ABERDEEN, Sask. – It looked like Christmas had come early for Ken Wiebe and Dean Sawatzky.
Showing a visitor around the construction site of their special crop processing plant, the two young farmers-turned-entrepreneurs could barely contain their excitement.
Not even a biting cold December wind could wipe the smiles off their faces as they watched workers install the main supporting beams in what is to become the main cleaning facility of Horizon Seed Processors.
“This is just amazing to see,” said Wiebe, shaking his head in wonderment.
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If all goes according to plan, Horizon Seed will open its doors for business in February, giving farmers in this highly productive area just north of Saskatoon a new market for their ever-increasing production of special crops.
The plant will clean lentils, peas and mustard to export standard, ready to be shipped in bulk, in bags or in containers, to buyers in Vancouver, Thunder Bay or Montreal.
“We can provide customers at our facility with opportunities that never existed before,” Wiebe said later in the warmth of the construction trailer.
There’s a mixture of excitement and trepidation as the project nears completion, but Sawatzky expresses confidence about the future.
“The plan is good and I believe in the people in this area, and that takes care of the risk as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
Watching the skeleton of the plant rise on the outskirts of this town of about 475 is the fulfilment of a vision that began to take shape after the 1993 harvest.
Wiebe and Sawatzky were part of a group of about a dozen farmers who had been meeting regularly for several years as the Saskatoon and Area Crop Production Club.
“It was a group of guys our age, progressive farmers, forward-thinking, really into agriculture,” recalls Sawatzky.
They would talk about production and marketing issues and compare notes on things like costs of production and budgeting. In the summer, they’d go on crop tours, looking at things like new varieties and conservation tillage practices.
Soon they began looking for something to diversify their income beyond simply selling their crops. With transportation changes coming and a shift to specialized farm operations, they felt it was time to make a bold move to add some value to their crops right at home.
They considered a number of things, including a joint hog operation, an ethanol plant and an inland grain terminal, but for one reason or another those weren’t right.
As they looked more closely at what their area had going for it – consistently good production, good transportation with main highways and a major rail line, and a burgeoning interest in special crops – an answer became obvious.
“Finally one guy said, let’s get into special crop processing as a group,” said Sawatzky.
That was in the fall of 1993. Now a year later, with the help of a $1.5 million loan from the Farm Credit Corp., and investment from six principals (Wiebe and Sawatzky, fellow area farmers Jeff Sopatyk and Rod Thiesson, transportation specialist Walt Siemens and Dean’s father Harvey Sawatzky), their dream is becoming a reality.
The goal in the first year is to process and ship about 20,000 tonnes of product. The long-term goal is 100,000 tonnes, although that will require some additional investment in cleaning equipment and storage.
An operating agreement with a major grain company will soon be announced.
Initially, the plant will have two lines of machinery capable of cleaning 500 bushels an hour of lentils and peas and 300 bushels of mustard.
Storage consists of a 60,000 bushel annex purchased from Cargill Ltd., 120,000 bushels in 30 hopper bottom bins and 50,000 bushels in two flat bottom bins.
The Horizon project has become almost a full-time job since he got off the combine, said Wiebe. And it’s been an eye-opening experience.
“It’s totally different from being a farmer, where you decide what you want to do and you do,” he said. Instead, it’s necessary to work together, to pool everybody’s talents. “We found you can do things on a scale you could never do by yourself.”
Both men also see Horizon Seeds as a chance to return something to the community and provide a boost for the local economy.
“Everybody in the community benefits,” said Sawatzky, adding that the plant will employ about six local people. “I want the young hockey players in town to build some muscles slinging bags in the warehouse.”
Ray Wagner, the Farm Credit Corp. official who has worked with the Horizon group, couldn’t say enough good things about the venture.
“They’re looking at a very good business plan, providing what we consider to be an excellent service to the producers in the community and outside that community,” he said. This is one of the first projects to be approved under the FCC’s expanded mandate of providing loans for value-added operations.
Both Sawatzky and Wiebe say the project couldn’t have gone ahead without help from a lot of people, like the rural municipality, which provided tax breaks, and CN Rail, which picked up 75 percent of the cost of building a 14-car rail spot.
It’s a co-operative in every sense of the word except its formal structure, they say.
