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leading the way Kelly Dobson finds a path to manage better

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Contents

DECEMBER 2015

BUSINESS 8

MARKET NOISE Could we see a Lehman Brothers-style collapse in grain markets? We ask market analyst to scope out the risks in the Glencore rumours.

18 4 WAYS TO STRUCTURE DIVERSIFICATION

Before rolling your new enterprise into your current farm business, our Maggie Van Camp helps you sort out what business structure will be best down the road.

22 AFTER IT WENT VIRAL

What it’s like to be the farm attacked by animal rightists and their video cameras? Even after a year and a half, dairy farmer Jeff Kooyman has difficult memories.

26 the QUALITY REVOLUTION

Business has changed. You can’t just build a tractor the way you used to. Farmers won’t let you.

42 THE GREAT DEBATE of our lives

Columnist Gerald Pilger plants GMO seed on his own farm but is alarmed by how little attention agriculture seems to be paying to consumers’ GMO concerns.

45 A MILLION WOMEN FARMERS

In this exclusive interview, USDA deputy secretary Krysta Harden tells us there have always been lots of women farmers. We just haven’t counted them… or valued them enough.

47 Guide HR — WHAT PRICE ARE YOU REALLY WILLING TO PAY?

Sometimes it’s hard to see why a decision can be so detrimental to our farm. Work psychologist Pierrette Desrosiers explains why.

PG. 12 THE LEADERSHIP EDGE More farmers are taking formal leadership training, and they’re reporting big paybacks on their investment, including better farm management, better human resources management, and better farm performance.

48 ASSESSING RISK IN THE FARM BUSINESS

Create your own heat chart the way other businesses do. AME’s Larry Martin says it’s a great first step for understanding and coming to terms with your business risks.

CROPS GUIDE

guide life — NETWORKING FOR BUSINESS AND LIFE Helen Lammers-Helps reports that if you cringe at the idea of networking, it probably means you’re doing it the wrong way. These pointers will help.

29 GRASSHOPPERS, APHIDS TOP PESTS IN 2015

This past year saw lots of the usual suspects, but also the appearance of desirable parasites.

32 DISEASES TAKE A BIT OF A BREAK

EVERY ISSUE

Reduced disease pressure in 2015 has more to do with dry weather than with outlooks for next year.

36 canola disease highlights from 2015 6 MACHINERY GUIDE

CNH introduces two new lines in the market for small-chassis, high-horsepower tractors.

53 GUIDE HEALTH

Ugghh… do we really have to talk about hemorrhoids? Just do it, says our Marie Berry. Some day you’ll be glad you did.

54 HANSON ACRES

Jeff thinks he knows. So does his Dad, and everyone else.

The rise of blackleg in Saskatchewan and clubroot in Manitoba are increasing the payback for aggressive scouting.

38 A bit of everything in 2015

Overall, the West produced more bushels of better-quality crops than expected this year. What does that mean for 2016?

40 peas — your morning cereal

Breakfast cereal manufacturers are looking to use peas to enhance their products.

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. Occasionally we make our list of subscribers available to other reputable firms whose products and services might be of interest to you. If you would prefer not to receive such offers, please contact us at the address in the preceding paragraph, or call 1-800-665-1362.

DECEMBER 2015

country-guide.ca 3

desk EDITORIAL STAFF Editor: Tom Button 12827 Klondyke Line, Ridgetown, ON N0P 2C0 (519) 674-1449 Fax (519) 674-5229 Email: tom.button@fbcpublishing.com Associate Editors: Gord Gilmour (204) 453-7624 Cell: (204) 294-9195 Fax (204) 942-8463 Email: gord.gilmour@fbcpublishing.com Maggie Van Camp Fax (905) 986-9991 (905) 986-5342 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 Lillie Ann Morris (905) 838-2826 Email: lamorris@xplornet.com

Tom Button is editor of Country Guide magazine

That hard-as-nails truth Every neighbourhood has its own stories of farmers who had to be hard as nails to survive, but who turned out to also be fired by a vital spark that could not be extinguished even by the heaviest, most wearying toil. It’s this combination — the toughness and the humanity — that makes them such heroes. On their own, neither trait was enough. In my own case, Alexander Sinclair was born on a Scottish farm but was brought to Canada with his parents in 1831 when he was 13. The family got rights to 200 acres of primeval forest just down the road from me, and Alexander farmed in the area the rest of his life. Despite the primeval forest with trunks of four- and even six-foot thickness, Alex wrote in a memoir when he was 76 that the only tools a pioneer needed were an axe, two iron wedges, a spade, a hoe, a handsaw and a couple of augers. With them, he could build a dynasty. Of course, the tools changed during Alex’s career. He cut his first 20 grain crops completely by hand, raked and tied them by hand, and then mostly threshed them by hand with a flail. Later in his time they got a reaper, although it still needed a man to rake sheaves off the table. Then the self-binder automated even that, and the farm soon enough had a mowing machine, a horserake and much more. In fact, you get a sense from Alex that 4 country-guide.ca

they might almost have got them too soon. “Farming is only child’s play when compared with what it used to be,” he wrote in 1894. Where I am now, the Ruddell family arrived from Ireland in 1820. They put themselves to it and dammed up the creek and built a mill that Alex would have known very, very well, carrying his wheat here in sacks on his back in the early years. At its optimistic best, according to letters the Ruddells left behind, their mill could grind six to eight bushels an hour. Today, I’m quick to look out the window at each new machine I hear on the road working up the hillside where the Ruddells bedded their dam. The horsepower today of course is of a different order of magnitude altogether. But what of the farmers? It turns out that it is still true. It not only takes all those hard-as-nails traits, like dedication, perserverence and single-mindedness to farm. In my neighbours and in the farmers I interact with every day, what I also see is that same vital spark, that extraordinary humanity that carries the belief that living isn’t only meant to be about being, it is also meant to be about doing. 2016 will bring its share of change, but as we stand at its brink, I hope you’ll raise a glass to the old ones from your own area and from your own family. There are lessons they can teach us for generations yet. Are we getting it right? Let me know at tom.button@fbcpublishing.com.

Head Office: 1666 Dublin Ave., Winnipeg, MB R3H 0H1 (204) 944-5765 Fax (204) 944-5562 Advertising Services Co-ordinator: Arlene Bomback (204) 944-5765 Fax (204) 944-5562 Email: ads@fbcpublishing.com Designer: Jenelle Jensen Publisher: Lynda Tityk Email: lynda.tityk@fbcpublishing.com Associate Publisher: John Morriss Email: john.morriss@fbcpublishing.com Editorial Director: Laura Rance Email: laura@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. Publications Mail Agreement Number 40069240. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

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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. 13 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.

DECember 2015

We all share the same table. Pull up a chair.

THE REAL STORY OF AG

“We take pride in knowing we would feel safe consuming any of the crops we sell. If we would not use it ourselves, it does not go to market.” – Katelyn Duncan, Saskatchewan

“The natural environment is critical to farmers – we depend on soil and water for the production of food. But we also live on our farms, so it’s essential that we act as responsible stewards.” – Doug Chorney, Manitoba

“The welfare of my animals is one of my highest priorities. If I don’t give my cows a high quality of life they won’t grow up to be great cows.” – Andrew Campbell, Ontario

Safe food; animal welfare; sustainability; people care deeply about these things when they make food choices. And all of us in the agriculture industry care deeply about them too. But sometimes the general public doesn’t see it that way. Why? Because, for the most part, we’re not telling them our story and, too often, someone outside the industry is. The journey from farm to table is a conversation we need to make sure we’re a part of. So let’s talk about it, together. Visit AgMoreThanEver.ca to discover how you can help improve and create realistic perceptions of Canadian ag.

36442 E AMTE Share the Table_8.125x10.75.indd 1

2015-11-19 1:59 PM

Machinery More compact mid-range tractors

By Scott Garvey, CG Machinery Editor

CNH introduces two high-horsepower, small-chassis models n our last issue, Machinery Guide took a look at AGCO’s newest Fendt tractor, the compact 500 Series. It fits into a relatively new tractor market segment that offers higher horsepower in a compact package. This year CNH also threw its hat into that big-power, small-chassis ring with the introduction of two new models in both of its brands, New Holland and Case IH. The blue versions, introduced in July, are dubbed the T7 Heavy Duty models and offer 290 and 315 engine horsepower (240 and 270 at the PTOs). These tractors get a slightly longer wheelbase than standard T7s but bump up the available power to something previously only available in the larger T8 Series. The result, say marketing reps, is a very manoeuvrable tractor that can work well with the kind of PTO equipment livestock producers have in their sheds. Livestock and forage producers are the customers they believe will be the main buyers of these tractors.

“This machine now has a wheelbase within half an inch of the old 8970 Genesis tractor,” says Dan Valen, product marketing manager. “We’re talking something of a very similar size and capability. What sets these machines apart, really, is their versatility. What we start with is the horsepower-to-weight ratio. Up to 315 horsepower in a tractor package only slightly larger than the current T7 long wheelbase. Versus the T8, we’ve shortened up the wheelbase. The reason we’ve done that is to create a very manoeuvrable tractor. ” You might expect the trade-off for shortening the wheelbase length typical of a larger T8 would be the loss of some ride features and roading abilities. But the T7 Heavy Duty models can be spec’d out to compensate for that. The tractors come with standard cab suspension and can be fitted with a suspended front axle to further smoothen out the bumps and even help increase traction in the field by keeping the tires firmly planted and pulling.

New Holland’s two new T7 Heavy Duty models are the brand’s offering in the compact, mid-range tractor segment. Photo: Scott Garvey

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december 2015

Both Case IH’s Optum and NH’s T7 HD tractors are compatible with the ISOBUS-based Charge and Slice Control features on each brand’s large square baler. Photo: Case IH

Above: New Holland is updating the look of its tractor lines with redesigned hood and side panels. Left: The T7 Heavy Duty models are available with an optional suspended front axle. “As you shorten up the wheelbase to get manoeuvrability, theoretically your ride quality will go down,” explains Valen. “We’ve changed that, and here’s how we’ve done it. We’ve done it with a class 4.75 saddle-mount suspended front axle. Along with that, there’s a suspended cab and a whole new family of seats. (The axle) is a little bit heavier than we have on the long wheelbase (T7s) but a little bit lighter than the T8s. The reason is we don’t have all the weight (of a T8).” Inside the cab, the T7 Heavy Duty models bring the same Sidewinder armrest control arrangement found in the brand’s larger T8 and T9 tractors. Under the hoods, you’ll find a 6.7-litre Fiat Powertrain six-cylinder diesel coupled to a CVT transmission. On the other side of the CNH family, the Case IH cousins of the T7 Heavy Duty, called the Optum line, were unveiled to the public at the U.S. Farm Progress show in August. These two models are numbered the 270 and 300, which are also the available engine horsepowers in the brand reports, although they still december 2015

end up with the same 240 and 270 PTO horsepower rating and rely on the same CVT-based drivetrains. The Optums get the updated body styling Case IH will eventually introduce across its entire tractor line. That includes a redesigned hood, grille and cab roof along with LED lighting packages. To put their horsepower to the ground, Optums are available with a range of tire options, including single tire configurations up to 900 mm wide and an anti-lock brake option to stop them safely when roading with something heavy behind the tractor. Just like their NH cousins, the Optums can be electonically linked through their Class 3 ISOBUS capability to the Feedrate Control feature on Case IH large square balers. NH calls its version of the technology IntelliCruise. Basically, it allows sensor input on the baler to control tractor speed and ensure the amount of hay feeding into the baler pickup remains consistent across changing field conditions, helping even inexperienced operators to dependably produce high-quality bales. CG country-guide.ca 7

business

market noise Could we see a Lehman Brothers-style collapse in grain markets? We ask Errol Anderson, is it all just talk? By Gord Gilmour, CG Associate Editor

t the heart of the issue is something known as a letter of credit, or LOC. These are essentially promissory notes that are backed by a financial institution with credibility, and their purpose is to ensure the money is there. Now there’s a question hanging over global commodity markets in the form of the Anglo-Swiss commodity giant Glencore — you know them in Canada through Viterra. Market watchers are buzzing that they’ve overextended with a poorly timed expansion strategy that’s soured as commodity prices have fallen When a big player like Glencore and its finances come under the microscope, this system can be disrupted until trust can be re-established between buyer and seller. It’s not going to be 2008 all over again, by any stretch, but it could mean commodity markets and their global movement slow or even seize up for a time, especially if Glencore unwinds in a less-thanorderly fashion. If that happens, everyone is going to be glancing around, wondering who has been left holding what, and if they’re still good for the paper they’re issuing in the form of LOCs. It all adds risk to a global commodity system already under pressure. It also raises a series of interesting questions: how can you tell when something like this is for real, or if it’s just market noise? What does it mean for your marketing plan? We asked Calgary analyst Errol Anderson for help making sense of it all.

COUNTRY GUIDE: People are likening Glencore to Lehman Brothers. Is it really that serious? Errol Anderson: It is definitely a big

deal from a global trade point of view, and with a company as massive as Glencore, a crisis for traders could slow the recovery of commodity prices. Also seriously, it could hamper movement of all commodities including agriculture from country to country for a time. This could definitely affect us, especially in Western Canada.

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CG: You’ve talked to us in the past about market noise and how to filter it out. Does that apply here? EA: No this isn’t market noise, this is a real issue that could delay the recovery of global commodity prices. But the effect on local grain movement hopefully is going to be relatively short. It should not impact the underlying fundamentals of the market. But make no mistake: I do hear market noise every day. I describe it as whatever the issue of the day is that’s capturing a lot of attention, but doesn’t truly affect the overall situation in a large or meaningful way. I’ve been analyzing markets for 30 years, and when I started, my tools were a calculator, a transparent ruler and a copy of the Wall Street Journal. That’s how we analyzed supply-and-demand fundamentals and their effect on price direction. These days, commodity funds can execute thousands of trades a second based on technical chart signals, exerting a huge impact on price direction, certainly in the short term. You can analyze a market fundamentally all you want, if these funds take the opposite technical view, it can be like getting run over by a freight train, at least in the short run. Funds have a huge say in price discovery and market volatility. So you can either grump at them or view their price power as an opportunity to add profit to farm production. A helpful illustration might be looking at the way a weather event can affect today’s market. Late spring, there was a lot of excitement over flooding in the U.S. Midwest. We did see corn and soybean prices move higher over a short period, mainly on commodity fund buying activity. But flooding doesn’t alter the underlying production of the market because, in reality, it doesn’t affect that many acres — when it does flood in the Midwest, it of course only floods Continued on page 10 december 2015

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business Continued from page 8 along the rivers, not the whole region, plus it offers an excellent start for crops outside the flood zone. I call this market noise. The media is hyping the event. Fund money pours into the long side of the market. But the impact of the flood is always short lived. However, it may turbocharge the futures market at least for a short while. The underlying fundamentals hadn’t changed. Excellent yields were on the way as a result of this heavy rainfall. As a farm manager, if past experience allows you to realize this as a short-term pricing opportunity, you may price a portion of your crop often above what the truevalue market fundamentals suggest.

CG: Is that why it’s so important to separate what’s real and what’s just noise? EA: Yes, but you also have

to understand the speed at which information instantly impacts prices and triggers almost immediate market volatility. Often markets react to news before the impact can really be understood. That’s because of the speed of trading, human emotion, and the power of commodity funds. These are speculative investors who don’t necessarily understand agriculture. What they’re trading is really immaterial to them. They could just as happily trade cardboard boxes if a futures market existed for them. So they’ll react and market prices may overreact. But from a farm manager’s perspective, this fund trading activity often provides excellent pricing and hedging windows. The risk is that you get caught up running with the herd, but commodity markets without fund activity would be a lot less exciting with fewer pricing opportunities.

CG: You talk about the emotions of a market, but at the same time a market can be pretty unemotional, can’t it? EA: The underlying fundamentals of a market have no emotions. But markets are made up of nothing but people and their emotions, and they can be highly emotional. These emotions affect the market for a short time, with movements well above and well below the true value of a commodity. 10 country-guide.ca

If you don’t get caught up in this whirlwind of emotions, market noise and the volatility, it can represent real opportunities for a farmer looking to price their crop and manage risk. Of course, farmers can have their own emotions too. You may get caught up in the hoopla of a rally and let your guard down expecting that higher prices are here to stay. During the last U.S. drought, some growers really did think $17/bu. soybeans were just a fact of life now, and $10/bu. corn too. However, farmers have already accepted the market has moved on. Farmers are really sharpening their pencils both in terms of their marketing plan and cost side of the balance sheet. It really is during tough times that good farm managers distinguish themselves. They’ll be the ones who have a marketing plan and stick with it, pricing on upticks in the market that they know offer better returns and often are short lived. Now more than ever, having that plan and executing on it will be vitally important. As a good marketer, you really need to strip the emotions out of the equation and be analytical, calm and clear headed, with ice water in your veins.

sellers are starting to buy back their positions. This is called short-covering and it is an indication a market bottom is near. This is not much different than pilots watching their gauges in crazy weather. Open interest is a technical gauge when price volatility becomes extreme.

CG: What about the saying that if prices seem to be too good to be true, they probably are? EA: Unfortunately, that is most often true. There’s been some wild price experiences in commodity markets over the past few years that have generated some amazingly bullish talk — $6,000 an ounce gold for example, or $10 per bushel for corn. It’s the sort of thing that’s easy to put in print, and hey, anything is possible. But market noise is easy to produce and its shelf life can usually be measured in a few days.

CG: Are there any reliable indicators for farm managers?

CG: This is complex stuff for those not familiar with the impact of market noise and volatility. It seems experience can be a real benefit — what about farmers newer to the game? Any suggestions for them?

EA: When markets act like a caged animal, whether up or down, one of the most telling indicators is open interest. Open interest is the total number of contracts for a given commodity that remain open in a trading month. When you get a lot of open interest in any given contract, it acts like the gas pedal for prices. Here are some scenarios: Let’s say the futures are surging into record-breaking territory. No one knows where the top is. Everyone’s a buyer, there are no sellers and the open interest is climbing. This situation suggests prices can go even higher yet. More buyers continue to pour into the heated market. But suddenly open interest drops off. This may be an early warning signal that a price peak is near. Long liquidation is beginning to take place. But let’s flip this bull market scenario to a bear market. Let’s say futures are in a dive and cash prices are plunging. If open interest is rising, this suggests more sellers are entering the market. Prices can fall further. But should open interest begin to decline, this now suggests the shorts or

EA: I think younger market participants, regardless of the sector, are at a disadvantage. Nothing beats experience when it comes to markets. Take interest rates, for example — we’ve had low rates for many years now and arguably there’s an entire generation of traders that haven’t ever seen a period of even normal interest rates, much less a period of rising rates. Younger traders and younger farmers should draw experience close to them. It can be a market adviser, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. It might be a government or university extension person or even an older farmer in their own community who has gone through the world of pricing knocks and is willing to share that experience. From there it’s really going to all be about understanding market fundamentals, understanding when you may be hearing market noise, and learning to take advantage of it. Having a plan and the discipline to execute it and not be distracted from it by market hoopla is advice that applies to all of us, regardless our experience. CG december 2015

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business

The leadership edge Across the country, more farmers are signing up for in-depth leadership training, and they’re using it to transform the way they farm and do business By Helen Lammers-Helps

Photography: Sandy Black

Kelly Dobson considered an MBA, but signed up for leadership training instead. It’s impacting his farm every day, he says.

here’s a saying that if you aren’t moving forward, then you’re falling behind. Never has this been more true than in agriculture today. But something else is equally true. It’s that more farmers are keeping up with this need for change by dedicating time and effort to cutting-edge studies on leadership. For 46-year-old Kelly Dobson, it meant enrolling in a graduate degree in leadership development from Royal Roads University in Victoria, B.C., despite the demands of his 4,100-acre farm near Fairfax, Man., where he grows grains, oilseeds and confectionery sunflowers.

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Dobson now sees his decision as a sort of foundation for how he is able to lead and manage his farm. “At the end of the day, I chose to study leadership over an MBA,” Dobson explains. Partly that was because he had been careful to observe more executives in other companies, and he could see how crucial leadership could prove for business success. Partly too, it was because as a farmer, he could hire accountants, lawyers, agronomists and others to source the advice needed to manage diverse aspects of his farm, “but you can’t contract out leadership.” Dobson says that today, he lools back and recognizes he had actually been hampered by shortcomings in his old business leadership, a key one being that he had felt that running a farm successfully really boiled down to financial management, marketing and operations. Today, when he thinks of that management style, he sums it up as thinking that, “All problems can be solved by lifting the lid of your laptop.” Now, he considers that short sighted, addressing only half of the challenge. Not to put too fine a point on it, the more he has learned about modern, scientific research into leadership, and the more he has seen how it can drive organization performance, the more he realized that there’s a danger if he as a farmer doesn’t keep up. “The attitude was that if you give orders, that makes you a leader,” Dobson says. “That isn’t going to get us where we have to go. “The goalposts in agriculture keep moving, and the human part of it — the emotional intelligence and the things that we never talk about — they’re all going to be crucially important.” The Royal Roads program covers a wide swath from systems thinking and organization design to specific, hands-on discussion of team building, communication, and how to manage change. To do December 2015

business

that, the program does requires significant investment. It takes two years, and although it is designed for working professionals, it still demands two residency periods, plus $23,000 tuition. For Dobson, though, it’s been a series of eureka moments, for instance seeing how Meyers Briggs personality assessments can be used to make a real difference not only in employee performance but also in employee satisfaction and commitment. It’s not about calling all the shots. “Shared leadership is necessary,” Dobson says. “No one person can have all the information. Nothing great that’s been achieved has been done by an individual. The reality is that it was a group of people working together collaboratively.” Meanwhile, 35-year-old Jennifer Doelman, who farms 2,800 acres with her family and runs a farm supply business in eastern Ontario, chose the Advanced Agricultural Leadership Program (AALP), a 19-month executive development program based in Guelph, Ont. to further develop her leadership skills. Doelman credits the leadership skills she learned through AALP with helping her take their business to the next level, especially through improved insights and improved processes involving human resources. “We were able to find people with take-charge, ‘can-do’ attitudes who have the potential to really move our business ahead,” she explains. There are now three people doing the job that Doelman once did by herself. “We have a number of people in our business who are exceptional and bring more to their jobs than I could have on my own.” Doelman says that as a Type A personality, she had been guilty of doing everything herself. Now, she has learned to ask for help and to say “no.” She also learned tools to help her separate emotion from business, which can be especially important in a family structure. AALP helped her learn to find the strengths in people, to allow them to use their skills and interests for maximum benefit, and also to create synergy among team members, she explains. Doelman is also putting her newfound leadership skills to use at the community level, as a Certified Crop Adviser and president of the Renfrew County December 2015

Photography: Robin Andrew • unposed photography

For Jennifer Doelman, leadership training builds personal drive. “It keeps you from stagnating,” she says of the AALP program.

After taking leadership training, these farmers say their big discovery is how their farms were being held back by their old leadership style Soil and Crop Improvement Association. Doelman tries to represent agricultural interests, and she credits AALP with helping her bring a better perspective to those roles. She has also put her media training to use. “It taught me a level of professionalism that ag should be showing.” With two young children, Doelman has had to decline some volunteer work. “Part of being a good leader is knowing what skills you have and the commitment you can offer. “My leadership training has helped me to see the big picture,” she adds. “I can

connect the dots and act as a catalyst to help steer committees and projects at the ground level. My formal training helps me to effectively chair a meeting, as well as to set measurable goals and timelines.” Other AALP participants report similar gains. For instance, 27-year-old Sara Wood who farms with her family near Mitchell, Ont., says she got involved in AALP to build her leadership skills, but then learned a lot about herself in the process. Continued on page 14 country-guide.ca 13

business Continued from page 13 This self-awareness helps on the farm, Wood says, and it has also helped her become a better and more active board member, giving her the confidence she needs to participate in effective ways despite being in the minority. Not only is she usually one of only a few women involved, she’s also 30 or 40 years younger than most farmers. “I’ve learned to ask the right questions, and to challenge the norm,” Wood says. AALP has also exposed her to a professional standard that she might not have experienced in an on-farm environment — professional conduct and respectful workplace decorum can take second place when your boss used to change your diapers. There are other benefits too, Doelman adds. She finds for instance that her leadership training has been a fantastic networking tool. “I was a budding eastern Ontario agronomist, training side by side with egg farmers, dairy farmers, OMAFRA staff, managers from the seed industry, insurance and banking,” she says. “The transfer of information in a course like this with a tight-knit group of

classmates is irreplaceable and absolutely necessary to move ahead in our industry… every day I find a new way to use the skills and information I learned during my AALP years.” Such views are shared by thought leaders in the business community who say the role of leadership is changing and evolving. Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and author of Leadership: the Power of Emotional Intelligence, cites the ability to identify and monitor emotions (i.e. your own and others) and to manage relationships as being essential for leadership. His list of leadership qualities includes self-awareness, self-management, resilience, empathy, and listening. Meanwhile, Terry Betker, president of Backswath Management in Manitoba agrees with Dobson’s take on the realities facing agriculture. He says there is a fundamental shift taking place, and farms are becoming more complex in how they’re structured. The needs of the farm family are outgrowing their skill sets, and can outgrow their advisory resources too, says Betker. Farmers tend to have a passion for operations, which is understandable, but many need to put more focus on

“ Leadership training has helped me see the big picture,” Jennifer Doelman says. “I can connect the dots and act as a catalyst.”

14 country-guide.ca

Farms are great places to learn about crops, says Dobson, but not the science of leading. management, says Betker. “They need to decide how they will manage the business, and to determine what they are good at and what their weaknesses are,” he says. “And they need to decide what is needed with regards to managerial development.” Once they have assessed their needs they can develop a plan for how they will fill the gaps. One of the challenges for everyone is to apply what they’ve learned. “It’s difficult to change,” says Betker. “That’s human nature.” One way to ensure that new skills are applied is to create accountability. For example, Betker suggests writing down your goals and then reviewing these goals six weeks later to see if there has been follow-through. Another option is to create an external check by buddying up with another farmer or hiring a consultant to keep you on track. Executive coaching is gaining ground in agriculture as an efficient mechanism for developing leadership skills. Michelle Painchaud, president of Painchaud Performance Group in Winnipeg says that as farms grow and become more sophisticated, with more regulatory issues and more staff, farm business owners and managers often find themselves feeling unskilled in some areas of business, particularly in the area of leadership. Traditional training can be expensive, time consuming and inconveDecember 2015

business

“ I’ve learned to ask the right questions,” says AALP farmer Sara Wood. “And to challenge the norm.” nient but executive coaching can be an efficient use of time for farm managers, Painchaud says. “Effective coaching allows the business owners to have a customized learning partner that not only helps the owner learn and grow, but holds them accountable to that growth.” Dobson is already seeing a payoff on the farm from his leadership training. He says he’s become a better communicator and a better listener, and he is asking more questions. “This has improved the work environment, and we are having more fun,” he says. The level of management required to stay competitive has increased, says Dobson, especially with today’s volatile markets and weather. His work on the board of the National Sunflower Association of Canada and as the industry co-chair of the Special Crops Value Chain Roundtable has also opened his eyes to the challenges and opportunities facing agriculture in the next 10 to 15 years. As farm business complexity increases, it will be impossible for a single owner to possess all the talents and knowledge needed to make the best decisions, Dobson believes. Farm owners will need help from skilled farm workers, and those workers are going to want to have input into how the work gets done. “Farmers with poor leadership skills may find it impossible to retain good help when better working environments can be found on the next farm,” Dobson predicts. Farmers are brought up to “do it our way,” says Dobson. This can be a strength, but it can also be a limitation. Being good at the technical, taskoriented skills will continue to be important, he adds, but it just won’t be enough anymore. As an example, Dobson thinks that as farm business gets more comples, communication and conflict resolution skills will prove increasingly valuable. “They can go a long way to avoiding unmet expectations and the inevitable anger and frustration,” he says. Unfortunately, continues Dobson, these aren’t the kinds of skills that farmers easily pick up around the farm-

From her farm near Ottawa, Doelman shares Dobson’s goal of turning that farm limitation into an advantage. Besides, says Doelman, working toward improved leadership is also its own reward. “Leadership development is an ongoing process,” Doelman says. “Once you start to develop personally, it’s like a bug. You get hooked, it keeps you from stagnating.” CG

yard. For example, he believes farmers don’t see good examples, so they often struggle with having difficult conversations and dealing with conflict. “We don’t tend to learn these skills anywhere,” he says.

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2015-10-09 2:57 PM

business

ways to structure diversification

Before rolling a new enterprise into the main farm, stop, think and talk about how this is going to fit into your operation long term

By Maggie Van Camp, CG Associate Editor aybe it’s something you just want to do. It might be manufacturing a new farm widget or selling birdseed, or producing heritage pork, or grazing sheep. Or maybe your son or daughter has graduated from agricultural college and they want to come home after a few years working off farm. You know there’s risk with new ventures, but they’re brimming with ideas, they’ve got a plan, and you want to encourage them. You’ve run the numbers. It looks like the enterprise should eventually contribute to overall profits. But how should you structure it? Should you incorporate the main farm and start a separate sole proprietorship for the secondary business, or incorporate and put it all under one? Or how about keeping both as sole proprietorships under separate names? Or maybe you should go for a partnership? Or a joint venture? Set things up right from the beginning with your long-range vision in mind, advises Allan Sawiak, chartered accountant and succession expert with KRP in Edmonton. “What do you see this looking like in 20 years?” Sawiak asks. “Line up the business structure with that future vision.” The communication involved in this planning process is invaluable. It forces you to think the business through and to prove its value. It also involves figuring out how you want to take profits out of the farm, and it makes you look at who owns what assets, and to define where the startup money is coming from and the value of that venture capital. The other question you need to answer at the outset is why you want to do it. It might not be all about profits for everyone. Sometimes it’s lifestyle or for the good of the community. In Saskatchewan, a survey of farmers found they diversified mostly to use available management and labour, and to provide full-time, year-round employment for key hired personnel. The survey also found that these farmers 18 country-guide.ca

used diversification into off-farm ventures or through non-agricultural enterprises to reduce risk exposure to market and production risks. Of course, a separate category of diversification projects isn’t really designed with profitability in mind. It’s designed to create enjoyment, perhaps, or to provide purpose, but does not contribute financially. “If it’s unprofitable, it’s a hobby,” says Mark Fournier, a professor at Olds College. Whatever the motive, the project and the way it’s structured should match the farm’s risk tolerance, which means it needs to be talked about with everyone who’s involved. Share up front how much money you want to make, how much you’ll need to start and operate, and exactly where you’re going to get funding. There are many ways to structure the secondary business without putting it in the main farm, and although there are positives and negatives to each structure, there’s no right answer for everyone. When Country Guide spoke with three experts — Allan Sawiak at KRP, Mark Fournier at Olds, and Ontario farm adviser Carl Moore — each leaned toward a different format, or leaned away from others, all for good reasons.

#1 — Sole proprietorship Most farms in Canada are still sole proprietorships. It’s the easiest, cheapest way to do the books, and the land is in individual names. But is it still right when you diversify? “If you’re just testing the waters, it’s a lot less tax hassle and legalities. You just do your books and then go see your accountant,” says Fournier. “It’s easier to get started in a sole proprietorship and good for the first couple of years.” A sole proprietorship doesn’t require a written legal agreement to start a new venture, so one can be launched without a lot of cost. However, once you start dealing with multiple individuals (even parents or siblings), discussing and writing down the logistics become very important. Since sole proprietorships don’t have written rules of December 2015

business engagement, it’s even more important to communicate expectations and to respect each other. Tell one another what you hope the business will eventually look like, and do take care not to take essential management time and capabilities away from the core business. “Make sure the family has open communication and a method to resolve problems,” adds Fournier. When starting a new business, a sole proprietorship can be advantageous if you’re going to lose money for the first few years, since those losses can be put against your personal income. However, once your business starts making more money, you start paying at personal marginal tax rates that are much higher than the small business corporate rates. “Successful farm operations should not be in sole proprietorships,” Sawiak bluntly says. Carl Moore, farmer and adviser in Woodstock, Ont. is a proponent of keeping it simple, especially with succession. Generally he encourages his clients to not incorporate and to keep land out of a corporation to take advantage of the rollover provisions. In his experience, he’s found that farmers often can buy enough assets and inputs to mitigate some of the extra tax burdens of not incorporating. Compared with problems that he’s seen with more formal agreements, the cost of paying extra taxes can be a pittance. He warns that small business taxes and rules around incorporation are becoming more complicated with every government budget. “Every situation is different and will change, so keep it simple to get in and out of,” advises Moore. Instead of involving children as shareholders in the farm corporation, Moore says it’s often better for them to set up separate sole proprietorships and buy land under their own names with some help from the parents. A mortgage is the best way to motivate the younger generation, Moore believes. “It puts the responsibility right where it should be. If it’s all split into shares, passed down between several generations, it’s like no one owns anything, no one takes responsibility.”

#2 — INCorporation As a tax specialist, Sawiak sees many successful, forward-thinking farmers charging ahead with incorporation. They’ll have that structure in place before diversification is considered. This can work well for diversification projects, especially with pilot projects. Any losses can be put against the corporation’s earnings, and lower corporate tax rates allow for more dollars to put towards debt repayment or diversification. Corporations allow more ways to split income and to take money out of the businesses with fewer tax implications. Then, after a year or two, if it looks like the new business will be strong enough to stand alone, and if you are farming with your sibling and both are shareholders, consider splitting it out of the farm corporation right away. December 2015

“It becomes difficult and very costly to split it out of the corporation later,” says Sawiak. “Splitting any family farm corporation that involves siblings as shareholders is very costly.” Every year Fournier sees students go back to the family farm, many with business plans for diversification. The most successful tend to run small pilot projects under the established family farm corporation, much as any business would try a new product line. Once it’s big enough, the students might run it as a sole proprietorship or another corporation, or as a division within the farm corporation. Regardless of the structure, expectations need to be communicated and understood, and all parties must respect each other, says Fournier.

Fewer farms may be diversifying, and the costs are increasing. Getting the structure right is crucial By their very nature, corporations have better records, plus preplanned and written structures for transitions. It’s also easy to run several different enterprises under one corporation, which means that as the farm diversifies it can still operate under one set of books. Something to keep in mind is what the farm will look like in the future, and if the rules may change. From a tax perspective, farm corporations set up before 1985 missed out on using today’s farm tax advantages such as capital gains exemptions,” says Sawiak. The capital gains exemption came into law in 1985 but before this farmland was typically owned by the farm corporations. Dealing with a corporation can become more difficult as more people become involved, especially for future generations. “In my opinion, many farm corporations formed in the ’60s and ’70s are now a disaster area for the third generation,” says Moore. “Now with all the sons and daughters, spouses and children involved, there are too many voices.” Worldwide, about 90 per cent of businesses do not survive through the third generation, says Moore. “Why are we not planning for this rather than setting up business structures that will not exist for the grandchildren?”

#3 — Partnership With farms, business formats tend to be based on the tax level, says Sawiak. In his experience, it is usually tax planning that triggers changes to structures. “Farmers have deferred, deferred and deferred and pre-bought, pre-bought, and pre-bought, and have run out of options,” he says. Continued on page 20 country-guide.ca 19

business Continued from page 19

#4 — Joint venture

When a farm is at this point, Sawiak tries to move it to a partnership for two years minimum and then into a corporation. This interim step allows them some time to do some strong tax planning and it helps set up the family with future tax savings to grow the farm. Partnerships that have proper partnership agreements can also help avoid some of the tax problems triggered on death for family farms, says Sawiak. Before Fournier was a professor, he worked in loans and saw both failures and successes play out. “I’m not a big fan of partnerships,” he says. “When I was a lender there was a saying that was often true: The only ship that’s destined to sink is a partnership.” Fournier says the problems arise with partnerships if there’s no set agreement ahead of time to deal with problems. Most partnerships are still handshake deals and they can sound like a good idea at the beginning, but then the real world sets in. Things like spouses, splitting income or disability complicate the situation and cause problems. At least with a corporation you have to talk about it. It’s long term and formal. You’ve paid a lawyer to work out the logistics if something happens, and before you get into it, you have a buy-sell agreement and a way to deal with spouses.

Part of the problem and a serious limitation for diversifying today is the massive expense to start a secondary farming business that has the scale to compete. This is an even bigger issue for younger farmers. Joint ventures are a way to maximize resources, diversify, or try something new. Joint ventures allow the younger generation to start farming or diversify a farm at a competitive scale with relatively little capital. Older farmers often use joint ventures so they have more time off and can ease toward retirement. Carl Moore says although the risk is spread out, usually one individual loses in a joint venture. And usually that’s the more established party. The individuals involved own the assets and share net revenues, and joint ventures can be set up for whole farms, a portion of the farm, or even just a specific component, such as a combine. Joint ventures tend to be short-term operating structures and, unlike partnerships or corporations, they don’t require a business number, own anything, or pay income taxes. The joint venture legal agreement is simply the framework for the parties to work together, but it is vital, says Fournier. “Lawyers get the hard discussion done in advance. It’s cheaper to get them involved at the beginning of business than at the end.” CG

Fewer farms diversifying Over the last few years, Allan Sawiak of KRP in Edmonton has noticed a trend toward less diversification. Most of his farm clients are expanding or trying to improve their productivity in the sectors they already do well in, unless of course they’re landlocked, in which case the diversification tends to be directly related to their core production, for example a grain farmer growing or selling certified seed or growing other crops that complement the land and grain operation. Typically more money can be made by getting better first at the base enterprise before diverting attention and resources to a new enterprise. In the past, sometimes when farms have tried to start a new enterprise, they have taken their eye off the ball and it has resulted not only in the failure of the new enterprise, but damage to the main business too. Sawiak thinks this becomes more of a factor as farming has become more complicated, specialized and asset heavy. There’s no room for messing up, and there’s more risk getting into a new product range, he says. With the steep learning curve and huge dollars to enter at a competitive scale, diversifying has too many risks. The success rate of farm diversification efforts is probably not much different from any small business venture; the majority fail in the first five years and many don’t even make it past the first year. Based on the survival rate of other business ventures, only one in five will contribute positively to the financial health of the farm.

20 country-guide.ca

With succession planning and adding another family, farming tends to be about doing it bigger and better, and today, successful single or double family farms are doing so much more and are hiring people, says Sawiak “These farmers are looking for potential access to more profits and, even with higher land prices, are just waiting for the opportunity to expand,” says Sawiak. “There’s little hesitation.” Sawiak does see mixed farms making little adjustments for their children coming back to the farm, but staying in the same stream. “Heritage is alive and well,” he says. As farm assets increase in value, diversifying has become less popular, agrees Mark Fournier at Olds College. “It’s too risky to try new things and there’s big dollars at stake. Young farmers trying to make mortgage payments know that they need to make payments from Day 1, they don’t have time to mess around,” says Fournier. One interesting way to allocate diversification risk is for the senior generation to transfer the base farm to their children and then start a new enterprise as their semi-retirement project. The retiring generation is typically financially established and can put the time and patience into developing something new. Risk becomes less of a factor because they’re not necessarily relying on it for a living. As a result, they’re willing and able to experiment and be creative.

December 2015

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business

After

it went viral What’s it like for a Canadian farmer at the centre of an international animal rights media frenzy? By Nicolas Mesly

year and a half later, Jeff Kooyman is still disturbed by a video produced on his farm, Chilliwack Cattle Sales, by the advocacy group Mercy for Animals. Broadcast during prime time on CTV national news on June 2014, the video let the whole world see young workers shouting “f***ing bitch” at cows, kicking one cow on the head while she was laying on the floor, beating the backs of others with a stick, and hanging one from a chain attached to a tractor bucket. The video instantly went viral on Facebook and Twitter, and a tsunami of insulting letters and email flowed from Canada and all around the globe to the family farm’s administration office, including death threats. Chilliwack is a regional agricultural centre nestled in the fertile Fraser Valley, and it proudly asserts on its website that it is home to B.C.’s biggest dairy farm, the Kooyman operation known by its initials CCS. Suddenly, however, Chilliwack became the “town where cows are murdered.” More than 100,000 angry consumers signed the Mercy For Animals

After the video — and despite repeated positive inspections of the farm by the province — milk processor Saputo still refuses to accept CCS milk

22 country-guide.ca

online petition. They also threatened to boycott Saputo products, since the Montreal-based company is Canada’s largest dairy processor, and its largest supplier is CCS. Milking 3,000 cows, CCS accounts for nearly five per cent of B.C. dairy output. In other words, a black eye for the Kooyman farm can damage the public image of the entire industry. At the CCS farm office, however, an earnest Jeff Kooyman maintains that his cows benefit from effective, humane care, and that the four-minute video “does not reflect the reality.”

A black eye for the dairy industry Kooyman knows he is at the centre of media furor that has slammed a dairy industry that accounts for $19 billion of Canada’s GDP. It’s not a feeling you’d want to experience, especially when you reflect that what is happening on your farm could be impacting 12,000 other dairy farmers across the country. Kooyman manages CCS with his seven brothers, and they have transformed the little family farm from 60 cows in the 1960s into a huge, Californiastyle facility. The farm’s rotary parlour works round the clock to milk 3,000 cows, with 70 employees on the payroll. The eight employees filmed on the video were working during the night shift, and they were all immediately fired. Without excusing their behaviour, Kooyman describes them “as good working kids from the town who made youthful errors.” However, they still face criminal charges. “We still don’t understand why these employees have not been judged for their misconduct,” says

December 2015

business

Geoffrey Urton, senior manager of stakeholder relations for the B.C. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals who has handled the CCS case. Although CCS is still under investigation, and although their lawyer has advised against it, Jeff Kooyman agreed to our interview, accompanied by Diana Barchard, the farm’s chief financial officer. It becomes clear he wants to give his version of the story after being crushed by the national and international press and the worldwide social media machine. In the hours following the release of the video, a brigade of independent experts and veterinarians invaded CCS, and the BC Milk Marketing Board (BCMMB) refused to market the farm’s milk during the time needed to evaluate the situation. More than 35,000 litres — enough milk to have supplied 140,000 school kids — had to be dumped into sewage lines.

December 2015

The milk board returns Under tremendous pressure from Mercy for Animals’ petition, Saputo still refuses to process CCS milk, even though BCMMB gives it a green light. “After checking that CCS milk was produced accordingly to the Code for Practices and Handling of Dairy Cattle, we had no choice but to redirect the milk refused by Saputo,” says Vicky Crites, manager of policy and communications at BCMMB. The CCS milk was then redirected to a biodigestor located in Washington state at cost of $200,000, paid by all B.C. producers. Since September 2014, three months after the video, the code has been mandatory for B.C. producers. Created in 2009 by the National Farm Animal

Despite his lawyer’s advice, Jeff Kooyman discusses the MFA video, and the steps they have taken in its wake.

Continued on page 24

country-guide.ca 23

business

Farmers and processors must present a united front against such attacks, Kooyman says, warning, “What happened to us can happen to any dairy farmer.” Continued from page 23 Care Council, the code protects the well-being of cows across the country. British Columbia has appointed the milk marketing board to ensure the code’s best practices are followed by the province’s 500 producers. (So far, the board has contracted six independent inspectors to conduct these inspections and 40 farms have been inspected through a random process. All have been found to comply with the code. The board also says a total of five inspections, two unannounced, have been made at CCS. The farm passed them all.) “The code is about animal welfare and not animal cruelty, but if our inspectors find out that cows are distressed because they lack water or feed, we can immediately suspend milk collection and revoke the farm’s licence to produce,” explains Crites. She adds also that an agreement has been reached between the board and the industry under which none of the 39 provincially licensed milk processors can refuse a producer’s milk if the farm meets the code of good practices. “This agreement will prevent another SaputoCCS situation,” Crites says.

The lessons learned Since the scandal, CCS has appointed a director of human resources. Employees go through three days of mandatory training on animal care and handling, and they all work not only under appointed supervisors, but also under the eyes of various surveillance cameras installed in the farm buildings. “We can monitor what is going on 24 hours by looking at our cellphones,” says Kooyman. Some animal practices and care have also been changed. A down cow stuck in the milking rotary is no longer moved with a chain attached to the tractor bucket, although that practice was approved by their veterinarian. It now takes seven men armed with straps to remove a 600-kg animal from the area. “It’s time consuming,” agrees Kooyman. Apart from having an animal density that is a little above normal, the only criticism from experts visiting CCS came from a Californian veterinarian. “He said that our cows were too thin, but it is the way we like them,” says Kooyman, who points out that a CCS cow, Apple 3, was crowned International Red & White Show Grand Champion at the World Dairy Expo held in Madison, Wisconsin in 2013.

24 country-guide.ca

More has to be done Although the code gives good recommendation on practices such as dehorning calves, “Canadian producers will have to do much more to eliminate lameness problems within their herds. It is their main challenge,” warns Anne-Marie De Passillé, animal welfare expert and professor at the University of British Columbia, based in Agassiz. Her observation comes from a study she and her colleagues did on 110 farms all over the country. The code sets a target of a lameness rate under 10 per cent. However, her research team found that fewer than a quarter of the freestall barns they studied actually met that goal. Jeff Kooyman admits that some lameness problems exist in his herd, although at a far lower rate than the video shows. “Our veterinarian and our hoof trimmer are here once or twice a week, and I can assure you that our lameness rate is less than five (per cent),” Kooyman says. The CCS video was filmed by an employee who worked one month at the giant B.C. farm in May 2014. In reality, this employee worked as “an undercover investigator” for Mercy For Animals (MFA), says Krista Osborne, Canadian director for the organization since January 2015. Chilliwack is the group’s eighth covert investigation in Canada, Osborne says. In addition to exposing animal cruelty, the Hollywood, California-based organization also promotes vegetarian and vegan diets to consumers.

Should they sue? Does the Kooyman family intend to sue their spy employee for damaging their farm’s reputation? It is happening in some U.S. states where it is possible for business owners to sue an employee who has sought employment under false pretences. But this family wants to turn the page on this painful chapter, CFO Diana Barchard says during our interview. To a degree, it will be a while before the hard feelings are completely forgotten. Kooyman says that he has been deeply hurt by the first reaction of BC Milk Marketing Board and then by Saputo “which has bowed to MFA lobby.” Still, Kooyman thinks that the Canadian dairy industry should present a united front on the animal cruelty issue instead of splitting processors against producers. “What happened to us,” Kooyman says, “could happen to any dairy farmer.” CG

December 2015

ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?

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business

The quality revolution Business has changed. You can’t build a tractor the way they used to. Farmers won’t let you By Scott Garvey, CG Machinery Editor

Workers at Massey Ferguson’s Brantford, Ont., combine plant in the early 1980s install cabs on the assembly line. Photo: Sourced by Ray Bianchi/Dave Nicolle collection

t first, we all thought he must have been exaggerating. It was 2013 and we were at the Hesston, Kansas combine assembly plant where Hans-Bernd Veltmaat, AGCO’s senior vice-president was discussing the plant’s US$40-million expansion, which included a new state-of-the-art paint system. “This paint centre is a major building block for AGCO,” Veltmaat said. “With this paint centre we are in the same league as Daimler, BMW, Lexus and so on.” No one actually winked or gave us a nudge in the ribs with their elbow, but in case you missed it, those car brands are luxury brands, associated with some of the highest build quality in the world. Really? Our next Gleaner and Massey Ferguson combine is going to have that kind of quality? It turns out, though, that Veltmaat’s claim wasn’t exactly off the cuff. Far from it, in fact, because the whole point of inviting the media and customers through those factory doors was to see their efforts to hit a new high in manufacturing. The Hesston plant had also just implemented a new testing regimen, requiring all combines to pass a 100-point inspection and a simulated harvesting test in a dyno room before moving out the door. “There is no combine leaving this factory which has not passed this test,” Veltmaat promised.

26 country-guide.ca

“We have to become (at AGCO) a culture of total quality,” agreed Robert Crain, senior vice-president and general manager for North America, speaking at the same event. “That’s our next great stride as a company. That’s the reason we made this investment.” The core message put out that day was, we build quality. That message has been repeated at many other factories owned by many other brands that I have visited over the years, where executives want to emphasize their company’s dedication to the industry’s current, almost universal, focus on quality. Of course, that isn’t to say there aren’t farmers who have had warranty problems with a piece of equipment lately. Nor is it to deny that the frantic work pace on factory assembly lines over the past five years has somewhat negatively affected build quality as companies have struggled to keep up with customer orders. But contrast those statements made in Hesston with the situation back in the 1970s and 1980s at the Brantford, Ontario factory that built Massey Ferguson combines when the company was under very different ownership. It makes the evolution in attitude very obvious. Dave Nicolle, the former head of quality assurance at the Brantford plant in the 1980s spoke to Country Guide about how quality was perceived in those days. “I was the quality guy in the plant, and it was very, very hard sometimes to get through to the upper management and even the union guys that we have to make a perfect combine,” Nicolle recalls. “We didn’t always have that culture in the combine plant.” The repercussions sometimes caused problems for dealers and customers. “Sometimes we would ship a new machine to a customer and he was absolutely irate with it for whatever reason,” Nicolle says. “Even though the dealer had done everything he could to get the machine back up and running again, the customer was so irate he said, ‘I want to speak to someone from the factory.’ So, I would fly to wherever it was in North America. I would show up with the dealer. The customer would run up one side of me and down the other, letting me know whatever was wrong. “I’d take notes and take pictures… and pacify him anyway I possibly could. Then I’d come back to the factory and have a debrief with the guys. But it was so difficult, because the management that was responDecember 2015

business sible for not letting things like this happen really didn’t care. I’d given my word to the customer that I’d make sure this wouldn’t happen again, but in my heart I knew that would be very difficult. Unless it was something concrete, like you could change a piece of equipment, it was very hard to get a mindset change in the factory.” A few weeks before Massey Combines Corp. fell into bankruptcy in 1988, Nicolle left to take a similar job at Toyota’s Cambridge, Ont. car assembly plant.

equipment-manufacturing plant has moved away from what was arguably the typical North American attitude toward manufacturing, which didn’t focus strongly on quality through the 1970s and 1980s. And manufacturers did learn from those Japanese automakers, at least in part. Consequently, customer expectations have grown significantly. Now, there is little tolerance among customers for poor workmanship in either cars or farm machinery.

“They (farmers) actually had an expectation that the machine was going to have quality issues when it was delivered to them. And they lived with it,” said Peter Clarke, president and CEO of Seed Hawk, a Saskatchewan seeding equipment manufacturer, during an open house event at that company’s factory in October. That is far from the case today, however. “We’re trying to keep pace with the Continued on page 28

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And he found the attitude toward quality was much different there. “I often reflected back, if Massey had run its business the way Toyota ran its, we’d still have been in business (in Brantford) today,” Nicolle says. “By that I mean they worked as a team, from the president to the guy on the floor putting the car together. Everyone was focused on quality. The top guys were 100 per cent committed to quality, and also to cost reduction, productivity and looking after people, all those things. But quality was the driving force.” At Toyota, the strategy was based around team work. “So if there was a problem, it wasn’t just your problem, it was ‘our’ problem,” Nicolle says. “It wasn’t like that at Massey. It (Massey) was a traditional North American-type company.” Today, however, virtually every ag

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pests 2015 Pulses By far the greatest pest threats facing Saskatchewan pulse producers this year were aphids and grasshoppers, according to Hartley. Grasshoppers have been sprayed for the last few years in lentils, where threshold levels are extremely low — two grasshoppers per square metre. “Economic thresholds tend to go down any time the insect is feeding on the yield component, such as lentil pods, where there’s a direct effect on yields,” Hartley said. Alberta saw a range expansion for pea leaf weevil. “We’ve always considered it

So far, Manitoba has been spared much damage from the soybean aphid, a serious threat farther south. Photo: Claudio Gratton, University of Wisconsin

a southern Alberta pest, but we had very serious high numbers into the Lacombe area, and we were finding it on fababeans as far north as Edmonton in the fall, so it’s made a major jump north,” said Meers. Expansion in pea leaf weevil range seems to be following fababean acreage expansion, but Meers said it’s too soon to tell what is causing the increase. Manitoba’s only significant pest concern in pulses was soybean aphid. “But overall it was moderate — we have seen much worse,” Gavloski said. “A lot depends on when they arrive. And once again we noticed a lot of natural enemies in soybean fields, and quite a few people let the natural enemies take care of aphids.” Gavloski believes producers are becoming much more aware of natural enemies of insect pests, and at times willing to let them regulate potential pests. “Many producers are willing to wait and see if natural enemies can regulate pest levels, rather than quickly resort to insecticides,” he said. “A lot of them get concerned when they have a high-value crop, but at the same time they would like to let nature take its course.” CG

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country-guide.ca 31

By Gord Gilmour ⁄⁄ Associate editor

Diseases take a bit of a break Drier conditions this past season kept a lid on most crop diseases — but this is probably just a brief respite until environmental conditions line up again he bad news is that dry weather cut yields across much of the Prairies in 2015. The consolation? This same weather kept fungal diseases in check. In fact, areas that were in the sweet spot of lower pressure but enough rainfall to carry yield were rewarded with exceptional crop quality. Country Guide recently spoke to provincial plant pathologists about what they saw this past summer, and what it might mean for the future.

Manitoba

Manitoba’s corn growers didn’t worry too much about Goss’s wilt this year, but despite the dry weather it did crop up in Alberta.

In the Keystone province, provincial plant pathologists Vikram Bisht and Pratisara Bajracharya report that growers enjoyed a bit of a break. It’s traditionally the wettest part of the Prairies, especially in the Red River Valley, sometimes referred to as “Death Valley” because of its heavy disease pressure This summer, however, while rainfall was mainly adequate to support yields, weather was drier than usual. This translated into lower disease pressure across the board, Bisht said. “Diseases and insects just weren’t a major issue in a lot of cases.” Bajracharya agreed, saying that in cereals there were some instances of fusarium head blight, leaf rust and stem rust, but nothing that rang the alarm bells. “They were present, but at fairly low levels,” she said. Winter wheat was an exception. “This year the timing was ‘good’ for fusarium in winter wheat,” Bisht said. “Flowering seemed to coincide with periods of very high risk, and we saw a few fields that did get caught.” Bisht said Manitoba growers have come to view

fungicide applications on cereals as essential due to the perennially wet and humid conditions, and a few growers even apply fungicides at herbicide timing, flag leaf and flowering stages, for a total of three applications. “They really like to get good coverage and protection,” Bisht said. “Even when it might not always be the most economical thing to do.” Bisht also noted that ergot infections in wheat crops had fallen this season, after a fairly serious problem last year. Corn grower (primarily in the Red River Valley) saw similar results for similar reasons. Drier conditions prevented the usual crop diseases like corn smut, common rust and Goss’s wilt from running rampant. Bajracharya noted Goss’s wilt stayed in check, which was particularly good news for growers who have struggled with it in recent years. “It’s a bacterial infection, not fungal, so of course fungicides simply don’t work on it,” she said. Sclerotinia and blackleg were present at low levels in canola, but also not at crisis proportions. So far clubroot, though present, hasn’t become a major issue. “It was nice to also see the two common diseases of canola were not a major issue for growers this year,” Bajracharya said. Bisht added this doesn’t mean growers can afford to be less vigilant. Both are stubble-borne infections that can linger in fields from season to season, and robust rotation is a key to keeping both in check, as it is with clubroot, which remains a concern. “Rotation is a major issue and if it is properly practised it can certainly bring down the risk level for growers for all these canola diseases,” Bisht said.

Soybean honeymoon ending? Soybean growers didn’t have huge issues this year either — but Bisht said reality is beginning to settle in after a bit of a honeymoon period. While growers did benefit from the general low disease pressure, they saw some cases of rhizoctonia and fusarium root rot, especially when conditions turned a bit wetter later in the season. Brown spot, caused by a fungal pathogen, has also begun to show up, and it’s one of those diseases that are typical of soybean-growing areas. When Continued on page 34 32 country-guide.ca

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Continued from page 32 it hits a field it can defoliate plants, but leaves the beans themselves alone, meaning its effect is purely on yield, not quality, Bisht said. Other relatively minor issues were seen with bacterial blight, though the severity and number of incidents remained relatively low. There was also some minor pressure from pod blight and stem blight, which are caused by a complex of fungal pathogens. “These are all issues we’re going to have to be on the lookout for in the coming years,” Bisht said. “I’m afraid soybean won’t be quite as much a Cinderella crop anymore.”

Late blight scare Manitoba’s potato crop continued to fight its ongoing battle with diseases. This year late blight infections appeared in the first week of September, placing growers on high alert, Bisht said. “It’s a very serious disease, and it can take down an entire crop over the course of just three or four days, under favourable conditions and without fungicide protection,” he said. One factor in the industry’s favour was an early and relatively dry harvest, which meant much of the crop was already out of danger, Bisht said. This also meant fewer problems with storeability. Bisht also noted the crop has seen a tricky new insect pest arise recently — the European corn borer. Its presence in potatoes is an unintended consequence of the widespread adoption of Bt corn varieties. “Potato is its next favourite host,” Bisht said. “This has been seen in other potato production areas in the U.S.” A Group 4 insecticide will control them, but tim-

Stripe rust has been a growing concern in Alberta in recent years. It’s a bacterial infection, so is not affected by fungicides.

ing is a real challenge. They can only be controlled while they’re on the plant, but not after they bore into the stem and gain the protection of the plant. “Timing is going to be a real challenge,” Bisht said.

Saskatchewan Moving west, Saskatchewan growers saw much the same pattern, with drier conditions hampering disease development, said provincial plant pathologist Faye Bouchard. “This was a change after the past several years, where we saw some wetter-than-usual conditions promoting disease development,” Bouchard said. Bouchard told Guide that plant pathologists typically talk about infections needing a “disease triangle” that consists of having inoculum present, a susceptible host crop and environmental conditions conducive to the development of disease. “In this case it was the environmental conditions that were the missing piece of the triangle,” she said. And while drying conditions did affect yields a bit, Bouchard added the emerging consensus is that growers in a lot of areas wound up with much better quality than in recent years, which helped to at least partially cushion the blow. “There were definitely also a lot less quality issues related to disease showing up in samples during harvest,” Bouchard said. “For example, there were far fewer fusarium-damaged kernels in wheat.” Growers did apply fungicides when conditions warranted it — i.e. during an elevated risk forecast at flowering. But generally, fungicide use was down in step with the generally drier weather. “It’s taken longer for (fusarium) to get here, and while growers started using fungicides in the wet conditions, they appear to still be using a decision model that looks at risk levels before they use them,” Bouchard said. That’s good news because careful stewardship means the products will remain effective longer and won’t fall prey to fungicide resistance. “A plant pathologist will always say we should protect these products and maintain their effectiveness as long as possible,” Bouchard said. “That means using them only when necessary, and properly rotating between modes of action.”

Low canola disease pressure The province’s major canola diseases — sclerotinia and blackleg — also seemed to be largely in remission this year, with only a few isolated cases appearing, although it appears there may have been more blackleg when crops were hit with damaging weather like hail, which opened it up to infections. “That’s our suspicion, and we’re investigating it a bit further to understand exactly what happened there,” Bouchard said. The perennial advice for growers on canola and diseases is robust rotation, Bouchard said, and it appears the message is getting through. “We recommend a one-in-four-year canola rota34 country-guide.ca

December 2015

diseases 2015 tion, and I think there are a lot of growers who are doing a good job of this now,” Bouchard said. “Unfortunately, there are still some areas where rotations are tighter, and when it comes to plant disease, your first and best tool is rotation.” Yet while growers may have had lower disease pressure this season, those diseases are still lurking in the background. “Unfortunately they’re now endemic to the area, and they’ll reappear when we inevitably have more favourable conditions for them in the future,” she said.

Alberta “Crop diseases just weren’t the topof-mind story this season — that was the drought,” said Michael Harding, an Alberta Agriculture plant pathologist based in Brooks. “That was the issue limiting potential yield this year.” Dry weather also hampered the development of most of the common diseases in the province, including sclerotinia and blackleg in canola and fusarium head blight in cereals. “We still saw all the usual suspects,” Harding said. “It’s not like they went anywhere, they were just present at much lower levels.” When moisture improves, all the common problems will reassert themselves when weather conditions line up, he said.

Unusual suspects That’s not to say there weren’t a few unusual suspects, however, with a couple of oddities cropping up in Alberta fields that bear watching in future seasons — things Harding said aren’t “ordinary to see or something we’d see every year.” Wheat streak mosaic, a viral infection commonly carried by the wheat curl

“ I’m afraid soybean won’t be quite as much — Vikram Bisht a Cinderella crop anymore.” mite, popped up on a few wheat fields, for example. There were also cases of aster yellows spread in the same way, this time by the tellingly named aster leafhopper in canola. Neither threatened large acreage, but Harding said growers should be aware that both insects could persist and continue spreading the diseases. “For example, we’ll see wheat curl mites overwinter on winter wheat, then in the spring move into spring cereal crops when the insects arrive,” Harding said. “These host crops support the disease, but until conditions are just right, it’s not a disease we’re necessarily going to see a lot of.” Harding also noted that there were more bacterial diseases beginning to crop up, saying he found their development a bit surprising. Two notable examples were bacterial leaf streak in wheat and Goss’s wilt in corn.

A break from stripe rust Dry weather likely saved growers a tough foe to battle. Stripe rust showed up early in winter wheat fields, only to be greeted by less-than-ideal dry conditions. “It overwintered on winter wheat and emerged early in the spring, poised to become a major problem — but it never really got rolling,” Harding said. It’s a cooler-season disease, so the hot, dry conditions in 2015 didn’t support it, and a number of the commonly grown wheat cultivars in the area also have decent genetic resistance to the disease.

The elephant in the room when talking about crop diseases with an Albertan is, of course, clubroot, a soil-borne disease issue that’s rapidly blown up after being discovered in the Edmonton area just a few years ago. Harding confirmed the disease continues to spread, and that the available genetic resistance isn’t a silver bullet. He talks instead of the need for cultural practices centred around crop rotation and certain cultural practices such as avoiding spreading soil between fields. With the issue just beginning to appear in the other two Prairie provinces, Harding hoped those jurisdictions can learn from Alberta’s experience and get on top of the situation early, while it’s still relatively easy to control — advice he says also applies on the farm level, due to the way the disease can lurk in the background developing, before appearing as a full-blown wreck. “This is a disease that is much easier to control if you find it earlier,” he said. “You have a lot more options when you’re dealing with, say, a 30-squaremetre patch, rather than 30 or 40 acres.” Harding said the approach that works best for this disease is really one that’s transferable to any crop issue — an effective rotation, regular and timely scouting including taking the time to know what symptoms to look for, and using tools like economic models and extension information to support decisions. “That’s the foundation of any good disease-management strategy,” Harding said. CG

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country-guide.ca 35

By Jay Whetter ⁄⁄ Canola Council of Canada

Canola disease highlights from 2015 Dry conditions, especially early in the season, reduced disease severity in general in 2015. Noteworthy events are the rise of blackleg in Saskatchewan and clubroot in Manitoba lackleg is on the uptick in Saskatchewan. The disease survey went 10 years with blackleg bumping along the bottom of the graph at low levels. But then prevalence — the percentage of fields with some level of blackleg infestation — rose from the 10-year average of 25 per cent up to 54 per cent in 2014 and 57 per cent in 2015. Prevalence had been that high before. In 2003, 53 per cent of surveyed Saskatchewan canola fields had blackleg. What has changed this time is the incidence rate. Incidence is the percentage of plants showing blackleg symptoms within those infested fields. Incidence in 2003 was very low — 0.1 per cent. It stayed at 1.0 per cent or below until 2010, when it went to 2.9 per cent. Then in 2014 it took another leap, to 7.0 per cent, and reached 9.0 per cent in 2015. Faye Dokken-Bouchard, provincial plant disease specialist with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agri-

Blackleg field rating scale

Score blackleg for each clipped taproot using the following scale No disease tissue visible in the cross-section Diseased tissue occupies 25% or less of cross-section Diseased tissue occupies 26-50% or less of cross-section Diseased tissue occupies 51-75% or less of cross-section Diseased tissue occupies 75% or more of cross-section Diseased tissue occupies 100% of the cross-section, with significant construction of affected tissues; tissues dry and brittle; plant dead

Any blackleg damage is considered a positive for “incidence,” which is the number of plants within a field that shows disease symptoms. Provincial canola disease surveys check 100 plants per field. Surveyors collect 20 plants from each of five sites at least 20 metres from the edge of the field and separated from each other by at least 20 metres. Timing is before swathing when plants are still alive and disease symptoms, if present, are most obvious. Canola samples were confirmed positive for blackleg through basal stem cross-section analysis, as shown in the diagram. Photo credit: Gary Peng, AAFC Saskatoon

culture, notes that these results are preliminary. “We haven’t gone through them with a fine-tooth comb as we usually do for the final report in the Canadian Plant Disease Survey,” she says. “But whether these blackleg-like symptoms are confirmed as blackleg or something else is causing blackening of the stem bases, there is likely to be somewhat of an impact on the crops as a result, as necrotic tissue in the stem will prevent water and nutrients from being taken up by the plant, resulting in yield loss.” The general rule for estimating yield loss is to divide incidence by two. With an average incidence of nine per cent in Saskatchewan in 2015, these stem lesions are causing potential yield loss of 4.5 per cent. When asked why 2015, a generally drier year, saw continued increase in the disease, Dokken-Bouchard says, “This is likely a result of a buildup of the pathogen in the past few wet years, shorter rotations and/ or incompatibility between the blackleg races present and the resistance in the canola varieties being used.” She adds that hail may have been a factor as well. “This disease is often associated with hail damage, so even without a lot of rain the pathogen may have been introduced via hailstorms and hail damage.” Saskatchewan blackleg numbers are still lower than Manitoba, which had a prevalence of 93 per cent and incidence of 24 per cent in 2014 and prevalence of 80 per cent and incidence of 14 per cent in 2015. Blackleg prevalence in Alberta in 2015 was 64 per cent with an incidence of nine per cent. For 2016, Dokken-Bouchard recommends that growers learn to identify canola diseases and scout for symptoms starting at the seedling stage to determine if blackleg (and other diseases) are a problem. “If they are getting worse within the season and over the years, growers can prevent blackleg by growing non-host crops in a four-year rotation between canola crops,” she says.

Clubroot in Manitoba While no canola plants collected from the 152 canola crops surveyed in Manitoba in 2015 showed visual symptoms of clubroot, the Plant Surveillance Initiative Lab in Winnipeg has found DNA from P. brassicae in soil all over the province. And while galls are still few and far between, clubroot symptoms (dying plants and galls on roots) were confirmed in the Swan River Valley and in the RM of Pembina in 2015. In the Swan River case, a grower noticed a dead

3 6 c o u n t r y - g u i d e . c a D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 5

canola 2015 patch in his canola field and called his agronomist. The agronomist found the galls. Soil samples have been sent away to determine spore concentration. Anastasia Kubinec, oilseed crops specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, and the Swan River agronomist want to figure out the clubroot pathotypes to give producers an idea of what clubroot-resistant varieties to choose. Using seed with genetic resistance to clubroot is by far the most important tool to manage the disease. Protecting that resistance, therefore, is a valuable endeavour. Ralph Lange, speaking at Canola Discovery Forum in Canmore, Alta. in October, described the five phases of disease management. • Phase 1: The invaders show up. Blackleg, clubroot and Verticillium longisporum, he notes, are all invasive species. • Phase 2: Disease management specialists provide practices to limit spread of the pathogen. These often include machinery sanitation and rotation away from host crops. • Phase 3: Breeders introduce resistance genes in commercial lines. • Phase 4: Pathogens adapt, and resistance breaks down. The rate that this happens at depends on factors like the biology and genetics of the pathogen, how frequently in time and space the host crop is grown, and how the pathogen is dispersed. For clubroot, this can happen very quickly. For fusarium wilt or verticillium wilt, it can be very slow. • Phase 5: New resistant genes are found and introduced. “Phases 4 and 5 repeat, getting steadily more intense with each round, until the crop can no longer be produced economically based on lower yield potential and higher input and management costs,” Lange says. This is already happening with clubroot resistance, as fields in central Alberta that have been seeded to R varieties a couple of times are already showing signs of pathogen shift. Stephen Strelkov with the University of Alberta tested soil

Blackleg on the rise in Saskatchewan Disease survey results 2003-15 Blackleg prevalence

2003

2004 2005

2006

2007

Blackleg incidence

2008

2009

2010

2011 2012

2013 2014 2015

Year

Provincial disease surveys show that blackleg prevalence, the per cent of fields infested (top line), and incidence, the per cent of plants infected per field (bottom line), have taken a jump in Saskatchewan over the past two years. Note that 2015 results are unofficial at this time. December 2015

samples from 27 fields in Alberta that were seeded to resistant varieties in 2014 and showed more-than-expected levels of gall formation. Of those 27 fields, 16 have unknown “class x” clubroot pathotypes that suggest the clubroot population in those fields had shifted to overcome the resistance trait in the variety grown. Surveys in 2015 expanded the number and range of these virulent pathotypes, which will be labelled in the near future. The way to protect the resistance trait and extend Phase 3 is to combine the management steps in Phases 2 and 3. Cleaning the soil from equipment before it leaves a clubroot-infested field will reduce the speed of spread through a farm. Rotation, even one year in three for canola, will greatly reduce the population of resting spores compared to two-year rotations and back-to-back canola. This break also buys genetic specialists and seed companies time to adapt to each Phase 4 with new advancements for Phase 5. “We’re in an era of managing resistance genes and not just the disease itself,” Lange says. CG Jay Whetter is communications manager for the Canola Council of Canada.

How to protect clubroot R traits Pathogens will adapt to repeated use of the same resistance trait. The following steps used together will reduce disease spread, reduce infection levels and reduce selection pressure for virulent strains of a pathogen that can overcome genetic resistance (R) traits. For communities known to have clubroot: • Keep a close watch. Look for unexpected levels of clubroot in fields seeded to resistant varieties. This is a sign that pathotype shift has reduced the effectiveness of the resistance trait in your fields. — Sanitation. Few growers are taking time to disinfect (final misting with bleach, EcoClear, or HyperOx) equipment because of the time it takes. But growers in these higher-risk zones must at least knock the dirt off equipment before leaving fields. At least 90 per cent of clubroot spores that move from field to field can be stopped by scraping off dirt. • Avoid tillage as it moves a lot of clubroot-infested soil around the field and from field to field. • Control host weeds and canola volunteers that provide a bridge for clubroot galls and spore buildup even when canola is not produced on a field. • Continue using resistant varieties and look for new genetics in the future. Never use susceptible varieties on clubrootinfested soil or in areas with a high prevalence of clubroot. For communities without a case of clubroot: • Scout vigilantly for signs of clubroot. • Avoid the introduction of clubroot by cleaning and monitoring equipment entering fields. • Use cleaned and treated seed only. • Use resistant varieties when growers think they are at higher risk. • Control volunteers and host weeds. For more on clubroot management, go to www.canolawatch. org and read clubroot articles under the “Diseases” heading.

country-guide.ca 37

By Gord Gilmour ⁄⁄ Associate editor

A bit of everything in 2015 Drought in the western Prairies had a lot of people concerned about production last season, but the latest information suggests the crop was bigger and better quality than expected ou can see it in the numbers — the StatsCan canola numbers that is. In August the agency predicted 2015 canola production at 13.3 million tonnes. By October that number had risen to 14.3 million tonnes and one industry watcher says it could be headed even higher. David Drozd of market advisory Ag-Chieve told Country Guide there’s talk in the trade the number could approach or even top 15 million tonnes in the next report — something that probably won’t bode well for prices through this season. “We’re getting into a production number more satisfactory to the crush and export markets,” Drozd said during a conversation that also included Ag-Chieve’s special crops specialist Frank Letkeman and grain marketing advisory services manager Ed Baldwin. “This makes them a lot less willing to chase or push this market.”

Tale of two crops Overall crop production turned out relatively well, in contrast to expectations when drought hit the western Prairies early in the season. In October, StatsCan estimated the total Prairie grain and oilseed crop at 56.3 million tonnes, seven per cent down from last year and 23 per cent down from the bin buster in 2013, but just three per cent off the previous five-year average. While the dry weather cut yield, it also contributed to a relatively high-quality wheat crop — on average. Rain in September spoiled the harvest party for some. “The first and largest part of the harvest had excellent quality, the last third didn’t have quite as

% of crop

% of grading #1 or #2 CWRS

CWRS making the top two grades is better than last year, and not far off the recent average. Credit: G3 38 country-guide.ca

good quality,” said Bruce Burnett, weather and crop specialist with G3, formerly CWB. Speaking to the Cereals North America conference in early November, Burnett said the portion of CWRS in the top two grades was estimated at 63 per cent, just two percentage points off the recent average and well above 50 per cent last year. For durum 55 per cent was in the top two grades, just one point off the five-year average and a substantial improvement over 24 per cent last year. Durum protein content of 14 per cent is well above the average of 12.6. Combined with similar results in the U.S., that’s led to a sharp drop in protein premiums. “If we look at the Minneapolis protein premiums for 13.5 to 15 per cent, last year at this time they were around $3.50 a bushel, and right now they’re about 65 cents,” Burnett said in an earlier interview in mid-October. Ag-Chieve’s Baldwin said wheat producers are in an “upside-down land” this season, with nearnegligible protein premiums and the possibility of some demand for lower-protein wheat for blending. This won’t directly translate into more dollars, but combined with the overall high quality of the crop, a grower might readily catch a break on grade from a local buyer if the math works out to a win-win situation. “I hesitate to call it a ‘premium’ for lower protein, but this opportunity will exist,” he said.

High-pro malt barley While higher protein might be welcome news for wheat and durum, it’s causing headaches for maltsters. Higher protein reduces malt extract and can cause some quality problems in beer. “We’re seeing protein levels between 13 and 14 per cent, which is way too high,” said Daryl Beswitherick of the Canadian Grain Commission. “Typically they want 12.5 per cent or lower.” Burnett said there are some other quality issues that popped up later in the season with the wetter weather, such as “chitting” on the kernels, which is a very early stage of germination that stops short of actually sprouting, but is a concern to maltsters, who depend on high germination levels. That means later-harvested barley is likely to struggle to make malt, he said. “I think it’s mostly going to be feed barley,” he said. Ag-Chieve’s Letkeman echoed these concerns, saying maltsters have clearly been re-evaluating what’s going to be considered malt this year. Letkeman added that growers won’t likely see December 2015

farming 2015 strong values for feed barley. Other feed grains like corn are lower in value right now and some later-harvested wheat is hitting the feed category as well, further weighing on price. “In general terms export demand seems to be a bit lower, as we’ve seen increased feed grain production globally,” Letkeman said. “Domestically the market seems well supplied, which makes it unlikely we’ll see any bid-up of prices.”

Bright spot for pulses There is a better marketing outlook for other crops. Some of the pulse crops, in particular red lentils, have seen an international production shortfall and Canada, having the lion’s share of exportable global lentil production, finds itself in an enviable position this year. “In the pulse sector, we see red lentils basically at record highs,” Drozd said. Lentils, a crop that developed naturally in hot and arid conditions, weathered the western drought reasonably well, as did most of the other pulses. Letkeman said the pulse price hierarchy this year basically boils down to red lentils on top, green lentils in second, then yellow

peas, with green peas trailing the pack by a measurable margin. The first three, he explained, are in relatively tight supply. “Green peas are the weak ones,” he said. “All the others are in tight supply, which will keep prices well supported.” Baldwin noted that this comes on the heels of a decent year for pulse growers in 2014 as well, something he says producers have noted and there’s a general expectation that 2016 will see increased pulse acres — something that an astute farm manager might want to take into account now when making a marketing plan. “You can find profitable prices for next year’s crop today,” he said. “It might be something you want to consider.”

Plan needed While marketing advisers like Drozd would love to have better news, he said the hard truth is that growers are in for some more challenging times. There’s little sign the well-supplied markets for major crops are looking at an imminent flip to tighter supplies, and if anything the risk is in the opposite direction. “Soybean ending stocks are more than double a year ago, and could go to a

global record high this year,” he said. “If you’re waiting for the South American crop to bring higher prices, you could be disappointed. If they have a good crop, they’re just going to add to the stocks.” It’s not all doom and gloom, however, with profitable pricing opportunities occurring regularly, Baldwin noted. “There are frequently profitable prices on the table,” he said. The biggest risk for growers this season is going to be holding on hoping for better times that are unlikely to come, Drozd said, noting that the secular trendline was largely sideways but trending down over time. “Typically in a bear market you’ll see lower lows and lower highs, and that’s the pattern that we’ve been seeing,” he said. It means growers need to contain production costs, know their cost of production and what a profitable price looks like, and have a plan that they’ve got the discipline to execute. “They’re really going to have to sharpen their pencils and be disciplined,” Drozd said. “I think many have realized that the market has changed and they’re making their plans based on this.” CG

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country-guide.ca 39

By Ellen Goodman ⁄⁄ Cigi

Peas — your morning cereal Cereal manufacturers are looking to counter declining sales by increasing the nutritional content of their products s the quality of processed foods faces greater scrutiny from consumers and media, the food industry has responded by focusing greater attention on improving nutrition in their products. Cigi (Canadian International Grains institute) is currently working with an international pulse task force led by representatives from major food-processing companies, food equipment manufacturers, millers, and the pulse industry to improve the nutritional levels of foods such as breakfast cereals, instant noodles, pasta, and bread with pulse ingredients. Heather Maskus, project manager, pulse flour milling and food applications at Cigi, is heading a project that is building on the knowledge gained from a project Cigi completed last year which investigated whether milling methods affected pulse flour and end-product quality. The current project, Advancing Pulse Processing and Applications, is funded by AAFC’s Canadian Agricultural Adaptation Program and Pulse Canada.

Adding yellow peas to a serving of cereal can boost its protein content by five times. Photo: Cigi

“We’ve been using a variety of pulse ingredients in many different applications and now we are focusing more on products that are under pressure from consumers,” Maskus says. “It’s a very targeted approach, looking at which products we can put pulses into that help overcome these nutrition and health challenges.” Maskus recently gave a presentation on Cigi’s current work, ‘Future in Food Formulations: Why and how to balance cereal and pulse proteins in food applications’ at the American Association of Cereal Chemists International annual conference in Minneapolis. About 125 representatives from the

40 country-guide.ca

food-processing industry, government, and universities attended the presentation which included references to media articles that are sounding the alarm about health risks related to eating breakfast cereals and instant noodles.

Declining cereal consumption Breakfast cereals in particular are encountering increasing consumer pressure with diminishing sales, Maskus says, adding that reports indicate a 19 per cent decrease in the U.S. over the past decade. “We are positioning our work with what the perceptions are of processed foods right now. Things have changed with products such as breakfast cereals and instant noodles as consumers are questioning their nutritional value more. Not all the options on the market are healthy. Some cereals, for example, contain large amounts of sugar and are low in protein and fibre.” Maskus says Cigi’s project has involved a strategic selection of processed foods and what will be achieved by using pulses in those products. “This means building on the protein levels, fibre, vitamins, and mineral content, and also how we could affect the glycemic response for some of these product applications.” The study includes investigation into how extrusion processing of breakfast cereals can affect nutritional quality since this method can change starch and protein structures and how they’re digested by the body, Maskus says. Cigi’s work with breakfast cereals currently aims to achieve five grams of quality protein in a 30-gram serving using yellow peas as an ingredient. By comparison, she says that cereals on store shelves contain about one gram of protein. Other targets include reaching five grams of fibre and hitting a medium glycemic index instead of the high index now found in retail corn-based cereal products. So far the effect of roller milling and extrusion processing on protein content and amino acids of whole and refined yellow pea flour and whole and refined yellow pea semolina (coarse flour) has been investigated, with refined yellow pea semolina yielding the highest protein content, Maskus says. “We will continue using refined yellow pea semolina in our work to reach the protein targets by optimizing milling and processing.” In addition, the work aims to build an understanding of functionality of the products, she says. “We have to always keep in mind that when improving the health and nutrition of a product, we still have to be aware of the quality in terms of texture and taste which is as important to consumers.” CG December 2015

The Canadian Association of Farm Advisors (CAFA) Inc. is a national, non-profit professional umbrella organization dedicated to assisting farm families and businesses by increasing the skills of farm advisors and consultants.

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Building Your Professional Network Craig SwiStun, ViCe PreSident CC&L PriVate CaPitaL Ltd.

ave you ever heard of the expression “jack of all trades, master of none”? Its origins trace back to Elizabethan England, but today the expression is used to describe someone that has managed to obtain skills in a number of different areas without becoming exceptionally talented in any. They might be good… but they aren’t great, and that’s why in order to do things right, we need experts. Whether personally or for business, hiring professionals makes sense. These individuals have spent time becoming experts in a particular area. You consult with professionals regularly—doctors, dentists, electricians—but what about the professionals you should be working with, but aren’t? What about those required to help you in the future? Who will you turn to when you need… whatever it is that you need? Your Network StrategY The first step to building out your professional network begins by defining your needs. Clearly, “needs” breaks down into more than one category. There are the shortterm needs: “I have a problem that needs solving immediately!” as well as longer-term needs: “I need to do something about this at some point in the future.”

Pause and take stock of your specific situation. Determine the list of professional services you might need—not actual people, but tasks that require outsourcing to experts—for both your short- and long-term objectives. I can’t stress this enough. Write these down. The act of physically writing something down helps to focus your thinking. Then—and this is the important part— after a day or two to let things sink in, take your written list and ask someone you trust to review it—a friend, business associate, family member. Often the process of waiting will cause you to rethink the list, and having someone you trust review it will help create a final list. Pay careful attention to how you feel about working with people that are close to you. For personal or sensitive business issues you may feel more comfortable working with an independent provider than a family member or someone from your immediate community. BuildiNg Your Network Now that your list is complete, you’ll want to start finding the experts to work with. Usually, you will already be working with one or two professionals (an accountant, lawyer, financial advisor). These can be excellent starting points because I find referrals are the best way to build your network. Start by tapping into your current professional network by asking them if they could make an introduction to someone they know who specialises in the area you need. From my perspective, this is the best time to review your current relationships as well. Ask your lawyer if they can recommend any accountants. Ask your accountant if they can recommend any lawyers. Tell everyone, openly and honestly, that you are reviewing all of your professional relationships to make sure you are getting the best independent advice for your situation. A great way to build your network is by consulting associations that specialise in a

Toll free: 1-877-474-2871 Email: info@cafanet.com PO Box 270 • Seven Sisters Falls, MB • R0E 1Y0

specific area. For example, I am a member of the Canadian Association of Farm Advisors (CAFA). CAFA members understand the needs of people and business in the agricultural sector. If you count yourselves in that group, tap into these resources easily by looking up a Chapter in your local area. I know that making lists and interviewing professionals isn’t fun, but it’s important. Before deciding to work with someone, take stock of a few important details: • Have they served you well in the past? • Have they been recommended by someone you trust? • Are they a respected member of their profession? • Can they refer you to satisfied clients? Your Network, Your future Building out a network of professionals is critical to personal and business success. As your needs change, so too will the type of experts that you need to help you solve your life and work problems. Needs evolve over time, and being aware of how they change and taking an active approach to building and maintaining your network will put you on a solid foundation, helping you accomplish your personal and professional goals. Craig Swistun is a Vice President with CC&L Private Capital Ltd. and can be contacted at cswistun@cclgroup.com. Connor, Clark & Lunn Private Capital (CC&L Private Capital) is an investment counselling firm that provides traditional and alternative investment solutions to high net worth individuals, foundations and endowments, first nations and trusts. The firm has over 30 investment professionals, manages over $5 billion in assets and is a part of the Connor, Clark & Lunn Financial Group Ltd., a multiboutique asset management firm whose affiliates are collectively responsible for the management of over $63 billion in assets.

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The great debate of our lives I plant GMO crops, but I’m alarmed at how little we listen to the concerns of the anti-GMO lobby. The risk is huge By Gerald Pilger

he biggest threat to farming as we know it in North America isn’t low commodity prices, high input costs or the lack of skilled labour. It isn’t even climate change. Instead, our worst threat is the growing perception that the food we produce is not safe. This fall, the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN) released its new Ipsos Reid poll showing 59 per cent of Canadians oppose using genetically modified crops or animals to produce food, 48 per cent support a ban on all genetically modified food, and 88 per cent want mandatory labelling of GM foods. Of those who said they want all GM foods labelled, 55 per cent are concerned about food safety, 58 per cent are concerned that not enough research has been done on the long-term health and environmental impacts, and 57 per cent are not confident in the government’s safety and regulatory systems for genetically modified foods. “Consumers have lost trust in food safety,” says Lucy Sharratt, co-ordinator of CBAN. Meanwhile, confronted by an audience that doesn’t believe their food is safe, Sharratt says our government and industry have been saying GMOs don’t need to be labelled because they ARE safe. Before any more GMO crops are commercialized, Sharratt says, there must be labelling of food, and there must also be an evaluation of the first 20 years of GMOs in Canada, plus more transparency and more discussion by producers, consumers, government and industry. Rachel Parent is a Toronto-area high school student. She is also becoming the face and voice of the anti-GMO movement in Canada. Her opposition to GMO grew out of a school project when she was just 12 years old. Since then she has been interviewed many times on radio, television and online media. She has started her own foundation “KidsRightToKnow” which focuses on food safety issues. Parent speaks at rallies and events, but she is best known for challenging CBC’s Kevin O’Leary to a debate on GMOs and food safety. That debate was posted to YouTube and viewed two million times in two months. Parent’s primary goal is mandatory labelling of all foods containing GMOs. While I was unable to talk with Parent, she did answer my questions via email (see sidebar). 42 country-guide.ca

The anti-GMO push is not limited to young consumers, however. Dr. Thierry Vrain, retired from the position of head of biotechnology at Agriculture Canada’s Summerland Research Station warns of pesticide-resistance problems, genetic contamination of non-GMO crops, genetic pollution of the environment, and the possibility of health problems due to allergens and toxic proteins arising from GMO technology. “There may or may not be a concern with GMOs,” says Vrain. “We just don’t have the science.”

Farmers question GMOs Even some farmers are opposed to GMO technology. One of the most outspoken is Joel Salatin, the owner of Polyface Farm of Staunton, Virginia. Besides managing his 650-acre operation raising beef, laying hens for eggs, broiler chickens for meat, pork, turkeys, rabbits, lamb, duck eggs, and forestry products (lumber and firewood), which he describes as “beyond organic,” Salatin has written nine books promoting holistic and sustainable food production, and he spends about 100 days a year taking the antiGMO message to colleges and environmental groups. Salatin believes he knows what the consumer wants when it comes to food. After all, he markets all of his farm’s production to roughly 6,000 customers within a four-hour drive of the farm. “We have no desire to sell to supermarkets,” Salatin says. “They should be obsolete.” As with several other sources for this article, when I asked Salatin why he is opposed to GMOs, he preferred to be interviewed by email, not telephone. Below is his complete, unedited response: “Every month it seems like a new study is showing direct health problems, whether it’s tumours, sterility, autism or whatever. It took 14 years to connect the dots of infertile and malformed amphibians to DDT. Nature is resilient, but eventually, assaults yield their condemning data, and that is where we are with GMOs. The impugning data that was merely a trickle five years ago is a veritable flood now. We’re connecting the dots, and it’s not pretty. Anybody who denies the increasingly damning science either doesn’t know about it or refuses to believe it. “Second, the production claims are simply not true. They are not really more productive on an energy-in, energy-out assessment. Just because a plant produces more per square foot does not make it a net positive gain. If it takes way more energy or erosion or wildlife death, December 2015

business boundary fence. Here we have completely alien life forms, owned by one person, trespassing on neighbours’ farms and cre ating life forms both foreign and abhorrent to the farmer. And, in the wisdom of the U.S. Supreme Court, rather than holding the trespasser liable, the victim must pay a royalty fee for the privilege of having his property violated. It’s as if a rampant bull came over and stomped your flower bed and rather than having the owner of the bull pay restitution for damages, you have to pay for the privilege of having your flower garden stomped. Nothing could be more uncivilized. GMOs give the evil mind an unprecedented power to act like a barbarian. “Sixth, GMOs view life as fundamen tally mechanical rather than biological. This is the heart of the industrial agriculture and it explains why we have an entirely new lexicon of tragedy: campylobacter, lysteria, E. coli, salmonella, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, C.diff, MRSA, food allergies. These are all modern inventions that have occurred as we’ve moved to a mechanical view of life. No longer do we ask how to ensure the

for example, to get that increase, the nega tives outweigh the positives. GMO cotton, for example, is less frost resistant. GMO corn is so hard a pig can’t eat the kernels; they have to be ground prior to feeding. “Third, it violates nature’s patterns. This is not a modern permutation of Mendel’s peas. Mendel was crossing peas with peas, not peas with corn with grass hoppers with salmon. The fact is that nature has tremendous barriers to keep GMOs from happening: by definition they could not happen, ever, in nature. To disregard these boundaries and wade into it like a bunch of swashbuckling drunken conquistadors is hubris turned to mad ness. When the sexual plumbing doesn’t match, it just ain’t right. “Fourth, it has resulted in some 300 million pounds of increased pesticide use. Rather than delivering on its prom ise to reduce pesticides and herbicides, it has actually done the opposite. This is not good for our ecological womb. “Fifth, it represents the most egregious violation of private property mankind has ever seen. In order to work, it must be pro miscuous. But this promiscuity respects no

Volume 40, Number 15 | SEPTEMBER 30, 2014

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SAFER GRAIN STORAGE Whether you’ve got enough storage space this year after last year’s bumper crop or you need temporary solutions, try these four tips BY ANDREA HILDERMAN

1. BRING IT IN DRY Grain going into storage should ideally be binned clean and dry. It’s debatable if that will be entirely possible this fall, and if not there should also be the means to either dry the grain or to aerate the bin throughout the storage period and a plan in place to monitor the grain in the bin on a regular basis. “Temperature cables are very popular and cost effective to monitor the temperature of the grain throughout the bin,” says Agnew. “The cables are put in place before the bin is filled and a reader hooked up on the outside provides a temperature profile of the grain in bin at any time.” This technology, like any other, is constantly advancing. Now there are wireless systems that will send email or text notifications when the temperature rises beyond pre-set limits. For farmers harvesting damp or wet grain, there will be added work to ensure the grain does not degrade or spoil in storage. “Ideally grain should go into storage dry,” says Agnew. “If that is not possible, natural air drying with the right capacity fans, even

under conditions of high humidity and low temperatures will draw off a lot of moisture. Any airflow through damp grain is beneficial.” Getting the grain cooled off is important to prevent any further degradation in quality. Turning grain in the fall or winter can have beneficial outcomes when it comes to mixing and cooling. Avoid turning grain in the spring when temperatures are on the rise.

0.1 cubic feet per minute (cfm) of airflow per bushel. A 5,000 bushel bin would require about 500 cfm from fans to cool the grain. Natural air drying requires at least 10 times that amount of air to dry grain in storage — one cfm per bushel of grain or 5,000 cfm for a 5,000 bushel bin. Aeration fans could never achieve those air flow rates. Moisture removal would be minimal and grain would spoil.

2. KNOW YOUR DRYING CAPABILITY

3. KNOW THE LIMITATIONS OF BAG STORAGE

“The next biggest misconception out there is the difference between aeration and natural air drying,” says Agnew. “Drying and cooling are very different and it’s critical farmers know this as there is a lot at stake if they don’t.” Aeration is cooling only and is a valuable part of grain storage management. Natural air drying, on the other hand, will actually remove moisture from the grain but requires much higher airflows than aeration fans can typically provide. High capacity fans are required to dry grain in the bin. Aeration requires about

Because of winter logistics problems and the 2013 bumper harvest, many farmers may need temporary storage for their 2014 production. “Grain storage bags are quite popular with farmers in recent years,” says Agnew. “Bags offer a convenient storage option, however, they also require diligent management to ensure the grain is maintained in good condition over the storage period.” Bags are prone to damage by wildlife so weekly monitoring is recommended

» CONTINUED ON PAGE 4

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Features ............................

Crop Advisor’s Casebook

Columns ........................... 16 Machinery & Shop ............ 26

Protect your crop sale

NEIL BLUE PAGE 15

CALL A FARMER FIRST

Continued on page 44

$4.25

PRACTICAL PRODUCTION TIPS FOR THE PRAIRIE FARMER

e were probably all expecting a tough harvest, despite hoping for the luxury of good weather and an open fall. Rain, frost and even snow in early September likely mean there will be an even greater need to ensure grain storage management strategies are well in hand. “Just because you are done combining does not mean you are done managing the crop,” says Joy Agnew, an agricultural engineer and project manager of agricultural research services at the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute in Humboldt, Saskatchewan. “Grain requires regular monitoring while it is in storage to ensure it does not go out of condition — that is going to be the challenge from here on out.” Considering the value of the inputs and the hours and months of time and effort put into producing the crop, this is good advice. But surprisingly, it is advice that is often not heeded as carefully as it should be.

pigness of the pig or the tomatoness of the tomato. The only question is can we grow it faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper. “Any society that views its life from this base, manipulative, mechanical phi losophy will view its citizens the same way and other cultures the same way. If we want to preserve a place where the Maryness of Mary and the Tomness of Tom is something to be reverenced, then it starts with the pigness of the pig. It’s how we respect and honour the least of these that creates a moral and ethical framework to honour the greatest of these (humans). “By embracing GMOs, our culture has slipped down the ultimate slope toward eliminating any sacredness to life and have exchanged human slavery for overall life slavery. That is not a positive exchange.” While some will argue that Salatin, as an organic producer, is mainly inter ested in increasing demand for organic production, many of his concerns are echoed by conventional producers.

Home ec teacher promotes local ingredients » Pg 27

Cattleman’s Corner .......... 35

John Deere’s 9R tractors get new features

FarmLife ............................ 41

SCOTT GARVEY PAGE 36

TAKING TIME FOR OTHERS

Rely on the unrivalled standability of Proven Seed

BREEDING BIG BIRDS

Busy farmers take time for CFGB growing projects » Pg 18

Just how did today’s poultry become so large? » PG 3

Learn more at provenseed.ca or ask your CPS retailer

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SerVinG manitoba FarmerS Since 1925 | Vol. 72, no. 42

Forage concerns after wet season High nitrate levels in frost-stressed crops can be fatal for cattle By Meghan Mast Co-operator staFF

attle farmers should test their feed this year because wet weather has compromised the nutritional value in late-seeded cereal crops, and cold weather could make them potentially dangerous, a provincial forage specialist says. “We’re quite concerned about nitrates this year after the stress that the plants have been under all summer and then with the recent frost and the crops being late,” said Pam Iwanchysko, from MAFRD, during the year’s first StockTalk webinar on September 16.

Poor weather impacts wild rice operations Wild rice has been harvested in northern Manitoba for thousands of years, but modern demands may outstrip supplies as the grain increases in popularity By Shannon VanRaes Co-operator staFF

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Murray Ratuski of Shoal Lake Wild Rice Ltd. at the company’s processing facility in the Rural Municipality of Springfield. photo: shannon Vanraes

all it too much of a good thing. Wild rice needs plenty of water to grow, but heavy rains and high water coupled with cool temperatures has hit producers hard this season, particularly in northwestern Manitoba and northeastern Saskatchewan. “There’s this little pocket that covers the majority of Canadian production and they had a terrible year. Some of the people I was inspecting, they were going to harvest nothing,” said Stuart McMillan, an independent organic inspector. “It’s hard to imagine with an aquatic plant, but they got drowned out,” he said. “At some stages of growth it’s really sensitive to rapid fluctuations in water levels.” Ideally, wild rice needs between three and five feet of water as a growing medium. “We’ve been calling it a perfect storm,” said Tracy Wheeler-Anderson, owner of Naosap Harvest in Cranberry Portage. “It’s just been a very, very odd year. The water table was high last fall, then we had an abnormal amount of snow and then we had an abnormal amount of rain, so come spring the water levels were way higher than what they normally are.” see WILD RICE on page 6 »

VO LU M E 1 1 , N U M B E R 2 2

High costs slowing cattle herd expansion Canada’s beef cattle industry is poised for expansion, but will high capital costs cause delays?

O C T O B E R 2 7, 2 0 1 4

Big shows offer a chance to reconnect Every year, Alberta’s farm shows attract hundreds of thousands of visitors — and socializing remains the major draw

BY JENNIFER BLAIR

AF STAFF

trong prices are signalling that it’s time to start retaining heifers and build the herd — but rising capital costs could cause some producers to hold off. “There’s lots of opportunities, but it’s costly,” said Rick Dehod, farm financial specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. A decade of pain and low prices means many producers have other priorities than expanding at the moment, he said. “A lot of those ladies and gentlemen for the last 13 years have kept their cost of production down, and they’ve really managed their farms well and survived,” he said. “But they’re behind on some of their working capital and some of the things that need to be done. “I’m sure they’re going to take their profit and meet some personal goals and some farm goals prior to keeping those cows back.” That’s the plan on Jake Meyer’s farm south of Lethbridge.

SEE HIGH COSTS  page 7

BIG NEW MARKET FOR HORMONE-FREE CATTLE » PAGE 34

THE TIME IS

NOW

YOUR MISSION IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE. You just need to accept it by October 20th. To date we have received over $45 million of non-binding commitments from farmers who want to participate in this opportunity to build a grain handling and fertilizer distribution company. It is now time to make a full commitment. We have released our offering memorandum outlining the details of this opportunity, but we need your commitment.

The cattle on show are only one of the attractions at Farmfair International.

Before there were smartphones, Twitter and Facebook, farmers perfected the art of social networking the good oldfashioned way — face to face at meetings, trade shows, and conferences during the busy winter season.

PHOTO: FARMFAIR

BY JENNIFER BLAIR

AF STAFF

nd that’s still what keeps ’em coming back for Alberta’s two biggest farm shows. “For agricultural folk, whenever they gather, networking is a major component of what they do,” said Dave Fiddler, show manager for Farmfair International. The Edmonton event has grown from humble beginnings 41 years ago into one of Western Canada’s largest — and lon-

gest running — farm shows. With nearly 300 exhibitors and 90,000 visitors over the week-long show, Farmfair attracts farmers from across the country who come to talk shop about beef. “It’s where the beef industry comes to meet,” said Fiddler. “It’s the largest beef event in Alberta, and that is the major draw.” Over the years, Farmfair has added equine events and sales, entertainment, and competitions to appeal to a broader audience

Network

SEE BIG SHOWS  page 6

The first closing of this offering is currently scheduled to take place on October 20, 2014. Visit us online or call us toll-free to participate.

FNA.CA/GRAIN or 1-877-362-3276

CENTURY OF SOLUTIONS

AG SCHOOL SAVOURS ITS SUCCESSES  PAGE 2

Participation is limited to accredited investors or those that are otherwise exempt. You do not need to be an FNA Member to participate.

December 2015

country-guide.ca 43

business Continued from page 43 Wendall Lutz is a conventional soybean and corn producer from Dewey, Illinois. He does not grow herbicide-tolerant soybeans because of his fears about weed resistance, but he does plant BT corn because of the need to control insects in his corn. Even so, when I spoke with Lutz, he was in Washington, D.C. lobbying for mandatory labelling of GMO food.

What must be done? When conversations turn anti-GMO, probably the most common reaction for the majority of North American farmers is to roll their eyes, shake their heads, and walk away. But simply ignoring the antiGMO movement is not a solution. Do not forget that only 28 countries allow GMO

Four questions for Rachel Parent Toronto-area high school student Rachel Parent has become the face of GMO opposition in Canada. We were not able to arrange a telephone interview, but below is her email response.

1. Are you opposed to GMO and GMO technology? Why? GMOs were introduced without adequate, independent, pre-market safety testing. When I met with Health Canada officials, I asked and found out that neither Health Canada nor the FDA do any of their own studies on the safety of GMO crops. There’s a lot of research indicating that GMO crops and the toxic chemicals used with them are hazardous to human health and the environment, but unfortunately, there’s no safety monitoring.

2. Do you consider GMO foods safe? Why, or why not? Numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies have linked GMOs to organ damage, digestive disorders, tumours and reproductive problems. Many studies have also shown the environmental hazards of GMOs, including cross-contamination of organic and non-GMO crops, increased use of herbicides and pesticides, super bugs and super weeds, and the dying off of monarch butterflies and bees with potential to affect our food supply.

3. What if any action do you think needs to be done with respect to GMOs? We need long-term, independent studies to determine if GMOs are safe. Until then, no new GE crops should be approved, and all products containing GMOs should be labelled, like they are in 64 countries around the world, including China and Russia.

4. If the above action(s) were taken do you feel you and consumers would be more accepting of GMOs? If GMOs were proven safe through independent studies, consumers would be much more accepting of them. Unfortunately, the only studies being relied on for safety are provided by the biotech companies, the same companies that stand to benefit by product approvals. Consumers don’t trust these corporations as they’re solely driven by profit, and spend 10s of millions of dollars opposing GMO labelling and consumers’ right to know what’s in our food.

44 country-guide.ca

production, and since Scotland recently voted against the growing of GMO crops, that number is shrinking. Instead of walking away, farmers need to listen to those opposed to GMOs and understand why they are concerned. The best advice for a farmer wanting to save GMO technology, however, comes from a most unlikely source. Mark Lynas is considered the father of the antiGMO movement. Back in the ’90s he wrote the first article citing the evils of GMOs. He admits to the vandalism of GMO crops and field trials. But on January 3, 2013 he reversed his position. During a speech at the Oxford Farming Conference Lynas said: “I’m also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid-1990s and that I thereby assisted in demonizing an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.” Today Lynas is a visiting fellow at Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and currently works with the Cornell Alliance for Science. Like Salatin, Lynas insisted on being interviewed by email, not by telephone (I guess when you’re as controversial as they are, you learn to be extra cautious and to do everything you can to avoid misinterpretation.) Lynas has this advice for farmers: “I think the Canadian farming sector has to be very clear that it is supportive of both transparency and sustainability. That means improving its performance in both these areas, and demonstrating why GMO crops can help deliver a more sustainable agricultural system with higher productivity and minimized use of chemical inputs. “It also means showing how no till and other recent innovations facilitated by GMOs have helped make farming friendlier to the soil and to the local and global environment. But it also means acknowledging that there is much more to be done — and being part of the resulting conversation rather than standing against change. “In my view transparency is good, because it means that farmers and producers can make the case for why new breeding technologies are worthwhile. On the other hand if you hide the presence of GMOs in food, you are not in a very good position to talk about their benefits. I would like to see a much more proactive approach — what we want to see are informed consumers, so how do we best facilitate this rather than being opposed?” Lynas adds: “My view is that farmers have to tell their stories better. Big Ag is not considered a credible voice — but farmers, especially family farmers, can tell an authentic story about the reality of farming today, the kinds of decisions they make and why. The fact that so many otherwise rational people believe that Monsanto has somehow enslaved a generation of North American farmers testifies to these same farmers’ failure to explain why they choose GMO seeds. In my view communication is far too important to be left to the professionals.” CG December 2015

business

A million women farmers To get big numbers of women farmers, the U.S. looks to small farms By Rebeca Kuropatwa ccording to the USDA’s Economic Research Service, the number of female-operated farms in the U.S. more than doubled between 1982 and 2012. On top of that, if you add in the number of women who participate on male-led or jointly led farms as primary and secondary operators, the U.S. now has nearly one million female producers, accounting for 30 per cent of American farmers. Krysta Harden, deputy secretary at the USDA, is the first to point out that women have always been deeply involved on the farm… and that it is about time we noticed. “Women have been involved in agriculture forever,” says Harden. “I think we’re just now recognizing their role, starting to talk about it in a different way.” Harden has been working hard at the USDA to

ensure women get the recognition they deserve. One way she is doing this is by asking census questions differently — trying to get at who is involved on farms and ranching operations and in which roles. She describes these efforts as making sure we’re really getting what’s happening on the ground. “In the past,” Harden says, “it was just assumed that it was a male principal. That’s how the question was asked.” But now, the statistiticians are trying to catch up, Harden says. “We are looking at ways to make sure we really do reflect what’s happening in the country.”

We need both Many women now view farming as a viable career option. The job does require some physical muscle, but that is not all, says Harden. “You have to be a good thinker, planner and business person to deal with your financials and marketing. “You’re seeing women come out of college wanting a career in agriculture,” she adds. “There are also young women who inherit land who decide they want to be the one to farm it. Agriculture is evolving and changing. As our older generations get older, they’re looking for what’s next for their land. They’re saying, maybe a woman will come instead of a man.” But Harden is quick to point out that the world needs both male and female farmers who are committed to growing food. “We need them to help feed our growing world… With about one per cent feeding the other 99 per cent of us, we need a pipeline of men and women.” And with the average age of U.S. farmers at 58, the need for both is getting urgent.

The inheritance question

USDA deputy secretary Krysta Harden talks to girls in a food and agriculture class at Peekskill Middle School in Peekskill, N.Y. Harden visited the school’s garden where students proudly showed off their crops in the school’s High Tunnel. Peekskill Middle School installed a High Tunnel in the school’s garden thanks to the High Tunnels in Schools Grant. Girls are not only good at food technology, Harden says, they can also have an edge because of their sharp entrepreneurial skills and their drive to make a difference. Photo: Elena Marinaccio from Peekskill Middle School, N.Y. December 2015

“We want to make sure that women who are inheriting land — widows, daughters, nieces, anywhere in that line — have a place in agriculture,” says Harden. “We need them. We want to work with them and help them continue that great tradition.” Clearly, that view is gaining momentum. The number of women principal farm operators has nearly tripled since the census started to track gender in 1978, starting at five per cent that year and rising to nearly 14 per cent today. Continued on page 46 country-guide.ca 45

business Continued from page 45 Robert Hoppe, one of the USDA report authors, has noticed that the biggest segments operated by women are those that specialize in raising animals. “Most of the sales are in poultry and eggs,” says Hoppe. “That’s where the larger women-operated farms tend to specialize.” As of 2012, about 19 per cent of poultry and egg farms were operated by women, plus 28 per cent of other livestock (mainly horses, but also 27 per cent sheep and goats farms and about 11 per cent beef operations).

Is a female farm a small farm? For Hoppe, getting gender balance into the USDA surveys also meant looking at having to put more emphasis on locating and contacting all farms, regardless of size. “Before, there were indications we were missing substantial numbers of very small farms, those with less than $5,000 or $10,000 in sales,” says Hoppe. “There was a concerted effort to locate and interview very small farms… women tend to operate smaller farms.” Supporting any and all women in agriculture is a widely shared goal, but two U.S. initiatives stand out as leaders — because their goal is leadership. One initiative is steered by a group of 10 women from across the nation, led by Sherry Saylor, a Buckeye, Arizona farmer who grows cotton, wheat, alfalfa, and barley plus some other rotational crops. Saylor runs the farm with her husband, while also working off the farm as a school counsellor. “There are about 80 per cent of farm women who do work off the farm,” Saylor says. “I am one of them. I’m also currently serving as the chair of the American Farmer Women’s Leadership committee. That’s almost like a second job, but one that I love.” The committee engages women by offering opportunities to develop the communication and leadership skills needed to become effective spokespeople for agriculture. Being in a school, Saylor is also working with women to take agriculture to the classroom, setting up programs and training sessions, and providing them with ways to promote agriculture. “We also have a function to encourage women who are actually doing the agri46 country-guide.ca

Women farmers around the world deserve targeted support, says USDA deputy secretary Krysta Harden, seen here with dairy farm owner Ms. Yetemwork Tilahun on Tilahun’s farm near the city of Mojo, about 50 miles south of Addis Ababa, Ethopia. Photo: USDA culture,” says Saylor. “A lot more women are getting into farming, I think due to the farm-to-table movement. More women are jumping into actual farming and not necessarily exclusively as partners with their husbands — they sometimes find a niche market or manage a smaller property. “Many women want to get into it,” Saylor continues. “It’s near and dear to their hearts and they just need training on how to manage a business. I encourage women to become involved in agriculture, whether it’s in production agriculture, in advocating for agriculture, or in science. Saylor believes women have a strong connection with the land and are very interested in the processes used to grow food, and they see the importance of combining that love of agriculture with the business side of it. In fact, Saylor feels women even have an edge because they have a tendency to be risk takers. “I think, with women, if they believe in a product and they think it’s going to make their life and the lives of women in this country better, they will promote it,” she says. “They will be willing to step in. They appear to be more entrepreneurial.”

The value of mentoring Meanwhile, the USDA’s Harden has launched Ag Women Lead, a mentoring network for women in all aspects in the industry. “This is a way for women to communicate with each other, to share information, to share best practices, to encourage

each other, and to really make sure women are connected,” says Harden. This began as a personal project, where Harden would collect contact information from women she encountered through her work. These women would often ask if Harden could link them with other women who could provide them with advice. Other women would sometimes tell Harden that they felt they had acquired skills and insights that they could share with new women farmers. “So, we formed this network and we already have almost 800 women across the country involved,” says Harden. “We look at all aspects of the industry, with everyone coming together to say, ‘you’re not alone, we’re here to share and to grow, to encourage each other.’” Harden feels women are networkers by nature and she is pleased to have found a way that the USDA can help connect women with other women in the field. And the network is not limited to the U.S. There are women farmer members from around the world, including Canada. “We’d love to have more women from Canada involved,” says Harden. “Some of our states are probably closer to Canada than other parts of the country, so they’ll have a lot in common. Again, it’s just about helping, promoting, encouraging, supporting, and being there for other women, wherever they are. We’d certainly welcome them and encourage them to join the network.” For more information about Ag Women Lead, visit agwomenlead@usda.gov. CG December 2015

What price are you really willing to pay? By Pierrrette Desrosiers tell my young children that every decision they make or don’t make has a cost. Each time they say yes to something, like hanging out late with friends and going to bed after midnight, they are also saying no to other things, like feeling energized the next day. Since they don’t have unlimited resources — time, energy, and money — they can’t do everything. I also tell this to my clients. Too often we avoid thinking about the consequences of our actions and our inaction, and of our words and thoughts. Everything has a cost. Consequences can be minor or significant, positive or negative (rarely neutral), and short term or long term. They can affect your mental or physical health, finances, productivity, well-being, or relationships. They can also impact others — your loved ones, neighbours, employees or society. These consequences also deserve careful contemplation when we’re making our decisions, although of course, it would be insane to try to evaluate everything that we do, think and say. We make thousands of micro-decisions, say thousands of words, and have about 50,000 thoughts in a day. It would be a full-time job. However, people don’t usually paralyze themselves with too much self-analysis; more often, we do not take enough time to evaluate our habits. As a leader, your job is to craft a vision, communicate it, and plan accordingly. But don’t get so caught up in your ideas that you can’t carefully consider their impacts. Because each thing we do has consequences, it’s wise to stop from time to time to reflect on our choices. I once heard a client say, “I told my spouse that my business is No. 1, and she is No. 2.” And he acted accordingly. I asked him if he was really aware of and willing to accept the consequences of that choice. Let’s think through a few situations: If you decide to buy equipment or land you can’t really afford, are you aware of the consequences? Or are you lying to yourself that everything will be fine? If you decide to not eat and exercise properly for years to save time, are you aware of the consequences? Are you really willing to jeopardize your health and your long-term productivity? If you decide to push your child to take over the farm when it’s clear their heart is somewhere else, are you willing to face tension in your relationship? When you strive to win first place in your category, what other things in your life will you abandon? Even very small decisions create an impact. If I decide to yell at someone because he hurt my feelings, I’m choosing to hurt him and cause damage to December 2015

our relationship. If I choose to not say, “I’m sorry,” I choose to miss an opportunity to nourish our relationship. When I log on to social media, I choose to be less productive, efficient and focused. When I choose to be a workaholic and never rest, I choose to let my physical and mental health break down. Life is a series of decisions. We open some doors and close others. Those who live happy, productive and successful lives make decisions based, at least in part, on an analysis of the possible consequences of their choices. It’s like farming. If you plant corn, you will harvest corn. If you seed wheat, you will harvest wheat. And if you choose to ignore the weeds coming up in your field, you’re choosing to let the weeds choke out your good harvest. If you don’t keep your soil in condition, you’re choosing to let your yields wither. When real farmers do such things, we call them foolish and short sighted. But sometimes we don’t see how some of the choices we make are just as detrimental to our personal lives and careers. So what does this look like? • If I invest my time in cultivating my relationships, I will harvest more harmony in my life. • If I invest in my employees, I will harvest more productivity, engagement, and a positive work environment. • If I eat well, get my eight hours of sleep and exercise, I will harvest more physical and psychological health in my life. • If I take time for self-care, I will harvest a stronger sense of self-control and will be less prone to burnout. • If I think about my values and priorities and act accordingly, I will harvest more satisfaction. • If I live with honesty and integrity, I will harvest more serenity. Next time you’re faced with a set of decisions — and we’re faced with decisions at every moment of the day — take a moment to contemplate the direction that your choice is leading you. When you say yes to this thing, what are you saying no to? And is that an outcome you’re willing to face? Life is not a goal, it is a journey, so be a leader not just of your business but of your life, making informed choices and reaping the positive consequences. 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. Find her at www. pierrettedesroiers.com, or contact her at pierrete@ pierrettedesrosiers.com. country-guide.ca 47

ame-management

Assessing risk in the farm business By Larry Martin, Agri-Food Management Excellence

Potential Impact

he process of assessing risk in a farm business is no different than in any other business. In agriculture, however, the types of risks in agriculture can be unique. How an individual views risk, how much they want to accept and how they manage it varies from person to person. Even so, there is a widely accepted framework that forms a logical and comprehensive process to assess and determine your approach. This article describes the framework and gives some suggestions on how to use it. Extreme

High

Medium

Low

Negligible

Remote % ranges

0-10%

Unlikely Possible Likelihood >10-25%

>25-50%

Likely Probable >50-90%

>90-100%

Risk ‘Heat Charts’: The chart is called a heat chart. The more intense the colour, the more “heat” the business takes from an adverse event. Developing a heat chart for your farm is done in a series of steps, which are explained below.

Step 1: Identify things that can go wrong This may be the most important step because it can be easy to miss or to avoid thinking about the very thing that causes the business to fail: this is the “Black Swan” concept, based on the book that was quite popular a few years ago. It’s important to be thorough and comprehensive. In our management courses we use the external and internal environment models developed by Michael Porter at Harvard to gauge risks faced by a farm business. They are simply comprehensive approaches to thinking about the risks in the external environment and internal environment.

Risks in the external environment: • Markets and customers: This can include anything from declines in commodity prices to loss of an important customer. The latter can include a range of negative events from a customer 48 country-guide.ca

switching to another supplier, to a customer in financial difficulty who fails to pay a significant receivable. (Each event should be given an identifier: a price decline could be 1a; switching to another supplier 1b; failing to pay 1c, and so on for all the events identified.) • Policies, laws and regulations: Many farmers are keenly aware of changes in environmental, land ownership, pesticide or animal welfare regulations, or changes in BRM payments or procedures. • Socio-economic factors: This could, for example, include consumer concerns about red meat, pesticides, changes in ethnicity. Are there trends that threaten the market for what you produce? • Competitors: Some farmers don’t consider others as competitors, but they can be if, for example, they adopt effective technology that drives their costs down. They certainly can be competitors for land that you want to buy or lease. Also, think about competitors in other countries; for example, Brazil is a growing competitor against Canadian grain and oilseed producers.

Risks in the internal environment: • People: This includes death or serious illness of a key person, including yourself; a key employee quitting; loss of support of key management in a related company; divorce; family feuding over any number of things that families feud over, especially in succession planning. • Assets: Obviously this encompasses fire, property damage, hail, important off-farm investments. • Finance: This requires understanding your financial position, especially debt service capacity and how it interacts with both production and markets. • P rocesses: Business process involves all the activities from obtaining inputs to delivering and collecting on final products. Risks then include the possibility of breakdown, sabotage, or becoming outdated.

Step 2: Estimating potential impact Once the potential events are identified, the next question is how bad will it hurt if each occurs? This will vary with the event. It often helps to get input from key employees or others familiar with your business. The bottom line is that you need to be realistic about the damage an event would cause, both in the short term and long term. Also, it’s important to be as realistic as possible. Look again at the heat chart, and note that it is set up as five levels of impact from negligible to extreme. These categories can be converted to dollar amounts that fit your farm to make the process more vivid. december 2015

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Step 3: Estimating the likelihood of occurrence

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This step is as described. Assign a likelihood on whether the event will occur. Note that the heat chart has five categories from remote to probable, which are translated into probability ranges. As with the potential impacts in Step 2, it is important to be as realistic as possible for each potential event.

Completing the Heat Chart

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When you have the impacts and likelihoods estimated for each possible event, plot them into the various cells in the heat chart, using the identifiers for each. This will give a visual representation of the risks and their distribution. Some people then use a minimum numerical score (e.g. 10 and above) to decide which risks to manage. This then leaves the final step of developing a risk management plan for those events that qualify. The appeal of this approach is that it gives managers the opportunity to be as comprehensive as possible in identifying potential risks and it forces them to think seriously about their likelihood of occurrence and impact on the farm business if they occur. CG

Monsanto Company is a member of Excellence Through Stewardship® (ETS). Monsanto products are commercialized in accordance with ETS Product Launch Stewardship Guidance, and in compliance with Monsanto’s Policy for Commercialization of Biotechnology-Derived Plant Products in Commodity Crops. Commercialized products have been approved for import into key export markets with functioning regulatory systems. Any crop or material produced from this product can only be exported to, or used, processed or sold in countries where all necessary regulatory approvals have been granted. It is a violation of national and international law to move material containing biotech traits across boundaries into nations where import is not permitted. Growers should talk to their grain handler or product purchaser to confirm their buying position for this product. Excellence Through Stewardship® is a registered trademark of Excellence Through Stewardship.

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life

Networking for business and life If you cringe at the thought of networking, it’s a good sign you’re going about it the wrong way By Helen Lammers-Helps hile in the stands at his son’s hockey game, John got a recommendation for an accountant from one of the other parents. At a conference, Chris met a group of farmers who were also interested in experimenting with cover crops. At the end of a long day of combining, Tara shared her frustrations about work-life balance with a group of fellow female farmers on Facebook. What do all of these scenarios have in common? They are all examples of people successfully using their networks to solve a problem. When people think of networking, they often imagine having to clock all sorts of hours attending events for the express purpose of growing their list of contacts. Instead, the potential to network is everywhere — coffee shops, planes, conferences and community events — and we should be making use of those opportunities, professionally and personally. “Effective networking is both a business and a life skill,” says Courtenay Wolfe, a Toronto-based finance executive and popular speaker on the topic of networking. “Happiness is built more through connection than through individual achievement.” Most people cringe at the thought of networking but that’s because they are going about it the wrong way, says Wolfe. “It’s not about selling, it’s about giving,” she explains.

The goal when you meet someone is to help them achieve what they need. Eventually you’ll also be rewarded by receiving help with the things you need. Wolfe has a simple strategy for networking. When you meet someone new, introduce yourself and ask questions about their interests, passions and even their hobbies. Find out what they need and want. She sums it up by saying: “Lead, listen and learn.” So yes, if you want to expand your network, you may have to get out of your comfort zone sometimes, says Susan Regier, publisher of NetworkingToday.com in London, Ont. But there are simple approaches to make this a lot easier and more successful. For instance, don’t sit with your friends at a conference, since this limits your potential to meet new people. Calgary’s Iris Meck, who organizes the Advancing Women in Agriculture Conferences agrees with Regier. “Be open and engage those around you. Use the receptions, trade shows and buffet lines at conferences to meet other people.” Networking isn’t simply about collecting as many business cards as you can, cautions Wolfe. “It’s about building relationships.” It’s about quality not quantity — a few good connections will be much more valuable than a stack of business cards, she adds. After meeting someone, Wolfe recommends making notes on the back of their card for future reference and adding them to your contacts on LinkedIn or other social media networking site.

Use social media to network There’s still nothing better than meeting people face to face, but social media tools are useful for making new contacts outside your geographical area and for staying in touch. There are many social networking sites but the big three are LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn bills itself as a professional social networking site. It’s a good way to stay in touch with people you meet at conferences or other events by linking profiles. Facebook groups are a way to interact with a community of people with similar interests. You can join an existing group or start your own. These do not have to be official groups and can be open or closed. Twitter can seem overwhelming but following people or groups who are doing work you are interested in can tame the noise. Use hashtags (the # symbol) to start a conversation or search on keywords to find like-minded people to follow. You can be active or passive with social media. You can “listen in” (recommended for a while until you get a feel for the social media channel) or be active by posting comments and articles. It’s best not to post anything on social media that you wouldn’t say publicly. And remember to keep it positive.

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December 2015

life Then, focus on nurturing those relationships. Wolfe and Regier say there are many ways you can stay connected. For instance, says Wolfe, you can email an article they might be interested in, or introduce them to someone you think could be helpful. Invite them out for coffee or send a new chew toy if they just got a new puppy, suggests Regier. Whatever else, make sure you actually do the things you promise to do, says Wolfe, who finds 80 per cent of people drop the ball and don’t follow through. The Internet is opening up new opportunities for networking. For farmers who work long days, often by themselves, this can be a particularly useful tool. Grace Vanderzande who has been a beef farmer in Napanee, Ont. for 37 years started her blog (www. buttonsthoughts.ca) five years ago as a means of connecting with others. Her husband works off farm, her daughters are grown and have moved away, and she knew some of her own family members didn’t know what she did every day. Vanderzande blogs about her experiences on the farm, posting pictures of newborn calves and the changing rural landscape. Today hundreds of people read her blog posts and through the blog she has become friends with farm women in Montana, Pennsylvania and Nebraska. “We understand each other, we’re all in the same boat,” says Vanderzande. CG

Tips for meeting new people • H ave a goal in mind. Who are you hoping to meet? What are you looking for? • Go early. It’s easier to meet others when there aren’t many people there yet. • F irst impressions are important so dress appropriately. Unless indicated otherwise, a pair of dress pants and a polo shirt are fine. Forget the ripped jeans and faded shirt. • D on’t sit with your friends. Use break time to mingle with others. • Relax and think of everyone as a friend. Be genuinely interested in them. • Be open to meeting new people. Stay off your smartphone. • W hen following up, use the person’s preferred method of contact. • U se social media such as LinkedIn to stay connected afterwards.

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December 2015

country-guide.ca 51

w e at h e r MILDER THAN NORMAL

C Sn old sp ow ell y s

** **

MILDER THAN NORMAL WITH NEAR- TO BELOW-NORMAL PRECIPITATION

Mild nal sio Occa snow rain /

Mild Scattered snow

U AT ER P L M TE AL AL OWF M OR SN R-N AND A E

Mild ed ter Scat / rain snow

Sc Mild sno atter w / ed rai n

NEAR NORMAL

December 13, 2015 to January 16, 2016

BRITISH COLUMBIA

Dec. 13-19: Generally fair apart from occasional coastal rain changing to snow inland. Brisk winds at times. Seasonable to mild temperatures. Dec. 20-26: Unsettled conditions on a couple of days this week with some coastal rain and snow elsewhere, chance heavy in places. Seasonable to mild. Dec. 27-Jan. 2: Blustery winds bring variable weather ranging from fair and mild to wet and cold. Intermittent rain southwest changing to snow inland. Jan. 3-9: Disturbances bring colder, windy, wet and foggy conditions to the coast on a couple of days. Periodic snow inland, chance of heavy in some regions. Jan. 10-16: Mostly mild and at times windy with some coastal rain and fog changing to scattered heavier snow inland. Often clear, cold far north.

ALBERTA Dec. 13-19: Near- to above-normal temperatures. Windy in the south with some snow and drifting and a chance of rain. Periodic snow in the north. Dec. 20-26: Variable with mild days alternating with cold periods and higher wind chills. Often windy with occasional snow and drifting. Dec. 27-Jan. 2: Generally settled with seasonable temperatures but a couple of milder days bring intermittent snow. Blustery in the south with some drifting. Jan. 3-9: Seasonable to cold this week with some higher wind chills. Scattered light snow and drifting on a couple of days south. Fair, cold in the north. 52 country-guide.ca

Jan. 10-16: Settled and quite cold in the north. Seasonable to mild in the south with periodic light snow and some drifting. Windy from time to time.

SASKATCHEWAN Dec. 13-19: Often fair with seasonable to mild temperatures but look for some snow and drifting on two to three days this week. Risk of rain southwest. Blustery. Dec. 20-26: Unsettled on a couple of days. Temperatures vary from mild to cold. Windy at times with a few higher wind chills. Flurries, colder in the north. Dec. 27-Jan. 2: Mostly settled aside from a couple of snowy, blowy days in the south. Seasonable to mild but brisk winds cause some higher wind chills. Jan. 3-9: A bit colder with some higher wind chills. A couple of milder days bring periodic snow and blowing south. Quite cold, settled north. Jan. 10-16: Settled, seasonable in the south but on a couple of days expect milder, windy weather with periodic snow and blowing. Fair, cold in the north.

MANITOBA Dec. 13-19: With brisk winds, temperatures fluctuate but lean toward the mild side. Mainly fair aside from snow and drifting on a couple of days. Dec. 20-26: Weather conditions and temperatures vary as cold and mild air collide. Occasional snow and gusty winds with blowing snow in the south. Dec. 27-Jan. 2: Seasonable to mild but

with a few higher wind chills and some drifting. Generally fair although light snow falls on a couple of occasions. Jan. 3-9: Clear skies and cold temperatures dominate although slight warming in southern regions on a couple of days brings light snow and drifting. Jan. 10-16: Fair with a few higher wind chills. On milder days look for some light snow and occasional drifting. Settled and cold in the north.

December 13, 2015 to January 16, 2016 NATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS Mild temperatures associated with an El Ni単o event will dominate the weather picture across most of Canada. Past records indicate that El Ni単o often leads to drier-than-usual conditions across our country. With this being the coldest time of year with the shortest days, however, occasional cold snowy outbreaks can still be expected from time to time. These inclement weather conditions are likely to be most prevalent in far northern regions of Canada.

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. December 2015

h e a lt h

Uhh… all about hemorrhoids By Marie Berry hen you even hear the word “hemorrhoids” you probably wince with discomfort. With treatment, however, you can be comfortable and prevent complications. Hemorrhoids or piles are very common, with about 75 per cent of the population being affected, most notably adults between 45 and 65 years old. Hemorrhoids are inflamed and swollen veins in the anal and rectal area. The veins are actually part of the vascular cushioning structures which control the passage of stools. The most common cause is constipation and the straining needed to pass a dehydrated hard stool. Pregnancy can cause constipation and may also result in hemorrhoids. Chronic or acute diarrhea can mean straining with resulting hemorrhoids. Sitting on the toilet, physical exertion caused by lifting heavy weights, and sitting for long periods of time (for example, at a desk job) can also cause stress on the vascular cushions and veins, resulting in hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoids seem to affect women and men equally, with the exception of the pregnancy risk, but men more often require medical intervention. With age, the connective tissues that are part of the vascular cushions weaken, thus the risk for hemorrhoids increases for older individuals. Children are not as often affected by hemorrhoids, although they can be. However, their symptoms should be checked to ensure that hemorrhoids are the cause. Internal hemorrhoids, just as the term suggests, lie inside the rectal area and do not usually cause symptoms. External hemorrhoids protrude outside the anal opening, and because this area has a rich supply of nerves, can be painful, itchy, and swollen. Hemorrhoids are described by the degree to which they lie outside or inside the anus. First degree ones remain internal; second degree may protrude but return after a bowel movement without any intervention; third degree remain externally after a bowel movement but you are able to manually replace them; and fourth degree cannot be replaced, remaining externally.

Ideally, you want to prevent hemorrhoids, so preventing constipation is key. A diet high in fibre and fluids as well as exercise is an easy and effective help in preventing constipation. Regular bowel habits are important, as is not delaying or “holding it.” The colon is the most active in the morning, making it an ideal time for bowel movements. Some drugs, most commonly narcotic pain relievers, cause constipation and often a laxative is recommended to be taken at the same time. Being overweight is associated with constipation and hemorrhoids, thus weight loss may be a good idea. Obviously, you want a healthy diet and exercise, but if you do experience hemorrhoids, there are nondrug approaches. A sitz bath, that is a warm, shallow bath, will relieve symptoms, but you may need to use it up to four times daily. If the hemorrhoids are external, they should be replaced with a soft moist tissue followed by a gentle soap and water wash to keep the area clean. Hemorrhoid creams and suppositories contain a variety of ingredients to reduce the symptoms, for example local anesthetics, anti-inflammatory agents like hydrocortisone, astringents like zinc oxide and witch hazel, protectants like glycerine, and vasoconstrictors like phenylephrine. Suppositories are best used at bedtime because they slip into the rectum and during the day will “melt out.” Creams and ointments are easy to apply and can be used both externally and internally. If the symptoms persist or get worse, then they need to be checked. Bleeding occurs because hard stools pass over the swollen blood vessels and in fact your noticing blood on toilet tissue may be your first indication of hemorrhoids. However, this bleeding may be a sign of more serious hemorrhoids and if the blood is dark in colour or if there are large quantities of blood, you certainly do want your condition evaluated. Hemorrhoids may be uncomfortable and embarrassing, but they can be treated and prevented. Who can argue with a high-fibre diet, exercise, weight loss, and plenty of liquids? Marie Berry is a lawyer/pharmacist interested in health and education.

With school-aged children, head lice can be a concern. However, an infestation of lice doesn’t mean children are “unclean.” Instead, it’s more likely to mean that they socialize well with many of their peers. Next month, we’ll look at some myths about head lice and some treatment options.

December 2015

country-guide.ca 53

acres

By Leeann Minogue

Hmmm…what’s that under the tree? Jeff thinks he knows. So does his Dad, and everyone else addy! Which ones are mine?” Fouryear-old Connor was jumping up and down in front of his grandparents’ Christmas tree. He grabbed a box wrapped in glittering Rudolf paper and held it up. “This one?” Jeff read the tag. “This one’s for me. Let’s keep looking.” Jeff picked up a large snowman gift bag with Connor’s name on it. “This one’s from your Grandma Donna and Grandpa Dale. You can shake it, but we can’t open any until after supper. Grandma’s rules.” Connor took the bag and shook it, grinning, while Jeff picked through the stack of gifts. He saw four tagged with his own name — all exactly the same shape and size. His grandfather, his mom, his wife, even his sister. He didn’t need to open them, he could guess what was inside. His family had been polite enough not to say much about the incident since it happened back in midNovember, although Jeff was sure if his Grandpa Ed was home instead of in Arizona he would have made some comments. Jeff knew it had been his own fault; he wasn’t surprised he was going to hear about it again. November had been perfect. A late fall. Warm weather, no snow. “We barely even need coveralls to work outside!” Jeff’s father Dale said more than once. This was the first year in a long time that the Hansons were finished harvest early enough to get to other farm work before freeze-up. “We’re even going to get all of those soybeans through the cleaning plant before it’s too cold for them,” Dale said one morning while they were in the shop for a break. “We might even have time to take a day off this month!” “You know what you should do,” Jeff’s Grandpa Ed said while he drank a caramel cappuccino from the machine his girlfriend had brought for the shop. “You ought to mow down those weeds at the edges of the 54 country-guide.ca

sloughs. Especially on that west quarter. You could gain back some of the land we haven’t been able to farm since 2011.” Most of the Hansons’ land had been too wet to seed in the spring of 2011. Since then, their sloughs were bigger than usual. They’d lost a lot of acres, and with changes to Crop Insurance, they couldn’t collect Unseeded Acreage payments on land that wasn’t in shape for spring seeding. But now that the sloughs had dried up a lot, with the cattails and weeds at the edges cut down, the Hansons could reclaim quite a few acres. “I’d get out there myself,” Ed said, “But I’m busy getting my trailer road-ready for the trek south.” “He’s got an idea, Jeff,” Dale said. Jeff nodded. “Yeah. But it would take a few days. We’ve got a little extra time this fall, but maybe not that much.” That afternoon, Jeff found Dale sweeping out the cleaning plant. “Grandpa’s right,” he said. “We should tackle those sloughs. I’ll take the combine out in the morning.” “Really?” Dale asked. “I thought we’d use the mower.” “I can finish twice as fast with a 40-foot header than with the 15-foot mower,” Jeff answered. “But… do you really want to wear out the combine, when you could put the hours on a $25,000 mower instead? And there’s a lot of tough weeds out there. Are you sure you want to put them through the combine?” “If we’re cleaning it up, we might as well do it right,” Jeff said. “The combine’ll chop up the straw better.” Besides, Jeff figured to himself later, if he used the mower, he’d still need to put hours on the tractor to pull it. And they could earn the cost back by having that land ready to seed. That night Dale complained to his wife Donna. “The kid doesn’t listen,” Dale said. “I’ve got decades of experience, and he wants to do everything his own way.” december 2015

“This isn’t a big deal,” Donna said. “We have to let him make decisions.” “On a worn out combine,” Dale grumbled as he crawled into bed. By Tuesday morning, Jeff was on his second day of sloughclearing. He was in the tractor cab, eating his roast beef sandwich a little on the early side. He could never resist a full lunch cooler. “92 acres already. And it’s only 11:00 on Day 2,” he wanted to text his dad. But he didn’t. He was trying to be mature. And he didn’t want to get mustard on his iPhone. When he finished his sandwich and wiped his hand, Jeff snapped a quick photo of the cattails in front of the cab. “It’s like a wetland jungle out here,” he thought. Then he sent the photo to his wife Elaine with a note. “Dad said this wouldn’t work, but I’m making great time and everything’s going just fine out here.” Then he opened his cooler again and rooted around until he found one of his wife’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. As he bit into it, he thought he noticed a strange smell. Before he had time to investigate, or even finish chewing, an alarm clanged in the cab. He swivelled in his seat and saw a trail of flame building in a line behind the cab. At least a quarter of a mile as it bent around the slough. Cattail fluff must have built up around the engine and caught fire. Now burning embers were drifting in the light breeze. Not only was Jeff in trouble — the field was on fire and the combine was on fire — he was also living the most humiliating moment of his life. He swallowed hard and clenched his teeth before he called his dad for help. Then he grabbed the fire extinguisher from the ladder and climbed down to get to work. Donna drove out with more fire extinguishers while Dale took the cultivator out, disking wide circles around the slough to stop any flames that might spread from a stray spark. Luckily there wasn’t much wind, and most of the weeds were tough and damp. Jeff had most of the flames under control before there was even enough smoke to attract the neighbours’ attention. “I’m OK,” Jeff assured his wife later. “But I singed holes right through the soles of my favourite running shoes!” “Your dad was right,” Elaine said. But that was the last anyone said about it. Dale was happy to be right, but also worried about the cost of fixing the combine. And Donna had threatened Dale with his life if he even imagined saying anything like, “I told you so.” Nobody mentioned it to Jeff again all fall, except to talk about who would call the dealership to have the combine hauled in for repairs, and who would finish cutting the sloughs (this time, with the mower). But now, six weeks later on Christmas Eve, Jeff was 98 per cent sure that four boxes under the tree with his name on them held new running shoes to replace the ones he’d burned. He practised his “good sport” smile as he gathered his kids and headed to the table for his family’s Christmas dinner. Leeann Minogue is the editor of Grainews, a playwright and part of a family grain farm in southeastern Saskatchewan. december 2015

The people on my Christmas card list and I have rejected electronic cards. We send greetings in the mail. The annual exchange renews connections with old friends. I value the relationships even if we don’t meet often. The words in a country song warn, “It is hard to make new old friends.” Memory takes me back in time. Dreaming carries me forward. With each card I recall shared experiences and conversations. Hearing from old friends, looking back and dreaming ahead contributes to my Christmas celebrations. Christmas cards bring messages of joy and sadness. A friend in Alberta has always been healthy and energetic. His wife writes saying he has suffered a major stroke. A lady writes from Ontario that her husband has died. I remember Christmas dinners around their table when we lived far from family. I wonder how she is doing without him. A widow my age reports she has been going out with a special man. The new and unexpected relationship is making her happy. A word embossed in silver on a card catches my eye: JOY. I am using it for a bookmark in Unwrapping the Gift. The book is written by a clergy friend, Curtis Almquist, who lives in Boston. Curtis describes flying home from the west coast of the U.S. The weather was stormy, the turbulence constant. Flights were delayed and cancelled. “Late in the afternoon the skies were definitely not friendly, nor were my fellow passengers. I got off a late plane and was hustling in a kind of anxious daze to get to my next gate… then the most amazing thing occurred. “In an airport lounge are half a dozen couples, dressed to the hilt, as handsome as models in Vanity Fair.” Curtis wonders if they are a welcoming troupe engaged by the city or a convention. “Actually they are dancers, ballroom dancers. Amid the cacophony of airport announcements and the bustling and bumping that goes on, these couples are waltzing to the music of a string quartet. I stop dead in my tracks — as does most everyone else. People let their luggage slide to the floor. A man standing near to me — a high-powered executive type — has tears streaming down his cheeks. It is beautiful: the music, the form and flow and the gorgeous grace of these dancers.” Curtis continues: “One of the women dancers walks through the empty space created by the travellers. She walks to the edge of the circle to a man, simply another traveller, a guy with a plane to catch. He looks as much a mess as the rest of us. She whispers something to this traveller. He sets his briefcase on the floor and allows himself to be escorted into the centre of the improvised dance circle. The music begins again. Within seconds the man, a fellow stranger along the way, starts waltzing with the dancer. It was a stunning moment, resplendent with energy and flow and delight. It soared with the movement of a crescendo. It was pure joy! The spontaneous and thunderous applause the couple received drowned out the sorry weather of that afternoon.” Curtis says to have joy — to do joy — is to rejoice. To rejoice is to have a deep sense of delight. He says joy comes when we take time to smell the flowers. “Take the time to let the fragrances and aromas of life penetrate to the deepest part of your being.” Wishing you the joy of Christmas and joy throughout the new year. Suggested Scripture: Isaiah 9:2b-7, Philippians 4:4-9 Rod Andrews is a retired Anglican bishop. He lives in Saskatoon. country-guide.ca 55

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