PAYNTON, Sask. – Every good partnership needs complementary strengths. A low-key ideas person with vision matches well with an outgoing person to sell the business’s public face.
That combination has worked well with the Dutton family of northwestern Saskatchewan, with David managing the farm and Vicki managing Western Grain Cleaning and Processing Ltd., located about eight kilometres north of North Battleford.
“Vicki’s more of a people person,” conceded David, as he sat on the back porch of his home.
“She loves people, loves talking on the phone.” When she gets home from the plant, she’s often right back on it.
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He became slightly defensive when told of Vicki’s observation about him – that if he could, David would spend 365 days a year on the farm.
“Well, I like the farm” he said with a shrug that hinted at annoyance.
“I think part of the problem is farmers enjoy what they’re doing too much to demand any money out of it. It’s just like cowboys – they’re not too worried what the price of cattle is if they can ride their horses.”
David farms about 4,000 acres of land, owning about 1,700 acres of that. About 2,000 acres grow special crops and the rest is planted in seed crops. The Dutton farm seems to grow everything including, chickpeas, beans, peas, lentils, canola and wheat.
David started growing seed in 1978. The idea for a cleaning plant, which also processes special crops, grew out of that. He and a partner built the cleaning venture in 1980, but David sold his share five years later, after it became clear the partnership wasn’t working.
When the plant went into receivership in 1990, David bought it again, driven by a desire to turn what he started into a successful business.
Keep it in the family
For the first year, the Duttons tried operating the plant with a hired manager. But that arrangement caused problems, so Vicki gave up her idyllic existence of painting, landscaping, freelance writing and political activism to take on managing the plant – with help from the staff.
They reacquired it at a good time, Vicki said, pulling out a report that showed the skyrocketing acreage of special crops over the last 15 years as farmers diversified out of wheat.
The plant primarily handles peas, lentils and canaryseed destined for overseas markets, especially Asia.
Vicki worries the trade embargoes following nuclear tests in India and Pakistan, and the economic crisis in Japan and other Pacific Rim countries will mean lost sales.
But that’s life in business. If it’s not turmoil in the markets, it’s scrambling to find peas to fill an order or having a rail car not show up.
“Sometimes you go home and you can’t sleep at night. You’re too stressed out.”
The time and energy put into the business means Vicki has had to drop one of her great passions – politics.
During the Meech Lake constitutional talks of the late 1980s, she served as a director of the Canadian Committee for a Triple-E Senate, the Triple-E meaning equal, elected and effective. It had her rubbing elbows with political heavyweights like former Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells.
“I really believe in politics,” she said in her sparsely decorated office, which prominently displays the book Putting Canada First, by
Financial Post editor Diane Francis. Homilies are also pinned on the walls, such as “attitude is more important than facts.”
She says “there’s so much politics in our industry. It’s one of the biggest weaknesses in agriculture.”
The couple has a daughter working in Mississauga, Ont., this summer and they went to visit.
Visiting the teeming urban area with a total population pushing four million, which is almost as much as the prairie provinces combined, reinforced where the political weight lies in this country.
That’s why a Triple-E senate was so important, to give some power to the regions, Vicki said: “We missed a real opportunity with Meech Lake.”
These days, the main object of her ire is the recent reforms to the Canadian Wheat Board and Ralph Goodale, the minister responsible for the CWB.
“Goodale gave us half-measures,” she said.
Vicki wants a fully democratic board of directors and giving farmers the right to opt out of the board’s wheat and malting barley monopoly. She also thinks Saskatchewan’s NDP government under Roy Romanow is anti-rural. She cites some of its policies like the early cancellation of the Gross Revenue Insurance Plan, the gas tax on farmers and the shifting property tax burden onto rural areas. She defended the legacy of former Progressive Conservative premier Grant Devine even though many of his former colleagues are at the centre of the biggest political corruption scandal Saskatchewan has ever seen.
“He gave us Ag Innovation Place,” she said, adding Devine was the first to push the idea of processing the province’s agricultural bounty into food, right here.
It doesn’t take much to coax an opinion out of her.
Set priorities
But family and the business take priority, with family being number one, she said.
“If I was a success in business and a failure with my family, I’d feel like a failure.”
But during the busy periods in spring and fall, sometimes the only time the Duttons have for each
other is at day’s end.
“We just crawl into bed and say, ‘hi, how (were) you today?’ ” she said.
While business duties might be split evenly, when it comes to household stuff, “David’s of the generation that wants his coffee poured and supper served,” Vicki said, although she added he’s getting better.
Of their three children, their teenage son George is the one who wants to continue farming.
Asked if he saw a long-term future in it, David said: “I started in the 1970s. If you can make it through the bad times, there’s going to be good times.”
“If you can make it through the bad times, there’s going to be good times.”
