YORKTON, Sask. – It’s not the honey that has made Wink Howland’s farm succeed. It’s the marketing.
Bulk honey prices are hovering around 75 cents per pound, about 40 cents less than the cost of production. Yet Howland’s Honey of Yorkton manages to make a profit and is expanding.
“We avoid selling into the commercial market. Retail (honey) prices haven’t fallen. But farm (bulk honey) prices remain lower than the cost of production,” he said.
Chinese honey imports have pushed prices down over the past decade. By 2002, Chinese exports to the Canadian market reached more than 3.5 million kilograms and the Canadian price had fallen to 33 cents per lb.
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In 2002, testing discovered the antibiotic chloramphenicol in the Chinese product, causing those imports to cease for a time and wholesale domestic honey prices to rise to more than $2.25. But a return to Asian imports and an increase in Argentine honey has again reduced prices.
“We try to avoid selling into that (wholesale) market altogether. For producers that do, they have to use their equity to pay the bills. It’s a lot like the grain farmers these days,” said Howland.
He produces about 200,000 lb. of honey annually and relies on farmgate sales, farmers’ markets, local stores and sales through food retailing giant Costco.
While he has worked with other large retailers, Howland said Costco has been the best.
“They pay on time. They make it possible for local and regional food producers to sell into their home markets and they are great to deal with,” he said of that company’s sales of his honey in its Regina and Saskatoon locations.
Howland produces a creamed honey product and said that, too, sets his family’s product apart from the mainly liquid honey Canadian market.
He said the cost of the heating equipment to create liquid honey would add to his overhead and cut into margins.
“And our creamed honey is preferred by a segment of the community. It helps us avoid direct competition with (the large farmer co-op and industrial food processors),” he said.
Howland’s honey sells for about $3.10 per lb. retail. Even with stores taking their cut of the sale, his share of the honey money is much larger than the 75 cent commercial price.
“At the farmers’ markets and sales here (in Yorkton) we get to keep the whole amount,” he said.
Howland now operates 600 colonies and produces his own queens for use on the farm and for sale to other producers.
He spent years selecting the insects for overwintering durability and added Russian genetics from a Saskatchewan breeding project that is producing bees able to resist damage from the tracheal and varroa mites. Howland now has a bee population that only loses about 10 percent during winter.
“This is like other livestock industries. You get the best stock you can and you raise them with the nutrition and management available and at the end of the day, if you haven’t cut any corners, you get great production,” he said.
“Then you have to go about marketing,” he said.
Like the grain business, bumper crops can happen and in 2006 average provincial yields were 252 lb. per colony. Howland averaged more than 300. Long-term averages for most growers are in the 150 lb. range.
And like grain producers, large crops can mask the effects of low prices and make the most efficient producers dramatically larger margins.
For Howland, operating an efficient farm has allowed him to bring his daughter and son-in-law into the business.
“Sasha handles the queen rearing and packing. My son-in-law Danny (Wasylenchuk) does the field operations. I handle the office, finances, marketing and general management,” he said.
“If we hadn’t been as profitable, I couldn’t have passed on the farm and considered retirement. I would have had to sell and the honey business isn’t attracting a lot of new farmers right now,” he said of his 25-year-old operation.
Howland’s Honey has six seasonal employees for field and packing work.
