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July/August 2015 $3.50

SMA 001532 Pub.Country Guide Size 2x2 Issue July/Aug2015 Art Director: sd/ Copywriter: ms Account Executive: wt Date: 07/01/15

+PLUS Harness These seven Megatrends to drive farm performance, pg. 18 CROPS GUIDE  MANAGE YOUR CANOLA FOR RIGHT AMOUNT OF HARVEST LOSS, PG. 44 BIOSECURITY COMES TO CROPS, PG 48 ARE WE LOSING SUSTAINABILITY? PG. 50

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Stay Ahead of the Grain

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Contents

july/august 2015

BUSINESS 8

used equipment perks up As sales of new equipment cool, good used machines are holding their value, and in some cases gaining ground.

12 smart farm strategies for giving

New tax laws and innovative financial strategies give you new ways to make donations with real impact.

14 talking up the job

What’s wrong with letting consumers know just how professional you have to be to grow their food in Canada today?

18 megatrends versus canada’s farms

Two top economists predict the seven big issues that are going to change your farm in the next five years.

22 an angel of an idea

As Kim Keller is proving, the test today is whether we can get innovative about how we handle our innovations.

26 His new playbook

What can farmers adapt from Wade Barnes’ trail-blazing success at Farmers Edge?

29 Genuinely in Business

As Canadian lead of Dow AgroSciences, it’s Brad Orr’s job to create growth by making Dow truly a people company.

32 how it plans to beat us

PG. 22 Thought-leaders pack this Country Guide with outside-the-box perspectives to shape how you farm and do business, from valuable insights on how to adapt the strategies of successful ag businesses to advice on how to structure your farm for success.

Australia reveals its strategy to take over our export markets.

35 three key alIgnments for top farm management

Align your vision, finances and management for more success.

36 back to work

It’s time for tractor engines that are better, not just cleaner.

38 the roads of zambia

We’ve always known the country’s agriculture potential is massive.

Now there are signs it is being opened up.

60

CROPS GUIDE

g uide life — write your legacy

Memoirs aren’t only for celebrities. Preserve farm history too.

66 Guide HR — ‘is he suffering from the god complex?’

Up to 10 per cent of entrepreneurial farmers are diagnosable.

44 the right amount of harvest loss

Canola’s Jay Whetter finds the best balance for profitability.

48 two steps forward…

Fears grow that we’re starting to slip back on sustainability.

EVERY ISSUE 6 MACHINERY GUIDE

Check out these innovations in grain carts and wagons.

63 GUIDE HEALTH

You won’t regret these common-sense steps for sun protection.

64 HANSON ACRES There are times when a granola bar just isn’t going to cut it.

50 win the right battle

Start defending how you farm with these effective tips.

52 livestock strategy comes to canola

Biosecurity may change our cropping as fast as our livestock.

54 getting better at fungicide application

You’re good now but it might be easy to do a whole lot better.

58 it’s a bliP

Despite acreage jump, barley, oats and flaxseed face big hurdles.

Our commitment to your privacy At Farm Business Communications we have a firm commitment to protecting your privacy and security as our customer. Farm Business Communications will only collect personal information if it is required for the proper functioning of our business. As part of our commitment to enhance customer service, we may share this personal information with other strategic business partners. For more information regarding our Customer Information Privacy Policy, write to: Information Protection Officer, Farm Business Communications, 1666 Dublin Avenue, Winnipeg, MB R3H 0H1.

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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: Gord Gilmour Cell: (204) 294-9195 (204) 453-7624 Fax (204) 942-8463 Email: gord.gilmour@fbcpublishing.com Maggie Van Camp (905) 986-5342 Fax (905) 986-9991 Email: mvancamp@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 Kevin Yaworsky (250) 869-5326 Email: kyaworsky@farmmedia.com

Tom Button is editor of Country Guide magazine

Are they right this time?

You’ll find no shortage of things to disagree with in this Country Guide. If you don’t, it means we haven’t worked hard enough.

My sense is that the future of farming is going to turn out to be just the other side of incredible. Probably, it’s your sense of the future too. If it’s too easy to believe, it isn’t going far enough.

The next time you climb into a new tractor or combine cab, think how much of it your father or grandfather would have dismissed as science fiction.

I keep reminding myself that when I once asked an older uncle of mine what was the single biggest advance he’d seen in his career, his answer came in a flash: hydraulics.

Now imagine what agriculture will look like by the time all those new tractors at the farm show are ready to retire.

There’s a widespread sense that the evolution of agriculture has slowed down.

The thinking goes that Darwinism is called the survival of the fittest because life is tough and only the very best will still be with us tomorrow. When life is good, evolution stops.

After a run of reasonable years, farm balance sheets are generally healthy, and the likelihood that farms will be pushed to the brink seems remote.

Does that mean evolution has stopped?

Maybe it only means that evolution has changed, and that instead of being driven by threats, today it is being powered by 4 country-guide.ca

opportunities and by the farmers who are seizing them.

If today’s family corporations were inconceivable a generation ago, how much more sophisticated will tomorrow’s farms have to get to be equally incredible to us?

Perhaps the logic is flawed. Perhaps we can’t take today’s trends and extend them into the future, but, as just one example from this issue, consider the case that economist Brian Oleson makes for his belief in ‘Megatrends versus Canada’s Farms’ that what we’re living through isn’t the birth of mega-farms, it’s the birth of “dynasty farms.”

I already know that some readers will be tut-tutting, saying, “We’ve been here before. Big farms have never lasted.”

To which I say, “Maybe.” Honestly, I know there have been a lot of smart farmers in the past, but I have trouble believing there has ever been a more sophisticated generation of farmers, or a generation with better advisers, or better technology.

For those with the drive to put that sophistication to full use, drawing on great advice and the best technology, the future will be beyond our power to conceive it.

It only makes me ask, What if consumers knew this is the kind of conversation we’re having? Talk about incredible!

Do let me know what you agree with, and what you don’t. I’m anxious to know.

Reach me at tom.button@fbcpublishing.com.

Lillie Ann Morris (905) 838-2826 Email: lamorris@xplornet.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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Subscription inquiries:

Call toll-free 1-800-665-1362 or email: subscription@fbcpublishing.com U.S. subscribers call 1-204-944-5766 Country Guide is printed with linseed oil-based inks PRINTED IN CANADA Vol. 134 No. 9 Internet address: www.agcanada.com

ISSN 0847-9178 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.

j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

“Now if our margins were increasing as fast as our yields...�

People who know Agriculture, know BDO.

The Agriculture Practice at BDO Changes throughout the industry have placed an entirely new set of demands on agricultural businesses, from family farms to national producers. BDO provides a partner-led, personal approach backed by the experience and resources of our national Agriculture Practice. We offer accounting, tax, and advisory services on a wide range of issues, including succession and estate planning, bookkeeping and payroll assistance, tax compliance, and more.

Assurance | Accounting | Tax | Advisory www.bdo.ca/agriculture

Machinery

By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor

Harvest is where it all finally comes together. With this instalment of Machinery Guide, we bring you some of the latest upgrades and innovations in grain carts and wagons. Large or small, how you get your harvest from the combine to the semi is emerging as one of the key drivers of harvest efficiency, which is why these three manufacturers have put so much thought into their respective designs. As always, be sure to do your homework. It’s a very competitive sector.

 Bach-Run A relative newcomer to the grain wagon and cart-carrying scene, Bach-Run was on site last year at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show. The brand has four different models of gravity bin grain wagons which are billed as new, complementing the company’s six heavy-duty, high-volume grain wagons. The company says its claim to fame is “Brute Strength” and its designs are based on working with farmers to meet their needs. With extensions, the gravity bin grain wagons have four different capacities, from 380 to 480 bushels. The interiors have a powder coating on a sandblasted surface for a durable, long-lasting finish. Each model also features three tie-in bars on the inside of the box, plus solid inner seams along with flat valleys that reduce dead corners. There’s also an easy-climb ladder on the outside, as well as large sight windows.

www.bachrunfarms.com

MK Martin  Another new arrival to Machinery Guide, MK Martin is showcasing a number of its gravity boxes and grain carts. A Canadian manufacturer, MK Martin offers four models of its Gravity Box, ranging from 270- to 745-bushel capacities. Whether it’s combined with a Horst wagon or as box-only model to run on your own wagon, you get flexibility and durability for any conditions. With the 5000 and 6500 models, there’s an optional divider that splits the Gravity Box

6 country-guide.ca

and allows for two separate commodities to be carried at the same time. Each side also comes with its own door for unloading and metering. With Grain Carts, there are two models available — the MK 650 and MK 850 with 650- and 850-bushel capacities respectively and a front folding auger that increases operator visibility while providing greater reach. The chute on the auger is also equipped with a hydraulic hood for more precise placement of the grain.

www.mkmartin.ca

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 5

Brandt  Soil health is integral to crop performance in the field, and more equipment manufacturers are engineering their tractors, combines and even grain carts to minimize soil compaction. That’s led Brandt to unveil its new flotation tire and track systems for its 1020XR and 1322XR Grain Carts. Enhanced tire and rubber

track technologies have enabled Brandt to add these options to its product line, with operations possible under a broad range of field conditions. Improved and highly flexible low sidewall designs allow for significantly reduced tire pressures, and the new track options can reduce ground pressures from 66 psi down to 13 psi, an 80 per cent reduction.

www.brandt.ca

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country-guide.ca 7

business

Used equipment perks up

By Scott Garvey, CG Machinery Editor

o put it mildly, sales of new farm equipment were terrible — even worrisome — in January and February, based on numbers tallied by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM). Purchases of four-wheel-drive tractors were down an astonishing 55 per cent compared to 2014. Worse yet, new combine sales had virtually collapsed, slipping 60.6 per cent.

Those invested in the equipment industry couldn’t help but notice.

But the grim picture painted by those early-year sales reports may not have told the whole story, according to Jim Wood, vice-president, agriculture, at Rocky Mountain Equipment, Canada’s largest CNH equipment retailer. According to Wood, the winter of 2014 was “a blip. It was an anomaly.

All of a sudden people look at the industry and go, ‘Holy smokes it’s down so much over last year.’

Well that’s because last year was too high compared to the year before.”

“ Guess who’s happy?” says Rocky Mountain’s Jim Wood. “Our used sales are way up, our new was consistent, and our inventories are coming down.”

The reason why they were abnormal, however, may not be what farmers would think. Or at least, not completely the reason that farmers might suggest, i.e. strong farm incomes.

Instead, the early 2014 numbers got pushed up due to changes in delivery dates for new equipment based on customer orders, primarily from one major manufacturer.

“I think the big thing was last year (2014 sales numbers) gave such a false sense of what was going on,” Wood says. “In December of 2013 and Janu-

8 country-guide.ca

As sales of new equipment cool, good used machines are holding their value, and in some cases gaining ground

ary, February of 2014, that’s when Deere delivered a lot of product, which it traditionally doesn’t do.

And that really spiked the industry (numbers).”

So a sober look at the data reveals that this year’s volumes may not be quite as dreadful as first thought, and Wood confirms that while the overall market for new farm equipment in Western Canada so far this year has dropped off significantly, it hasn’t fallen as badly as those early market reports suggested.

As if to emphasize the point, April sales numbers actually showed a gain over last year, which has helped correct the market data. The number of four-wheel-drive tractors sold that month was up, pegging the overall year-to-date market reduction at just 22 per cent compared to the same time in 2014. So while that’s still a little painful for dealers and manufacturers, the market hasn’t really fallen off a cliff the way the early numbers suggested.

Not all the news is bad. Some new equipment categories are showing surprising strength. Sales of rigid-frame tractors above 100 horsepower are strong, and April sales of these machines beat out the numbers for April 2014 too, bringing the overall year-to-date sales in this category close to par with last year. They now only lag by 1.6 per cent, with much of the demand in the category due to livestock producers.

“We’ve seen our cattle stuff, loader tractors and balers, really increase,” notes Wood. “But they are smaller dollar amounts than what cash crop (equipment) is.”

That means from a dollar amount perspective, overall industry sales totals remain much below last year. And despite an active April, the low U.S. dollar exchange rate and competition from an ample supply of late-model used machines, most in the industry are willing to bet new equipment sales will likely finish out the year well below 2014 numbers.

“I think it’s the new normal,” Wood says. “If you look at it from our side, we’re trying to sell a little less new, because our used is just that much more attractive. I can’t see it changing unless someone

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business

brings on some new technology. It’s hard to justify a lot of the price increases from manufacturers, because, let’s face it, a combine from five years ago will still go out and do what a new combine will today. It’s considerably cheaper for (a farmer) to buy a one-year-old machine than a new one.”

And that factor has been driving demand at auction sales.

“The interesting thing on (auction) prices is, we started the year a little conservative in our own business model,” says Simon Wallan, Ritchie Bros. vicepresident of agriculture for Western Canada. “Commodity prices dropped a bit through the last two quarters of 2014.

We thought that would have a negative effect on the price of (used) equipment.”

But any effect has been limited, and by mid-April, auction sales across the West were attracting crowds as large as last season. And they weren’t made up of just onlookers. Many took their bidding hands out of their pockets.

“There have been good turnouts, as good as previous years,” says Kim Kramer of Saskatchewan-based Kramer Auction Ltd. That interest has actually pushed up prices for some types of equipment.

“When it comes to truck tractors, anything in good condition with a pre-emissions engine is very, very sought after,” Wallan adds. “It doesn’t matter what sale you’re at, a farm sale or an industrial one.”

Kramer has noticed the same trend at his company’s sales, with pre-emissions engines in any type of machine garnering a lot of interest.

“In trucks, anything pre-emissions, I bet they’re up a good, solid 20 per cent,” Kramer says. “A pre-emissions Kenworth or Peterbilt, those brands, they’re a really strong sale. For a tractor, maybe a Tier 2, without the emissions controls, they’ll bid way stronger on it. Guys are saying they can buy an older tractor, as long as it has the horsepower and the hydraulic power, it will do the same job as a new one.”

But the kind of frenzy that had driven demand for used machines at auctions in past years has evaporated. Buyers now seem to be taking a more measured, careful approach. And they know there is currently a very large selection to choose from, so there is no need to panic and overpay.

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

The number of registered bidders at auctions this spring held steady with previous seasons, with demand for many types of used machines staying strong.

Photo: Ritchie Bros.

“Guys this year are more selective,” observes Kramer. “They’re not pushing the panic button like in previous years where they’d get in a bidding war because they were worried they wouldn’t find another one. One guy told me at an auction sale yesterday, ‘I’ve bought so much machinery there’s no sense of urgency anymore that I need to buy it today or I won’t find another one. There are lots available.’”

“I think they’re looking for specific pieces and they don’t mind travelling longer distances to find them,” adds Wallan.

“They want good pieces, and they’re not going to overpay for something that’s tired, below average or worn out.”

Along with the old, tired and worn out, a couple of other types of equipment saw lagging demand this spring as well.

Swathers are among them. Their selling prices are starting to fall, which doesn’t surprise Wood.

“Now you have canola varieties that can be straight cut, so you’re going to see the windrower market drop off,” Wood explains.

“Seeding equipment is really volatile,” says Kramer. Guys are getting really selective on that. There is such a variety out there right now, I think it has caused the prices to be volatile.”

“It’s a buyer’s market out there for seeding tools,” confirms Wallan. “Every farmer out there seems to want something different in a seeding tool, so we are having trouble finding consistency when it comes to size and specifications.”

The result of all this is that many industry players now seem ready to take a deep breath and acknowledge that the market for used equipment is staying relatively stable, despite the previous concern over the large supply. But the evolving, more competitive sales environment for new machines means there may be some realignment happening in that sector.

Exactly which dealers farmers are willing to look to for their new equipment may be fluctuating. Wood thinks the products and services each manufacturer offers may now play a more critical role in swaying farmers’ purchasing decisions than it ever has.

“If you look at our new sales numbers, they were pretty well flat with last year, but the industry is down 40 per cent from last year,” Wood says. “So, guess who picked up market share? In our first quarter this year, we’re really, really, happy. Our used sales are way up, our new was consistent, and our inventories are coming down.” CG

country-guide.ca 9

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business

Smart farm

strategies for giving

By Maggie Van Camp, CG Associate Editor

New tax laws and innovative financial strategies give you new ways to make donations with real impact ith fewer farmers facing an insatiable number of organizations needing time and money, the decision of how much to give to whom is getting tougher.

What do you want your money to do? How much should you give and when? What are the tax benefits?

For many farmers, there’s also the question of how best to give to charities through your estate and succession planning. Additionally, in the last few years some new ways to save taxes while giving have been added to the playbook.

Society’s thinking about giving has also changed. As fewer families attend church, the younger generations aren’t being taught to put something on the plate Sunday after Sunday. Instead, they are moving toward more spontaneous, secular giving. For example, there’s the phenomenon of crowdfunding where someone asks for money online and it goes viral. In the last few years this has reaped millions of dollars that would have historically been directed to registered charities.

It’s not for lack of tax receipts.

Donations to registered Canadian charities are eligible for a charitable donation tax credit for indi-

12 country-guide.ca

vidual donors or for deduction if the donor is a corporation.

Over 85,000 charities are registered in Canada, so individuals can give to these charities directly for specific causes and get a receipt to claim against income taxes. To qualify to provide tax receipts, these charities must follow certain rules, like having a board of directors and separate annual CRA filing.

Within this CRA list are charitable foundations, like the Mennonite Foundation of Canada.

Although anyone can set up a foundation, they must follow the CRA rules, including separate annual filings and a board of directors.

Foundations pool the donations, take care of all the paperwork and administrative responsibilities, and invest the funds on the donor’s behalf for a small fee. For example, the Mennonite Foundation of Canada charges about one per cent, says Sherri Grosz, MFC’s stewardship consultant in Kitchener, Ont. Another way is to set up your own family trust and hire a foundation like Gifts Canada to administer it for you. You control the investment and how it’s donated.

It’s called donor-advised, and you can change it over the years.

Many foundations have sunset clauses, and you can set where

your money is to go in stone at the very beginning.

With pooled foundations, you can get the receipt right away. Currently, you can donate shares of a company, equities, ecologically sensitive lands and cultural property and, if they have increased in value, any capital gains would be tax exempt. However, if you sell those assets and want to give cash, you have to pay the tax on the increases in value.

So not only do you get the tax deduction, you don’t have to pay the income tax on any increase in values.

New budget rule Proposed during this spring’s federal budget is an exemption for capital gains tax for charitable gifts of cash proceeds from disposition of private company shares and real estate. Previously this exemption was only available for when you sold and donated publicly listed securities, ecologically sensitive land, and certified cultural property.

Beginning in 2017, this exemption would include the capital gains when you sell private assets, like shares and real estate.

In theory you could donate some of the amount you might owe for capital gains when you sell a company. Instead of paying more to the government, you are

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

business

able to give more to your favourite charity.

Accountant and partner at Collins Barrow in Elora, Ont., Tom Blonde uses the following example to explain: You sell your family farm corporation for $3 million to someone outside of the family. You’ve already used up your available capital gain exemption and the marginal tax rate is 50 per cent. (If there’s no donation, you’ll only get $2.25 million net, after the capital gains tax.)

However, if you donate $1 million of the proceeds within 30 days of selling your farm, you’ll get a charitable credit of $500,000. You’ll also be taxed on only $2 million of capital gain, and $500,000 tax on gain is eliminated by charitable credit. The final result is that you donate $1 million and receive $2 million net of capital gains tax.

Make sure you talk to your accountant about how this might work for you, and please note that final legislation and assessing practice has not yet been determined.

Before you do anything, MFC’s Grosz says it’s really important to take some time to think about what you want your money to do instead of randomly giving to whatever group comes asking.

“What are your hopes and goals for your donations?” asks Grosz.

Although donors into the Mennonite Foundation of Canada are of all ages and socio-economic classes, the majority are older than 50. This group tends to have more disposable income, understands the fragility of life as part of the sandwich generation, and is doing estate and retirement planning, says Grosz. Plus they’ve been raised within the church and are comfortable giving through their church.

MFC gets Great West Life to invest the pooled funds for them in one of two ways — one is higher risk, with 50 per cent equities, and the other is a more conservative investment based on bonds and mortgages. In keeping

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with their faith’s principles, the MFC screens out of GWL’s portfolio companies that sell alcohol, tobacco or gambling. “If you are preaching against it on Sunday, you shouldn’t invest in it on Monday,” says Grosz.

Estate planning and giving Although there’s no inheritance tax in Canada, when someone dies, their estate has to pay their income tax and everything is deemed disposed on the date of their death. This means everything, even tax-sheltered investments like RRSPs, are sold in the year of death and the estate has to pay income taxes.

Living poor and dying rich does have its tax implications.

Using predetermined charitable giving to counter this tax bite is one strategy some farmers are employing to decrease their taxes on their relatively large estates.

Grosz suggests getting the help of an accountant to figure out if it would be better to have the tax receipt during life or after to decrease the tax bill on the estate.

Sometimes it means keeping the donation until after passing away so the tax credits can be used against estate taxes. Other times it’s better to give while earning more. Maybe a combination, or phased-in strategy is best for you.

In the past, MFC has been willed land but it tends to be more complicated, and usually property is liquidated with the estate, says Grosz.

Grosz says some people make their favourite foundations or registered charities the beneficiaries of life insurance policies.

They pay the premiums and get a tax receipt for those premiums paid in their lifetime and when they die, the charity gets the insurance proceeds.

Sometimes a donor will even transfer the ownership of a life insurance policy to the charity

while alive and pay the premiums, and, if they get a receipt can use these premiums as a tax deduction.

Keep in mind that if you transfer a policy while you’re alive but no longer insurable, it may have significant fair market value so the donation credit might be larger. However, you’ll get a much larger deduction if you buy life insurance through your farm corporation at lower tax rates.

On death, the life insurance proceeds are paid out tax free to the estate through the capital dividend account, and then the estate makes the donation and gets the larger credit.

Sound accounting advice may help you make major donations with an affordable net cost to the farm First-time donors For smaller donations, a few years ago the government added the First-time Donor’s Super Credit (FDSC) to entice people to give to charitable organizations. It supplements the value of the charitable donations tax credit (CDTC) by 25 per cent on donations made after March 20, 2013, by a firsttime donor.

If neither you nor your spouse (or common-law partner) have claimed and been allowed a charitable donations tax credit for any year after 2007, you are considered a first-time donor.

This super credit applies to a gift of money made after March 20, 2013, up to a maximum of $1,000, in one taxation year from 2013 to 2017. The claim for the FDSC can be shared with a spouse or common-law partner, but the total combined donations claimed must be under that $1,000 cap. CG

country-guide.ca 13

business

Talking up the job

By Gord Gilmour, CG Associate Editor very farmer has one. For Manitoba’s Rolf Penner, his aha moment came a few years back, when he suddenly realized just how hard it is for a farmer to talk to non-farmers about his business.

Penner and a farming friend were on a weekend getaway with their spouses. Neither wife had a farming background. As the weekend wore on, a little shop talk was inevitable, and the discussion turned to the recent wheat harvest and protein levels. Both took off decent yields, but Penner says his friend got better protein levels.

“I started to ask him if he’d done anything different, like top dressing some nitrogen,” Penner said.

“Our wives overheard this and they thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard, and started teasing us about it. To us it was a straightforward question; to them it was something strange and funny.”

While a funny bit of jargon that turns into a running gag over the course of the weekend is a pretty mild example, Penner says it highlights a challenge farmers

Consumers want to hear from farmers, says FCC’s Carlson.

“They want to hear us say, ‘We’ve got this.

You’re in good hands.’”

What’s wrong with letting consumers know just how professional you have to be to grow their food in Canada today? are always going to face. How can farmers talk like the experts they are when they engage with lay people about what they do and why they do it?

Making the problem even tougher to tackle, says Penner, is that gets such a rough start because of the way farmers view themselves.

Joe Farmer, PhD “A lot of times we think of ourselves as dumb farmers,” says Penner. “That’s just not so. Think about the knowledge we have to have to farm, the technology we use every day. If you really think about it, we’re likely operating — and speaking — on the PhD level.”

To Penner, who grows grain and special crops and raises hogs near Morris, Man., this suggests farmers need to hone their messages for a non-agriculture audience so they can be ready to stand up and speak.

There’s plenty of consumer interest in farming and food production these days, he believes, but unless growers take the time to define themselves, they’ll be defined by others.

“We have to be ready to talk,” Penner says.

Lyndon Carlson couldn’t agree more. He’s Farm Credit Canada’s senior vice-president of marketing, and among other responsibilities, he’s been working very hard the past few years on the “Agriculture More Than Ever” campaign that aims to arm farmers and others in the business as “agvocates” who can speak up for agriculture.

Carlson shares Penner’s worry that farmers downplay their own capabilities and contributions.

“It’s a cultural thing,” Carlson says. “There are a lot of farmers out there who are, by and large, very modest people. They don’t like to draw attention to themselves, they just quietly go about their business.”

In many ways, they’re the opposite of today’s narcissistic selfie culture, but that can be a good thing, Carlson says, because when agriculture can at times seem threatening or ominous (i.e. “big ag”), farmers are well liked and trusted, something that shows up year in and year out in public opinion surveys.

Continued on page 16

14 country-guide.ca

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business Continued from page 14 Farmers consistently score near the top, although this goodwill can’t be taken for granted, Carlson insists.

“We’ve got to protect our social licence,” Carlson says. “People really want to hear from farmers, they want to hear us say, ‘We’ve got this, you’re in good hands.’”

That doesn’t mean patronizingly telling consumers not to worry, but neither does it mean taking a hard line or talking down to them. It means finding a way to present a message that finds common ground.

One stumbling block, Carlson concedes, is the highly technical nature of the business — but he insists these challenges aren’t something that only agriculture faces.

“Any business is like that,” Carlson says. “I don’t care if it’s manufacturing, or finance or information technology, we all develop our own language, filled with jargon and acronyms.”

Getting past this will be a milestone for agriculture, Carlson says, but it will only happen one conversation at a time, starting with farmers who are prepared to work at it.

Dumbing it down “We say in the business world that you should write to an eighth-grade level,” Carlson said. “That’s not to say we want to dumb down or dilute the message — rather that we want it to be clear.”

Having that message at the ready is more important than ever in this age of social media where issues can go viral overnight. Some think farmers aren’t well adapted to this new paradigm, but based on his experience, Carlson insists otherwise.

Look to build trust, not to win the debate at all costs, Penner advises

16 country-guide.ca

“I know I’ve been at meetings where I look around and it’s predominantly late-middle-age farmers, maybe with a few younger ones, and the tweets about the meeting will start flying,” Carlson says. “I do think farmers are well equipped to do this.”

Still, he thinks the industry can do a better job of supporting each other in social media settings. One individual can’t be out there alone, fighting the good fight and making their own case for the continued trust of the general public, he says.

One thing the industry has to understand is that there’s definitely greater interest in agriculture in recent years, and that’s unlikely to go away. Everyone wants to know just a bit more about where their food is coming from, and it’s just a fact of life that you’re going to end up having conversations about your job, and that people are actually interested in hearing about it.

“When you go to the airport and get on a plane, be it for business or pleasure, and you start talking to your seatmate, when they ask, ‘What do you do for a living?’ and you respond, ‘I’m a farmer,’ you’re starting a conversation, there’s no doubt about that,” Carlson says. “There’s an intense interest in what you do as a farmer.”

It’s a double-edged sword, however. On one hand it doesn’t do anyone in agriculture any good if people think their food comes from the grocery store. But it can also mean you’re going to have to defend your practices at times, and counter a tremendous amount of misinformation.

“In those cases I think you do have to disagree, but do it respectfully,” Carlson said. “You’re not going to get anywhere by being dismissive.”

Create common ground Instead Carlson suggests taking a tactful approach that seeks that common ground. In effect, farmers and the broad public frequently share the same goals, but differ on their diagnosis of how to get there. That’s when to bring up the great examples of farms evolving and adopting new methods very quickly. “We really do have a lot of good-news stories to share,” Carlson says.

Carlson stresses it’s important not to talk down to anyone, and Rolf Penner echoes that message, saying it’s equally important to recognize one’s own limitations. That includes remembering that it’s perfectly acceptable to say you don’t know something, and to refuse to speak on a subject you’re not yourself familiar with.

Tact is also going to be an important part of any discussion, Penner says, even when some of the statements you encounter are eye-roll inducing.

“I’ve seen people use their superior knowledge base to bully others in conversations, and I don’t think that works very well,” Penner says. “If you make someone feel stupid or embarrassed because they honestly don’t know something, they’re probably not going to come around to your side, whatever the issue is.” CG J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

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business

Megatrends Canada’s farms

By Maggie Van Camp, CG Associate Editor

G

lobal forces are transforming agriculture in this country. It barely takes a second for any farmer to rattle off a list, starting with world population that the UN says will jump by another billion over the next decade and reach 9.6 billion by 2050. Or smartphones that link us to the world from our tractor cabs. Or GM crops that are now so mainstream, we wonder whether we could ever farm without them.

But those are only the start. Sweeping changes will continue to impact Canadian agriculture.

Why should we care? Because eyeing these macrotrends as opportunities and threats for your own business plan is where the big benefits lie.

If you understand how to apply these trends on a micro-scale specific to your sector or business, they can be game changers.

Country Guide challenged two of the country’s top agricultural economics professors to identify megatrends affecting Canadian farmers. Sylvain Charlebois, associate professor in the college of business and economics at the University of Guelph has a more modern, future-based view of patterns and shifts, focused on food and trade.

As the former executive director for planning and communications for the CWB and professor at the University of Manitoba, Brian Oleson has ridden the roller-coaster through many major changes over the years. He knows megatrends have long cycles, and he has seen how the Canadian grain industry can be fundamentally impacted by global political events.

So buckle up. Here are seven megatrends from Charlebois and Oleson that will shape the future of Canadian agriculture and your farm.

18 country-guide.ca

/

Can your farm thrive over the next decade?

Black swan events

“We have entered a world of complete geopolitical instability,” says Oleson. He points to the collapse of the Middle East peace, the increasing number of failed states, and the radical fundamental religious groups wreaking havoc across the globe.

As the world becomes more connected and more linked economically, this means more unpredictability in commodity markets. “Farmers should expect more black swan events,” Oleson says, referring to the theory developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book, The Black Swan: The Impact Of The Highly Improbable.

“We cannot even conceive of these black swans,” Oleson says.

In the last 20 years, we’ve had our share of earth-shaking, unexpected events, such as the September 11 attacks or, more recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. North American agriculture has had its own black swans, including the 1998 collapse of the Asian economy, when prices crashed, or the BSE crisis in 2003 or the current onslaught of avian influenza.

These mostly unexpected events resulted in a lot of structural changes to the Canadian livestock industry. They took some farmers completely out of the game. Many shut down the livestock portion of their farms and switched to crops only, and the change in the sector has been real and permanent.

In short, the hog industry has become an investor-based industrialized commodity.

Cow-calf producers have been better able to manage this risk, says Oleson. If needed, they can keep cattle longer on feed or build up their herds, so they aren’t exposed as much to random events or market swings. The ones who survived and waited for better times are now being rewarded with high feeder and fat cattle prices.

J u l y / augus t 2 0 1 5

business

mega / Mega, DYNASTY farms The capital-driven farm family has emerged as the most significant player in Canadian agriculture.

“The family farm will not disappear, says Oleson. “They become a dynasty.”

Oleson likens this group to the large boulders in a barrel. Although there’s more space between the boulders for the smaller operators, most of the barrel is filled with big boulders and they’re getting bigger.

The increase in the investment required to farm today, such as the large efficient

precision farming equipment and the skyrocketing price of land, mean larger family farms are able to outbid the smaller, less established farmers.

Smaller farmers are forced to compete with these large operators for limited productive assets, including land. Those large operations simply have more collateral base to buy more land or equipment, and low interest rates have allowed them to leverage their assets and outbid any potential newcomers.

Also, this large capital base means these farms should be able to survive through tough times.

Furthermore they can leverage the heritage and success of the people before them.

Of course, there’s always an exception but it’s becoming more difficult to go from a pebble to a boulder. “This will continue,” says Oleson. “The utilization of technology will intensify the consolidation.”

A decade ago, driverless vehicles and drones seemed science fiction. Now, robotic field equipment is on the drawing boards, says Oleson. Will that further enhance the power of these large family farms to expand?

Continued on page 20

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country-guide.ca 19

business Continued from page 19

/ Supply management 2.0

Political momentum has favoured trade agreements in the last few years, Charlebois says. Will it still lean in that direction after October?

The opportunities and threats around those trade agreements can and will affect your farm business going forward. “When you are talking politics, you’ve got to talk about food in that,” says Charlebois.

“The EU-Canada trade agreement created a breach in supply management,” says Charlebois.

“The TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) is the biggest trade deal in history. What’s going to happen with it?”

With Europe recently getting rid of its supply management system, Canada is the only developed economy with a quota and tariff system in dairy.

That leaves us in a precarious position, says Charlebois. “I absolutely think there’s a momentum toward a reform.”

What can we learn from Europe? “We can be inspired by Europe but it’s a totally different system,” says Charlebois. “The pricing formula was different. The tariffs were different. Farmers couldn’t use the quota as collateral. There was less fiscal baggage with its system.”

However, the biggest difference was that European farmers had a financial incentive to get rid of the system, while Canadian dairy and poultry farmers want supply management. For example, in Germany, farmers were paying nearly $20 billion a year in fees to keep their system going.

In contrast, Charlebois says he was basically shut down during a recent meeting in his home province of Quebec for even discussing what to do to transition out of supply management.

Instead of burying out heads or reacting with fury, we should create a map to protect our supply management farmers and make changes to enable more trade, before we don’t have a choice, says Charlebois.

There are a lot of ways to do this, he says, but to make the road out of supply management smoother, farmers need to engage in the discussion of how, and they need to plan for the transition.

Without preparation, the removal of tariffs could be catastrophic to some farmers and the rural economy, especially in Quebec and Ontario.

“The EU quota system was newer, with much less fiscal baggage,” says Charlebois. “Given that in Canada, billions (of dollars) in quotas are used as collateral to support farmers who pay very small levies compared to those in the EU, a Canadiantailored quota-lifting reform would take more than 15 years to implement, at the very least.”

20 country-guide.ca

/ Grain cycles “Over the years, I’ve learned that there are three phases to cycles: the up, the maturity and the down phases,” says Oleson. “These cycles occur once or twice in your lifetime.”

In Oleson’s lifetime, he experienced the Great Russian Grain Robbery of 1972 to 1982 and what he coins the Great Ethanol Robbery from 2006 to 2012-13.

Politics was a willing and erratic partner in both these big grain cycles. The recent price boom was driven by corn-based ethanol. “In 2008, Obama was a major supporter of ethanol and won the ethanol debate in Iowa. In 2012, as energy realities changed, he was the last person in the world to talk about the end of corn-based ethanol,” says Oleson. “The end of his presidency coincides with the end of the cycle.”

Although other factors have played into this grain price cycle, energy vulnerability and homeland security created the dynamics by diverting five billion bushels a year out of traditional markets.

Combined with the rapidly increasing demand from China, the price of grain shot up with energy. That price cycle is completely spent now, says Oleson. As long as there are no additional capital investments, the established corn ethanol plants will continue to attract four billion to five billion bushels a year. “Corn-based ethanol as a new demand factor is over,” says Oleson. “It’s actually a damper on future price increases as supplies can easily be diverted from fuel to feed and food, if corn prices increase.”

land / Sticky prices Another shift in mentality that Oleson has witnessed in the last few years is that associated with farmland. The wealth created in many areas during this last cycle shifted the thinking around land prices from productive value to land being some place to park your money.

“It’s similar to the logic used on gold,” says Oleson.

“Basically, existing farmers, retiring farmers and farmland investors have all turned farmland into gold with a return.”

Now that we’ve gone from massive profits to break-even prices, we need to be aware that the current crop profitability cycle is on the downward slope. This should be reflected in realistic productive asset values.

“Land prices are historically so sticky,” says Oleson. “They’re now more sticky than ever.”

Land prices are probably not going to swing down quickly with commodity prices, Oleson predicts. The large farms will weather the black swan events. They’ll consolidate and become the mega-farm survivors.

“They’ll survive and thrive by the big price cycles,” says Oleson. “They will ensure that land prices do not drop significantly, even with commodity price declines like we’ve witnessed in the past two years.”

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

business

on / Focus ingredients Over the last decade, a major shift has occurred in how food is perceived by the public. Charlebois says this will increase, and sales will become more attuned to individual buyers instead of the mass market.

“Demand is increasing for more fragmented food,” Charlebois says. “Food is becoming more market driven, more fragmented.”

With that, retailers are calling the shots and more are connecting with farmers to create partnerships to supply specific quality products.

“The food supply chain will narrow,” says Charlebois.

It’s also time for farmer groups and large farmers to become part of the public debate on how food is being grown and handled. Livestock processors and producers need to move toward public transparency.

Processors and producers need to move toward this type of engagement. For example, Cargill’s Better Beef slaughterhouse in Guelph has installed cameras along the line, and Andrew Campbell on Twitter is doing a fantastic job representing the industry, says Charlebois.

Squeezed between retail and farmers is a processing industry dependent on a weak loonie. Having the 80-cent (Canadian) dollar helps, but building an industry on currency is risky, says Charlebois. Instead we need processors to modernize their factories.

Processors need to be innovative and create new food choices.

Since 2007, we’ve lost over 150 food-manufacturing plants in Canada. That affects farmers. “If there’s a red light in food, it’s absolutely in manufacturing,” Charlebois says. “Farmers will be directly affected.”

/ Market volatility

Although we have been through a decade of incredible market volatility, Sylvain Charlebois at the University of Guelph says we’ve only seen the beginning.

We’re in for commodity markets bungee jumping with many more factors tugging on the rope. “Farmers need to become better hedgers,” says Charlebois.

On top of hedging market prices, farmers should also mitigate the risks of swinging currency values and climate change, Charlebois believes.

One way to hedge against weather is to buy weather derivatives, which are now a tradable commodity. Weather derivatives cover low-risk, high-probability events, whereas weather insurance covers high-risk, low-probability events. “If you have a bad crop year you can actually use derivatives to offset your losses,” says Charlebois. “It’s not insurance. You buy them in Chicago.”

His perspective and experiences have recently been shifted to encompass Europe. Charlebois is currently a visiting professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria for one year, with the shockwaves that rippled out of the banking crisis in Greece as just one example of how the world is increasingly interconnected.

We should also be aware of the currency wars being played out in many nations. This past winter foreign exchange markets jumped into turmoil after the Federal Reserve Bank stopped its quantitative easing program. Many governments, Charlebois says, are trying to stimulate their economies and create jobs by devaluing their currency values. CG

Oleson no longer talks “big farms.”

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country-guide.ca 21

insight

An angel of an idea dmittedly, it’s hard to say exactly what makes any innovation a success, or why farms are such fertile ground for new ideas. Maybe it’s the opportunity to test new ideas under real-world conditions.

Or because farmers are so practical, or so resourceful, or because they know how to persevere.

Or, today, maybe it’s more likely to be the willingness to take a risk, or the determination to find the right people to help push the idea forward, or the talent for adapting to new ways of doing business.

In fact, Kim Keller will tell you it’s all those traits together that help explain why her hot new farm app called Farm At Hand actually got its start in Saskatchewan farm country, a long, long way from the technology mecca of Silicon Valley.

It’s also why, in her role as Farm At Hand cofounder, Keller is seen as breaking a mould, while she sees herself drawing on a rich history of farm innovation, but doing it in a way that makes sense for the 21st century.

Through links she builds to angel investors, Farm At Hand gets resources for product development, plus invaluable business insight

22 country-guide.ca

As Kim Keller is proving, the test today is whether we can get innovative about how we handle our innovations Making it fly I visit Kim Keller’s family’s farm in late spring.

The farm borders Gronlid, a small hamlet in northeast Saskatchewan where the Kellers have a parklike yard, maintained by Kim’s mother, Deb, who plants a truckload of flowers every year and eradicates any weeds that dare germinate in the bin yard. That’s no easy task, given there are about 50 bins in the yard.

Kim also introduces me to her dad, Rick. He shakes my hand and chats briefly before heading back to the field. He’s buoyant and relaxed despite being in the middle of seeding. The weather up to this point has favoured spring field operations.

Kim takes me on a tour of the 12,000-acre farm, and I shoot video of her dad and the Keller family’s two employees doing field work. Kim has flown here from her home base in Vancouver to run seed and otherwise support field operations this spring. She also helps out at harvest by driving the grain cart, and is at the farm frequently throughout the year.

After filming, we sit down at the Keller family’s kitchen table. The TV is tuned into CNN, Deb’s favourite news source, so Kim switches it off before we begin.

In the last couple of years, Kim has driven the 3,500-km round trip from Vancouver to Gronlid about 10 times. She’s also a frequent flyer, jetting to technology conferences and hitting agricultural trade shows around North America.

It’s a hectic life, but so is farming, she says. Hers is just a different type of hectic, and she’s willing to take it on to make Farm At Hand fly.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

Photography: Photos By Kathryn

By Lisa Guenther, Field Editor

insight

Himanshu Singh through friends. Himanshu had just started a small software development company in Saskatoon. He was intrigued by Kim’s thinking about the lack of farm management apps, and asked her how her family tracked what was happening with their bins.

Kim explained they used a big sheet of paper on the kitchen island. Every time something changed in the bin yard, her brother Jeff would erase the old entry and pencil in the change.

Himanshu’s response was quick.

“There’s got to be an app for this,” he said, so he and Kim went to work. “We did all of the research, and there wasn’t,” Kim says.

“That’s how it all started,” and in February, 2012, they decided to build an app.

They didn’t intend to start a business, however. They simply wanted to create something for the Keller family farm.

But then, Kim’s family members quickly threw in their two cents about what they wanted in a farm management app, and what started as a tool to track bin yards and grain bags quickly evolved into a program to track field records (planting, spraying, harvesting, and scouting), contracts, contract deliveries and equipment maintenance and parts’ lists. “So it is farm management, basically seed to sale,” says Kim.

Light-bulb moment

we have,” Kim says. “There’s nothing I won’t do to make sure that we make the most of it.”

The path that led her to becoming an ag tech entrepreneur was unexpected. It started in 2011 when Kim realized she wanted something different than her career with a Crown corporation. It was like she woke up one day and wanted to be a farmer, she explains.

This change was a bit of a surprise for her. She had done the usual farm chores while in school, but otherwise wasn’t too involved. “Growing up, I never wanted to be a farmer,” she says. Instead, she earned

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

a university degree and got a job, like many other farm kids who create lives for themselves in the cities.

Then her parents suggested she come back to the farm on a trial basis, and it was while running the grain cart during harvest that first fall that she had her spark of inspiration.

“I did everything else on my phone, but I couldn’t do anything meaningful for the farm on my phone,” she says. There were farming games and reference materials, but nothing to do with the business of farming.

Shortly after that harvest, Kim met

On April 26, 2012, Farm At Hand made its debut.

“We ended up putting it on the app store because a couple of friends of mine and a couple of neighbours wanted to try it out,” says Kim. Farm At Hand was, and remains, free for farmers, and within two months, they had about 500 downloads.

About three months after releasing the app, a market consultant gave Kim a call.

All of his farmers were using the app, he said, and it was saving him a ton of time.

It was a “light-bulb moment,” Kim says.

She and Himanshu saw a business opportunity, and they decided to run with it.

In 2013, Kim and Himanshu had a chance to attend a technology acceleraContinued on page 24

country-guide.ca 23

insight Continued from page 23 tor to grow their business. But there was a catch.

The accelerator was in Vancouver and they’d have to move there, at least temporarily.

Kim says leaving the farm was difficult. Vancouver wasn’t a place where she’d dreamed of living.

In fact, neither Kim nor Himanshu had even visited there. But it was an opportunity for Farm At Hand, she says, “and there was no way that we were going to say no to opportunity.”

Over the August long weekend of 2013, Kim and Himanshu packed her truck and drove through the Prairies and mountains until they reached Vancouver.

They’d rented an apartment, sight unseen, off Craig’s List, the online classifieds service.

“We slept on air mattresses for three months,” says Kim. After they’d completed the accelerator program, they decided to stay in Vancouver to build their company. Recruiting staff to Vancouver was an easier sell, especially since Vancouver and Toronto are Canada’s tech hubs.

And Vancouver has its charms. Being downtown allows Kim to catch hockey and football games. “I can go watch the Riders play without having to drive four hours... I can just walk on over,” she says.

Today Kim and Himanshu have seven staff and the number of farmers using their app has topped 20,000.

They’ve also captured interest from industry. In April 2014, they raised over $1.4 million in funding from angel investors. With that funding, they can stay true to their pledge to keep offering the app to farmers for free while they’re also creating a paid version for agribusiness, which Kim says they plan to roll out by late 2015 or early 2016.

At this point, 90 per cent of Farm At Hand’s

Farm records when and where you need them, even offline!

24 country-guide.ca

customers are in the U.S. and Canada — mostly in Western Canada and through the U.S. Grain Belt, Kim says, but the company is also gaining customers in South America, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Australia.

No matter where they are, all farmers need the same basic things from the program, Kim says. But each farmer does things a little differently, creating a unique need, she adds. To deal with those needs, the Farm At Hand app allows farmers to create custom activities to cover tasks that aren’t on the app’s pre-built lists.

Kim and Himanshu have also figured out their roles within the company. Himanshu is the CEO, handling business and investor relations. Kim is the chief operating officer. She works closely with the development team to build the product, and works with their head of community, Anastasia Hambali.

Kim essentially heads up everything on the farmer side of things, she explains.

Finding investors One benefit of the tech accelerator was that it gave them a network to bounce ideas off, says Kim. Those advisers also shared information on making deals with angel investors — often a make-or-break step in today’s tech business world.

There’s also a crucial distinction that they had to learn. Angel investors invest their own money in early-stage startups with potential. By contrast, venture capitalists invest money from a pool they’ve raised from limited partners.

So how does a farmer find angel investors? The first answer is, “everywhere.” Through their tech accelerator, Kim and Himanshu entered Farm At Hand in various pitch competitions, and they pitched it to investor groups.

But a lot of it came down to networking, which they started doing before they even joined the tech accelerator. Their first priority had always been to do what’s best for the company and farmers, Kim says, and they talked about their vision for the business early on. “Our focus has always been to find investors that are going to help us build that vision.”

Himanshu and Kim exchanged equity for financial support from investors (the exact terms are confidential). While there was back-and-forth negotiation with investors, Kim says it wasn’t anything like you’d see on TV shows such as “Dragon’s Den.” There wasn’t anything in the initial offering that was out of the question, she explains. “We have a great group of investors.”

Critically, those angel investors also provide more than cash.

“We gained a ton of insight and advice from our investors. Many of them are from the agriculture industry and all of them are successful business people,” says Kim. In fact, investors from the agriculture industry are also part of the potential market

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

insight for the paid version of Farm At Hand, she adds.

And because all of Farm At Hand’s investors have built successful companies, they’ve all dealt with the inevitable bumps in the road, Kim says. “They made it out the other side, and so can we.”

Farm At Hand deals with those bumps by providing the best service that they possibly can to their customers and farmers, Kim says. They make decisions based on whether it will benefit farmers, she says.

And farmers send them suggestions on improving the app daily, she adds. Most of their farmers have a phone number for Kim, Himanshu or Anastasia, she adds, and their emails are on the company website.

“We say: ‘We work your hours. So whatever you need from us, just call, text, email, whatever works best for you,’” Kim says.

The Farm At Hand team has also found itself educating urbanites about modern agriculture. Some investors didn’t know that farmers used even basic technology such as smartphones, Kim explains.

To counter those misconceptions, Farm

At Hand launched a technology campaign, dubbed #iamfarmer as a play on the caveman-like public perception of farming. Farmers posted pictures on Twitter of everything from hailstorms looming behind combines to adorable kids. Farm At Hand also gave out T-shirts showing farming’s evolution from its very humble beginnings to now using drones.

The last few years have been quite a journey for Kim. Asked if she was ever worried about the risk, she says starting any business is risky. Being a farmer is risky, she states. “But you just do it and you go into it 100 per cent.”

Kim and Himanshu are not only bringing a new technology to farmers, but they’re also pioneering a new business model by giving farmers a free program.

“That’s risky but it’s also incredibly exciting to think that when we succeed, we’re going to be part of how agriculture is changing right now.”

So it’s then that I ask her, does she have any advice for would-be ag entrepreneurs?

Her answer comes quickly. Kim says they should take every opportunity that they’re

given. There are a million ways you can say no to an opportunity, she says. But that opportunity won’t wait forever.

“Even if it doesn’t open the door you thought it would, it’s going to lead to four or five others you never even dreamed of,” Kim says.

Entrepreneurship isn’t an easy road to follow. There will be times you think you can’t get up and continue the next day, Kim says. But you can, she says. “And you will. And you’ll keep on doing it.

You’ll get knocked down and you’ll just keep standing back up.” CG

Wondering what cloud computing is? Or whether

you should sign up for a specific information management service?

Check out the video interview with Kim Keller at country-guide. ca by searching “farm data.”

Or go to www.country-guide. ca/2015/06/12/moving-yourfarm-data-from-field-to-cloud/.

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insight

His new playbook What can farmers adapt from Wade Barnes’ trail-blazing success at Farmers Edge?

By Tom Button, CG Editor

26 country-guide.ca

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

insight

Photography: victoria anne photography

I

n an agriculture that is struggling to figure out what its future will look like, Wade Barnes may at least know how to get there. And, as his example seems to promise, knowing ‘how’ may put you on the path to knowing ‘who,’ which in farming is the question that will eventually answer all the others.

In Barnes’ world view, the farmer today has the opportunity to achieve more than ever before. If you bring the right juice to the game, and if you run with the right playbook, the possibilities can be incredible, whether on the farm or in partner businesses.

“I’ve seen things other people haven’t seen yet,” says Barnes, CEO of Farmers Edge, the Winnipeg-based variable-rate technology (VRT) startup that now has 190 employees in five countries.

Launched in a Manitoba basement by Barnes and co-founder Curtis MacKinnon in 2005, Farmers Edge today has its eye on global leadership in precision-farming technology and management.

But the technology is only half the reason for his excitement. Barnes has also seen the application of Silicon Valley’s corporate strategies to the world of farming, and it has changed his outlook permanently.

Can his playbook work on your farm? Would you even want it to?

Barnes is convinced that variable-rate technology and “big data” are revolutionary, not just evolutionary. “This will change everything,” Barnes says.

“This is the next Green Revolution, this is the next GMO moment.”

His belief is making all the difference for his company, Barnes says, and it can make that much difference for farmers too.

Nothing is more important for young and midcareer farmers to understand, and to engage with, he says. “Nothing.”

Barnes wants to be understood exactly. He doesn’t want any of us to hear it wrong, only partly because it could be so easy to dismiss what he says as the kind of pie-in-the-sky thinking that agriculture can seem particularly prone to.

“I was born and bred in the field,” Barnes begins, talking of his early days on the farm near Pilot Mound, Man., after which he did a university degree in agriculture and became one of the hundreds of company agronomists across the West. It was a job he loved.

He was even named a Certified Crop Adviser of the Year, and he bought fully into it the prevailing ethos.

“If your nose isn’t in the dirt,” he remembers thinking, “you’re not going to make good recommendations.”

But that was then, not now.

Today, Barnes says with even greater conviction, “Agriculture is all math.”

When he and MacKinnon got their first taste of variable-rate technology a decade ago, they immediately saw it as a game changer. Until then, farmers aimed to make the best average decisions, an

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

approach Barnes calls the soil-sample philosophy.

You take cores across the field, but instead of analyzing those cores separately and using them for localized application rates, you dump them all into a pail and blend them before sending one sample to the lab to represent the entire field.

The goal was to fertilize at the best average rate, the same way you’d spray a fungicide, for example, picking the best average day for the entire crop.

Barnes admits that he and MacKinnon weren’t the only ones a bit star struck by VRT’s potential, yet few others quit their jobs, as he and MacKinnon did, when their boss refused to charge forward with the new technology as quickly as the duo wanted. And few others set up business, as MacKinnon and Barnes did in his basement, with no money, little credit except their personal lines, and almost no income.

Today, Barnes admits too that he and MacKinnon probably did jump a bit too early, in a way. Results in those first years were mixed. Technology and science still had to catch up. But the early start meant the two got in at the ground floor, and it gave them a chance to immerse themselves in the concept and to figure out its implications for the farm.

By 2012, when crop data was being successfully paired with localized weather instrumentation, Barnes was seeing, time and again, that analysts with remote data access could know more about what was going on in the field than local scouts, even though the analysts never left their offices.

However, what set the growth of Farmers Edge into overdrive was their leadership in understanding of what precision agriculture will mean for farms as businesses, not just as production units.

To this day, if you want to see Barnes bristle, tell him that VRT is a niche sector. “No one in agriculture will think that,” he snaps back.

Barnes sees the technology rewiring how farm business is done. “The farmer is the only person who makes a huge amount of decisions — million-dollar decisions — based on gut instinct,” Barnes says. “He’s got a Continued on page 28 country-guide.ca 27

insight Continued from page 27 great gut to do it, but in five years, that will change. He’ll rely on data generated on his farm to make decisions. That’s where I want to see us.”

Farmers will test a new combine on the farm, generating data about fuel efficiency, harvest speed, field losses and more to prove to the dealer what the combine is actually worth. They’ll know exactly what fertilizer to apply, what seed to plant, and how to schedule, manage and monitor complex field operations.

More than that, they will use this capability to build new partnerships,

Along the way, many of those farmers may in turn be watching Barnes and Farmers Edge to learn how to turn their opportunities into modern business realities.

What they’ll mainly see is the critical role that they themselves will have to play.

The higher you go in business, Barnes will tell them, the more you will be judged on whether you bring the right stuff to the table.

Despite all the accountants and all the technical advisers, at the end of the day if you want to partner with even the biggest organizations, you can expect someone in a boardroom to demand a chance to look you in the eye and ask, is this someone I want to do business with?

If anything, Barnes is finding that his personality and his personal attributes grow more important as the company grows and the scale of its partnerships increases.

Barnes points to two Monsanto announcements that helped convince Farmers Edge to get extra serious about growth. “When Monsanto bought Precision Planters (in 2012), I went, ‘The world is going to change,’” Barnes says.

“Either we sell right now or we raise capital and we change the business.”

for acquisition, but Barnes was also making his way to key boardrooms across Canada and in Silicon Valley, netting a deal with Kleiner Perkins after about a year of discussions, and with Mitsui after nearly two years.

In both, the process was similar, starting with a couple of phone calls and the exchange of some initial documents, then followed by extensive due-diligence analysis, followed up with a series of personal visits.

“It’s all about that,” Barnes says.

“They’re making a bet on you as the CEO. That’s what it’s all about.” Such investors would rather see the company thrive with its own leadership rather than bring in a new team, which as a strategy has a more mixed track record.

So what did they look for? Barnes has a pretty clear idea. Both Kleiner Perkins and Mitsui wanted a player with entrepreneurial fire and with vision, and a leader able to attract and retain great talent. Critically, however, they also wanted a CEO who was prepared to be tough as well, and a leader who can make change, including in himself.

Barnes thinks the timing is great for farmers to expand into this new era. Not only is the field open, he says, but Can-

“ This will change everything,” Barnes says. “This is the next Green Revolution, this is the next GMO moment.” bypassing elevators and dealing directly with end-users, providing a General Mills for instance, a superior combination of genetics, climate and soil to grow its oats, together with data transparency so it can know exactly how many tonnes of what quality it will get, and when it will get it.

Nor is that a dream, Barnes says. In fact, the biggest gap isn’t technological. The big gap is in the farms that are ready to make those deals come together.

Barnes is convinced it’s a temporary gap that is already being bridged by innovative farmers around the world, and their success with data-based input decisions and data-based marketing initiatives is going to help fuel the growth of Farmers Edge over the next five years, making it a key player in five core markets — Canada, the U.S., Australia, Eastern Europe, and Brazil, which Barnes refers to as the Saudi Arabia of agriculture.

28 country-guide.ca

The decision was to raise capital, and Farmers Edge bolstered its board of directors, bringing in key resources including Brian Heywood with his solid background in that arena.

Then in 2013 Monsanto paid $1 billion for Climate Corp., a startup founded

by Google employees David Friedberg and Siraj Khaliq that had an income stream of roughly $30 million. Again, the message was to get big or get out.

More than that, the message was also to get big by forming the right partnerships with investors who would open up new market opportunities.

“This is the side of it that a lot of people don’t realize,” Barnes says. “Raising capital is really hard. It’s much more difficult than anybody can ever imagine… not just raising capital, but raising the right capital.”

Soon, Farmers Edge was being studied

ada has a good supply of smart ag graduates who can make great employees for employers who can create the exciting, challenging jobs that they want.

But also make sure you monitor your own performance, he advises. Every business goes through periods of stress, and it is in those times that employees and investors want a sense of structure, and a sense that the company knows how to get the job done.

“The entrepreneurial excitement is infectious, but if you don’t adapt, your people will get frustrated,” Barnes says, adding, “I’m a farm kid, I have no MBA or business training, but I know that if you believe in something, you have to change, grow and adapt. You have to keep the entrepreneurial, renegade spirit, but bring in structure and focus.

“If they see I’m changing, that’s infectious too.” CG J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

insight

Genuinely in business OK, so it’s a cliché that business means people working with people.

It’s also how you create success.

Just ask Dow’s Brad Orr

By Tom Button, CG Editor

O

f all the global ag input suppliers, Dow AgroSciences has arguably changed the most, transitioning from a company whose Canadian presence was dominated by Treflan, a herbicide that nobody sprays today, into a diversified operation with a strong national presence and significant market share in crop protection, plant genetics, traits and more.

There’s just as good a case for arguing, however, that Dow has also changed the least. It’s still differentiated from its major competitors in the same way, based on its culture.

Growers know it intuitively. To them, Dow feels different, and a trip to its head office in Indianapolis confirms it. Compared to Monsanto, it isn’t as preppy, or as upwardly mobile as Syn-

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

genta, or as European as BASF or intellectual as Bayer.

Actually, it could be hard to know exactly what word to use to describe Dow, except, of course, for the fact that Dow has already come up with it.

“Genuine,” says Brad Orr, just finishing his first year as head of Dow’s Canadian business.

In fact, Dow has a small handful of such words — also including collaborative, resourceful and responsible — that it routinely tests itself on, including via feedback from growers.

“Building the culture of an organization, and its performance on individual projects, are related,” Orr explains.

But there’s even more to it than that.

Crucially, Orr says, culture influences your relationship with your customers, and how you anticipate and satisfy their needs.

For farmers looking at whether they might import high-level, Dow-based thinking to drive their own businesses over the next five years, this may even be where to start.

Of course, the rule of thumb is the same for agribusiness as it is for farming, with 80 per cent of your effort needing to go into getting the best, most efficiently produced crop to market. With global sales of roughly C$9 billlion and with 9,000 employees worldwide, Dow AgroSciences understandably puts most of its hours into ensuring that its pipeline is full.

Now that the company has diversified into everything from Nexera canola to the new Dow Seeds, and from crop protection to the Enlist trait that makes corn Continued on page 30 country-guide.ca 29

insight Continued from page 29

30 country-guide.ca

“ Open, honest conversation about what you are and what you aren’t is the beginning,” Orr says. “It makes for great collaboration.”

Orr, raised as a Manitoba farm boy, but now with 26 years with Dow, starting as a summer student while in university and followed with postings in Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

“Mother Nature humbles us. Every time you find a solution, you have to look for a new solution.”

That’s not to say, however, that “relationship marketing” doesn’t work. In fact, it’s that kind of thinking that helped drive Dow’s recent genetics announcement in Ontario, where for the past five years it has sold corn and soybean seed through

the two predecessor brands it had acquired — Mycogen and Hyland.

Now, all its sales will be through a combined Dow Seeds, partly because combining the two seed lists will result in one, more competitive catalogue with a larger research team behind it, but also because combining the sales lists will increase the new brand’s ability to have agronomists and other sales support on its customers’ farms.

The decision leaves the U.S. as the only Dow market selling genetics under different brands, and it marks a strategy to raise Dow’s genetics sales in Canada.

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

Photography: anne de haas

and soybeans tolerant to the Enlist Duo combination of glyphosate and 2,4-D choline, plus other product lines including nitrogen stabilizers such as N-Serve, this has become an exceedingly multidisciplinary task.

From a people-management perspective, it is also a challenge. Not only does Dow need experts on hand in all those different fields, but each segment also demands a share of the finite management, marketing and sales resources that Dow can muster on any given day.

It’s much the same, Orr agrees, as for farmers who diversify and now must not only pay attention to their grains and oilseeds, but somehow find the hours to monitor a specialty crop as well.

The business argument is clear. Dow has aggressive growth targets with the goal, within five years, of becoming recognized as a top-tier Canadian input company in a market where farmers have a wide choice of competitively priced technologies, and where they will only buy the best.

One route would be to sweeten its loyalty benefits, using marketing programs that increasingly reward farmers to up their Dow purchases.

It’s called a share-of-wallet approach, tied in to the thinking that it’s cheaper to grow sales with an existing customer than to go out and get a new farmer on your list.

All companies consider it, and Orr concedes Dow does too. “We all have our lists of cutomers we want to acquire, those who are loyal, those who have slipped.”

But Orr doubts how far that thinking can go. Attractive as it might seem, it would put the company at odds with its customer base, which prizes its independence and its ability to retain choice.

Instead, says Orr, the path forward is to focus more on its portfolio. “You have to give yourself the right to ask for the sale,” Orr says.

Increasingly, that means not specializing only in crop protection, or only in traits or genetics.

In a market where customers will only buy the best technology, and where none of the sciences can be expected to always produce the best solution, the necessary choice is to aim for world-class capability in all three, despite the additional people demands it creates.

“This is a humbling business,” says

insight “Having two brands was slowing us down,” Orr says. In the corn market, where Dekalb and DuPontPioneer have a combined 80 per cent market share, and where Mycogen and Hyland have a combined eight per cent, Orr is promising that Dow will grow its sales aggressively and become “the clear alternative within five years.

There will be three large companies… we can get there.”

That strength in Eastern Canada, combined with the company’s leadership in cereal herbicides in the West, plus its market share with Nexera and the growth of its traits sales, will then support growth across segments and enable the company to focus even more on relationships with its grower customers.

It’s a plan based on hard numbers and a goal that Orr articulates for staff and, increasingly, for customers. “Five years from now, Dow AgroSciences will be viewed as a leader in introducing innovation,” Orr says. “We will be seen as a toptier company.”

Because Dow is convinced that it

will take excellence in multiple disciplines to achieve that, Orr knows that tough decisions lie ahead, forcing him to choose which resources go to which initiatives.

“It’s a good problem to have,” Orr says, adding, “You always have to evaluate what’s core to your business, and what will create success by creating the most customer success.”

It also means there’s another pipeline that Orr is carefully monitoring. It’s the flow of new employees into the organization, and the growth of those already there.

Increasingly, that’s a multi-generational workforce, with the same opportunities and challenges that farmers see in their own operations. It takes careful thought to create an environment where the different generations can work together despite differences in work styles, expectations and personal goals.

Increasingly too, it’s a workforce with more gender balance. Women make up half of Dow’s western regional sales force, and Orr says that’s only a beginning. The clear evidence, he says, is that fostering

that kind of diversity leads to better decisions.

Again, the parallels with the farm come to mind. Orr’s team continually evaluates not only the progress but the aspirations of its people. As on more farms, it also finds ways of keeping the channels of communications open, so individuals have a clear role in defining their own development plans.

“It’s an ongoing dialogue,” Orr says, and the company uses tactics ranging from internships to temporary assignments at its Indianapolis headquarters to work on specific assignments.

Hitting these HR targets is as vital as any other business numbers.

Overall, though, it’s part of a core belief that human relationships can be optimized for success, whether those are relationships with customers, partners or staff. As a leader, Orr says, he needs to recognize what he can control, and what he can’t. “If you try to control things you can’t control, that’s not very genuine.” CG (With files from Amy Petherick)

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country-guide.ca 31

Business

How it plans to beat us Here’s a must read from Down Under for coming out on top

By Gerald Pilger ou have to admit that for an economic study, this one has a great title: “The Puck Stops Here!: Canada challenges Australia’s grain supply chains.” The new study is by the Australian Export Grains Innovation Center (AEGIC), and it looks into Western Canada’s export grain supply chain.

In fact, it looks at our grain system in such a comprehensive way that Australian farmers who read the report may emerge with a better understanding of our strengths and weaknesses than many Canadian farmers have, which should both embarrass and worry us.

This report is a testament to the fact that Australia’s grain industry is working hard to grow into the global go-to supplier of wheat and coarse grains, likely at the expense of Canadian farmers.

Australia recognizes that the health of its agricultural industry does not start with the seeding of a crop. Nor does it end with the dumping of grain into an elevator pit. It understands that marketing isn’t only about the price that farmers receive for their production. It’s about a lot more as well.

It’s also a sign that Australia realizes that in order to be competitive in the global grains market, it needs to know its competitors’ supply chain systems as well as it knows its own.

Knowing your competitor is a fundamental business strategy across many industries. For example, Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon says, “We watch our competitors, learn from them, see what they are doing for customers, and copy those things as much as we can.”

In the same way, Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, once tweeted, “Strike the right balance between respecting your rivals and focusing on how you can beat them, and you’ll have a winning formula.”

This is the strategy Australia is using to increase the efficiency and competitiveness of its grain supply chain. By analyzing Canada’s system, it plans to learn from our mistakes in order to avoid making those same costly errors. Second, it will identify what is working well in the Canadian grain supply chain and highlight which practices are most appreciated by our customers. Then it can build similar features into its system.

The goal is for Australia to become more efficient and competitive in order to capture new markets, some of which are currently Canadian customers.

32 country-guide.ca

So what did the report reveal? Australia’s and Canada’s Prairies are relatively similar not only in their acreage, crops grown and production practices, but also in their need to find export markets for a large portion of the production.

However, there are major differences in how each country handles and markets its production, and it is largely because of those differences that it costs Canadian growers $20.50/tonne more to move grain from field to ship than it costs Australian growers.

Distance to port is a major disadvantage for western Canadian grain growers. Prairie growers must transport their production 1,300 to 1,800 km to reach tidewater compared to the 100 to 400 km for Australian growers. But even though we are moving grain about six times farther, the average cost of this movement is $49 per tonne in Canada versus $28 per tonne in Australia.

The reason is that rail rates are almost five times higher in Australia than in Canada ($0.14NTK versus $0.03NTK). While we decry the rail service for grain in Canada, our regulations, efficiencies, and multi-use rail lines keep our rail costs much lower than Australian rail lines, which are almost totally dependent on grain movement.

However, we have serious rail issues too. Australian researchers who visited Canada last winter were told of the problems Canada has had with grain movement by rail, as well as about the abandonment of branch lines and about our increasing highway costs as more grain is moved longer distances by road.

There is also a difference in the degree to which farmers rely on rail. In Canada, Prairie farmers have very limited options for bypassing their rail system, while in Australia half of the grain moves by road from farm gate to port terminals.

Our port terminals are not designed to receive grain by truck even if we were willing to move grain by road.

Because of the lower costs of Canadian rail movement of grain, the key recommendation of the Australian report is to improve the flow and efficiency of grain to port in Australia. The report calls for Australia to develop a new, clear, concise plan for least-cost grain movement to port. According to the report, that plan should encourage private as well as private/public investment to boost grain movement from farm to port.

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

Business Farm versus off-farm storage Canadian grain-marketing specialists talk of the value of on-farm storage and the opportunities to capture higher prices by storing grain on farm. Rarely do we hear of the added costs to the Canadian grain supply system of onfarm storage, but those costs are identified in the Australian report.

According to the report, it costs Canada’s grain system $17.70/per tonne for our on-farm grain storage of the entire crop. Correspondingly, on-farm storage costs in Australia are only $5/tonne for a system where farmers store as little as 20 per cent of their crop on farm.

(In areas where there is strong local or domestic demand, farmers store up to 80 per cent. Areas which export more store very little.)

The Australian system has an additional cost of $3.90/tonne for the upcountry warehouse storage which Canadian farmers do not incur, but still our storage costs are double the cost of Australian farmers.

Australian farmers, by being able to move grain into upcountry storage at harvest, also do not have to worry about the risks associated with storing grain on farm. Those risks are assumed by the warehouse and/or grain trader.

The Australian storage system also offers individual producers access to many more buyers. Instead of being limited to selling to the few companies which are within trucking distance from farm gate to local facility, as is the case in Canada, once Australian farmers move the grain into upcountry warehouse storage, it is available for electronic purchase by any grain trader, so farmers can sell at any time to any buyer. This gives them the benefits of holding grain for later sale, but without the risks and additional costs of having to store the physical commodity on their own farm.

The farmer, grain merchant, and buyer also benefit by having the grain in commercial storage and available for immediate shipment instead of having to co-ordinate the movement of grain

from farm to ship after a sale is made, as happens in Canada.

In other words, Australia has adopted a true PUSH system whereas Canada relies on a PULL system in the grain supply chain.

Based on its storage comparisons, the report recommends a rationalization of some of the receiving and storage facilities to increase efficiency and further reduce the cost of the Australian grain supply chain. However, the report makes it clear that the end result of any rationalization must be that “… grain farmers are the net beneficiaries.”

Owning the Chain While Canadian farmers and governments continue to divest themselves of grain-handling assets (pools, CWB, inland terminals, etc.), the co-operative model of infrastructure ownership and supply chain management remains strong in Australia. CBH, the dominant player in the grain supply chain Continued on page 34

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Business Continued from page 33 in Western Australia is a farmer-owned co-operative with equity in receiving warehouses, port terminals, locomotives and rolling stock.

The Australians think their approach is right. Because we have sold the infrastructure in the grain supply chain, the report states, “The ownership structure of the Canadian export grain supply chains limits the proportion of the system from which the farmer can derive direct economic benefit.”

Then the report continues: “… Lack of equity in other sectors of the grain supply chain typically weakens the bargaining strength of farmers, especially those located in a region only served by one rail operator and with only one or two nearby receival sites owned by large grain companies.

“This limited market power of the Canadian farmer could also limit their capacity to capture the significant benefits that will result from ongoing climatic change and improved production technolo-

gies such as new inputs, crops, and varieties. Much of the benefit from increased grain production in Canada will be extracted before and after the farm gate.”

What Canada is doing right Besides identifying problems and higher costs within the Canadian system, the report points to areas where we have an advantage, and it urges Australia farmers and governments to adopt or adapt these practices.

The Australian contingent was impressed with the work and reporting of the Grain Monitor. Its report suggests setting up a grain-monitoring program similar to ours which could lead to better policy formulation.

As well, the report encourages Australia to strengthen relationships in export markets by creating its own version of the Canadian International Grains Institute (Cigi).

Plus, the report also notes that Canada has both higher productivity and higher productivity trends. The report calls for increased research by farmers,

industry and government to cost effectively boost production.

Interestingly, the report calls for a focus of this research to address climate change and the risks of declining production due to warmer and drier conditions, whereas in Canada many farmers still doubt that climate change is real.

It is important to realize that Australia, in spite of the lower productivity and a corresponding lower efficiency of infrastructure usage, is able to deliver grains into the critical Asian market at a lower cost than we can from Canada.

Instead of sitting back and waiting for sales, AEGIC, Australian farmers, and their governments are actively seeking to increase both productivity and the efficiency of their grain supply chain.

Canadian farmers must take note.

A good place to start may be for all Canadian farmers to read this report and look at our system as seen through a major competitor’s eyes. It is available online via www.aegic.org.au or by following the links on the AEGIC home page (www.aegic.org.au). CG

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A M E - ma n a g eme n t

Three key alignments for top farm management

By Terry Betker hen the planets align, life on the farm can be very rewarding, like when your weather is perfect at the same time that there are production shortfalls in other parts of the world and you can price into market highs.

There are other alignments, however, that are much more within your control when you are managing your farm business, including business direction, financial performance and management structure.

In a way, these factors have impacted farm business performance for decades, but as farms grow in size and complexity, it is increasingly important that we understand them better, and that we monitor them as the farm business moves through its life cycle.

Business direction This alignment consideration is really about strategic direction. Farms and farm families should have written vision statements that provide longer-term direction. A vision is the foundation of your future: what you want your farm business to become.

Technically, a vision statement should be a little cloudy and grand. Practically (which I find most farm families prefer) it should describe where you see your farm business five years from now. It is not set in stone. The vision will evolve over time as situations and circumstances change. It represents the direction of the business or where the business is headed. It becomes the road map — the “you can’t get there if you don’t know where you’re headed” reality.

Financial performance All businesses, including your farm, are tracking somewhere financially. They have an existing financial direction. For most farmers, this is a reactive function meaning that the financial position in the future — say five years from now — will be an outcome of what will happen over that time frame.

The preferred approach is to define what you want, or need, your financial position to be. Then determine what can and needs to be done to achieve it. Think of it as creating your financial vision. It should include financial targets and investment guidelines. How do you know if you are tracking to where you want to be financially if you haven’t defined the goal?

Logically, there should be a significant degree of alignment between a business vision and a financial vision. I find myself in discussions with farm families J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

where there sometimes is a disconnect between their ideas of where they want their farm to be in the future and their ability to get there financially. Having a dream and then realizing after a time that you can’t afford it can be discouraging. It’s like setting out on a trip and partway along the journey, finding out that you don’t have enough gas. It can cause frustration, add stress and result in hard feelings. Alternatively, financial clarity can have a positive impact on the business and family.

Management Structure Your farm’s management structure becomes more complex as your business grows, especially if there are intergenerational transitions. The basic management functions on a farm are the same, but what’s involved in attending to those functions has changed and is changing. For many farms, this is a new reality.

Simply stated, what does the management structure of your farm need to look like five years from now so the farm’s management will be appropriately aligned with your financial and business vision? Putting some structure around the management functions on a farm can yield powerful results, but it doesn’t have to be a complex exercise.

Start by drawing an organizational chart that best represents how your business is currently being managed. Determine who has responsibility for operations, marketing, financial and human resource management. Next, define what the tasks are in each of those management areas.

Then, repeat the process for what you think will be required from a management structure perspective five years from now, both in terms of the tasks and the responsibilities in order to define what your management structure should look like in the future. The process then is to begin to work towards it.

Three key alignments are required: • Creating your business and family vision.

• Putting definition around your farm’s financial future.

• Developing a management structure that reflects the current reality and future requirements.

Once completed, you’ll be able to monitor the alignment and make the adjustments that will be required to keep them aligned. CG Terry Betker is a farm management consultant based in Winnipeg, Man. He can be reached at 204-782-8200 or terry.betker@backswath.com. He is an instructor with Agri-Food Management Excellence’s CTEAM program. country-guide.ca 35

business

BACK to WorK Now that we’ve met the Tier 4 Final emissions standards, can we finally get back to designing better diesel engines?

By Scott Garvey, CG Machinery Editor

Off-road diesel engines now produce low enough levels of NoX and particulate matter to meet Tier 4 Final emissions standards.

Photo: John Deere

t last, we’ve crossed the finish line.

January 1, 2014 marked the implementation date for the very last level of phased-in emission reductions for off-road diesel engines above 175 horsepower, as called for in joint standards issued by the U.S. and the European Union.

The last set of regulations — called Tier 4 Final in the U.S. — has taken enormous engineering effort, and it has affected machinery far beyond the U.S. and Europe, including the lion’s share of farm machinery available in Canada.

The question is: Can we declare victory now?

Can we switch the industry’s focus back to delivering more productivity for famers?

The answer is: Maybe, but it turns out we might not have heard the last of emissions cuts for offroad diesels after all.

The jury is apparently still out on whether or not there will be more to come. There is talk in the industry (albeit still just talk) of resetting allowable limits or at least harmonizing them across all OECD countries. This time, though, the debate around emissions has expanded beyond parts-permillion objectives, and it is evolving into a broader, all-encompassing discussion.

“Generally speaking, in the U.S. we’ve spent the last decade in the off-road space focusing on virtually eliminating emissions of nitrous oxides and particulates,” says Allen Schaeffer, executive director of the U.S.-based organization Diesel Technology Forum, which represents many major diesel engine manufacturers.

“We’re sort of at a major milestone point,” Schaeffer says. “Industry has invested billions of dollars and a decade to get to near zero for the criteria pollutants, which has been the focus for so long. It’s

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been like one person dominating the discussion at a dinner. And that has been the discussion for the last 10 years. But other people want to talk now. They want to talk about C02, efficiency, performance benefits. And they want to talk about bigger issues, maybe global harmonization of emissions standards.”

When you look at the powered farm equipment on the market in 2015, some manufacturers who previously used only in-house engines prior to last January are now using a select few from other brands to fill gaps in their own lineup.

Executives will usually concede the real reason behind that was the difficulty in getting all their own engines to meet the T4F implementation deadline on time.

The large number of uses and applications for engines in the off-road sector is a key factor behind that difficulty.

“The uniformity you have in the on-road world is dramatic compared to the off-road world,” says Schaeffer. Class 8 trucks, for example, have a typical range of horsepower and duty cycles, driving at steady speeds and loads, so there can be a lot of standardization. By contrast, Schaeffer says, the number of engines and the diversity of applications in the off-road sector is “mind boggling.”

It’s a difference that has made the job hugely more complex for off-road machines. “Today in the highway truck world, all the Class 8 trucks from every single manufacturer use SCR and a particulate filter,” Schaeffer says. “In the off-road space, you need a spreadsheet and a matrix to figure out who’s using what.”

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business

Plus, some of the emission control technologies have negatively impacted fuel efficiency.

“There has been a lot of lost productivity and lost fuel efficiency,” Schaeffer says. “They lost the performance benefits that consumers would have got if industry hadn’t been pursuing such aggressive emissions levels. I think that more than ever, today, manufacturers want to focus on restoring those benefits.”

In other words, manufacturers want to get those gains back.

“What you’re seeing now in the U.S. are manufacturers that have those platforms out in the marketplace looking for ways to improve productivity and reduce fuel consumption,” Schaeffer says. “All of that is good news for operators.”

But if new rounds of emissions reductions are imposed on manufacturers, it’s possible they might jeopardize or at least delay those efforts to regain lost productivity.

Industry also points out that, with NoX and particulate emissions already near zero, there will be diminishing returns associated with the high cost of engineering further cuts.

Of all the gains in emissions reduction during the last 10 years, industry insiders say, the biggest jump came at the beginning of the program with the move from unregulated to Tier 2.

“That gets you half of the way to where you are today,” says Schaeffer. “The other steps, Tier 3 and 4, brought you the rest of the way, but as you get close to near-zero emissions anything else that happens is very expensive with much smaller returns.

“We’re down now into the zone we like to call near zero,” Schaeffer says. “There’s not a lot of additional chopping that can be done.”

In fact, pursuing alternative paths may be more practical. “There are other things happening now that influence manufacturers’ thinking on this,” Schaeffer says. “One of the best examples of those is hybridization. Five or 10 years ago, the thought of using electric motors on off-road machines was not common practice. Now if you look today, there is a range of equipment, like the Cat D7E and others, that have some kind of hybrid component. Not from an emissions perspective, but because they want to deliver more productivity and fuel efficiency.”

But it’s concepts like that which add another dimension to today’s emissions discussions. If additional regulation becomes the chosen route, could performance-enhancing features like hybridization figure into overall emissions numbers?

Would any of those systems come into play when

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

selecting which engines are certified or required to comply? And which becomes more important, further emissions level reductions or overall lower fuel consumption?

In the end, is there really a difference? Farmers and other end-users might think so.

One other way to achieve lower overall emissions is to simply get more of the newer engines into service. In both the on- and off-highway segments, there are still plenty of old diesels at work using less efficient emissions reduction systems or none at all.

“To deliver the benefits of these clean-air technologies, they (new engines) have got to make it to the marketplace,” agrees Schaeffer.

“ I don’t think standards are going away, but they won’t have the same front-seat influence in the next decade.”

In the end, governments might not have to move at all to make that happen. Societal pressures might become the real driving force. For example, some construction contracts in the U.S. now come with strings attached. Only contractors using low-emissions equipment are entitled to bid on them.

With large restaurant chains already demanding certain production practices from producers who supply their beef and produce, could the use of low-emissions farm equipment eventually become one of those conditions?

“Climate may help push that along a little bit,” adds Schaeffer. “If we find ourselves with a global attention to climate, you could see a lot of unconventional influences that could drive us to use cleaner technology.”

Even so, Schaeffer is optimistic that a lot was learned in the past decade. “I don’t think standards are going away, but they won’t have the same front-seat influence in the next decade that they’ve had in the last.” CG

Allen Schaeffer is executive director of Diesel Technology Forum, an industry-supported organization.

country-guide.ca 37

business

The roads of

Zambia

By Maggie Van Camp, CG Associate Editor

We’ve always known the country’s agriculture potential is massive. Now there are signs it is being opened up

Associate editor Maggie Van Camp travelled to Zambia through an International Federation of Agricultural Journalists investigation into the country’s challenges and opportunities. One farm was ultramodern and 74,000 acres, she reports. Others struggle with basic subsistence. The future may need both. riving to Nsongwe, Zambia from tourist-rich Livingstone is a tooth-rattling, 30-minute adventure through a savannah of parched grass and scrub trees.

Occasionally we see a clearing and a mud hut with its thatched roof, an open firepit, chickens, and brightly dressed women and children.

Colin Eves drives the jeep over the rough winding red dirt road. He’s a partner in The SilvaGro Partnership, one of the largest forest seedling producers in Western Canada, and he also runs a not-for-profit charity in rural Zambia.

In 2007, after the tragic death of their teenage son, he and his wife, Sandra, went to Zimbabwe to help a medical team treat displaced people after a flood. Soon after, the couple started the charity called the SAM project, for Sustainability through Agriculture and Micro-enterprises (www.thesamproject.ca).

It’s a not-for-profit, non-political and secular charity that aims to help the HIV/AIDs-ravaged population, improving its standard of living and providing education and medicine.

38 country-guide.ca

Eves and I are on our way to see the goat-breeding project his charity has helped create. In Zambia, goats are mostly left to forage through the villages and along the roadsides. Eves and the local chairman of this project, the successful emerging farmer and village head Teddy Neube, set up a goat-breeding co-operative of five members to improve genetics, piggy-backed with some husbandry training.

They imported three big Boer billy goats from South Africa and added them to a small rapidly growing herd of about 65 to cross with females, housed in little barns on stilts. The F1 offspring of bigger, hardier hybrid nannies will be bred back to another Boer male.

Over the 18 months so far, the goat-breeding cooperative has already established three of its planned five goat farms, says Eves.

Along the road to the village, we meet a donkey cart hauling jerry cans full of water to the farmyard at the top of a hill that has no well. Hardly anyone out here has their own well. Every day, the farmer hauls water a few miles from the community well that the Rotary Club drilled.

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business

Canadian Colin Eves felt called to help a country with one million poor farmers J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

The World Bank’s report, Recent Economic Developments and the State of Basic Human Opportunities for Children, has urged more investment targeted at the region’s lagging rural areas, particularly in infrastructure services such as drinking water, sanitation and electricity. Basic opportunities for children still remain a challenge. The same report says the largest barrier is for those born in rural areas, and for those who are female.

At the bottom of yet another bumpy hill, two small children flag Eves down for a ride. He recognizes them as children of a friend from the village and he offers to drop them off at the well.

Beaming, they hop in the back. Their English so far consists of, “I am fine, and how are you?” but by the time they finish school (public education only goes to Grade 7), they’ll be as fluent in English as the majority of the population.

Beaming, the girl places her hand against mine, filling only my palm.

“I guess I came here to help them hold on to their children a little longer,” says Eves. “People are like comets, they come into our lives and we remember their light.”

Running through this heart-wrenching story is money and greed — government spending, foreign investment, NGO (nongovernment organization) and mission projects. The problem with many wellmeaning NGOs and government agencies is that individuals take advantage of systems. “Some are gamed by the bureaucrats running the NGOs,” says Eves.

“Sometimes corrupted funds are channelled to the wrong places so they don’t make it to the villages.”

As we drive by a cluster of huts, Eves points out an empty corncrib made of sticks about two feet off the ground. The maize crop this year was poor because of ill-timed rains, and Eves says folks will be relying on the government to give them their allotted two 50-pound bags of maize cobs to last them through until the next crop.

Maize is the staple here and is made into a sticky mash so it can be hand rolled in balls and dipped in stews and vegetables. After years of subsidies to grow maize, Zambia is starting to shift to more diversified crops and diet. “The composition of the food basket is maize, maize and more maize,” says Given Lubinda, minister of agriculture and livestock. “We are trying to improve, not only food security but also overall nutrition.”

Build it big Big thinking and big opportunities can create big operations in Zambia.

But don’t forget to budget for rifles From the main highway it takes at least half an hour to traverse the washboard roads and cut across the fields that are fenced with electrified barbed wire, with armed guards stationed at the gates.

Dust flies up, and our vehicles are going only slightly faster than the many bicycles along the way. At one point, baboons and monkeys noisily scatter, climbing up the overhead trees.

At the end of our journey is the impressive 74,000-acre Zambezi Ranching and Cropping Ltd. The farm’s numbers are staggering: 380,000 broilers 6.4 times a year; 8,000 beef cows and calves; a $1.5-million piggery producing gilts; and 320 acres of tobacco with a processing unit. Along with the huge expanse of dryland pastures, there’s also 2,500 acres of open-pollinated seed maize, 2,500 acres of soybeans, 500 acres of Irish potatoes (they are a new crop in Zambia) and 1,400 acres of wheat under pivot irrigation that lets them rotate two to three crops a year.

Zambezi Ranching and Cropping Ltd. is a joint venture formed by Graham Rae with Ed Fleming from the U.K. and Francis Grogen, originally from Ireland but who now also owns Zambia’s largest beef feedlot and slaughterhouse, Zambeef.

Rae arrived from Zimbabwe in 2001, bringing his equipment, formidable energy and expertise to Zambia after pro-government militants, led by veterans of the 1970s liberation war, began invading white-owned farms in the former Rhodesia.

Recently, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe signed a law giving the remaining 2,900 white farmers 45 days to wind up their operations and another 45 days, expiring at midnight on August 8, to move off their land and make way for black settlers. Compared to Zimbabwe, Zambia feels like a land of opportunity for Rae. “I’m a farmer, my grandfather was a farmer, my father was a farmer,” says Rae. “I can’t sleep in the city.”

In 2001, the partnership’s 20,000 Continued on page 40 country-guide.ca 39

business

Graham Rae manages 74,000 acres of crops in a land often without passable roads

Continued from page 39 hectares were sitting bare and undeveloped — no wells, no electricity, no fences, no houses, no buildings. After a decade of cheap, abundant labour and modern farming technology, however, now it’s swarming with capitalism.

Today only 38 per cent of the African population has access to electricity, and the penetration rate for the Internet is under 10 per cent. In Zambia electricity is prepaid. In the city, tokens are sold in kiosks at the side of the road.

In the 14 years Rae has been here, the secondary road to the farm has been graded only once, and he has never seen any government improvements to the roads. That might be about to change.

40 country-guide.ca

Yamfwa Mukanga, Zambian minister of transport, works, supply and communications says the government is hoping to create private/public partnerships to improve feeder roads. This could work well for the large commercial farms, like Rae’s, with their own fleet of equipment.

As the crow flies, Zambezi Ranching and Cropping Ltd. is only 20 km from Zambia’s capital Lusaka, and theft is a big problem. Rae even buys feed instead of milling it himself so he knows exactly what’s coming over his weigh scales at the gate. “It’s like a takeout shop,” he says.

Every night, 16 to 22 armed guards protect cattle and property. Rae spends $15,000 a month on security and says Zimbabwe was even more malicious and random. Every night, shots are fired, and a few weeks before my visit a cattle poacher was killed. Sometimes, though, his guards come under fire too. “We are about 15:1 here,” says Rae pragmatically talking about the ratio of human deaths

almost as if they’re production risks. “It’s like the Wild West here.”

The farm employs 1,800 people who are supplied with housing and free medical. Residents of the local village also use the sparse but clean medical centre on the farm for a minimum fee. Mostly they’re provided with HIV medication.

In the 1980s AIDS basically wiped out the middle class of many villages in Zambia, crippling society and the economy.

Today, 75 per cent of Africa’s population is under the age of 25, and although testing is limited, in many villages the majority of adults is HIV positive.

In Zambia, the average farm worker earns US$100 to $150 a month. Last year the government introduced legislation to raise the minimum wage to 33 kwacha a day, equivalent to US$6/day.

“A loyal, healthy community is essential,” says Rae. Continued on page 42 J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

CONGRATULATIONS!

Kayleen Holman

Ariane Bergeron

Julie French

Christopher Manchur

Middle Musquodoboit, NS

St-Samuel, QC

Caledon, ON

Gilbert Plains, MB

The next generation of Canadian agricultural leaders is growing, and CABEF is proud to support them. Congratulations to these six exceptional students who have won $2,500 CABEF scholarships. Based on their applications, the future of the agriculture industry is in great hands.

Morgan Heidecker

Kyle Wheeler

Middle Lake, SK

Strathmore, AB

Six more $2,500 scholarships will be awarded to grade 12 students in April 2016.

Apply at cabef.org @CABEFoundation CABEF is a registered charity (#828593731RR0001).

For more information on all registered charities in Canada under the Income Tax Act, please visit Canada Revenue Agency www.cra-arc.gc.ca/charities.

business

Moving beyond sustenance In Zambia you not only need resources, you need swagger At points, the road to Francis Moomga’s 28-cow dairy is barely passable by vehicle. And this is the dry season.

Even so, the milk from this handmilked herd is delivered daily by ox and cart to a co-operative’s collective milk coolers. The Magoye Smallholders Dairy Farmers Co-operative has 225 active farmers supplying 2,700 litres of milk a day. Twice a day, the members deliver the milk to the collection site from up to 20 km away, mostly by bicycle.

Many small-holding farmers deliver food to markets by bicycling or walking with their wares piled on their heads or in a wheelbarrow. Some emerging farmers have dirt bikes, small cars and trucks. Most of the marketing is done by the men, while the production labour often falls to the women.

Studies have shown that poor road, rail and port facilities add 30 to 40 per cent to the costs of goods traded among African countries.

Beyond the few major highways in this country, the roads are bone-jarringly poor. Only a quarter of Africa’s road network is paved. The newly elected Zambian government is in the process of building 8,000 kms of major throughways and it is establishing private/public partnerships for secondary roads, according to Transport Minister Mukanga.

The harsh reality is that change and construction are excruciatingly slow here, yet so needed. For example, a bridge is being constructed to Botswana, a major trading partner and route to South Africa.

Although construction has started, it will be at least a couple of years before this small bridge is complete. Currently the ferry takes transport trucks across the river one at a time, with a four- or fiveday wait to cross.

Zambia fell into poverty after international copper prices declined in the 1970s. The socialist regime at the time tried but failed to prop up the country’s economy. The railroad through Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe), stopped construction and it still remains 1,000 km short of the port.

Along this railway line, terminal 42 country-guide.ca

concrete elevators that were built in the 1960s still sit underutilized. They’re big white-elephant reminders of how building infrastructure doesn’t solve anything if it’s not well thought through, done with integrity, maintained and secure.

The other reality is that building infrastructure to stimulate economic growth only works if it’s complete and if it complements an overall economic plan for the country. In any country, business growth needs a heavy dose of entrepreneurial willpower. But in Africa, it seems, you also need swagger, passion and grit.

ZAMBIA, A COUNTRY OF CONTRASTS Clockwise from top left: Small farms have no wells and farmers spend hours a day hauling water for their families and to livestock; huge elevators sit idle because the roads connecting them to coastal ports have never been built; as part of its 74,000-acre operation, Zambezi Ranching and Cropping Ltd. grows 350 acres with its own processing plant, based on labour at $6 per day; a typical corncrib, built of sticks and kept a couple of feet off the ground; a sign of hope, entrepreneurial farmer Teddy Neube is working to integrate improved goat genetics.

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business

Zambian opportunity Zambia wants to open up 10 farms… 250,000 acres each The contrasts in Africa vibrate. Red dust savannahs give way to green rivers streaming with life; mud-hut poverty subsists in the midst of copious natural resources; shoppers haggle at markets

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packed with vegetables while just a few miles away, the hungry wait in lines at desert refugee camps.

More than half of the 10 most unequal countries in the world are in Africa, according to the Gini Coefficient Index, a standard measure of income equality, and that includes Zambia, a place where the disparity in income, production and infrastructure is as wide or wider in agriculture than it is in any other sector.

Food is paramount and precious.

One-fifth of Zambia’s GDP and 85 per

cent of its jobs are generated by food, fish and forestry. Yet, most farmers are living below the poverty line, only one dry season away from starvation. The vast majority of the over one million farmers in Zambia is self-sustaining on less than a couple of acres, and many are female. The most common farm equipment is the short hoe.

In contrast, commercial-scale farms have technology that meets or surpasses North American norms. Near Zambia’s capital of Lusaka, AGCO, GSI and Bayer have collaborated on an impressive research and demonstration farm to showcase both large and small mechanization, pivot irrigation, storage technology, and crop diversity. AGCO’s senior vice-president and general manager for Europe, Africa and Middle East, Rob Smith, projects his company’s annual sales in this continent will quadruple in about five years to $1 billion.

Everyone seems to agree that the potential is huge. Currently, only 14 per cent of Zambia’s arable land is under cultivation, and the country has access to 40 per cent of the continent’s groundwater.

Now, money is coming into the country to help turn that opportunity into reality.

Zambia is on the cusp of great change with its stable, pro-investment government.

“The agriculture sector plays a critical role in the country’s economy. Agriculture could stimulate job creation and enhance rural resilience and break the chain of rural poverty,” says Given Lubinda, minister of agriculture and livestock.

The government goal is to bring 2.5 million acres of land under cultivation in the next 10 years. At the official opening of AGCO’s Future Farm in May, Lubinda announced that 11 parcels, each with 250,000 acres of undeveloped land are being opened up to co-venture with investors. Germans already control one.

The state owns 20 per cent of the land but chieftains control the remaining 80 per cent, called traditional land, distributing leases as they see fit.

In 1995, the Land Act allowed for traditional land to convert to state land with private leaseholds. About 10 per cent of land held under traditional tenure has been privatized. It’s a sign of progress, but the process is slow and bureaucratic. Without title, there’s limited collateral to improve or expand, and little incentive for outside investment. CG country-guide.ca 43

CropsGuide

By Jay Whetter

the right amount of harvest loss Here’s how to find that optimum balance between harvest efficiency and lower field losses ombines can easily throw more than a couple of bushels per acre of canola without drawing any notice from the operator. Yet that hidden loss can add up. Two bushels per acre tossed with the chaff amounts to $3,200 per 160 acres (based on the round number of $10 per bushel of canola) and it also contributes to the volunteer seed bank at a volume equal to 20 times the typical seeding rate.

“Losses will vary machine to machine, field to field, afternoon to evening, and there will be times when losses are much higher than two bushels per acre,” says Angela Brackenreed, agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada. “Getting to know how these losses vary and being able to recognize high loss situations does require some work with a drop pan, but it can provide a pretty strong return on that time.”

Agronomy consultant Jim Bessel spoke about harvest loss management at the outdoor agronomy fest canolaPALOOZA in Alberta in June. He compares the time spent measuring combine losses to the time

Jim Bessel demonstrates how to use a one-foot-square stick pan.

44 country-guide.ca

spent taking soil samples. “A soil test provides growers with a baseline to make soil fertility adjustments so they can get the most economic impact from the nutrients they’re applying,” Bessel says. “Harvest loss measurements provide that baseline for combine adjustments.”

The drop pan is like the soil test probe for combine loss evaluation. It’s an essential tool because electronic loss monitors are not accurate enough.

They give you a vague idea whether losses are going up, but can’t say how many bushels per acre are thrown over.

“Time spent with the drop pan will give you a better idea what the loss monitors are telling you,” Brackenreed agrees.

Growers have three drop pan options. First is a deep-sided drop pan on a stick that the user holds under the back end of the combine. Deep sides will limit seed bounce out of the pan. Second is a wider pan the user tosses under the combine as it goes by.

Third is a wide pan that attaches to the belly of the combine and releases with a switch.

How to sample for harvest loss Step 1. Disengage the chaff spreader and straw chopper and move them out of the way so straw, chaff and thrown-over seeds drop straight down over the pan. This is important for accurate calculations.

Step 2. Position the pan. When using the pan on a stick, move the pan into position upside down so it doesn’t gather any losses ahead of time. Walk behind and to the side of the rear wheels and position the pan in front of the chaff and straw discharge area. Once the pan is in position, quickly flip it over and stop walking. Stand still until the combine has passed over the pan. This procedure provides the same result as throwing the pan, but the handle provides more precision when it comes to placement.

Step 3. Remove the straw and chaff and preserve only the seed. A screen works. Another method is to put the collected sample in the bottom of a five-gallon pail and use a blower or old hair dryer to blow out the lighter chaff and straw, leaving the seed behind.

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canola management

Jim Bessel, agronomy consultant and former CCC agronomy specialist, spoke about harvest loss management at canolaPALOOZA, an outdoor agronomy event hosted by the Canola Council of Canada and Alberta Canola Producers Commission at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada centre in Lacombe, Alberta in June. Photo: Earl Greenhough

How much loss it too much?

“Each farm will have a different concept of how much loss is too much,” Brackenreed says. “Loss of half a bushel to one bushel per acre is considered an ideal balance between putting more in the tank and getting harvest done in a timely and efficient manner.”

If losses are 2.0 bu./ac. or higher, slowing the combine ground speed may be the key to reducing those losses. See the sidebar next page for 10 ways to reduce combine losses, but growers may find that slowing the combine ground speed is an effective step.

Bessel says that growers may discover that slowing from four m.p.h. down to three m.p.h., for example, puts an extra 1.0 bu./ac. in the grain tank. While this would increase revenue from each quarter by $1,600, he says it also means two to three more hours to combine that quarter. There is a risk trade-off.

If growers can’t take that kind of time, Bessel encourages them to pencil out the cost of running a second combine so canola can be harvested at the slower ground speed and still get each quarter harvested in two to three fewer hours. If the combine is a rental and if it means an overall more timely harvest, this saved time creates economic value in addition to the saved bushel per acre, he says.

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

“The approach to combine loss management comes down to the grower’s perception of risk,” Brackenreed says. Is combining slower a higher risk than throwing over a bushel or two? Is buying another combine riskier financially than taking it slow with one unit? “Either way, the decision has to start with a true picture of combine losses and the cost they represent,” she says. “Measure how much the combine is throwing over.”

Bessel says measure first, then calculate, then adjust. “These need to be followed in sequence, otherwise you’re not accomplishing anything.” CG Jay Whetter is communications manager for the Canola Council of Canada. For more on this topic, search for “harvest loss” at www.canolawatch. org. While at the site, why not sign up for the free weekly agronomy newsletter from the CCC? Growers may also be interested in the Harvest Loss Calculator available through Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association at www.ssca.ca.

Turn to next page for more of Jay’s best tips on how to get on top of canola harvest losses

country-guide.ca 45

CropsGuide

6. Don’t assume canola separates easily.

Unthreshed pods in the chaff mean the combine is underthreshing. Increase cylinder or rotor speed, narrow the concave setting, add concave blanks, or slow down.

7. Know the combine.

Rotaries work best with a narrow windrow, like a ribbon. Conventional walker combines work best with a wider swath that creates an even mat over the full width of the cylinder and walkers.

8. Feed canola as uniformly as possible into the combine. Take time ahead of harvest to smooth out bunches left by the swather. Losses as these big bunches move through the combine can be huge.

9. Travel at speeds that match a level of acceptable loss. It may take just a small decrease in speed — say 0.2 or 0.3 m.p.h. — to provide a significant reduction in losses. The loss curve tends to remain fairly flat until ground speed reaches a critical point when combine capacity is taxed, then the loss curve can rise steeply.

10. Acknowledge that losses can vary from field to field and morning to afternoon to evening. With practice, growers will recognize conditions that increase or reduce losses and make adjustments throughout the day.

(Note: Jay compiled this list largely based on input from Les Hill with PAMI in Humboldt, Sask.)

46 country-guide.ca

Step 1. Measure the seed in the pan by weight. Find a small scale that can measure in increments of 0.1 of a gram.

Step 2. Calculate based on one square foot. If the pan is two square feet, for example, divide the weight or volume by two to get the total for one square foot.

Step 3. Determine the concentration factor (CF) for the combine. This is a ratio of header cut width (swather or combine) and combine discharge width — a factor necessary to calculate losses per acre. For example, if the header is 30 feet and the discharge width is five feet, then the CF is “6.” See Table 1.

Step 4. Plug these numbers into Table 2 to get losses in pounds per acre. If the cleaned sample weighs 6.2 grams per square foot and the combine CF is 6, the loss works out to 100 pounds per acre — or two bushels per acre.

Table 1: Common ratios of width cut to width of discharge (Concentration factor)

Width of cut (ft.)

1. C heck for leaks. Losses do not always come out the back end. Before making any adjustment to cylinder speed, concave spacing, fan speed or sieve spacing, check for holes and cracks on the pickup, feederhouse, elevator, shoe seals, separator covers and the grain tank.

2. Start by setting the combine according to the operators’ manual recommendations for canola. Use a drop pan to check for losses. If losses are too high, adjust one variable at a time and check losses between each adjustment.

3. Adjust fan speed to the point where seed is just beginning to blow over.

4. Open chaffer and sieve settings as wide as you can tolerate.

5. Avoid overthreshing.

Straw pulverized into small pieces that drop down to the sieves will reduce airflow and separation — and increase losses. Cracked seed is another sign of overthreshing. Consider lowering the cylinder speed or widening the concave setting. This adjustment may also make it possible to drive faster and keep losses constant.

How to calculate loss per acre

Width of discharge from rear of combine (ft.)

CF

3

4

5

6

(X)

12

16

20

24

4

15

20

25

30

5

18

24

30

36

6

21

28

35

42

7

24

32

40

48

8

27

36

45

54

9

30

40

50

60

10

A combine’s concentration factor (CF) is the width of cut divided by the discharge width. Source: PAMI Table 2: Weighing method — all crops 4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Loss lb./ac.

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1.0

10

Cut width compared to windrow dropped behind combine (Concentration Factor=CF)

CF

Loss collected behind combine in 1. square foot grams/ft.2

10

ways to reduce combine losses

0.6

0.8

0.9

1.1

1.2

1.4

1.6

15

1.0

1.3

1.6

1.8

2.1

2.3

2.6

25

2.1

2.6

3.1

3.6

4.2

4.7

5.2

50

3.1

3.9

4.7

5.5

6.2

7.0

7.8

75

4.2

5.2

6.2

7.3

8.3

9.4

10.4

100

5.2

6.5

7.8

9.1

10.4

11.7

13.0

125

6.2

7.8

9.4

10.9

12.5

14.1

15.6

150

7.3

9.1

10.9

12.8

14.6

16.4

18.2

175

8.3

10.4

12.5

14.6

16.7

18.7

20.8

200

For bigger collection pans multiply the values in the grey zone by the number of ft.2 in the collection.

Calculations are based upon 0.010413 grams/ft.2 over each ft.2 in an acre = 1 lb./ac.

To calculate loss, cross-reference the combine’s concentration factor with the loss (in grams) collected per square foot of drop pan area to come up with a loss in lb./ac. One bushel of canola typically weighs around 50 pounds. Source: PAMI

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

Coast-to-coast oportunities for the Canadian forage industry

By Cedric J. MacLeod Executive director, Canadian Forage and Grassland Association, cedric@canadianfga.ca

The Canadian forage industry is much like forage itself — rich in diversity, ripe with potential, and challenged by countless decisions on where to focus our inputs.

As the growing season kicks in to high gear, I'm reminded of how many returnon-investment decisions we make throughout the year as forage producers.

Do we keep back heifers or sell a few cows? Should I reseed winterkilled acres or overseed pastures? Plant annual forages, bale and sell or graze it off?

There isn't always a clear correct option — each call comes down to the financial opportunity or risk-management choice of each decision. Each day involves a series of important decisions that, ultimately, help us achieve our long-term strategies and goals.

I initiated a rotational grazing system at my home farm in the summer of 1996, the first summer I returned home from a four-year tenure at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College.

In that year, the productivity of our pastures for five cow-calf pairs was doubled, and I was convinced that this was the change our farm needed. This change in management, while small in the grand scheme of the Canadian beef industry, was substantial in my own small sphere of influence. Similarly, small changes to an industry that encompasses 34 million acres of tame forage and 36 million acres of native pasture, can add up quite quickly.

CANADIAN FORAGE & GRASSLAND ASSOCIATION www.canadianfga.ca Ph: 506-260-0872

I have been fortunate to travel across Canada, speaking and interacting with ranchers and dairy operators from the interior of B.C., to the Alberta foothills, to the grey wooded zones of Saskatchewan, Manitoba's Interlake, grass and crop producers throughout Ontario and Quebec, and of course in my home base of the Atlantic provinces. I've provided technical agronomy support to some of the highest producing beef and dairy operators in these regions, and have learned first-hand just how incredibly diverse the Canadian forage production industry can be.

opportunity to highlight the important role of forages in the Canadian agri-ecosystem.

Change can be scary. It's embracing the unknown and, possibly, opening ourselves up to new challenges. It's a difficult concept that causes many to become nervous even when just discussing options for change.

From my years working with young farmer organizations across Canada discussing advanced farm management systems and farm business continuance planning, I tend now to focus on the concept of evolution instead of change, as it implies a more logical movement forward, a more-comforting slow and steady pace, whereas change invokes a feeling of option A stops now, and option B begins.

Coast to coast, the challenges and opportunities facing the forage industry vary considerably. It is our job to focus and prioritize which challenges get tackled first, and which opportunities are first on the list to leverage.

Evolution in the goals we generate for our grass stands, and how we go about achieving these goals has accelerated over the past five years. Recognition of the value of high-quality forages in our livestock rations has created an exciting new

I am excited to have the opportunity to take on the challenge that is the Canadian Forage and Grasslands Association, and for the opportunity to work towards leveraging the Canadian grass advantage opportunity.

When you tally it up: highly productive and fertile soils, a refreshed and invigorated industry boasting new entrants in every province, a robust beef and dairy complex and a growing export opportunity in North America and abroad — how could I not be excited?

I look forward to working closely with our national and provincial partners to assess where we are, where we need to be, and how we get there. Developing a structured approach to evolution of the Canadian Forage and Grasslands Association is my goal, and I look forward to working with you towards it.

Save the Date for the 2015 CFGA Annual General Meeting on November 18-19th in Saskatoon, SK. Canadian Forage in the International Year of Soils – Capture the Intensity .

More information available at: http://www.canadianfga.ca/

CropsGuide

By Richard Kamchen

two steps forward…

Farmers have made great strides toward sustainability, but there are fears that we’re starting to slip back ave we become more sustainable?” asks Martin Entz, professor of natural systems agriculture at the University of Manitoba. “In some ways we’ve moved forward a long way, but there’s also some things we’ve moved backwards on.”

Farmers have scored big wins in erosion control, the rate of organic matter loss, water use efficiency, weed management, yields, and economic efficiency, says Entz. Those gains are backed up, for instance, by research from Pulse Canada, which compiled data from 1981 to 2011 showing improvements in a range of areas in Western Canada and Ontario.

But amid the scores of initiatives across the country that are aimed at boosting agriculture’s sustainability and to minimize its environmental impact, Entz is challenging farmers to take a critical look at how far they’ve come, and how far they have yet to go.

That starts with the recognition that the change in Canada’s farms is real, and it is as positive as can be seen from those Pulse Canada numbers. “We’re just finishing a fertilizer use survey as part of this effort, and some of the information that we’re gathering from that is that growers are applying good practices when it comes to placement and timing of fertilizer,” says Denis Trémorin, Pulse Canada’s director of sustainability. “A lot of people have moved to singlepass systems in the western provinces. So everything is going down with the seed, and that makes things more efficient.”

But Entz says energy efficiency is an area where little headway has been made.

“We’re using a lot of energy to produce the crops that we are, with fossil fuel energy in the form of fertilizers,” Entz says. “And we’re not producing our crops much more (energy) efficiently than we were in the past. Maybe less efficient.”

Nicole MacKellar, Grain Farmers of Ontario’s market development manager, says improvements are evident in spraying applications thanks to GPS and auto steer systems.

“Those are two very big components that we’ve really seen become adopted quite heavily in Ontario,” MacKellar says. “GPS not only allows you to plant straighter, but for a spraying application, we have very precise information so there’s not any overlap. We can be very precise when we’re spraying around ditches or creeks.”

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Have GMOs turned the tide?

John Oliver adds Roundup has totally changed agriculture for the better on the sustainability side because farmers are no longer running over their fields multiple times, burning fuel and wearing out machinery.

But Entz says GMO technology has been less than a boon to sustainability.

No till was already practised before GM crops, although Entz concedes the ability to use glyphosate on certain crops made it easier to reduce tillage.

“The herbicide-tolerant crops really, they just bought us some time with weeds, because now we see resistance building to glyphosate. So the GM crops are becoming much more ordinary in terms of their weed benefits,” Entz says.

Oliver, however, argues in favour of GMOs, especially the potential they might offer in the future.

“There’s no way we’re going to feed the world without being able to place the traits that allow us to get by on much less water for plant rearing. There’s just no way,” Oliver says.

Oliver also argues Western Canada’s cropping system is among the most sustainable in the world, in no small part because the crop mix has changed so much and eliminated the wheat/fallow rotation.

Entz agrees that crop diversity has increased in some areas, but argues GM technology has promoted more monoculture.

Also, even if you take into account more pulses and soybeans, canola and wheat remain the dominant crops by a long shot.

Falling diversity “We do see on the Prairies now the level of crop diversity has dropped in the last 10 or 15 years,” Entz says, noting production of crops like barley and rye has fallen. “We want to diversify our crops, and it remains a challenge. And I don’t know if the investment is so weighted toward very, very few crops that they’re getting all the attention in terms of breeding and management systems that it becomes harder to compete with them.”

Another area of farming that hasn’t improved is in water drainage, Entz argues. Loss of wetlands in particular has become problematic for lakes, and it’s cost farmers a lot of money to deal with the excess water that runs off their landscape.

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

sustainability

Martin Entz sees opportunity for grain and livestock producers to work together on a more sustainable combination of annual and perennial crops.

MacKellar notes GFO has been actively involved in looking at voluntary solutions that the Ontario agriculture industry can implement.

The group is trying to address water quality issues through its involvement in the 4R Nutrient Stewardship program, which looks at farmers applying their nutrients at the right rate and source at the right time and place.

“We drink and utilize that same water that the general consumer does. So what as an Ontario agriculture industry can we be doing proactively to address that situation?” MacKellar asks. “We really feel that 4R Nutrient Stewardship provides us that voluntary tool that farmers could utilize.”

Perennials and livestock “Ontario’s gone in many ways way backwards,” says Entz, who argues that the province’s agriculture sector’s sustainability was weakened when many of its pastures were replaced by corn and soybeans.

“We’ve really abandoned a lot of our perennial pasture approaches and gone to straight grains,” Entz explains. “And once you’re in the straight grain farming system, then you have all the water quality problems, you have the energy problems, you have the herbicide-resistance problems.”

The Canadian Prairies never bought into perennial pastures at the same degree Ontario did at one time. But perhaps it’s time they did. Entz points out that many farmers already grow crops intended for livestock consumption anyway, and that perennials would allow animals to harvest those plants themselves through grazing.

Whether a farmer was to graze his own livestock or a neighbour’s, the market would be the same — feeding ruminents for human consumption.

“Because we’re so involved in the livestock busiJ u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

“ On the Prairies now the level of crop diversity has dropped in the last 10 to 15 years...

— Martin Entz we want to diversify.” ness in Western Canada — so much of what we produce goes for livestock feed — I think that that would allow us to change our farming systems, at least in some places, and not really change what we’re feeding,” says Entz. “We’re still going to produce seven million beef animals every year on the Prairies. Can we organize our farming systems to serve that a bit differently? I know it’s a big challenge, but I think we should at least be thinking of these things.”

There are already numerous farmers in Western Canada who’ve got breeding stock for grass finishing. And there are farmers who are grazing almost year long and calving in the spring. The beauty of the latter is it allows a farmer to take his animal into a second summer of grazing and sell it fat.

Entz calls the livestock sector the “low-hanging fruit” of sustainability. With perennials in the system, the land’s drainage improves and can better handle heavy rains.”

That ability to handle excess moisture could prove a crucial trait, Entz believes. “One thing we know with climate change is, as the temperature goes up, the atmosphere holds more water, which means when it rains it’s going to rain harder. We’re already seeing a lot of farmers struggling with excess soil water. And we know that when you have perennials in your system, it’s not nearly as susceptible to that problem.” CG country-guide.ca 49

CropsGuide

By Richard Kamchen

win the right battle Not only is the food we eat bad for us, but the practices that produced it are unsound too. Or so goes the message that too many consumers get too often from our mainstream media he science is clear. “If you look at Western Canada and you look at a four-year crop rotation that starts anchored by a pulse crop at the front end, I believe that’s one of the most sustainable farming systems in the world,” says John Oliver, president of Maple Leaf Bio-Concepts.

Many of the loudest, harshest voices on farm sustainability, however, are from would-be “experts” who focus on so-called Frankenstein foods and Monsanto in particular, drowning out the messages coming from growers.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve sat with people who have no connection to agriculture other than they get three meals a day, and they’ve got an opinion about Monsanto,” Oliver laments.

Oliver says the arguments he makes about the advantages of glyphosate and how many fewer passes over fields it’s meant — and the positive impact this makes from a carbon point of view — too often fall on deaf ears.

Nicole MacKellar, manager of market development with the Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO) calls the bad light shed on agriculture unfortunate.

“ Can we develop a tool that enables our industry to respond to market demands for sustainability information?” — Denis Trémorin “We care greatly about our environment,” MacKellar says. “One of the things that we’ve realized as we’ve gone through this sustainability work is we do have a lot of great things we’re doing, here in Ontario and across Canada. But we haven’t done a great job of sharing that story.”

Denis Trémorin, director of sustainability with Pulse Canada, acknowledges the heightened consumer scrutiny into the food they buy.

“There’s a shift going on in terms of a new marketplace demand for sustainable products. And some of this is information coming down to the field and farm level,” says Trémorin.

“We understand sustainability has become a large topic,” adds MacKellar. “Almost every day we’re hearing about a new program being put in place or a new company coming out and making 50 country-guide.ca

these public declarations about wanting to source sustainable raw ingredients.”

GFO, along with a group of companies and growers’ associations, has joined Pulse Canada in the Canadian Field Print Initiative, with the objective of replicating the success of the U.S. Field to Market program.

“Can we develop a tool that enables our industry to respond to market demands for sustainability information at the farm level, and can we make this as easy as possible and as low cost to our supply chain,” were the principles behind the initiative, Trémorin says.

Taking a page from the U.S., a homegrown calculator has been developed that allows growers to determine the sustainability of their production practices.

Basic input information includes farm location, type of equipment and duration of field operations. Based on that data, the calculator provides performance measures on land use efficiency, soil erosion risk, energy use, climate impact, and soil carbon release.

“The calculator itself is an Excel-based tool where growers can input their crop information,” Trémorin says. “We’re specifically focusing right now on fuel use and fertilizer. We go practice by practice in the field. It’s not too onerous a process.”

Fertilizers are farmers’ most costly input and they’re what Trémorin sees driving the calculator’s value. “If you’re more efficient with your greenhouse gas emissions, it means you’re more efficient with your fuel use or your fertilizer use. So these are the types of outputs we want to share with growers in a workshop setting.”

A survey Pulse Canada conducted showed over 60 per cent of Prairie farmers were applying the same rate of fertilizer on all their canola and wheat fields.

With a background in soil science, Trémorin realizes that may not be the optimum approach.

“There are a lot of questions whether precision agriculture is the way to go, but I think one solid effort is, can we at least get precision down to a field scale so you’re applying the right rate of fertilizer to the right field?… I think there’s some refinement there that’s going to help drive more profitability on the farm.”

General Mills is very much invested in the U.S. calculator and its equivalent in Canada. “It wants to apply this to its oats supply chain in Canada and use it as a verification tool to prove that the oats it’s buying from Canada, which is its only oats supply chain in North America, are sustainable,” Trémorin says.

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

sustainability

> Empty Pesticide Container Recycling Program

There are many reasons to rinse.

While there may be opportunities to apply the sustainability calculator to niche markets where customers will pay extra, Trémorin indicates that proving one’s system of production is sustainable will be a coming requirement.

“Often the food industry is saying this is an expectation we Only rinsed containers can be recycled # have of the supply chain and we’re not going to be paying for it,” Trémorin says.

Besides making the calculator as easy for the supply chain Helps keep collection sites clean # to apply, the initiative is also seeking existing data to leverage, importing it into the calculator to make the process even less onerous.

Use all the chemicals you purchase # Field testing has provided the initiative 150,000 acres of data from 500 fields from about 35 farmers.

“We’re expanding the work into Ontario this year. And Keeps collection sites safe for workers # we want to do five regional pilots this year so that would be a minimum of 100 growers we want to participate this year. We can probably get more than that,” says Trémorin.

Maintain your farm’s good reputation # Field to Market is targeting 20 per cent of U.S. commodity crop acres — equivalent to 50 million acres — in its supply chain sustainability program by 2020. The Canadian initiative, however, hasn’t gone so far as to peg how many acres it wants in its database yet.

For more information or to find a collection The Canadian program has Growing Forward 2 funding site near you visit cleanfarms.ca until the end of 2017 at least, Trémorin says. By then, they hope to have developed a web-enabled tool that any grower can access for free.

Now, take your empty fertilizer “Because once you’ve built this thing, I think the industry containers along for the ride! associations can keep it alive,” Trémorin says, adding they would be interested in ensuring they own the data and that it doesn’t fall into hands that don’t have farmers’ best interests in mind.

Trait Stewardship Responsibilities Notice to Farmers To further spread the message that farmers are conscious of10901A-CFM-5Reasons-QRTPage-CountryGuide.indd 1 4/2/14 11:59 AM the environment and that their methods are sustainable, GFO is Monsanto Company is a member of Excellence Through Stewardship® (ETS). Monsanto products are commercialized in accordance with ETS Product Launch Stewardship Guidance, and in compliance with also working through the national, multi-stakeholder Canadian Monsanto’s Policy for Commercialization of Biotechnology-Derived Plant Products in Commodity Crops.

Roundtable for Sustainable Crops.

Commercialized products have been approved for import into key export markets with functioning regulatory “What we are working on right now is a large communisystems. Any crop or material produced from this product can only be exported to, or used, processed or sold in countries where all necessary regulatory approvals have been granted. It is a violation of national and cation piece which will include a website and brochure that international law to move material containing biotech traits across boundaries into nations where import is not will highlight some of this information, not only to our cuspermitted. Growers should talk to their grain handler or product purchaser to confirm their buying position for this product. Excellence Through Stewardship® is a registered trademark of Excellence Through Stewardship. tomers who are purchasing our grain, but also to the general consumers as well,” MacKellar says. Highlights will include ALWAYS READ AND FOLLOW PESTICIDE LABEL DIRECTIONS. Roundup Ready® crops contain genes that information about crop rotation, environmental farm plans, confer tolerance to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup® brand agricultural herbicides. Roundup® brand agricultural herbicides will kill crops that are not tolerant to glyphosate. Acceleron® seed treatment precision agriculture technology and nutrient management technology for canola contains the active ingredients difenoconazole, metalaxyl (M and S isomers), fludioxonil plans. “Through this roundtable, all of us can share those best and thiamethoxam. Acceleron® seed treatment technology for canola plus Vibrance® is a combination of two separate individually-registered products, which together contain the active ingredients difenoconazole, practices that we’re doing within each of our provinces and metalaxyl (M and S isomers), fludioxonil, thiamethoxam, and sedaxane. Acceleron® seed treatment technology develop that consistent communication message.” for corn (fungicides and insecticide) is a combination of four separate individually-registered products, which together contain the active ingredients metalaxyl, trifloxystrobin, ipconazole, and clothianidin. Acceleron® The roundtable also allows its members to identify the areas seed treatment technology for corn (fungicides only) is a combination of three separate individually-registered that need improvement and implement programs that are going products, which together contain the active ingredients metalaxyl, trifloxystrobin and ipconazole. Acceleron® to be the least cumbersome on farmers. seed treatment technology for corn with Poncho®/VoTivo™ (fungicides, insecticide and nematicide) is a combination of five separate individually-registered products, which together contain the active ingredients “What we want to do is develop effective resource tools that metalaxyl, trifloxystrobin, ipconazole, clothianidin and Bacillus firmus strain I-1582. Acceleron® seed treatment will allow our farmers to meet these new mandates retailers are technology for soybeans (fungicides and insecticide) is a combination of four separate individually registered products, which together contain the active ingredients fluxapyroxad, pyraclostrobin, metalaxyl and imidacloprid. asking for, but at the same time not be a larger burden to our Acceleron® seed treatment technology for soybeans (fungicides only) is a combination of three separate farm operations,” MacKellar says. individually registered products, which together contain the active ingredients fluxapyroxad, pyraclostrobin and metalaxyl. Acceleron and Design®, Acceleron®, DEKALB and Design®, DEKALB®, Genuity and Design®, Genuity®, GFO is also actively involved in a number of other sustainJumpStart®, RIB Complete and Design®, RIB Complete®, Roundup Ready 2 Technology and Design®, Roundup ability programs, including the Sustainable Agricultural InitiaReady 2 Yield®, Roundup Ready®, Roundup Transorb®, Roundup WeatherMAX®, Roundup®, SmartStax and tive, the Roundtable on Responsible Soy, and the 4R Nutrient Design®, SmartStax®, Transorb®, VT Double PRO®, and VT Triple PRO® are registered trademarks of Monsanto Technology LLC, Used under license. Vibrance® and Fortenza® are registered trademarks of a Syngenta group Stewardship Strategy. company. LibertyLink® and the Water Droplet Design are trademarks of Bayer. Used under license. Herculex® is “Definitely there’s maybe some areas we could improve a registered trademark of Dow AgroSciences LLC. Used under license. Poncho® and Votivo™ are trademarks of Bayer. Used under license. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. on, but I think for us here in Ontario and the rest of Canada, because we have a lot of infrastructure in place and programs that allow us to be sustainable, we are ahead of some of our competitors who maybe don’t have quite as sophisticated an infrastructure put in place for it,” MacKellar says. CG

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country-guide.ca 51

CropsGuide

By Gord Leathers

livestock strategy comes to canola Canola and soybean farmers are just beginning to see the wave of biosecurity that could sweep them the way it swept Canada’s hog and poultry sectors hen Manitoba agronomist Terry Buss goes out on a call from the Beausejour office, he takes a big trunk full of plastic boot covers in the back of the pickup. There are disinfectants in the trunk too, and other cleaning supplies as well, and he uses them all.

Buss has adopted a brand new form of field biosecurity designed to fight the spread of pathogens, so when he’s done his call, his boot covers will get tossed and he will carefully clean his tools before he heads to the next field on his next call.

Buss introduced the system at last winter’s Manitoba Agronomists’ Conference where he was recognized as what you might call the provincial poster boy for biosecurity, and he made some important observations.

“I’ve noticed two things,” Buss said. “One is that the term biosecurity turns people off because they immediately think of extreme stuff like hazmat suits. Getting people to realize that that’s not what we’re really talking about is important.

“ The term biosecurity turns people off because they immediately think of extreme — Terry Buss stuff like hazmat suits.”

And the other side of it is the ‘it’s not going to happen to me’ mentality. People figure these pathogens aren’t coming to their area, but when they do, then they’ll deal with it.”

Besides, biosecurity also has that unsettling feeling of somehow being linked to bioterrorism. Yet its origins are actually agricultural, with a focus on keeping potential pests and pathogens from multiplying and spreading.

Livestock producers deal with it already. It’s part of their routine vocabulary, and their hygiene protocols for chickens and hogs are proving at keeping diseases out or isolating them within one herd.

Sometimes in the livestock sector, biosecurity 52 country-guide.ca

even ramps up to the international level, as it did in the early 2000s with the outbreak of foot-andmouth disease in the U.K. Travellers from Great Britain found themselves walking through trays of disinfectant at the airport to keep them from inadvertently spreading the virus to other countries.

Now, crop farmers here are starting to deal with biosecurity, and the reason is clubroot, a disease of the brassica crops that include cruciferous vegetables and canola. Market gardeners in Ontario and Quebec were already familiar with clubroot but in the mid1990s it started appearing in Alberta canola fields.

“I work in the county of Leduc, and I’ve been dealing with this since I started my company in 2007,” says Paul Muyres, agronomist with Solid Ground Solutions. “I operate all through Leduc, Wetaskiwin and Ponoka, and I have to manage my biosecurity based on the fact that clubroot is present in that entire area.”

Clubroot presents some intriguing problems.

First, we’re not quite sure what it is. Plasmodiaphora brassicae shows characteristics of three distinct types of organisms, including fungi, amoeba and slime moulds, but it doesn’t quite fit into any of those categories.

In the field, a brassica plant would first contact clubroot in its dormant form, an extremely tough resting spore with a potential life of 20 years. If one of these spores touches a brassica root hair, the seeping compounds unique to the plant signal the spore to “wake up.”

This is where the action starts. That tough little spore germinates into a zoospore equipped with two tiny flagella that act like a boat’s propeller, moving it through the film of soil water in search of the root hair that activated it. If the zoospore finds the root hair, it penetrates and infects it and forms a body called a plasmodium that produces and releases more zoospores. These secondary zoospores infect the whole root, so the plant now has a full-blown case of clubroot. The root swells and can no longer absorb water or nutrients. The plant weakens and may die.

Oddly enough, clubroot’s main strength as a survivor is also its weakness. That ultra-tough spore can’t move, so it’s locked in the soil until it’s woken by a suitable root hair. Although it becomes mobile J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

biosecurity when it germinates, it’s highly vulnerable in its short-lived zoospore state, and it’s very limited in how far it can move.

Agriculture really gave clubroot legs.

We work the soil with large machinery, which means infected soil clings in clumps to the bottom of tractors and cultivators as well as the tires. As that machine moves into the next field, the infected dirt falls off and the spores are introduced. The machine becomes a vector.

Since chemical control for clubroot in canola isn’t feasible, the best way to deal with it is to keep clubroot where it is and to prevent it getting any further.

But that means we need to be able, as a first step, to find it and identify it.

“There’s a line called the county line between Wetaskiwin and Leduc and for two years there was no clubroot in the county of Wetaskiwin because nobody was looking for it,” Muyres says. “I found it in 2007 but I couldn’t say anything because the farmers there didn’t want us to acknowledge that.”

Denial is merely human, and bad news often trips the reflex to “shoot, shovel and shut up.” Having said that, it’s really important to confirm the presence of a nasty disease like clubroot and make absolutely certain it’s there before going off half cocked. In the larger picture it’s equally important to take a proactive approach by developing ways to contain it, manage it and keep it from spreading.

This is really what biosecurity is about.

“Trouble comes on an exponential curve, a mathematical curve that changes very little and very little and then suddenly it takes off,” Buss says. “That’s when my phone rings and that’s when it’s really, really expensive to fix. We need to keep everything back down at the beginning of that curve and that’s a very, very hard thing to get people to understand.”

“We were faced with a problem that we really didn’t have a handle on, so it was kind of the-sky-is-falling scenario,” agrees Muyres. “When I first started, I had an 80-gallon slip tank in my truck and a pressure washer and I had to wash my vehicle all the time, so I was probably washing my truck three hours a day. “I thought, ‘this is ridiculous, I can’t be doing this,’ and that’s when we came up with a checklist and started going through it.”

Buss says the Manitoba government went through something very similar but had the luxury of a later start, so it could look at what other people were J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

Get used to seeing more agronomists with more disinfecting gear. The trend is growing. doing and what seems reasonable to do.

Then they developed protocols, starting with the assumption that every field you go into could have a transmissible problem. From there they came up with a group of procedures that they use all the time on all farms.

“It’s meant using booties, it’s meant procuring and modifying equipment that’s reasonable to clean,” Buss says.

“It’s meant looking at alternatives to make it work quickly. We’ve got some basic paperwork that we’ve put together, some sheets where we get signatures from growers depending on what we’re doing, some reporting sheets that we fill out, I do mine on my smartphone digitally every time I go into a field so I’ve instituted some record-keeping.”

All fields that Buss works in are noted and recorded into a database so they’ll be monitored for clubroot and anything else that shows up in the checklist. Although clubroot has certainly brought biosecurity into agronomy, it’s not the only issue we deal with. That checklist has to take the holistic approach to agronomy. The farmer or agronomist who focuses on clubroot may miss something else that’s also important, such as soybean cyst nematode, one of the potential pests that keeps Buss up at night.

“These days I spend most of my time working on soybeans,” Buss says. “There’s a lot of surveying going on down south

of us, and the rivers flow our way. I think when we get it (i.e. the nematode) we’re really going to get it because soybeans are such an important crop for us, really the bedrock of all of our crop planning.”

So this is how Buss thinks ahead and how he’s proposing a proactive approach about monitoring and management. We have to look at how these things can get into our fields and then keep looking for them. We have to think of all possible vectors, even the unlikely ones.

Joe Sierens, a farmer and seed dealer also promotes awareness and education, and not just among farmers and agronomists, but anyone who might put something in your field. Knowledge and vigilance have to be the cornerstones of biosecurity.

“I had my own experience. A dealership wanted me to change the colour of my tractor and he brought me a quad track to drive,” Sierens says. “So I get in there and I look and I see 700 hours and that’s a lot of hours on a demo tractor.

I asked where this tractor came from, and he said Alberta. I asked, ‘have you ever heard of clubroot?’ and he says, ‘no, what is that?’”

“We need to educate our sales people and machinery sales forces,” Sierens says, “especially in big companies across Western Canada that move equipment on a truck.” CG country-guide.ca 53

CropsGuide

By Clare Stanfield, for WGRF

Getting better at fungicide application You may be doing a good spraying job now, but new WGRF research shows it might be relatively easy to do a whole lot better set of new sprayer nozzles can cost $500 to $1,000, while a new sprayer can clock in at $400,000. “But almost the entire probability of application success depends on the nozzle,” says Tom Wolf, co-owner of Agrimetrix Research and Training in Saskatoon.

He’s not saying that farmers shouldn’t invest in a new sprayer if they really need one. But when it comes to your investment in fungicides, understanding how to get the best performance out of today’s nozzles is where the bigger return lies.

Wolf is a specialist in spray technology and has done extensive work in herbicide application efficacy. As he turns his attention to fungicide application, he says the questions are the same, such as what is the optimal droplet size, angle of spray, water volumes, boom height and travel speed. But the challenge is quite different.

“Weeds are small and on the ground,” says Wolf of the early-season spray timing. “There’s not much

canopy, so there’s not much of a problem reaching weeds. But with fungicides, the canopy can be up to four or five feet high, and disease can occur anywhere within it.” Not to mention that it also occurs on variously oriented plant parts — stem, leaf or head — which presents its own challenges.

The trouble is that while farmers are increasing their use of fungicides, the best practice knowledge pool for successful application looks more like a puddle.

So, with funding from the WGRF and Saskatchewan’s Agriculture Development Fund, Wolf, along with colleagues Randy Kutcher and Bruce Gossen, has designed a three-year study to identify the key variables farmers need to focus on to get the best fungicide spray coverage and, by extension, the best disease control out of the spray equipment they have now, or will buy in the future. (Funding support is also being provided from nozzle manufacturers Wilger Industries, TeeJet Hypro and Greenleaf Technologies.)

Which makes a bigger difference in spray success, nozzle direction, nozzle spacing, or nozzle height? Wolf’s research is finding some unexpected answers

54 country-guide.ca

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 5

WGRF Straws tell the tale The first order of business for Wolf and his team was to test various nozzle types and application practices in controlled lab conditions to see how adjusting various factors might affect canopy penetration and spray deposition.

“We designed the experiment to isolate particular application factors, like travel speeds, water volumes, spray pressures and nozzle type, and configurations, such as leading and trailing fan positions,” says Wolf.

The experiments were conducted over the summer and fall of 2014 in a track room capable of carrying a multinozzle boom at speeds up to 16 km/h.

Wolf’s team created broadleaf and grass crop canopies, then placed plastic drinking straws into the top, middle and bottom third of each canopy to act as spray deposition targets.

“The straws are the approximate dimensions of field targets, like a flag leaf or wheat head,” says Wolf, add-

ing that they were positioned horizontally and vertically so they would mimic an actual field target even more closely. Drinking straw targets were also set just outside the plant canopies as a check.

Researchers then sprayed the canopies, using various nozzle configurations and application techniques, with a liquid that contained a fluorescent tracer dye and a non-ionic surfactant. “We introduced some variability by slightly altering the location of the straws, such as making sure they weren’t under the same leaf for every test,” says Wolf.

After each pass, the straws were individually washed in an ethanol solution to remove all spray liquid for measurement. The amount of spray deposited on each in-canopy straw was expressed as a percentage of what was deposited on the out-of-canopy straw checks.

WGRF is a farmer-funded and directed non-profit organization investing in agricultural research that benefits producers in Western Canada. For over 30 years the WGRF board has given producers a voice in agricultural research funding decisions. WGRF manages an Endowment Fund and the wheat and barley variety development checkoff funds, investing over $14 million annually into variety development and field crop research. WGRF brings the research spending power of all farmers in Western Canada together, maximizing the returns they see from crop research.

Continued on page 56

A hopper full of best-in-class technology.

Through Western Grains Research Foundation, producers have helped fund research and development for more than 200 varieties of wheat and barley. You most likely recognize more than a few of them, and you’ve probably had some success growing several of them too. Western Grains Research Foundation is a producer-funded and producer-directed organization. Working together, we produce some of the world’s finest and most technologically advanced grains.

@westerngrains westerngrains.com

CropsGuide

WGRF

Coverage trials in the lab are now being validated with tests on commercial farms. Early results are surprising.

Continued from page 55

Surprises and confirmations Results are preliminary, but a few things already stand out to Wolf. “A big belief is that spray pressure forces droplets further into the canopy,” he says. “It turns out that spray pressure is not that important a factor.” This is mainly because the higher the pressure, the finer the droplets and the less able they are to push through the air pressure they encounter when they leave the nozzle.

Similarly, you’d think that narrower nozzle spacings and slower travel speeds would improve a spray application, but Wolf’s lab study calls both ideas into question. He found that canopy penetration and spray deposition were not improved when nozzles were 25 cm apart, compared to 50 cm apart. “Travel speed has a role to play,” says Wolf, but slow isn’t always better.

“With fusarium head blight, we found that a faster speed with the right spray angle was more effective.”

Other intuitive theories were confirmed by the study, however. For example, Wolf found that higher water volumes tended to increase product penetration into broadleaf canopies, but didn’t make much of a difference in cereal canopies, and backwardangled sprays were better at getting into the midcanopy of cereal crops than forward-angled ones.

The lab experiments also show that the benefit of forward-angled sprays is pretty specific to vertical targets at the top of a cereal canopy, and that the twin-fan nozzles that produce this kind of spray work best at low boom heights. “If you’re going to be using twin angle fan nozzles for fusarium head blight, make sure the spray is coarse and the booms are low,” says Wolf. “If the boom is 30 inches or more above the canopy, it’s not worth going with angled nozzles.

“If you want to be really precise with the spray angle, you have to be even lower,” Wolf says, noting the study showed that spray retention on the vertical straws improved by about 30 per cent when the 56 country-guide.ca

boom was placed 20 inches above the canopy, compared to 30 inches. “You’d see further improvements at 15 inches, but there comes a point when you just can’t go any lower.”

Practical advice for the field The lab work is interesting but is it translatable to the field? That’s what Wolf is about to find out via test on actual farms this summer.

“We are dealing with collaborators who will conduct commercial-scale trials,” Wolf says. “It’ll be a real reality check to see if what we see in the lab will work in the field.”

The bugaboo of successful fungicide application is that so many variables are in play. Wolf understands that and says that even though this research aims to examine a multitude of factors, his goal by the end of the study is to identify the ones that can really make a difference to a grower’s success or failure.

“The demands on a farmer’s resources are huge,” Wolf says. “I would like to keep it as simple as I reasonably can — we’re going to evaluate 10 to 20 variables, but we may recommend only two or three that really count.”

Wolf says the goal of the research is much bigger than coming up with a narrow list of dos and don’ts for fungicide application. Because sprayer and nozzle technology is constantly changing, he thinks it’s more useful if farmers understand the principles of good canopy penetration and spray deposition so that they can apply that knowledge now and in future too.

“As scientists, we seek principles as opposed to direct answers,” says Wolf. “We want to know how things work, not just what things work best. A much better service is provided if, when an untested product comes out, we can predict what it is likely to do.

“Farmers have a huge investment in maintaining yield and quality,” Wolf says. “I want to give them as much information as I can to help them maximize that potential.” CG J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 5

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CropsGuide

By Richard Kamchen

it’s a blip Acreage may be up in barley, oats and flaxseed, but that doesn’t mean there’s a long-term resurgence of interest in those crops he trend to lower acreages of barley, oats and flaxseed in recent years has largely reflected the increased profitability in alternative grains and oilseeds, and canola in particular. As Western Canada’s darling, canola production crested at nearly 18 million tonnes in 2013, and even more is being called for with the Canola Council of Canada’s 2025 target of 26 million.

“Growers look at net returns and then they pay attention to agronomic issues,” says Randy Strychar, president of OatInformation.com. “Net returns dictate what they want to put in the ground, and that by a landslide has been canola over the last five to seven years.”

Pulse and soybean production has also been on the rise for similar reasons.

But with softening returns and price prospects of canola and wheat during the spring, farmers reported greater keenness to plant barley, oats and flaxseed. Statistics Canada got a lot of media attention in April when it estimated barley- and oats-seeded areas would rise, respectively, 10.2 per cent and 30.3 per cent up from their final acres a year ago. Together, StatsCan saw those crops accounting for nearly 1.5 million additional acres versus 2014, and the agency also predicted flaxseed area would also rise 4.8 per cent to over 1.6 million acres.

If, however, those figures are compared to farmers’ seeding intentions of March 2014, the changes are far less dramatic. For barley, intended acres were only about three per cent higher than the intended acres from the same time a year ago. So just where is the West’s interest in these crops heading?

BARLEY Patrick Rowan, senior manager of Canadian barley operations with Bari-Canada, a division of AnheuserBusch, was watching the spring numbers too, expecting 2015 acreage to end up as high as projected — 6.48 million — if not higher. With prices at $5 a bushel or higher in mid-May, malt barley looked to offer a decent return for those who want to contract it.

“Most of the farmers we deal with are at 80 bushels to 100 bushels an acre, (and) at $400 to $500 gross an acre, you’re doing not too badly,” Rowan says.

It’s definitely a reversal in barley’s fortunes.

Excess moisture and flooded acres last year contributed to driving 2014 Prairie barley acres and production down to their lowest levels since the 1960s. It was a long way off from 1989 to 1998, when annual Canadian barley production averaged 12.74 million tonnes, with a peak of 15 million in 1996.

Through the farm income crisis of the early 2000s, Prairie farmers opted for low-cost crops, but much has changed since then. The grain industry has consolidated, and transparent price discovery disappeared. ICE Futures Canada delisted its western barley contract, and the open market in barley futures that replaced it has generated little to no volume.

“This is a problem when farmers are looking for true price discovery, especially when deciding on what crops to plant,” says Jim Beusekom, president of Market Place Commodities. “It is a problem from our perspective on how to manage price risk on barley purchased or sold for future delivery.”

Meanwhile, feed barley demand has declined.

Alberta cattle numbers declined drastically after the 2003 BSE crisis. Hog numbers fell as well, especially 58 country-guide.ca

between 2007 and 2012 when pork prices were extremely low.

Feed acres took a further hit with the elimination of the former Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly and the amount of barley produced for malt versus feed grew.

But the outlook for both feed and malt barley is now on the upswing. The livestock industry is growing again, Beusekom says, and the low Canadian dollar keeps Canadian grain competitive.

The malt industry too is looking more attractive.

“Certainly there’s a demand for it,” says Rowan.

“In Canada, you have the malt houses in Western Canada and a couple in Eastern Canada, they come very close to malting close to a million tonnes, especially with the advent of the craft breweries along the West Coast of Canada. And the U.S. craft breweries are mushrooming everywhere.”

Exports have improved as well, and Saudi Arabia, which recently bought a stake in the CWB, has publicly stated its desire to import more of its feed needs.

“Canada is one of the countries that has exportable stocks of barley and should be able to compete with that,” says Beusekom. China too is a notable buyer, of both feed and malt barley.

An additional plus is better-yielding barley varieties, which boost farmers’ margins, making the crop more competitive with others.

“When they can get higher-yielding and betterquality varieties, it helps return the bottom line to producers,” Beusekom says.

Nevertheless, he believes it’s unlikely that barley production will return to what it’d been in the late ’90s and early 2000s: “Other commodities would have to lose those acres for barley to do it, and I can’t see that happening right away.”

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crop outlook OATS

FLAXSEED

For oat acres to top out at 3.65 million this year represents a huge 30 per cent bump from last year’s weather-diminished crop, and even a 14 per cent jump from March 2014’s intentions.

“My thought is that the oats acres probably will not be as big as the Stats Canada early indication,” says Chris Ferris, senior grains analyst with Informa Economics.

Between the start of March to the first week of May, nearby Chicago oat futures dropped from US$2.99/bu. to around $2.36/bu.

That’s a dramatic decline from $3.80/bu. in September. And following StatsCan’s seeding forecast, prices fell C$0.30/bu. in a week.

OatInformation.com’s Strychar notes the trade was expecting only a five to 10 per cent increase from last year’s final acres. He too believes 2015 oats plantings won’t end up as high as StatsCan reported.

“On average, Stats Canada overstates the March number by about six per cent, so you’ve got to assume it’s probably around a 24 per cent increase.”

But it’s still more, which Strychar thinks is a reflection of oats’ lower input costs, plus depressed returns for competing crops.

“Given the low prices for all crops in general but particularly canola, it wasn’t that enticing to a lot of farmers,” says Strychar.

Strychar projects 2015-16 ending stocks at around 600,000 tonnes, halfway between the record low and the average.

“It’s not bullish, it’s not bearish,” Strychar says. “But to get that 600,000, you’ve got to get the 24 per cent increase, average yields and average abandonment and near-normal quality in the crop. There’s a lot of factors.”

Strychar doesn’t anticipate long-term growth in Western Canada’s oat acreage, especially because of declining feed usage, including the equine market.

“The problem with the feed market is they shifted, in the late ’90s and early 2000s, into a least-cost formulation pelletized feed,” Strychar says. “They just simply look at the cheapest feed ingredient that meets the nutritional profile and put it in there.

And I can tell you it hasn’t been oats. It’s been corn, barley and other local feed ingredients.”

Oats’ struggle in the feed market threatens to turn it into a contracted crop, Strychar warns: “We’re not a hair’s breadth away from that.” Feed markets at some point could drop to levels where oats are mainly grown for millers, he believes. In that scenario, many farmers might just stop growing them.

Says Strychar: “I think it’s the same reason why farmers don’t grow barley. If it doesn’t make malt, what do you do with it?…

(Oats will) become a special crop, no different than a lentil or a pea. It will become a specialized contracted crop without the feed market.”

The decision by Grain Millers Inc. to stop accepting oats treated with glyphosate as of the 2015 harvest adds another wrinkle to future oats plantings. Nobody can say for sure if some farmers will simply stop growing oats or will just carry on using glyphosate without admitting it.

“We also don’t know if the other food companies are going to follow suit, particularly General Mills and Quaker Oats,” says Strychar. “If (they) follow suit, then I think it becomes a bigger issue. If Grain Millers stands there alone, I really don’t know how this plays out. A grain company that has to take in oats that ships to all three of those companies, what do they do?

Do they IP (identity preserve) it? Do they have to test it? Do they test each load? Do they have a protocol testing? I don’t know.”

The flax market has recovered from the Triffid disaster that nearly levelled it. In 2009, Canada seeded 1.7 million acres to flaxseed, but during harvest, its biggest customer halted imports of Canadian flaxseed after finding traces of Triffid, a banned GM variety. Europe had accounted for two-thirds of Canada’s flax exports, and without it, future acreage in Canada would plummet. By 2011-12, the EU represented a mere six per cent of Canadian flax exports and domestic acreage wasn’t even half of what it’d been.

In the EU’s absence, however, China emerged as a major buyer. Its help filling the hole left by the EU was a gift, says Jonathon Driedger, senior market analyst with FarmLink Marketing Solutions. From 2009 for a period of about five years, Chinese buying ranged from 150,000 to 195,000 tonnes.

Combined with greater demand from the U.S., those two countries have taken around 70 per cent of Canadian flax exports in recent years. That’s allowed acreage to recover, and with intended acres of 1.63 million in 2015, flax plantings have returned to pre-Triffid levels.

Chuck Penner, president of LeftField Commodity Research, thinks Statistics Canada’s estimate is actually on the low side, with acreage between 1.7 million and 1.8 million.

Also supportive is improved European demand, which has topped 20 per cent of Canada’s flax exports in recent years.

Yet if flaxseed area has any chance of ever equalling or exceeding the 1995 peak of 2.18 million acres, China would need to become an even bigger buyer.

“With China’s continued economic growth and its desire to diversify the variety of oilseeds it imports, it has become Canada’s most important customer. If Chinese demand continues to grow, flaxseed area could continue to rise,” says Agriculture Canada oilseed analyst Chris Beckman.

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

With weak feed demand, oats could be on the verge of becoming a contract crop, Strychar believes. “We’re not a hair’s breadth away from it.”

But that’s far from a safe bet.

Penner predicts over half of Canadian flax exports will go to China this year and agrees Chinese demand will drive any acreage expansion.

“Its purchases of flax have gone up year over year over year…

It’s certainly possible we could put in two million acres of flax in coming years and the Chinese market could absorb it. But to predict Chinese demand is always a little dicey,” Penner says.

With its rail link to China, Kazakhstan could stymie Canadian efforts to market more flax to China.

Nevertheless, flaxseed is a good fit in many rotations across Western Canada, given its resistance to diseases and weeds common to other crops, Beckman notes.

“Saskatchewan is the major flaxseed-growing province in Canada, and most of any increase in area is expected to occur there,” he adds. “This is partly due to the better fit of the flaxseed crop to the climate than, for example, soybeans.” CG country-guide.ca 59

life

Write your legacy Writing a memoir isn’t only for celebrities. It’s a perfect way to preserve farm history too

By Helen Lammers-Helps

t’s called learning by experience. Most of us get to a point where we regret that we didn’t ask our parents and grandparents more questions about their families and about what life was like when they were young. So now, we are determined to write our own stories as a legacy to our children and grandchildren, so they won’t be left wishing they had likewise asked us more.

The question is, how do you actually get those stories down in print.

It’s a question that Elizabeth Johnston, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal is used to hearing, because she also teaches life-story writing at a seniors’ community centre in Montreal.

Perhaps the best start, she says, isn’t to pick up a pen.

Instead, agrees Sid Tafler, author of the memoir, Us and Them, and an instructor for a memoir writing class at the Metchosin Summer Arts Institute on Vancouver Island, begin by thinking more clearly about exactly why you want to write.

Writing can do a lot more for you than simply recording your memories, he points out. Many people write for the sense of accomplishment, for example, or for self-expression.

And while it may not be the initial motivation, some people find writing their life story to be very therapeutic, says Claudia Cornwall, author of the memoir, L etter F rom V ienna , who teaches an online course in memoir writing at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. “I’ve seen people come to grips with a difficult past by writing about it,” Cornwall says. “It helps you to sort things out, to get it clearer in your own mind.”

Even if your past isn’t as difficult as that, however, you will find yourself asking questions that you may not have asked before, and you will likely end up with a new set of deeper, more relevant perspectives on the past and present.

Of course, other writers have their eyes on glory. They want their memoir to be the next bestseller like Frank McCourt’s, Angela’s Ashes.

Whether you are writing for yourself, your family or the public, Tafler encourages his students to ask themselves: “What is my story?” He says you need to focus on the narrative that you are going to 60 country-guide.ca

shape your story around and leave out the other 99 per cent of the things you did.

But what should that focus be? Ironically, you will probably have to start writing in order to figure that out. Themes commonly emerge after you start, Tafler says. “Sometimes the story isn’t the one you thought it was.”

Like a fairy tale, a memoir generally follows a classic pattern, continues Tafler. It has a beginning which is the problem, the middle which is the struggle, and the ending which is the resolution.

Feeling overwhelmed is one of the biggest roadblocks for those who want to document their story, but there are many ways to make the project more manageable, such as breaking it into chunks.

Remember, Johnston recommends, that you are writing a memoir, not an autobiography. An autobiography is the story of your entire life up to this point. A memoir is a slice of it.

Sometimes a lack of confidence keeps people from writing their life story. Johnston recommends writing the story without worrying about spelling or grammar. “Turn your internal editor off while you write your first draft,” she says. “You can always get help with grammar and spelling later if you need to.”

If your audience is your family, you don’t have to be a great writer, adds Cornwall. “They will appreciate having it no matter what.”

However, Tafler adds that if you want people to read it, you owe it to yourself and to them to do the best job you can. He assures his students they will get better with practice, so the best way to get better is to “just do it.”

Perhaps you should be prepared to do multiple revisions, adds Cornwall. Even really good writers revise their work several times, she says. Read it out loud, or get someone else to read it. He or she can point out where things are unclear, she says.

And while it’s important to be as honest and truthful as you can be, it’s important to remember a memoir is somewhere between fiction and nonfiction, says Tafler. “You are recreating a story and recreating dialogue. It’s also your story, told from your own perspective.” Someone else might remember things differently or assign a different meaning to the events. But be cautious when writing about other people’s flaws, says Cornwall.

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

life If what you are writing about others could be perceived as negative, it can cause hard feelings, she says.

Tafler adds that it’s important to include your own flaws, the things you’re ashamed of. “That’s part of the story,” he says.

Cornwall likes to start by gathering documents or other objects that will serve as inspiration. A diary, a letter, a photograph, a passport, a ticket stub or a piece of music can serve as springboards for telling your story.

Creating a timeline can be another way to jump-start your memory and help you organize your story. Where do you want to start your story? When you finished school? When you got married?

Bought your first farm?

Also explore the senses to add detail.

What colour was that dress? How did it feel? How did things smell?

Then approach your motivations.

How did you feel? What prompted the decisions you made?

Making a list is another way to generate ideas and get unstuck. Some of the lists you could make include: people who have influenced you, turning points in your life, moments when you were afraid, happiest moments, world events that impacted you, places you have travelled, childhood events that stand out in your memory, character traits you have inherited from family members, regrets, funniest things that happened to you, what are you most proud of, or lessons learned.

If you’re still having trouble making progress on your memoir, both Johnston and Cornwall suggest joining a class. Having weekly deadlines will help keep you on track, says Cornwall.

Participating in a class helps you keep up the momentum, and you will find you get inspired by what others in the class say and do, adds Johnston. Check your local community college, university, community arts group, library or community centres for courses.

If you’d like to document more of your family history, you’re not limited to writing. You could use a voice recorder or video recorder to record you telling the story. Or you can use software such as Dragon Dictation to convert your voice to text.

Annotated recipes can tell a story too. For instance, you can share Aunt Mary’s famous recipe for apple pie along with a description of Aunt Mary.

An annotated photo album is also a good way to document family and farm history. Add captions to explain old photos: who is in the photo, where and when was the photo taken and what are they doing. Too often people inherit photographs but they don’t know who or what they are of, says Cornwall.

There are many resources available to help you record your story and farm history. There’s no time like the present to create a legacy that your family will treasure. Remember, our experts say, you are the only one who can tell your story. CG

resources Books that help These books will help you get organized and structure your memoir.

Inventing the Truth: The art and craft of memoir by William Zinsser How to Write your Life Story: The complete guide to creating a personal memoir by Karen Ulrich Your Life as Story by Tristine Rainer

Courses Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts, Victoria, B.C. The Memoir: The Story Only You Can Tell.

http://www.missa.ca/product/thememoir-the-story-only-you-can-tell/ Conestoga College, Kitchener, Ont. Write Your Life Story.

http://www.conestogac.on.ca/continuingeducation/courses/groupcourselist. jsp?CatalogCode=C12_H4750 Online Course, Simon Fraser University, How to Write a Family Memoir.

https://www.sfu.ca/continuing-studies/ courses/cpw/how-to-write-a-familymemoir.html

- Jen C., Ontario, 2014 AWC Delegate

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Register today! Visit advancingwomenconference.ca or phone 403-686-8407.

WESTIN HARBOUR CASTLE, TORONTO, OCT 5 & 6, 2015 J uly / au g ust 2 0 1 5

country-guide.ca 61

Advancing Women Conference East / Country Guide 7” x 3.357” / Ontario Quote

w e at h e r NEAR NORMAL

COOLER THAN NORMAL

S fro ept st .

WARMER AND DRIER THAN NORMAL

MILDER THAN NORMAL

**

COOLER THAN NORMAL

Cool Rainy AVERAGE RAIN SOME SNOW

NEAR-NORMAL TEMPERATURES AND RAINFALL

Warm ted Isola ers show

Scattered showers / t/storms

**

Sh Co sp ow ol el ery ls

le Variab nal o occasi rain

BRITISH COLUMBIA

August 9 to September 12, 2015

Aug. 9-15: Generally settled under sunshine on most days with highs in the 20s, few 30s Interior. Sporadic shower or thundershower activity.

Aug. 16-22: Mainly sunny and warm on many days this week. A couple of hotter, more humid days trigger showers or thundershowers.

Aug. 23-29: Apart from a few cooler nights, look for seasonable to warm temperatures. Sunny but with isolated showers and spotty thundershowers.

Aug. 30-Sept. 5: Highs generally crest in the 20s except teens on the coast and north. Fair skies apart from passing showers on a couple of days.

Sept. 6-12: Some lows dip to near zero at higher levels and north, otherwise expect seasonable to warm temperatures. Scattered rain or showers.

ALBERTA Aug. 9-15: Seasonable to hot temperatures under sunny skies on many days aside from spotty showers or thunderstorms, chance heavy in a few localities.

Aug. 16-22: Mostly sunny and warm under sunshine but a couple of hotter days set off thunderstorms, possibly heavy in places.

Aug. 23-29: Sunny and quite dry as showers and thunderstorms are widely separated. Lows dip to single digits but with comfortable daytime temperatures.

Aug. 30-Sept. 5: Lows fall to near zero at higher elevations, otherwise pleasant temperatures by day. Sunny with isolated showers or thundershowers.

Sept. 6-12: Brisk winds at times with frost likely at many localities this week. Fair 62 country-guide.ca

overall apart from scattered rain or showers on a couple of days.

SASKATCHEWAN Aug. 9-15: Seasonable to occasionally hot temperatures dominate under sunny skies.

Isolated thunderstorm activity, possibly heavy in a few localities.

Aug. 16-22: Sunny skies this week aside from passing showers or thunderstorms on a couple of days. Some cooler nights but seasonable to warm by day.

Aug. 23-29: Sunshine dominates on many days but with a few cool nights. Some lows fall to near zero north and central.

Sporadic showers or thunderstorms.

Aug. 30-Sept. 5: Comfortable temperatures but with a couple of cool nights and a frost threat in many areas. Otherwise mostly fair with patchy showers or rain.

Sept. 6-12: Frost likely in several regions on at least two nights as temperatures vary from warm to cool. Blustery at times.

Scattered rain on a couple of days.

MANITOBA Aug. 9-15: Sunny skies dominate the week with seasonable and at times hot temperatures. Scattered thunderstorm activity, chance heavy in a few localities.

Aug. 16-22: Sunshine dominates with seasonable to warm temperatures but a couple of cooler days set off scattered showers or thunderstorms.

Aug. 23-29: Expect a few cooler nights but highs climb into the 20s on most days. Sunny apart from a few showers or thunderstorms on a couple of occasions.

Aug. 30-Sept. 5: Lows dip to single digits on a few nights with a frost threat in some

areas. Otherwise seasonable with scattered showers.

Sept. 6-12: Brisk winds bring variable temperatures. Frost in several areas this week. Mostly sunny but with scattered rain on two or three days.

August 9 to September 12, 2015 NATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS Warm and relatively dry weather is expected to linger over British Columbia and the western Prairies in this late-summer period. These summer-like conditions will spread across the eastern Prairies from time to time. Otherwise look for changeable weather ranging from isolated heavy thunderstorms in August to frost and rain in September. Changeable weather is also anticipated in Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces where temperatures and rainfall will both average close to longtime normal values. In spite of periods of fine, settled conditions in Atlantic Canada, there also exists a slight threat of unsettled weather in far-eastern areas due to passing tropical storms or hurricanes.

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.

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 5

h e a lt h

Smart sun exposure

By Marie Berry eing outdoors is part of day-to-day life in the summer, but you need to be smart about your sun exposure. You may experience nothing more than a tan, but more serious skin effects can occur such as sunburn, sun-aged skin, and even skin cancer.

Skin cancer is the most common of all cancers in Canada, but it is the most easily prevented and treated. About 800,000 new cases are seen each year and with the exception of malignant melanoma, skin cancer has a cure rate of about 95 per cent!

It is repeated exposure to the ultraviolet or UV portion of the sun’s rays that causes both sunburn and skin cancer. Two components of UV light, namely UVA and UVB, cause most problems, and people with fairer skin and light complexions are most at risk.

These individuals don’t have as much melanin, a skin pigment which filters out the sun’s rays.

In addition to sunshine, tanning beds can be a source of exposure, and if you used a tanning bed before age 30 your risk of skin damage is 75 per cent higher than someone who didn’t.

Some medications can cause phototoxic reactions (that is, an increased risk for skin symptoms with sun exposure). Antibiotics including tetracycline, sulfonamides and ciprofloxacin; diuretics including hydrocholorothiazide and furosemide; non-steroidal anti-inflammatory pain relievers including ibuprofen and naproxen; oral acne medications such as isotretionoin; and even acne skin creams containing tretinoin are linked to sun sensitivity. If you take any medication on a regular basis, check with your pharmacist about needing extra care for sun exposure.

Prevention is preferred to treatment for both sunburn and skin cancer. Stay out of direct sunlight, especially when it is the strongest between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., and remember the reflected sunlight off surfaces such as white paint, water, and sand. Cover up with a hat, long sleeves and long pants. Most important, also wear a sunscreen regularly.

Sunscreens absorb, reflect, or scatter the UV light before it can damage your skin. Para-aminobenzoic acid or PABA, cinnaminic acid derivatives, and benzophenones are commonly used ingredients. The fine print on the label will list the active ingredients, but remember to choose one that protects you from both UVA and UVB light. Sunscreens are labelled with numbers indicating their sun protection. These are their SPF numbers and they are based on the tendency to burn and the ability to tan. The higher the number, the more protection the product offers. The Canadian Dermatology Association recommends choosing a sunscreen with an SPF of at least 30.

Unfortunately, some people choose a sunscreen with a very high SPF and apply it only once, even though they remain outdoors in direct sunlight for long periods of time. You should always apply sunscreen about an hour before going outdoors to enable it to soak into your skin. You also need to reapply it every three to four hours, regardless of the SPF value. If you are swimming or sweating, it will wash off and you will need to reapply it even more often. And, don’t forget the tops of your feet, you ears, lips, and the back or your neck.

Regular checks of your skin will enable you to identify any lesions that may be early signs of skin cancer. The acronym ABCD will help you. Any lesion that is Asymmetrical, has irregular Borders, Colour variation, or a Diameter greater than six millimetres should be examined more closely for possible skin cancer. Checking about once a month is a good habit to get into. Use a mirror for skin areas like your back that can be difficult to see.

Staying out of the sun may be impossible if you work outdoors, and after a long, cold winter you may want to enjoy summer sunlight, but remember to be smart about your sun exposure. Cover up, and use sunscreens properly. That’s the key!

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

Next month, we will explore iron, the topic originally intended for this issue. If you have ever been told your “blood is low,” you will have been amazed at the number of available options. Choosing one can be difficult and confusing! Our next column will help you decide which is right for you.

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

country-guide.ca 63

acres

Who ordered the parade?

By Leeann Minogue

“You OK?” Jeff asked his dad. “You look kind of pale.” ale parked the sprayer beside the dugout at the west end of the Hansons’ yard to fill. Before he got started, he walked to the house to refill his water bottle and hunt for a snack. With Donna away camping — for the second time already this summer, Dale grumbled to himself — he wasn’t sure the quality of the snacks in the kitchen would be worth the trip across the yard.

When he came out of the house to get back to work, Dale saw his son Jeff already getting started.

Then his father Ed, just arrived from town, drove his truck up near the dugout and parked.

“Hey Dad,” Jeff said. “Maybe you want to wait around here a few minutes before you start spraying again. I’ve got an agrologist from the seed company coming out to take a look at that canola south of the house.”

“What? Why?” Dale asked, unwrapping his store-bought granola bar. This was far from his top choice for a snack. He was wondering if he was going to have to learn to bake.

“We’ve got a real bad patch out there,” Jeff said.

“Pretty big spot where nothing came up. Right by the road. And worse yet, right by where that new seed rep, Allison, put her sign in the ground.”

Ed was annoyed. “If I’d planted that field, everybody would just figure the old guy missed a spot with the seeder,” he complained.

Jeff ignored his grandfather. Dale had seeded that field, and Jeff had never known his father to screw up like this. And if Dale had missed a spot that big, in that location, surely he would have said something.

“I looked online,” Jeff told Dale. “I found a Grainews article that says wireworm damage can sometimes look like a seeder miss. I’m going to make some bait balls.”

“Bait balls?” Ed snorted and headed for his truck.

“You want to attract more of them?”

64 country-guide.ca

“It’s a way to count them, Grandpa. If we’ve got a problem, we need to know how big it is.”

“You kids think you have the answers to everything. Right on your phones. I’m going to make myself a coffee.” Ever since Ed’s new girlfriend had brought over a one-cup coffee maker and a year’s supply of mochaccino, Ed had been drinking enough coffee to make himself a little dizzy almost every day.

“You mind finishing this, Dad?” Jeff asked Dale, who hadn’t said a word. “I’ve got some things to do before the agrologist gets here.”

“Sure,” Dale said.

“You OK? You look kind of pale.”

“Nope. I’m good.” Dale said.

“So, you’ll wait until they come?”

“They?” Dale asked.

“Allison. The agrologist. A couple of corporate bigwigs who happen to be in the area.”

“Great,” Dale said.

“So you’ll wait?” Jeff said.

“You know head office guys. They’ll be late. I can likely finish that east quarter before they get here.”

“OK,” Jeff said. “Grandpa and I’ll run your truck out to the field so you can get back here quick when you see them.”

“Yup.” “You’re sure you’re OK?” “I’m fine.” Dale finished filling, then climbed into the cab.

He had been fine before Jeff came along. In fact, everything had been going so well for the past few weeks, he’d forgotten all about what happened in that field south of the house.

Dale had been trying to get over his broken ankle.

He’d kept working, even with the pain. He didn’t need the neighbours thinking he was too old to get back to work after an injury. After he’d stopped to load more seed right near a power pole, the field had been a little wetter than he had expected. While he was trying to skirt by the pole, Ralph came by on the j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

road with the grader, waving. Dale’s phone rang. An alarm went off in the cab. And Dale banged his sore ankle on the steering column. When the smoke cleared, Dale realized he’d forgotten to turn the fan back on after he filled. He’d travelled 30 feet with no seed going into the ground.

He’d considered going back to fix the problem, but he didn’t want to rut up the field worse than it already was.

And, if he tried his luck in that spot again, he might get the tractor stuck.

Of course he’d meant to tell Jeff. And Ed. Even the seed rep. But the day it happened, Dale was still in pain. All he wanted to do was crawl into bed as soon as he got out of the cab. The next day it rained, and he hadn’t even seen Jeff or Ed. By Day 3, too much time had passed. It would have just been embarrassing to bring it up. And he should have told Allison. But he hadn’t been home the day she’d stopped in to pound her sign into the ground, and he couldn’t imagine phoning her up and explaining why she should drive back out and pull the sign out again.

But now what?

It would be a pretty lucky coincidence if Jeff’s bait balls actually lured in a wireworm in that particular spot.

Dale picked bits of quinoa seed out of his teeth while he sprayed the field and kept an eye out for trucks in the farm driveway. “What kind of granola bars is Donna buying, anyway?” he grumbled to himself. “Is the whole world against me?”

Then he saw them. Not one, but two corporate trucks pulled into the yard. Dale kept spraying while Jeff came out of the shop to greet them, then got into his truck with Ed to lead the way to the problem area.

Dale reluctantly drove his sprayer to the edge of the field where Jeff had parked his truck. As he drove near the canola field, he counted seven people dressed in matching corporate shirts, huddled around the seed sign with Jeff and Ed. Ralph had been going by on the grader, again, and stopped to see what all the fuss was about. Jim Callum had slowed his truck to a stop by the side of the grid road to see what was going on in the Hansons’ field.

Dale’s stomach churned. “Damn granola bar. Of course Donna’s away camping, just when I need a decent snack.”

What was he going to tell these guys? How could he explain why he hadn’t said anything? Lying wouldn’t work.

Three of the corporate guys were already kneeling in the dirt, digging around for ungerminated seeds.

Would Jeff ever let him seed anything again? How much fun would Ralph and Jim Callum have, telling all the neighbours how badly Dale had screwed up?

Dale slowed down to pull into the closest approach.

Ralph waved. Dale scraped another quinoa seed out of a back molar. He saw Allison kneel down to join her co-workers in their futile search for seeds.

Dale shook his head. Then he hit the gas and drove right on by, looking the other way. He fiddled with the display on the dash and made a call on his hands-free phone. “Donna, you still at the lake? Where’s your campsite, anyway?”

Leeann Minogue is the editor of Grainews, a playwright and part of a family grain farm in southeastern Saskatchewan. j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

“I don’t want any of those CCF power poles on my farm.” We are getting a double dose of politics in Saskatchewan. The looming federal election generates enough volatility to spark the air in some coffee shops. A provincial election will follow.

Political stories permeated an educational morning for museum guides a few weeks ago. The subject was rural electrification. In a 1952 provincial election campaign, the CCF party led by Tommy Douglas promised to hook 28,000 farms to power, a huge expansion. Art worked on an installation crew that encountered a farmer who had been a dedicated Liberal all his life. He refused to allow a power line with “those CCF poles” on his property.

Prior to a provincial grid, some farmers tried wind chargers and light plants. These proved unreliable. Some villages operated a generator to serve their residents. In other towns, enterprising individuals set up generators and charged the users.

My father arrived in Delburne, Alta. in 1937 to work in the bank. My mother worked in the post office. My father paid the generator operator to keep the power on for an extra hour on Saturday night when he was courting my mother.

The introduction of electricity constituted an enormous change for farm women. An electric range eliminated the dust, grease and dirt created by coal, gas, oil or wood-burning stoves.

No coal and wood to be carried and no ashes to be removed.

In 1939 Canadian General Electric published a booklet describing what electricity would mean for farm women. “The number of steps taken by a woman in doing the household work equals and sometimes exceeds that of the man on the farm,” it suggested. “There are no tractors in the farmhouse.”

Our group leader read an excerpt from the September 1953 edition of Country Guide. Editor H.S. Fry wrote that “… farming, more than almost any other business one can think of, is a partnership between the farmer and his wife. The lady of the farmhouse customarily does much more than ‘keep house’ for her family. The garden and poultry are often, if not generally, the responsibility of the farm wife, to say nothing of the dairy.” Fry continues: “Making the housework easier is one way of achieving an intangible kind of profit from electricity, which could become very real if it prevents sickness, saves doctor and hospital bills and makes rest and recreation easier to secure.”

Father Matthew Michel of the Catholic parish of Annaheim, Sask. recognized the benefits of electrification but there was considerable resistance. Father Matthew called on every farm family to discuss the pros and cons. When the work began, he donned coveralls to help erect power poles and string wire through dusty attics. “I was out there in my coveralls day after day. Every morning and in the evening I recited my breviary, then attended to parish matters.”

Electricity fascinates humans. The writer of the Psalms describes God thundering in the heavens and flashing forth lightning. Jesus speaks about lightning flashing and lighting up the sky from one side to the other. The writer of the Book of Revelation recounts an event where “there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.” For me, summer lightning storms demonstrate the awesomeness of nature and the mystery of God. Suggested Scripture: Ephesians 5:8-14, Luke 17:20-30 Rod Andrews is a retired Anglican bishop. He lives in Saskatoon. country-guide.ca 65

HR

‘Is he suffering from the god complex?’

By Pierrette Desrosiers, psychologist and coach

e is always right,” says Matthew, age 25. “We always have to do things his way. Not even my mother can voice any kind of opinion. I’ve had enough.”

When I met Matthew’s father, his initial comment was, “You will see right away that my son and my wife have problems.”

At that point, I was the best psychologist and coach. However, when I started to say that maybe he was part of a problematic dynamic, and when I challenged him and asked him what he could improve, he immediately classified me as incompetent.

Unquestionably, I was dealing with a real narcissist. A narcissist lives most of his life in a world of fantasy. His behaviour is grandiose. He needs to be admired and often is not well liked.

Narcissism has also been called the god complex.

As a joke, I often tell my audience that someone suffers from the god complex when he wakes up and says, “OK God, you can go back and rest, I am awake now.”

A god complex is an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility. Such a person will usually refuse to admit and may even deny the possibility of their error or failure, even in the face of complex or evident problems or impossible tasks. Most of the time, they regard their personal opinions as unquestionably correct, rejecting even the brightest advice.

To be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), a person must meet five or more of the following criteria. A narcissist: • Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g. he expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements); • Is overwhelmed by fantasies of unlimited success, power, splendour, beauty or ideal love; • Thinks he is “special” and can only be recognized or understood by special individuals; • Has a very strong sense of entitlement, (e.g. unreasonable expectations of automatic compliance with his or her expectations); • Has an excessive need to be admired; • Thinks he is “owed”; • Exploits others in his interpersonal relationships; • Frequently envies others and thinks others envy him; • Is arrogant and haughty in his attitude and behaviour.

Narcissists come in all shapes, sizes, and degrees.

Certainly, we all have a certain level of narcissism. In fact, a degree of narcissism is healthy and useful for success. The problem occurs when the level of narcissism is too high.

Why does a high level of narcissism put the longterm success of the business at risk?

66 country-guide.ca

• Any relationship involving two or more people requires empathy, listening to the needs and expectations of the others (something that is almost nonexistent with a narcissist); • He doesn’t listen to others, take their advice or accept criticism (because he is perfect!); • He crushes, manipulates and uses others (which wears down the relationship); • His need for prestige, success and power are so strong, he will sometimes make decisions that are completely illogical (i.e. disproportionate purchases or investments); • He creates a climate of terror, despair or apathy among his colleagues; • In the long run, others will abandon him (family, partners, employees) because he is impossible to live with.

Narcissism is a mental health disorder, and narcissists can be found just about everywhere (they’re about one per cent of the population). One per cent may not sound like a big deal but for the higher-ups in hierarchies (CEOs, professional leaders, bosses), the numbers could reach up to 10 per cent for the full disorder. Even more business leaders have important traits of “the god syndrome.” It’s likely that the disorder could explain many poor results in business (bad decisions, turnover, burnout, and bankruptcy). Many authors have looked at the failure of big companies through the lens of narcissism.

Is there a cure?

This is a disorder that requires very prolonged treatment, and even then, there is very little improvement. Strong narcissists rarely seek help unless they have lost everything. Otherwise, why would they seek help? After all, they are convinced that the problem is with others and that they are God. What can you do if you live with or are associated with a narcissist?

Unfortunately, living with a narcissist is like dying a little every day. It means accepting the put-downs and being at his service your whole life. The only way to protect yourself is to respect yourself, to set limits, and to assert yourself despite the potential consequences.

If you live with, are associated with, or work for a narcissist, you have to think about survival. Professional help can help. CG Pierrette Desrosiers, MPS, CRHA is a work psychologist, professional speaker, coach and author who specializes in the agricultural industry. She comes from a family of farmers and she and her husband have farmed for more than 25 years ( www.pierrettedesrosiers.com ). Contact her at pierrette@pierrettedesrosiers.com.

J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

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