If you’re thinking of diversifying your farm operations, you are likely considering something agricultural.
But another way to diversify is to use the skills you’ve developed while farming to move into a non-farming business.
That’s what Ken Rempel did, and while his story is unusual – not everyone with a welding torch goes from farmyard shop to international heavy equipment manufacturer in just a couple of years – it shows how valuable everyday farm skills are.
A fourth-generation grain farmer from Manitoba’s Red River Valley, Rempel was just nine when his father died and the land was rented out. At age 16, Ken and his older brother Les began farming fulltime, expanding the original 480 acres to 1,200. Still, that wasn’t enough to live on, so Ken took up long-distance trucking.
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But it wasn’t what he wanted.
“I’ve always enjoyed playing in the dirt,” Rempel said. “Earlier we had done some laser drainage on our farm and, in the fall of ’99, I got a chance to buy a tractor, lasers and scraper.”
Earthmoving scrapers are designed for road-building, not for sloping farmland so that it drains well. This wouldn’t bother the average earth scraper business owner, but there was too much farmer in Rempel for him not to notice its shortcomings and take a farmer’s let’s-fix-that approach.
“Right away I started thinking of designing my own scraper,” he said. “We have soft soil here and I wanted better flotation and less compaction. I wanted something wider because you’re working land, not building a road. I also wanted something that could haul more dirt with less horsepower.”
So after just one season in business, Rempel headed to his shop to build his own scraper.
In doing so, he found himself testing his skills against the design and engineering departments at the Caterpillars of the world. But Rempel had finished his formal schooling at 15, never studied engineering or design and didn’t own a computer.
What he did have was a picture in his head of what his scraper would look like, just like countless farmers who have modified equipment to make it work better.
That’s one of the reasons why Rempel, now 34 years old, likes hiring people with farm backgrounds for his factory, which employs 30.
“People who come from farms always take the commonsense approach,” he said.
“Let’s say you give someone a drawing for a sub-assembly of some kind. If they can look at it and get a mental picture of what this thing’s going to look like when it’s finished, then they’ll make way fewer mistakes and won’t keep asking their supervisor how to do this or that.”
Rempel sold the first scraper, bought a computer, learned how to use design software and built another, better scraper. And then he built another, and then another.
“After I worked the bugs out, I advertised in a trade magazine that went out to all the big construction companies in North America,” Rempel said. “It was amazing. The day that ad came out, I started getting calls. Lots of them.”
Today, Lo-Pel Manufacturing produces nearly 60 scrapers a year, selling the $100,000 machines across North America and as far away as Australia.
Rempel’s quick ascent to the big time – he went into full commercial production only in 2004 – is unusual. But he says he knows all kinds of farmers who have developed a sideline in road-building, construction or something to do with mechanics, custom fabricating or manufacturing.
“I think most farmers don’t realize the skills they have; they haven’t given themselves a chance to shine,” Rempel said.
He is quick to voice his admiration for those who have learned their craft in a classroom, whether it is engineering or office administration.
It’s more a matter of appreciating what a good classroom a farm can be, he said.
“I don’t think I would have got to where I am today if I hadn’t been brought up with a farm background,” he added .
“Starting a business can be very stressful and very time-consuming, but if a farmer has an idea – whether that’s custom shop work or manufacturing a product they think might sell – I’d tell him to go for it.”
So if you’re thinking of diversification, don’t just look at the farm. Look in the mirror, too.
Glenn Cheater is editor of Canadian Farm Manager, the newsletter of the
Canadian Farm Business Management Council. The newsletter as well as archived columns can be found in the news desk
section at www.farmcentre.com.
