RIMBEY, Alta. – As long as Brenda Schoepp can remember, she wanted a career in agriculture.
Working with her parents George and Hilda Schoepp on the family feedlot at Stony Plain, Alta., she was fascinated with animal welfare, cattle research, marketing and technology.
She has spun those passions into a career as an agricultural market analyst and business strategist that has taken her across Canada 12 times and to more than 600 professional speaking engagements.
She was recently named one of Alberta’s 50 most influential people by the business magazine, Alberta Venture.
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“To be honoured in that way is very humbling and to be appreciated as an independent. And you’re not there because you’re making $325,000 a year. You’re there because of your credentials as an independent working within agriculture,” Schoepp said from her ranch north of Rimbey.
She and her husband Clinton Bezan run a custom grazing operation and bred heifer development program called Rio Grande Grazing Co. They have lived near Rimbey for three years after relocating from the Peace River district. Besides ranch work, Bezan works in the Alberta oil and gas industry.
While Schoepp’s consulting work is a full-time job, her favourite part of the day is walking the pastures and checking the cattle.
“That is my way of relaxing. I love to walk my pastures once a day,” she said.
Schoepp runs her business out of a small office in the back of their log home. Self-taught, she approaches problems with a big-picture view and offers tailored solutions to clients developing business plans, research projects and marketing concepts.
She gives clients a tool kit to deal with whatever the markets and farm policy deliver. For her, there are endless opportunities for those willing to seize the moment.
“Agribusiness is growing in leaps and bounds. We have not resolved the problem of primary production woes, that is for certain. One of my goals, particularly in the research, is to ensure that we have a fully integrated system where there is a greater appreciation of an end and more of a trickling effect to primary producers.”
Schoepp’s first public presentation was with University of Colorado animal behaviourist Temple Grandin, who was also taking a new approach to livestock care more than 20 years ago.
“She was just starting out with some of her philosophy and I was doing things a little bit different on the marketing side. The crowd gave us a little bit of a rough time,” she said.
As a novice public speaker, she learned to overcome shyness by joining Toastmasters. Within a short time she became a lively speaker before groups of all sizes.
Demand for Schoepp’s services grew through word of mouth and she spent the next 15 years on the road with speaking engagements and education sessions about animal welfare and cattle marketing, specifically dealing with shrinkage and weight loss through management at the ground level.
At the same time she started writing columns for Grainews that grew into her own national weekly publication, BeefLink, a one page sheet of market updates, tips and analysis in easy to understand language.
When she was a young mother with two children, the travel schedule often meant taking Benjamin and Amie with her.
“They gained tremendous social skills from the experience and gained the ability to travel extensively on their own,” she said. “They gained an appreciation for agriculture and for relationships.”
The family remains a team even though Benjamin is now a software developer based in Montreal and Amie is manager of Agriculture Canada’s integrated pest management laboratory at Beaverlodge, Alta.
“They have never lost their importance in the team. All my best ideas came from the young people because they saw it through a different set of eyes,” she said.
Schoepp is a strong believer in encouraging young people to stay in agriculture. She worries that ingraining a sense of hopelessness in young people drives them away when they should be adopting the innovation, science and technology of agriculture.
“Agriculture is so much more than the production of a raw commodity, and it is so much more than the production of food.
“We need to make agriculture and the beef industry an exciting challenge and opportunity for them and they will come back. We can’t keep telling them there is no hope in it and expect them to come back,” she said.
The word “fun” is prominent in her vocabulary. She loves being an Albertan at this time of prosperity and optimism.
“I am absolutely blessed to be in Alberta. This is such a dynamic province all the way around.
“Moving to Alberta isn’t like moving to another province. It is like moving to another country.
“People say, ‘don’t you folks ever rest?’ and we say, ‘no, this is too much fun.’ “
She sees a strong political commitment to agriculture.
“No portion of agriculture is ever denied so that is a real blessing, especially as you look around the world,” she said.
As an educator, Schoepp never stops learning and believes in cultivating friendships wherever she goes. It is not uncommon for her to enter a hall anywhere in the country and know someone there.
Over the years she has noted changes in business attitudes.
People have learned to be more nimble in the marketplace where quick decisions must be made to capture extra profit.
“Pre-BSE, a farm family for example, could talk about the markets, evaluate when it worked best for them to load the cattle out and they had a length of time to do that. Those opportunities aren’t there anymore, not if you want to really profit from the cattle out there.”
Schoepp is also interested in agriculture policy and wants to see more unification within the beef industry.
Commodity groups are slowly moving toward better communication and collaboration, and people need to adopt a more integrated system that includes understanding government processes.
She finds time for volunteer work and serves on a number of boards, some of which she plans to discontinue to pursue more time with grandchildren and redesigning her own business.
“I’m ready and excited and looking forward to hopefully making a really positive contribution to agriculture,” she said.
Her contributions include serving as a delegate to the Alberta Beef Producers and chairing its research committee.
She also helps organize the international livestock congress held annually in Calgary and sits on national and provincial rural development and livestock committees.
She is a director of the Alberta Veterinary Medical Association food animal committee, a member of the University of Calgary Alberta School of Veterinary Medicine, chair of the Canadian Adaptation and Rural Development Fund and Canadian chair of the Cross Border Livestock Health Conference.
While agriculture has struggled in recent years and the beef industry took a major hit from BSE sanctions, Schoepp has never lost her optimism.
“Everything goes in cycles. We may feel a little bit down right now but that too shall pass. We have to be ready and be in the mindset and be economically stable enough to take those challenges and opportunities when they come,” she said.
