Efficiency drives progress on Sask. farm

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Published: February 19, 2004

ESTON, Sask. – Gary and Susanne Schweitzer didn’t set out to become the biggest farmers on the block.

But somewhere along a 15-year journey dotted with opportunities both taken and missed, they ended up with 43 quarter sections of farmland and a business that sells spices and pulses around the world.

It is a journey that the couple insists has been more accidental than intentional.

“It’s not driven by acreage; it’s driven by efficiency,” Gary said.

“I never intended to become a large farmer. I wanted to become an efficient farmer. I wanted to be successful and earn a profit. It wasn’t a matter of trying to acquire a lot of land. That’s just the spinoff of trying to become efficient.”

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Today, Schweitzer Enterprises sprawls out around the town of Eston, employing nine full-time staff members, plus Gary and Susanne. Four are dedicated to farming the business’s 6,800 acres, two work in the bagging plant that dominates the farmyard and three help run the office, focusing on marketing and administration.

It’s a far cry from the 12-quarter grain farm that Gary returned to in the early 1980s after earning an agriculture diploma from the University of Saskatchewan.

Over the next few years, no longer satisfied with growing wheat, durum and barley, the Schweitzers began to diversify and were among the first producers in Saskatchewan to grow chickpeas and lentils.

Then, in 1998, they decided to try spices, planting one or two rows each of 12 spices in their garden, including anise, cumin, coriander, fenugreek and caraway.

The field trials resulted in what Susanne called a “very colourful” garden that summer.

They had hoped their experiment would produce at least one spice they could grow on the farm, but were surprised to discover that almost all of them would work.

“It became much more difficult than we thought,” Gary said.

“We were thinking we’d be lucky if we found one, but the reality was, ‘we’ve got many, now what do we do? Obviously we’ve got a larger opportunity than we realize.’ “

More land was needed to take advantage of the opportunity and the farm’s acreage began to increase dramatically, plateauing six years ago.

Schweitzer said growth was part of what he considers a winning strategy.

“My view to specialty crop production is, you keep it as small as you can while you’re learning what you’re doing and as soon as you know it’s profitable, go as big as you can.”

However, they now had another problem.

“The intention was we’d grow (these crops) and we’d find someone to sell them, and the next thing you know we had millions of pounds of production and nobody prepared to sell them,” he said.

“Kind of out of necessity then, it became, ‘well, I’m going to have to try to do this myself.’ “

The Schweitzers’ initial success caught the attention of other farmers, who not only began growing the same crops but also needed someone to market them. They turned to the Schweitzers, who eventually built a bagging plant and developed a customer list of 950 buyers, mainly from North and South America, Europe, South Asia and the Middle East.

Some years they contract as many as 30,000 acres on the Prairies, Montana and North Dakota. They handle 28 crops, pretty much every spice and pulse that grows in Canada, but specialize in caraway, coriander and chickpeas.

In 1997, about the time they began to require marketing staff, the couple built a new home and attached it to their old house, which was renovated into a complex of offices.

This arrangement has introduced balance to the Schweitzers’ lives, allowing them to control the amount of time they spend working on the farm, taking care of marketing and raising their three daughters, now 19, 16 and 13.

“The door between our office and our house can be opened or closed depending on what you’re doing. Open the door and in 15 seconds you can be at work and 15 seconds later you can be home doing something that involves your personal life,” he said.

“You don’t waste a lot of time with travel. Increasingly in the world, you’re finding people spending tremendous amounts of time just commuting to and from work, trying to juggle their lifestyle.”

The same efficiency that drove the Schweitzers to expand is what makes their work-home arrangement so appealing. In fact, efficiency drives most aspects of the farm.

Because business at the bagging plant and the farm peak at opposite times of the year, plant workers can help on the farm in the summer and farm workers can help in the plant in the winter.

Susanne is the office manager and Gary is the general manager, keeping an eye on the big picture. Other than to relieve farm workers for lunch during seeding and harvesting, he no longer spends his time on a tractor or combine. Rather, he can be found scouting for diseases and insects in the fields or on the phone in the office.

“I view myself as a generalist and I hire people and train them to be specialists.”

Even the crops lend themselves to an efficient work flow. Because of the vast range of growing seasons among pulses and spices, the Schweitzers begin harvest in late July and finish in late October, keeping two complete lines of equipment working full time.

“We’re usually the first people to start harvesting in the area and usually the last people to finish,” he said.

“But we always finish.”

About the author

Bruce Dyck

Saskatoon newsroom

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