From the fresh fruit of the Okanagan to wide stretches of colourful grain fields and hundreds of different varieties of livestock, Richard Buck knows the best way to see Canada is to visit Canadian farms.
Buck, who began his career at the University of Guelph’s school of agriculture in the 1980s, remembers being asked as part of his job to start organizing a few farm visits for students and university guests.
His work was so well-received, people started coming back and asking for more.
Read Also
Farming Smarter receives financial boost from Alberta government for potato research
Farming Smarter near Lethbridge got a boost to its research equipment, thanks to the Alberta government’s increase in funding for research associations.
“When it got to the point that I was working seven days a week, because I was working my regular job plus doing all this extra work, I decided that I would start a private company to do agricultural tourism,” he said. “Then they could hire me to do those tours.”
Now, Buck runs Agritours Canada, where he has made it his mission to bring the world to Canadian farms, and to bring Canada’s farmers to the world.
Over the years, Buck said learning about the different industry groups who have come to visit the country has given him new perspective on Canada’s role as an agricultural power on the world stage.
“There was a group that came from Europe, a group of computer scientists that were developing agricultural computers for use in Finland,” he recalled. “So they were innovating new software for use in agriculture, and they basically came here to try and get a sense of what programs Canadian farmers are using.
“And that was exciting because I hadn’t realized how advanced we were when it comes to using computers in agriculture before this.”
Buck regularly travels around a portion of the country with groups of international farmers, politicians or other industry members for three to four weeks at a time. For him, some of the most exciting tours happen when he is able to introduce people to staples of the Canadian industry they’ve never experienced before.
“I love showing something completely new to groups of farmers,” he said. “I’ll take them to big dairies and large machine-based systems and organic farming and all kinds of operations.”
And, he says, operating farm tours has given him unique insights into global politics, within the food world and beyond. For example, a number of years ago, he was asked to arrange for four Vietnamese politicians to visit a poultry plant staffed largely by employees originally from southern Vietnam. He hadn’t expected political tensions to boil over on the plant floor.
“The production manager… wanted to talk to these Vietnamese ministers of agriculture, and when he found out they were from Vietnam and they were north Vietnamese, he started yelling at them,” Buck said. “Then the line, all the people on the line started screaming at them.
“So we had to get out of there right quick. It was really, really interesting.”
Over his years in the business, Buck has met people from around the world who want to come and learn from what Saskatchewan farmers in particular are doing.
“Saskatchewan is where we see the most interest in large-scale agriculture,” he said. “Sunflowers are a big draw, as well as malt and barley, grain production, ethanol production. We show people around some amazing things — not just agriculture, but manufacturing as well, like working leather, as well as systems of grain handling. We look at infrastructure for water and chemicals.”
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Agritours’ business is significantly restricted at the moment, and Buck anticipates losing almost an entire season of revenue. Still, he says, his work has prepared him for a situation like this one and he believes the agricultural industry as a whole could learn from some of the safety protocols he has been using on his tours for years.
“We just plan to make sure we can keep everybody safe, both when they come to Canada and when they get back home,” he said. “We always make sure they know to bring a separate set of clothes for when they’re going to Canada and wash them right away when they get here, and then we don’t put them on farms for 48 hours.
“And if they’re going to a bio-secure area, we’ll put them in coveralls, hair nets, face masks, the whole thing.”
Buck is looking forward to when it will be safe enough to start having tours again.
“There’s a lot of people who are interested in the way we do things in Canada,” he said. “It’s pretty amazing.”
