When John Coté and his wife Barb Stefanyshyn-Coté started farming in 1990, their routine wasn’t much different than that of generations of prairie farmers who preceded them: wake up, do chores, go to bed.
Sixteen years later there has been a metamorphosis on their grain and oilseed farm near Leask, Sask.
“Without a word of a lie I would say probably 40 percent of our time is spent very close to a computer or a telephone,” Coté said.
Instead of a day consumed by outside chores, nearly half of their time is spent in the office poring over financial statements, formulating business and strategic plans and following the markets.
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The Cotés are part of a new breed of farmer attempting to generate a profit as much through the management side of the business as the production side.
“It’s beyond just what’s being done out in the field,” Coté said.
“That’s kind of the ante when you come to the poker table is that you’re good at production.”
Superior management skills can give producers the edge over a neighbour down the road or a competitor in another country, said Coté, who along with his wife won Canada’s 2001 Outstanding Young Farmers award.
“That’s where the whole farm management training comes in.”
Wendell Joyce, executive director of the Canadian Farm Business Management Council, a government-funded group that offers farm management services including conferences, web casts, newsletters and marketing seminars, said there is a growing demand for such tools.
“Times are tough and people are looking for
solutions.”
A decade ago most farmers wouldn’t have considered the notion of seeking management advice, concentrating instead on gathering production-related information for their farms, Joyce said.
Back then, farmers could survive and even prosper in agriculture if they were technically proficient at producing a commodity.
“That certainly isn’t true anymore,” Joyce said. “You can go broke producing a bumper crop for all kinds of reasons.”
He would like to see management training become as much a focal point over the next decade as production training was in the past.
Heather Broughton understands that sentiment.
She just completed a four-week training program offered by the George Morris Centre, a course that has already transformed the grain farm she operates with her husband, brother-in-law and sister-in-law near Donalda, Alta.
“One of the first things taking a course like that does is give you a vision,” she said.
In this case the vision was to add 800 acres to the operation by renting more land. It was the first substantial change in the family farm in a decade, a 36 percent increase over the 2,200 acres the two couples seeded in 2005.
The idea is to make better use of the farm’s assets by spreading the costs out over a larger land base, a plan that was vetted by her classmates, fellow farmers from across Canada.
Using her newly acquired number crunching skills, Broughton was able to show her business partners how the farm should eventually grow to 4,000 acres if it wants to fully use its equipment and other fixed assets.
She is so excited about the $5,000 course that she has enrolled in it again and this time she is bringing her husband. She thinks they both have more to learn about farming than simply expanding their operation.
“This is great for now, but what is our next step?”
