“Our government is working to create a more inclusive agriculture sector that respects the values of Indigenous Peoples,” Agriculture Minister Marie Claude Bibeau said in a statement Friday.

“These investments are intended to ensure that Indigenous Peoples have equal opportunities in the sector, the resources they need to be successful, and access to safe and affordable food.”

One project, based in Saskatchewan, is receiving up to $954,000 to reintroduce grain farming as a career path, and to finalize a business plan for Cowessess First Nation, about 50 km south of Melville, to expand its farming operation to 2,000 acres.

Chief Cadmus Delorme said the long-term goal is to have a fleet of grain farming equipment.

Cowessess members, according to Delorme, “utilized the teachings and tools provided to support an agricultural existence” after signing Treaty Four. “Over time Cowessess members were great farmers, then Canadian policy made it harder for Cowessess members to farm.”

Delorme said the intention now is to “to revive agriculture and enable our community and its citizens to benefit from the vast amount of arable acres Cowessess First Nation owns.”

Another will see Xaxli’p First Nation, about 150 km west of Kamloops in British Columbia, get $88,000 to “prepare the community to engage in a number of agricultural activities by conducting a market study, a land capability assessment and an irrigation water source assessment.”

The economic development officer for Xaxli’p, Lyle Leo, said in a statement this project “project is a stepping stone to business planning and infrastructure improvements.”

Bigstone Cree Nation, about 125 km northeast of Slave Lake, Alta., will receive $131,000 to identify and plan agri-business opportunities to enter into Alberta’s market.

Most of the funding comes from the Indigenous Agriculture and Food Systems Initiative.

“Indigenous farmers, communities and agri-food entrepreneurs have a strong partner in the government of Canada. We recognize all of you, as leaders, in building and growing opportunities — from farming, community gardens, traditional foods and agri-entrepreneurs,” Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller said in Friday’s release.

“Indigenous Peoples were the first agricultural innovators and have a unique connection to the land that continues today.”

— D.C. Fraser reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Ottawa.

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“We know that farmers are very stressed, but we also know that business planning can help,” said Heather Watson, executive director of Farm Management Canada.

“The farmers who do have and follow a written business plan are able to sleep at night. They’re able to manage under greater amounts of stress because they have an idea of where they’re going.”

That’s especially true now with global upheaval disrupting supply chains and markets, Watson said at the virtual Ag in Motion conference in mid-July.

“If there’s any silver lining to all of this, it’s perhaps a greater appreciation for the farms that were ready to turn on a dime,” she said. “They’re seeing opportunity, whereas others are struggling to survive. I would hope that the situation we find ourselves in today is an indication that we need to invest in business management practices.”

Canada’s top farmers have already done that and are reaping the rewards, she added.

“Adopting business practices like planning has been proven to increase profitability,” she said, citing her organization’s recently updated Dollars and Sense study. “The difference between the bottom performing farms and the top performing farms was measured at 525 per cent — another very good reason to invest in business planning.”

Those with written business plans are more likely employing other best management practices, including record-keeping, budgeting, benchmarking, and training.

Still, only 21 per cent of farms surveyed by Farm Management Canada indicated they’re regularly following a business plan, while 48 per cent said they rarely or never do. Adoption rates for other business practices have also gone down in recent years.

“A lot of times we’ll see that farmers turn to business practices when times get tough,” said Watson. “It’s been relatively good for farmers the last five years, but now a switch has flipped.”

No one can say how the pandemic will play out, but business planning isn’t about “predicting the future.”

“It means preparing for whatever may happen — looking at the risks and opportunities out there and how you can position yourself to respond to them,” said Watson.

“So no matter what happens, you’ve got some sort of guiding path to get you through the good times, the bad times, and everything in between.

“It can be your trusty sidekick when stress runs high and times get tough and decision-making might become clouded.”

Planning for known risks can help prepare for those “you don’t see coming,” said Rob Hannam, president of Synthesis Agri-Food Network.

“We’re much better prepared as business owners and managers to respond because we’ve got a bunch of potential solutions already figured out,” said Hannam, who also spoke at Ag in Motion. “That act of planning really makes us better prepared.”

He pointed to companies that had already developed an online component to their business.

“They were much better prepared to respond when COVID occurred, and some have taken advantage of that, building market share or lowering their cost of doing business by moving to more online systems,” he said.

“Some businesses are taking advantage of those opportunities, and farms can do that, too.”

But farmers tend to think that, since they’re succeeding without a plan, there’s no point in investing in one.

“Are you really succeeding? In what way? And could you be more successful with a business plan?” asked Watson.

“We all know we do better with goals — you manage what you measure,” added Hannam. “The activity of planning is gold. Every farm business can do that.”

But it needs to be part of “your everyday activities so that it comes to mind more often,” said Watson.

“It’s not something you pay an adviser to do and then it sits on the shelf. It’s something you’ve come together as a farm team to decide what you want your future to look like.

“Your plan can provide that road map to success.”

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Accelerator Guelph aims to provide business training, help create networks and provide a process to innovators in agriculture and food at the university.

Why does it matter? Getting research and great ideas from university researchers to the market has been a challenging process. The University of Guelph has many examples of innovations that have had significant impact on farming, but it believes more can be done.

Accelerator Guelph was launched during an innovation showcase Friday in Guelph that highlighted innovation in agriculture and food at the university.

“Our researchers have bold, ambitious ideas, and their work addresses gaps and helps solve problems while shaping the future of food and agriculture in Canada and beyond,” said Malcolm Campbell, the university’s vice-president for research.

The four-phase accelerator program will provide business planning, executive leadership training, financial and accounting expertise and human resources management.

The university has licensed the successful Waterloo accelerator system which includes a tool that helps innovators through feasibility of their ideas, said Dana McCauley, associate director of new venture creations in the University of Guelph’s Research Innovation Office.

The Research Innovation Office has been reorganized; the Catalyst Centre, which was created to transfer technology from the university to the market, has been moved into the reorganized office.

“The real magic of our program isn’t that we are bootcamping these academics through entrepreneurial training, but it will come later,” McCauley said.

“My job is to create a big enough network that I can take these proven concepts that do have good leadership and pair them with more traditional entrepreneurial people.”

Researchers don’t need to be CEO material, she said, but there has to be a process for them to get their great ideas to the market.

A pilot cohort, involving six ideas the Research Innovation Office is using to test the Accelerator Guelph concept, has been identified. The cohort includes:

• Ibrahim Deiab and team are designing a low-cost additive manufacturing solution, like a 3D printer, for metals or bio-consumables made from agricultural waste that can produce manufacturing parts with reasonable accuracy. The effect will be to reduce down time in food and other factories and make it much easier run plant trials and test innovative new ideas.
• Amberley Ruetz and Leah Blechschmidt are starting their business with a consumer insight. They have identified that schools in Ontario lack nutritionally dense, shelf-stable snacks and they plan to create a product that matches school food guidelines and that students love.
• Wael Ahmed and his partners at FlorNergia have developed an innovative airlift pump that improves performance and reduces energy usage in aquaponic and aquaculture applications, making sustainable fish farming more viable.
• Sujeevan Ratnasingham, has created LifeScanner, a kit that can be used to test the DNA of food to ensure against food fraud quickly and affordably.
• Kevin Piunno, has created a user-centric, modular, easily-adapted growth vessel that is more ergometric and flexible than traditional tools used in biology labs.
• Mannick Annamalai has created a new free-flowing encapsulated maple powder that will allow consumers and food product developers to do new things with naturally sweet, local maple products.

— John Greig is a field editor for Glacier FarmMedia based at Ailsa Craig, Ont. Follow him at @jgreig on Twitter.

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“The need to develop a strong business plan has been never greater,” said Rick Dehod. “With grain prices flattening, margins have been squeezed. Being proactive allows your business to strategically plan and manage for the risks and uncertainty that are inherent in the business of farming.”

Step one is gathering new information, and update existing information, he said.

To assist in this annual review and planning process producers will need:

• Their completed 2014 income and expense statement. “Preferably this statement is completed on an accrued basis,” says Dehod. “You may want to compare this to previous years to see how the farm has progressed.”
• An up-to-date net worth statement or balance sheet. “All assets should be at current market value and all liabilities as up to date as possible. The balance sheet is a comprehensive listing of all your inventories and accounts receivable plus a comprehensive listing of all accounts payable, including all trade credit and farm business credit card debt is required.”
• A projected income and expense statement. “What is your projected net margin, and will it provide your business the funds to fulfil its current obligations and debt service? Stress test your projection. What if yields were five per cent less than your farm’s averages or prices less than projected? What if interest rates went up one, two or five per cent? Could you still meet your obligations?”
• A list of possible capital expenditures planned for the year, how much down payment will be required, over what amortization, and how this will affect the farm’s cash flow and repayment obligations.

These statements should be shared with your lender, partners, and advisers, said Dehod.

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Getting into Farming – Information Session for the Aspiring Farmer will be held in Airdrie on Oct. 30. It will provide an overview of Alberta’s agricultural industry, business planning, self-assessment, accessing capital, finding land, and resources for beginning farmers.

“There will also be presentations from established farmers on how they got their businesses started,” said Verstraete. “These producers will discuss financing, challenges they had, and key learnings that formulated from the establishment of their businesses.”

Registration is $25 and includes lunch. To register, call the Ag-Info Centre at 1-800-387-6030.

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After 35 years of travel there has never been an incident with takeoff — but the landings have been mixed. There were quite a few times when we could not land because of weather, and times when the pilot realized he might overshoot the runway and had to hit the brakes. This is a jolt to the system and can be unsettling especially if the fog is so bad that no one can see the runway anyway!

I often think of flying — the pure miracle of it and the opportunity that the disruptive technology of the invention of the plane has afforded us. In terms of business, I see that we spend a lot of time planning the takeoff and enjoying the ride, and very little time preparing to land. The runway is only so long, it takes a flight plan to change, close or transfer business and that cannot be done from the air. At some time, our feet need to be firmly planted on the ground.

Landing in business is not just succession planning, it is planning for when the bank says no, when the business fails, when our health fails, or when the world around us changes. It is the mitigation of risk and the knowing of when we are safe after the wheels hit the ground. Young entrepreneurs, especially women, should look at this very carefully.

More than half of small and medium-size businesses in Canada are owned by women (a small or medium business is defined as under $25 million) while the food product from those make up over 80 per cent of our items for trade. As a consumer, she buys and sells food, clothes, houses and cars, appliances, vacations, tools, trucks, tractors, feed, seed, welders and combines. Yet accessing money for continued growth is often difficult.

Even though women and men face the same challenges when accessing finance, research in this area has found that even in developed countries only 58 per cent of all equally eligible loans applied for by women were approved and at a higher interest rate than the same proposal by men. (In the United States, the rate is 20 per cent less approval rate than men and only four per cent of venture capital funding has been allocated to women.) The study found that the reason for credit refusal was that lenders do not wish to be associated with specific types of borrowers such as women, racial minorities, classes and castes. In short, commercial banks and village money men did not loan to women because they presented a bigger perceived risk, they did not loan to women because they were women.

• More with Brenda Schoepp and the Alberta Farmer Express: Women in agriculture bank on change

A true lack of access to credit often hinders growth in what could be a thriving agricultural practice. Women in particular continue to be tied to their husband’s financial performance, permission or signature, even when they are solely responsible for the production of food or for the business. What needs to be done for young men and women to access financing for business (the takeoff) and how do businesses access additional funding for growth or mitigate their financial risk (the landing)?

Asking the right questions ahead of time is important. What do I need to prepare? What are the asset requirements needed to satisfy the lender? What are the perceived risks? How much weight is on past history and credit score or on receivables and cash flow? And the list goes on.

But the point is that the plane cannot and will not take off without the appropriate preparation and pilot check.

Compared to their male colleagues, women often face the additional challenge of not asking for enough money. Many commercial banks look to larger long-term loans attached to a sound business plan that is clearly articulated both in writing and orally. And repeatedly we see evidence that cash flow is not king, men and women need to own something concrete — an office building, factory, ship or any other asset. When it comes to farming, ladies who wish to build their enterprises must have deeded land in their name.

For example, the Montreal Gazette recently ran a story of two women with an 11-year-old company generating $4 million in home party clothing sales. Because they did not own the factory in which the clothing was produced they were ineligible for a meagre $500,000 line of credit for the past three years and were forced to use personal savings.

In this scenario, the women are obviously fighting an outdated system that is discriminatory but I also see it as preparing for a landing. Like these ladies, at any point in time in our business if we do not have collateral, capital assets, receivables and cash we can run out of runway. Paving the way for success includes takeoff, a flight plan, and a long runway.

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