,” she says. “The PMRA did its assessment and came up with the figure that 70 per cent of the bees that were dead contained neonics. But there’s a problem with that kind of reference to neonic residues, because they never indicated the amount of those residues — the mere presence of a toxin doesn’t mean that it’s going to kill — it’s the dose that makes the poison.”

This is where Scott-Dupree becomes concerned that the government’s approach is based on politics and emotions — not science. For starters, how did the provincial government arrive at an 80 per cent mark for the reduction of treated seed? On top of that, she questions the demand that growers buy treated seed in October when they can’t predict the severity of winter conditions and how those conditions will have an impact on pest levels the following spring.

“If we had the science that allows farmers to predict whether they will need treated seeds or not — that early before planting — then we’d be in a good place, but we aren’t there,” says Scott-Dupree.

“In the end, if we want to come up with an answer that’s going to benefit everyone, there may have to be compromises from a lot of different sides.”

Other considerations Scott-Dupree believes time will provide several clearer paths to follow. She has studied and participated in work being done by Dr. Art Schaafsma at the University of Guelph’s Ridgetown Campus, and she believes there is a problem with bee exposure to contaminated dust at planting.

But finding scientific solutions takes time.

Even the recommendation within the government’s policy — to train certified crop advisers to scout pest levels and make recommendations on the need for seed treatment — will require more time than the policy allows. That’s mostly because there isn’t the long-term data required for training them.

“This is what annoys me about the government in making these decisions,” April 2015

says Scott-Dupree, whose research has been ignored by the government on one side and routinely attacked by OBA board members on the other. “It all looks good… but they don’t have the science to support these decisions, and they don’t want to listen.”

Scott-Dupree contends that when the beekeepers first stated that neonics were killing their bees, people really didn’t pay much attention to them. But then when they shifted their perspective to say growers were not using the concept of integrated pest management (IPM) correctly — they’re treating with chemicals prophylactically, which is exactly what IPM isn’t — more people started listening, and rightly so.

That also opens the door on a whole new discussion surrounding the use of IPM. The challenge, however, is the confusion surrounding the actual definition of the concept. Like the term “sustainability,” IPM can mean different things to different people. As Scott-Dupree says, the concept of IPM on paper is amazing, but getting people to embrace it fully can be extraordinarily difficult.

Much more at stake Beyond banning neonicotinoid seed treatments, there is concern that activists will continue their efforts. But if the effects of a neonic ban on rapeseed farmers in the U.K. are any indication, Ontario farmers stand to lose a lot in the short and long term.

Farmers in Britain have endured a ban on neonicotinoid-treated seed for their rapeseed, and in 2014 suffered devastating losses against overwhelming populations of cabbage stem beetles.

But the damage to farmers’ management practices and overall production levels are just two of many facets. Two separate studies, one from the Conference Board of Canada and another from a group of agricultural economists and scientists with AgInfomatics in the U.S., forecast crippling economic impacts in both countries. The Conference Board’s research estimates Ontario farmers would lose more than $630 million annually. That would affect jobs throughout the food value chain, from country elevators and ag retailers to equipment manufacturing and research and development. And it’s likely that it would affect jobs in urban centres, as well. The AgInfomatics research was a little more conclusive and ominous, stating, “Research results prove that neonicotinoids add billions of dollars to the economy and benefits entire communities, not just individual farmers.”

“This is a fight for science-based decision-making on the part of leadership,” says Baute, who is also impressed with how seed, chemical and equipment sectors have worked proactively to find the best course of action. “If the leaders of our government have caved to the political opportunity of popularity, then all bets are off.” CG

Table 2: Overwintering losses — by province, 2013-14 Province

Number of colonies wintered

Fall 2013

Number of dead or unproductive colonies

Spring 2014*

Per cent wintering loss

British Columbia

39,047

5,858

15.0

Alberta

282,000

52,170

18.5

Saskatchewan

100,000

18,880

18.9

Manitoba

71,000

17,040

24.0

Ontario

100,000

58,101

58.0

Quebec

50,000

9,000

18.0

New Brunswick

10,282

2,700

26.3

Nova Scotia

18,500

4,200

22.7

Prince Edward Island

6,995

1,338

19.1

169,196

25.0 **

Newfoundland and Labrador

Data Not Available

CANADA

677,824

Source: Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists (CAPA) * Calculated from the per cent winter-kill reported in the survey of beekeepers, multiplied by the total number of colonies reported to Statistics Canada in the fall of 2013. ** Calculated as total estimated mortality in Canada divided by the total estimated number of colonies in Canada wintered. country-guide.ca 43

CropsGuide

# PestPatrol

with Mike Cowbrough, OMAFRA

ave a question you want answered?

H Hashtag #PestPatrol on twitter.com to @cowbrough or email Mike at mike.cowbrough@ontario.ca.

Question: A couple of years ago there was a lot of talk about a new invasive insect, some sort of stink bug. I was told that it could take a few years before this insect reached populations that would negatively affect crops. What are populations of this insect doing in Ontario? or our answer, I contacted Tracey Baute, OMAFRA field crop entomologist. Her response is below: Let’s start on a positive note. We did not find any brown marmorated stink bugs (BMSB) during our corn and soybean field survey in 2014.

The discouraging news is that they are being found in more locations across Ontario. From past BMSB surveys and OMAFRA’s outreach efforts to homeowners (BMSB overwinter as adults in homes), we know that they have been overwintering in: Beamsville, Brampton, Burlington, Cedar Springs, Delhi, Fort Erie, Grimsby, Hamilton, Kincardine, London, Maidstone, Milton, Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ottawa, Paris, St. David’s, Stoney Creek, Tecumseh, Toronto, Vaughan, and Waterdown.

During our recent two-year survey, we also found breeding populations of BMSB in Hamilton, London, Newboro, St. Catharines and Windsor. Of greater concern are the recent reports of low levels of stink bug damage found on two apple farms near Hamilton and Waterdown, as well as homeowner complaints about damage to garden and ornamental plants. This is a good indication that BMSB is reaching higher population densities that will push them to move to their host crops in the near future.

We continue to stay informed on research efforts being conducted in the mid-Atlantic states where BMSB has been causing significant economic damage in corn and soybeans. Action thresholds, spray timings and management options are being identified and will be validated and put to use here in Ontario when management is required.

To learn more about brown marmorated stink bug and how to control it, visit www.ontario.ca/stinkbug. CG

44 country-guide.ca

Photo: Hannah Fraser, OMAFRA

Brown, marmorated stink bugs aren’t major crops pests yet, but their numbers are building across southwestern Ontario

April 2015

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SOIL CARE – Will we learn from history?

2015 is International Year of the Soil, and from April 19-25, National Soil Conservation Week brings focus to soil care in Canada. We need to consider our record through the ages as we plan for the future.

Through the past 10,000 years, history records the successive rise and failure of great civilizations and powerful nations.

For example, Mesopotamia (now Iraq), with nearly 20 million people in 3,000 BC, was the most progressive nation in history and then it declined. By 100 BC, Rome had become the most powerful and industrious, but by 500 AD the power of Rome was gone. The decline of these and most civilizations happened for many reasons, but ultimately when their capacity to grow food declined people moved on to new frontiers and fresh soil.

Now – there are no new frontiers!

We must not repeat past mistakes.

The ancients did not carelessly squander their land. It gave them food, wealth and strategic political advantage. Productive soil was a prized possession, yet over the centuries its productivity slipped away. Failure came when agriculture was extended to fragile land, when the cropland water supply failed and when the soil was depleted by tillage-based agriculture. Tillage always removes more from the soil than can be returned. Plato, a Greek citizen and philosopher who tended his own soil, observed that soil building ended and soil erosion began with plow-based agriculture. So in 350 BC, plowing was banned on hillsides in Greece.

By 1500 AD, farmers in Lowlands Europe – Holland, Belgium and adjoining lands – had learned how to build soil organic matter and improve productivity with the use of plant residues, manures, crop rotation and new plant types such

as legumes. In the late 1800s, Darwin recognized the value of earthworms in soil building. Much later, mycorrhiza fungi were recognized as important contributors to nutrient retrieval for plants and for the development of soil aggregates that resist erosion. All of this contributes to biologically active, healthy, productive soil as well as a soil-building process.

Regrettably, around 1730 Jethro Tull, an English entrepreneur studying plant growth, wrongly concluded that plants grow by absorbing small particles of soil through their roots thus intensive tillage was advocated. The plant-growth response was actually caused by nutrient release by bacteria that prefer tillage. However, tillage destroys soil – biota, organic matter and aggregates – the entire soil-building process.

Geomorphologists tell us that the only sustainable way to use soil is to mimic nature. On either the dry grasslands of the prairies or on the moist woodlands of the east, undisturbed soil is highly aggregated.

This provides strong resistance to water or wind erosion and creates important capacity for water infiltration.

The ground is covered with protective plant litter and the soil is stabilized by undisturbed root systems. Undisturbed biota can provide nutrient for plants. Only no-till crop production replicates this.

Some farmers have used this practice successfully and profitably. They can actually build soil by managing crop residue carefully and growing cover crops.

Water is the first limiting factor for crop production so soil moisture management has always been critical. Reliable provision of irrigation water has been a challenge; however, during the past 250 years we have learned how to use sub-surface

drainage effectively for efficient water use. Today, we have highly skilled contractors with technically advanced equipment to do this work. This allows us to sustainably extend crop production to a greater range of soil conditions.

Dr. David Montgomery, author of DIRT – The Erosion of Civilizations, recounts the sad legacy of tillage-degraded soil during the past 10,000 years. He then points out that “Soil is not lost because we farm – soil is lost because of how we farm.”

We have tools and knowledge that the ancients did not have. We can make choices that provide productive soil and clean water for future generations. The choice is ours.

Roman Empire ruins, North Africa, the effect of long-term tillage-based crop production and intensive grazing.

S: C   L-7,000 , USDA

Today, we can re-build and protect soil with the use of no-till and cover crops.

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w e at h e r NEAR NORMAL

COOLER THAN NORMAL

MILDER THAN NORMAL

Showers Flurries Cold WARMER THAN USUAL

Ch a S ng Ma how eab y f ery le ro st

ONTARIO

NEAR-NORMAL TEMPERATURES AND PRECIPITATION

ble Changeary Showe

May 3 to June 13, 2015

May 3-9: Often sunny. Cool air is displaced at times with warmer air and scattered shower activity. Chance thunderstorms south. Windy. Frost areas central and north.

May 10-16: Highs in the teens and some 20s south. Sunny days are interrupted by showers, chance thunderstorms. Blustery at times. Frost pockets and snow north.

May 17-23: Pleasant south with scattered showers or heavier thunderstorms on one or two occasions. Windy at times. Cooler north with some rain and patchy frost and snow.

May 24-30: Mostly sunny with scattered shower or thunderstorm activity south.

Seasonal to warmer. Some rain and a frost risk northwest and away from larger lakes.

May 31-June 6: Highs in the 20s south except cooler near the lakes and north.

Mainly sunny but with scattered showers or thunderstorms, heavy in a few regions.

June 7-13: Sunny on most days with normal temperatures but a couple of humid, windy days bring heavy thunderstorms to a few places. Seasonal north with some rain or thunderstorms.

QUEBEC May 3-9: Changeable temperatures and at times cool. Frost patches south, more widespread central and north. Sunny with a few showers south, wet snow north.

May 10-16: Highs in the teens except a few 20s south. Frost patches south, more common central and north. Sunny with scattered shower activity, chance thunderstorms.

April 2015

COLDER THAN NORMAL

Sh Mil o d sp we ell ry s

ild rs M we o Sh

ol ells o C sp et W

May 17-23: Seasonal to occasionally cool.

Sunshine interchanges with showers and thunderstorms south. Windy at times.

Scattered rain south, snow north.

May 24-30: Seasonal to warm but a couple of cooler, blustery days bring showers or heavy thunderstorms. Cool north and near larger lakes with scattered rain, frost.

May 31-June 6: Sunny most days aside from showers or heavier thunderstorms on two to three occasions. Highs often in the 20s, a little cooler in the north and near larger lakes.

June 7-13: Sunny and seasonable but with showers or heavier thunderstorms at a few localities on a couple of warmer, more humid days. Cooler north with some rain.

ATLANTIC PROVINCES May 3-9: Cool with some rain, drizzle and fog. Windy. Occasional snow in eastern and northern regions. Some sun southwest with scattered shower activity.

May 10-16: Unsettled on a few days with occasional rain or snow and cool. Brighter west and south with scattered rain. Inland frost. Occasionally windy.

May 17-23: Sunshine alternates with some rain and fog. Blustery with a few frost areas inland. Seasonal to cool.

Chance of snow eastern and northern regions.

May 24-30: Rain and fog dominate eastern regions with a few cool, windy days.

Chance of snow. Often sunny, seasonal west with scattered showers or heavier rain.

May 31-June 6: Gusty winds bring fluctuating temperatures. Often sunny with coastal fog. Scattered showers, thunderstorms west, periodic rain and cool spells east.

June 7-13: Expect several pleasant days in the west with highs in the 20s and scattered showers or thunderstorms. Elsewhere sunny with some rain and fog and highs in the teens.

May 3 to June 13, 2015 NATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS Warmer- and drier-than-usual weather is expected to bring summer-like conditions to western British Columbia in this late-spring period. Contrasting winter-like weather is anticipated across much of the northern and easternmost regions of Canada with rain and snow well into June.

Elsewhere look for changeable weather as warmer air and longer days combine to create more seasonable conditions from eastern British Columbia through the Prairies and on into Ontario, southern Quebec and most of the Maritimes. In many of these areas, May and June are the wettest months of the year. Overall, however, expect precipitation and temperatures to average close to normal values.

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 51

h e a lt h

I’m sorry, could you repeat that?

By Marie Berry he number of times you say “Pardon me” may be the only sign you have that your hearing has gradually lessened. It happens with age, but even so, it’s important to recognize there are steps you can take to reduce your risk and to maximize your hearing.

About 10 per cent of all Canadians have hearing loss, but as you would expect, the numbers do jump as age increases. At 45 years of age, only about 20 per cent are affected, but by age 65 it’s about 60 per cent of people. Men are more often affected than women, which may be related to noise exposure at work.

It is also thought these numbers should actually be higher because hearing loss is so gradual that it is not noticed, or because it is denied.

There are two components to hearing. Conductive hearing loss occurs when sounds are prevented from getting to the middle or inner ear, for example because of impacted earwax, a foreign body, water, or even an ear infection. Removal of the obstacle will solve this type of hearing loss.

By contrast, sensorineural hearing loss involves the inner ear and the nervous system. Unfortunately, this kind of hearing loss is usually permanent.

Your ear has three parts: the outer ear which is the part that you see, the middle ear where hearing is sensed, and the inner ear which is responsible for sending sound messages to the brain for interpretation.

Incidently, the inner ear is all important in maintaining your balance, which often means that damage to the inner ear will affect both your balance and hearing.

Earaches can affect any part of your ear and reduce your hearing. Infections, a foreign body, trauma such as a blow to the ear, or even something like swimmer’s ear can be the cause, but once the earache clears your hearing returns to normal.

Earwax or cerumen can be a problem if it accumulates and plugs the ear canal. Earwax is a mixture of secretions from both sweat and earwax glands. If you are older, have narrow or misshapen ear canals, wear a hearing aid, or even have lots of hair in your ears, earwax can readily accumulate and become impacted. There are various earwax removal products available, but you need to read and follow the instructions carefully. And, if you are unsuccessful, don’t just try another product, have your ears checked first.

If you notice that your hearing has changed and you have begun taking a new medication, ask if hearing loss may be an adverse effect.

Some drugs can affect your hearing. Drugs with the potential to reduce hearing by affecting the nerves that sense sound include antibiotics like gentamicin, tetracycline, and erythromycin; the leg cramp remedy quinine; some cancer drugs; and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen and acetylsalicylic acid. This effect typically occurs over time and, usually, stopping the drug halts the loss, although hearing may not return completely.

Acetylsalicylic acid in higher doses can also cause tinnitus or ringing in your ears. The ringing may not develop into hearing loss, but it certainly interferes with hearing. Again, stopping the drug will alleviate the effect, but even reducing the dose may do the trick.

Hearing loss does increase with age, but that doesn’t mean it’s inevitable. These steps can help provide lifelong hearing protection Your ears are considered to be self cleaning and you shouldn’t need to do anything else other than wash your external ear, for example when you are shampooing your hair. Don’t try to “dig out” anything from your ear, earwax included! You may push whatever you are trying to remove further into your ear. Ideally, you want to put nothing smaller than your elbow in your ear, if that’s even possible!

Take care of your hearing by wearing ear protection when you are exposed to loud noises, such as machinery or rock music. And, if you wear a hearing aid, always remember to make sure it has fresh batteries and that it fits properly. Getting older is no reason why you shouldn’t have good hearing.

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

Pregnancy warnings seem to be everywhere these days. Of course you shouldn’t drink alcohol or smoke during pregnancy, but you may be unsure if you can take any drugs while pregnant. Next month, we’ll look at drugs and pregnancy.

52 country-guide.ca

April 2015

HAVE YOU GOT IT? “We went to church and no one, not one person, spoke to us.” Derek and Heather Punshon are regulars at the church we attend in Saskatoon. They attended church while on vacation and were ignored. People gathered in clusters at the coffee hour following the service but did not include the Punshons. Derek and Heather are an outgoing couple with pleasant dispositions. They are not easily riled but the experience “ruffled their feathers.”

As Derek and Heather described the church service, I recognized the formula. The clergy designed the worship hoping newcomers would feel comfortable. Unfortunately, their efforts to be “user friendly” failed the Punshons, and perhaps others.

More is required than planning a service, printing bulletins and writing a sermon. People will come back another Sunday if there is personal contact and encouragement to return.

It takes a certain amount of courage to walk into any strange place. I think venturing into a new church is scary.

Churches have personalities. They have characteristics which define them beyond the shape of the building.

Most churches have an image of themselves as friendly and welcoming. In all fairness, churches are eager to receive newcomers and want them to feel at home. Contrary messages work against those hopes. Did you visit a church and feel your car was parked in another person’s space? Did you get the impression that you were sitting in someone else’s pew? Did anyone make an effort to learn your name and ask if you had a question? Visitors come and go. Churches have an opportunity to show warmth and friendliness to people who drop in. Sometimes they blow it.

A restaurant posted a prominent sign “Guests are not to stay beyond one hour.” Churches have their own signs, although not as clear or blatant as that. Usually they are read in the faces, smiles (or lack of smiles), and tone of voice of members.

It does not take much to show genuine interest. Often it’s nothing more than a great smile that seals the deal.

Desmond Tutu spent his life advocating for justice and fairness. He was instrumental in the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa. He became the first black archbishop in Africa. When he was a young boy, his family moved to the City of Johannesburg. Tutu’s father worked as a teacher, and his mother was a cleaning lady and cook at a school for blind children. Desmond Tutu, nine years old, met a priest named Trevor Huddleston at the school. Tutu calls the meeting the most defining moment in his life.

Huddleston, an English bishop known for his fight against apartheid, was a priest in the slums at that time. The child Tutu witnessed this tall white priest (Huddleston) take off his hat to greet Tutu’s mother, a black working-class woman. Tutu never forgot this gesture and it gave him the passion to fight apartheid later on in his life.

A writer named George Lewis says, “All of our efforts toward reform and renewal are utterly futile unless we have grasped the simple fact of Christian life that the church is people.”

A minister preached a very long sermon. When it finally ended a friendly lady noticed a newcomer in the congregation. She moved across the aisle to offer a welcome. “Hello,” she said, “I am Gladys Dunn.” “So am I glad he’s done” answered the visitor.

Suggested Scripture: Leviticus 19:33-34, Colossians 3:12-17

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Rod Andrews is a retired Anglican bishop. He lives in Saskatoon. ©2015 Farm Business Communications

April 2015

country-guide.ca 53

acres

When tomorrow comes...

By Leeann Minogue

Maybe someone will lose those stupid signs anyway he first day, Dale found ways to cope with the frustration. He watched from his truck, driving out to the field and back. He paced the yard, if hopping around the yard on crutches could be called pacing. He phoned his son, texted his father.

But by 10 a.m. on Day 2, Dale hit the wall.

“I’m going to run the tractor,” he announced to his wife when she brought their grandchildren outside to see what he was up to.

“They can get by without you,” Donna said.

“Jeff’s running the tractor. Elaine and your dad are doing fine keeping the cart loaded. And Jeff says Alan’s doing fine picking rocks.”

“Alan’s only been working here for 15 minutes.

We can’t put all our eggs in his basket.”

“You’re still taking painkillers,” Donna said, giving him a hard glare. “It’s right on the label: ‘No heavy machinery.’”

“I haven’t taken any pills all day,” he said triumphantly.

“That explains all that moaning I heard when you thought I wasn’t in the room,” Donna said.

Dale had been in a lot of pain since he’d broken his ankle falling off the top platform of the grain cart, changing the tank lid seals two weeks earlier.

But the physical pain was nowhere near as bad as the pain of not being part of spring seeding.

Before noon Dale had convinced the rest of the crew that he was perfectly able to run the tractor.

His son Jeff had given in reluctantly, mainly because they also had a customer coming to the farm to pick up seed, someone had to go to town for more fertilizer and Alan had already hit a fence with the rock picker.

Dale had a tough time making his way up into the cab, carrying his cooler full of lunch in one hand and clutching his crutches under an arm. But he managed to use his free hand and one good leg to pull himself up the ladder.

54 country-guide.ca

Dale was happy to be back in the cab. It was a huge relief for him to finally do something useful, and this was his favourite field to seed. It was just north of the Hanson farm, and this time of day every time Dale came up over the hill he could see the sun glinting off the bins at the edge of the yard.

It was also the field closest to the road — the field that all the neighbours would be sure to associate with the Hansons, and the field with the potential to make him the most proud of the operation.

This was going to be the year, all right, Dale thought. The soil was moist, but not too wet.

They’d done soil tests and with what they were adding, there should be nitrogen to spare. His ankle barely hurt at all. That new song he liked came on the radio, so Dale turned it up.

The throbbing in his ankle picked up as the afternoon went on. By 5, it was getting hard for him to think about anything else, but he was almost finished with this quarter. He stopped at the corner of the field closest to the house, next to the road, where Ed and Alan were waiting with the trucks.

Dale couldn’t get out of the cab to help out. He hoped nobody would drive by and see him, just sitting there like a lump while everybody else did the work. Or, if anybody did drive by, Dale sure as heck hoped it would be somebody who knew about his ankle, so they wouldn’t think he’d got lazy. Or worse yet, old.

Ed and Alan finished up. They shut off the augers and waved him off. Dale pulled out, being extra careful to edge around the power pole — close, but not too close.

Then his stomach tightened as the wheels started to spin. It was much wetter in that low spot by the pole than Dale had expected. He didn’t breathe again until the wheels caught and he was back in motion, just in time to notice Ralph, crawling by on the road with the grader, waving. If Ralph saw him do anything stupid, it would be all over the RM April 2015

acres

before morning. Dale waved back, hoping Ralph hadn’t noticed that he’d almost gotten stuck, or that he’d been just sitting around while the guys filled the cart.

And suddenly the alarm was going off and his phone was ringing and the radio was way too loud. He swung around in his seat to see what was going on and banged his left leg on the steering column. “Damn ankle!” he cursed.

“Damn phone!” And then he cursed again. He’d left the fan off.

He switched it on. How far had he gone? Thirty? Forty feet? Thirty feet with no seed in the drill? A long empty stretch right by the road. But it wouldn’t be empty would it?

There’d be a patch of weeds twice as big as the damn garden.

Could he turn around and take another run at this spot? Not without Ed and Alan seeing him. And Ralph too, of course. And now there was a pickup truck going by. And another one coming from the south. Jim Callum, slowing down to take a good look. They would all know exactly what he’d done if he turned around. And next time through, he’d probably get stuck to boot.

“Damn drill,” Dale shouted, and kept on going. “Why do they make them so damn wide?”

This was the worst possible place for a weedy mess.

It couldn’t be closer to the house. The road. Dale was mortified. Horrified. Embarrassed. Could he even get his pounding ankle out of the cab if this stress made him throw up? How would he tell Jeff?

Dale held himself together for 20 more minutes, when Jeff drove out. Dale stopped the tractor and Jeff climbed up.

“I ate early, Dad,” Jeff said. “You’ve put in a long enough day. Go in. Mom’s got supper for you. And take something for that ankle — looks like you’re in pain.

“Yeah,” Dale said. “Listen, Jeff…”

“I know we said we could do it without you,” Jeff told Dale, “but I’m not really sure how. It’s great of you to come out here, with that leg.”

“About that…,” Dale started, but Jeff interrupted again.

“Dad, I just want you to know. I don’t how I could keep this farm going if something happened to you.”

“But there’s a…,” Dale tried.

“You’ve taught me a lot about this. I don’t say thank you enough.”

Dale didn’t have the heart to try again. Maybe by the time the crop came up, everybody would forget who’d seeded this field.

Jeff’s phone rang while Dale was still struggling to drag his cast through the door of the cab.

“Yeah, sure,” Jeff was saying. “We’ll put those variety signs up right in the field Dad just seeded. It’ll be perfect.

Right by my house. Field’s in good shape. Ship ’em out as soon as you can.”

Dale put his crutches under his arms and headed home.

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

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country-guide.ca 55

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©2015 CNH Industrial America LLC. All rights reserved. Case IH is a trademark registered in the United States and many other countries, owned by or licensed to CNH Industrial N.V., its subsidiaries or affiliates. www.caseih.com