OAKVILLE, Man. – When he was 29 years old in 1995, Darcy Miller saw the Crow Benefit end and knew something big had to change on his family’s farm.
It was a small grain and pedigreed seed operation in the middle of the continent and exporting wheat and barley didn’t look lucrative anymore as transportation costs soared.
The $1.6 billion Crow payout went to landowners. He and his father rented most of their land and so received little investment capital from the government.
“We never saw that Crow money,” said Miller, a gregarious and optimistic 40 year old with three young children.
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“So what we had to figure out was how to diversify without any money.”
In his area, which is good grain land, many farmers turned some acres into pasture and added a cattle component to their farms. Others built hog barns. Some began growing crops like potatoes, edible beans and soybeans.
But Darcy and his father Bob stuck with a diversification strategy Bob began in the 1960s: seed cleaning and seed growing. The Millers believed they could create enough extra value by growing pedigreed seed and cleaning seed to help them make up for the loss of the Crow.
It appears to have worked. Bob has retired, but Darcy is now one of the biggest seed growers in his area of east-central Manitoba after expanding the farm’s acreage four-fold. He’s found a niche serving demanding, high-quality grain growers. Producers who stuck with grain are aggressive in getting the best varieties and leaping on each new opportunity.
“The ones who are strictly cash crop are keen for the newest varieties,” Miller said on a day when he fielded many calls from local farmers.
“I have a loyal clientele because I think that if I can’t give them extra value in purchasing the seed from me, why would they buy it? I try to give them the newest genetics, the best varieties.”
Miller isn’t planning to go anywhere soon, but in his area lots of older farmers are preparing to retire and many younger people would like to get into the business or expand their acreage.
That’s going to be a problem for either the young guys or the old guys, because older farmers are relying on high land prices to pay for their retirements while young guys find the land too expensive to buy.
It’s an odd situation for an area where the situation looked so grim in 1995, but Miller said contradictions are nothing new.
“I’ve seen guys who do nothing but grow grain and do very well at it, and I’ve seen guys move into cattle and hogs and other crops, but it has forced some guys out of the business. They paid the price.”
