MOSSBANK, Sask. – Ron Wells might operate one of Canada’s largest organic grain storage and handling facilities but this is a family business first.
His wife Elaine and two daughters, Teresa and Chrystal, all work there. During a recent visit, his four granddaughters were running around the office, decked out in RW Organic T-shirts.
“I want to see this going on to the next generation,” he said. “I couldn’t have done it without them.”
RW Organic Ltd. started on the Wells farm in 1999. He didn’t like to spray chemicals and found he got light-headed when he did.
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“I just did not want to do it anymore.”
He could also see the financial benefit from the premiums paid on organic crops.
Through 2000 his company helped 194 organic producers become certified, going so far as to pay their certification fees. The population of organic farmers in the region doubled in one year, he said.
In those days, the grain was stored and blended on the Wells farm and trucked to flour mills.
In 2003, the company bought the former Saskatchewan Wheat Pool elevator in Mossbank. That opened up rail transportation and 275,000 bushels of storage.
“We shipped more than one million bu. out of here this year,” Wells said.
The company could double its volume with its recent purchase of the Pioneer Grain facility in Gravelbourg, and the Pioneer and former Sask Pool elevators in Kincaid. A crew will spend the summer cleaning out the elevators to make them suitable for organic grain and Wells hoped they will be in use by the fall.
Wells said the acquisitions will make RW Organic one of the world’s largest, if not the largest, organic storage facilities. RW is certified through Pro-Cert Organic Systems.
Although he has spent a lot of his own money on his venture, Wells was also the first recipient of money from the Saskatchewan Entrepreneurial Fund. Initiated in 2005 by Saskatchewan credit unions and the province’s Crown Investments Corp., the fund is managed by PFM Capital Inc. of Regina.
The Entrepreneurial Foundation of Saskatchewan works with the fund managers to identify small and medium sized companies that show promise.
RW Organic secured $1 million from the fund to help its expansion plan. As a result, the company will hire two people full-time in addition to the five full-time and two part-time employees it has now.
Organic agriculture can help the economy in other ways. Wells said converting to organic is a way for farmers with smaller acreages to make a living on the farm.
“They can keep their farm and their identity,” he said.
He bases his pricing on volume and said he likes to be able to pay farmers as much as he can.
“I’ve got a farmer heart,” he said. “I work on volume rather than making money on the back of the farmer.”
Removing barley from the Canadian Wheat Board’s jurisdiction will help in that respect because he will be able to offer a set price for it.
RW Organic handles mostly wheat, but also deals in peas, oats, barley and flax.
The market is mainly in North America although Wells said he is looking at the European container market now that he’ll have rail access from three sites. In the end, the family will make that decision.
“We discuss everything as family,” Wells said. “I’m making managers out of my kids. I don’t have to be the Grand Poobah.”
