OUTLOOK, Sask. – Working in the traditionally male world of grain brokering isn’t as tough now for Jean Harrington as when she started selling her family’s crops 15 years ago.
“There’s the very odd time I’ll come up against some resistance, but when I first started brokering our product way back in the late ’80s, it was a huge component,” said Harrington, who runs a grain brokerage firm in central Saskatchewan.
“That has not happened in quite some time and I think most of my buyers, and producers as well, I don’t think they really care as long as they get the service they want and we provide the service that we have promised them.”
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Harrington’s career as a grain broker began on the family farm near Glenside in the late 1980s. She had taken on the job of marketing the farm’s crop, and when the local plants were full and couldn’t take any more product, she started phoning farther afield. She eventually put together a useful list of contacts.
In the early 1990s, she took a commodity marketing course that the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology offered in Glenside. There she met local farmer Pete Kennedy of Conquest, Sask., who 10 years later, with his wife Barb, would become partners in Prairie Farm Brokerage with Harrington and her husband Garry.
In the next 10 years, Harrington’s confidence in her marketing abilities continued to grow.
“I just realized that so often when I wanted to move product, especially things like pulses, that I had to find a wider range of markets, so I just started phoning them, and found out that it actually wasn’t such a difficult thing to do.”
In 2001, with marketing credentials firmly in place, she took a trading job with a Calgary firm, working first out of her home and then in an office she set up in nearby Outlook.
This past February, the Harringtons and the Kennedys took the plunge and went out on their own. She said it wasn’t a large financial investment, but money was definitely at stake.
“It was scary in that when you go off on your own, there’s the question of can you make enough to make it sustainable? But was it huge? No.”
Harrington handles all the company’s trading, spending more than half her day on the phone, while employee Dawn Brown makes follow-up calls with clients, keeping in touch with them to gather more business. Barb Kennedy, Harrington’s business partner, handles administration, makes sure farmers have been paid and deliveries made, and helps with dispute resolution.
Harrington is reluctant to call herself the boss of the office, but when pressed, admits that if a final decision has to be made, she’ll be the one to make it.
However, Harrington and Kennedy report no problems arising from their unique relationship of business partners, office colleagues and friends.
Their husbands, while not involved in the day-to-day operation, provide guidance, ideas and a strong agronomic background.
“They bring an understanding of what it takes to put that commodity in the bin.”
The two couples’ farming experiences have had one direct influence on the company’s direction.
“Part of the reason I got into it was because my farm is a medium-sized farm, but I often only moved a B-train of lentils at a time, rather than moving them all at once or maybe that was all we had that year,” she said.
“I wanted to do a service for people like me where that 40 tonnes was as important as the guy who had 700 tonnes of barley.”
Practical experience gained by selling her own crops has also made her fussy about the buyers she chooses to work with. She makes sure they are bonded and that they will pay within Canadian Grain Commission standards.
“I’ve learned that because on my farm, if I happen to lose a load of lentils, not so much now but 10 years ago, it could have meant whether my farm was still here tomorrow or not.”
In her early years of grain trading, especially when operating out of the house, she found that she spent too much time working. Now, she tries to adhere strictly to the office’s hours of 8-5, Monday to Friday, although she still makes herself available when necessary.
Her free time is taken up with her children. The two sons, 23-year-old Travis and 16-year-old Graeme, live away from home playing hockey, and a lot of time is spent driving to games. As well, 14-year-old Jessica is involved in tai kwon do, drama and volleyball.
Because many of these activities take place in Outlook, which is 25 kilometres away their home, the family spends a lot of time on the road. But Harrington said the advantage is that she gets to spend at least15 minutes of quality time with the children while driving from the farm to Outlook.
Modern telecommunications mean she could move the office anywhere but Harrington rejects any suggestion of relocating.
“We stay here because we farm here. It’s our home, it’s where our kids live,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t I live in the city? Because I wouldn’t.”
