Farmer’s Edge co-founder Wade Barnes once met in Europe with two senior managers of Dow and Cargill. They were trying to develop an Eastern European canola production supply chain. Barnes realized they would have all fit in just as well at a curling club or hockey rink on the Canadian Prairies.
“We were sitting around talking about how we were going to build a strategy for specialty oil in Eastern Europe, and the three guys around the table were all from close to each other in Western Canada,” he said.
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“There were no Australians, or Brits or Americans. Just three Canadian boys, all from the farm.”
It’s a phenomenon he’s noticed as his company’s business moves into many parts of the world’s leading crop production areas. For some reason, Canada seems to produce a lot of people who know how to develop farming systems that work, and the world appreciates those people.
“We don’t even understand what we have until we go out into the world,” said Barnes.
The unlikely rise of Farmer’s Edge to being a globally recognized leader in variable rate technology began with humble ambitions but is typical of what Barnes thinks sets Canadians apart from other agricultural entrepreneurs.
Barnes and co-founder Curtis MacKinnon, both of who are still in their mid-30s, were working for a farm inputs retailer in Pilot Mound, Man., in the early 2000s and wanted to develop a local variable rate technology business.
So they did.
“We thought, ‘there’s a business to be made here in Pilot Mound. We’ll be able to go hunting and fishing and play hockey and we’ll develop this business and we’ll do as well as we would if we were working for a retailer,’ ” said Barnes.
“But there was an actual big need for this, and there was a technology void out there. Opportunity kept presenting itself and we kept walking through the door.”
The company has set up dozens of agronomists across the Prairies since it was founded.
It directly advises farmers in South America and Russia on crop production and identity-preserved systems, helping manage hundreds of thousands of acres.
It also sells its variable rate technology software through U.S. ag retailers and agronomist networks. Farmer’s Edge developed its own software so that it had agronomist-focused programs for its own staff rather than software-focused programs adjusted for agronomy.
“That’s becoming a bigger part of our business,” said Barnes.
The company has its headquarters in Winnipeg in a building that houses the soil-testing lab the company bought from a former owner.
The growth into a multi-faceted company was unplanned, but Barnes thinks that is probably why it all works. They have applied themselves and made things work wherever they had skills and there were unmet needs.
Just like any prairie farmer.
Even when many people were saying that variable rate technology was just a fad and would fade, they plugged away.
“Sometimes, you just have to have the tenacity to say just because everyone says you can’t do it doesn’t mean it’s true,” said Barnes.
