“Both the market and policy volatility are unprecedented since at least (the) Second World War. It is not only unprecedented for Canada, but for the world,” says Larry Martin, principal of Dr. Larry Martin & Associates, an agri-food consulting firm.

WHY IT MATTERS: Tariffs, the Iran conflict and broken trade rules have created the most volatile environment for Canadian agriculture since the Second World War, putting pressure on farm investment, debt servicing and mental health.

Markets

In a chart showing monthly ranges of U.S. corn futures contract prices since 1974, Martin points out larger differences from the peaks to the troughs during periods over approximately the last 15 years. Variations within a month are larger as well.

“This is a major part of the more volatile environment in which farmers operate,” he says, but notes that there remain periods of time — such as 2013 to 2020 — when they stabilize again. “We can put any commodity chart up and get a similar result.”

Martin cites increasing incomes of populations around the world as a major cause of market volatility, as well as a trend to trade commodities on a just-in-time basis.

The variation in canola prices over the last five years shows significantly greater volatility for farmers, according to Derek Brewin, professor and head of the University of Manitoba’s agribusiness and agricultural economics department.

He notes canola started in a trough around $450 per tonne ($10.23 per bushel) in the summer of 2019. It then climbed up to $1,200 per tonne ($27.27 per bushel) in May 2022. It’s moved around a lot since then, but generally on a downward trend until recently, Brewin says.

“But volatility does not always suggest an equal chance for devastating troughs and bonanza price spikes,” he says. “As a storable good, most grains and oilseeds see persistent price floors.”

If prices fall too low, buyers start to worry that producers will switch their land to other uses, Brewin says.

“But we occasionally see large crop failures on larger areas — North America in 2021 — and we get concern(ed) about supplies that identify consumers willing to pay much more than they normally do when they are just attracting supplies from the least demanding buyer that sets that floor price over time.”

Brewin says that the low prices of the summer of 2025 represented net losses to the average Manitoba farmer, and that current prices likely are a major relief. Drought concerns could send prices rising again, but a bumper crop could push them back down to last year’s lows, he says.

Crop price spikes damage livestock in the opposite direction, Brewin says.

“Every crop price spike represents a cost spike to the feed sector. I think they face a floor much lower than crops — especially if the herd is on a shrinking trend,” he explains. “When herds are shrinking, it represents a number of farmers forced out of business. We have not seen cropland abandoned the way beef herds have been dropping.”

Trade rule breaking

Governments breaking trade rules they’d previously agreed to are also contributing to price volatility.

“Government actions are caused by politicians who either don’t understand or don’t care about the consequences of their actions,” Martin says.

He says countries agree to rules under the WTO and then break them, pointing to India as a notable offender “opening up trade when prices are high, then closing it when they fall. Canadian pulse growers felt that one.”

Canada is not innocent, nor is the U.S. — even before Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office.

“Biden and Trudeau broke all the rules on dumping when they shut off Chinese exports of steel, aluminum and EVs,” Martin says.

Trump, however, takes rule breaking to another level: “Trump does it virtually every day,” he says.

War, fuel and fertilizer

The Iran conflict has added further pressure to an already strained global trading environment.

“The Iran war is unfolding against a global trading system already strained by Trump’s tariff,” said global financial institution ING.

S&P Global Inc., the parent company of S&P Global Ratings (previously Standard & Poor’s), said the war raised “farm-to-fork food inflation risks on fuel, freight, fertilizer disruptions.”

As Laura Rance-Unger noted in her piece, “Iran war catches Prairie farmers in the geopolitical crossfire — again”, over 40 per cent of a grain farmer’s annual operating costs go to fertilizer and fuel, and the conflict has made a war zone out of the Strait of Hormuz, where about 20 per cent of the seaborne oil and up to one-third of global trade in urea passes through.

Impacts on fertilizer purchases

Through anecdotal information he’s gathered from discussions with Manitoba input retailers, provincial farm management specialist Darren Bond has found 80 to 85 per cent of Manitoba producers have either purchased their fertilizer prior to the fighting or locked in the price, thus insulating them from the price increases associated with the Mideast conflict.

“However, the impact will most likely be felt in the fall 2026 fertilizer application period, especially if the conflict drags out for a longer period of time,” warns Bond.

Another risk is that producers won’t buy fertilizer this autumn in the hope prices will decrease over the winter, and delay application until spring 2027.

“This could severely stress the supply network, potentially causing supply issues,” Bond says.

Another risk is farmers slashing fertilizer applications due to high prices.

“Broad-based cuts to fertilizer could result in disappointing crop yields. That’s why it’s very important to soil test and apply appropriate amounts of fertilizer,” Bond emphasizes. “Protecting yield will be what pulls many producers successfully through these tighter times.”

Impacts on investment and growth

Global volatility and uncertainty make it much harder to undertake business forecasting and cause more volatility in production margins, which thereby make debt servicing riskier, Martin says.

“More volatility in prices, margins and incomes means people will likely invest less and growth will slow,” he says.

This can come from either internal or external capital rationing: internally when producers feel they need a higher return on capital before investing because of the extra risks; externally when lenders or equity partners go through the same analysis and decide to extend less capital, Martin explains.

“It also results in much more mental and emotional stress, which can affect decision-making,” he adds.

How farmers can protect themselves

Among the ways farmers can help themselves is to become ever more savvy with modern farming contracts.

“Without the [Canadian Wheat Board] CWB, grain companies are increasingly able to take more advantage of farmers by offering inferior contract terms, duration, price, blending, etc.,” says James Nolan, a professor in the department of agricultural and resource economics at the University of Saskatchewan. “What this means is that in the post-CWB era, I wonder if farmers should also be taught how to negotiate over contracts, which is a skill unto itself that can be improved through exposure and teaching — which we really don’t do.”

Another area for farmers to concentrate on: staying well informed about world events that can affect their margins.

“The world is now so well connected that farmers can no longer rely on local or regional information to support their decisions,” Nolan says. “They need to try to stay current with global news and try to stay ahead of all business reports that can be reasonably and logically tied to future demand for foods and commodities.”

He concedes that can be a lot of information to process “pushing the farming industry even more towards larger and more complex operations in equilibrium.”

“We still don’t really know what comprises the minimum efficient scale for Prairie farming. Right now, I wonder if this level of cost minimization for commodity farming now lies well beyond 25,000 acres,” Nolan says.

Finally — if possible — build a financial portfolio that includes the stocks of so-called “opponents,” such as railroads and/or grain companies, he says. Why not hedge your risks by supporting the business entities that share the pie with you, he asks.

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Debt and financing decisions today, however, will have a long-term impact, so farmers should be tying decisions to the strategic vision for their operations, Backswath Management consultant Gavin Betker says.

“Operating without a vision and without goals and a plan could lead to debt management and … financial package management decisions that are, perhaps, sub-optimal,” said Betker in an interview earlier this month.

Some farmers have a carefully developed strategy and set of goals for where they want to take their farms. However, some have not gone through that process and are just operating year by year.

The problem with that is long-term debt management is difficult if it isn’t matched to a long-term vision. Debt taken on now can affect short- and medium-term decisions for years to come, so they need to fit the farm’s priorities.

The question of “do you need to restructure today? … is a question that should be related to your goals and your vision,” said Betker.

Dealing with debt and financing issues shouldn’t be put off, especially if there’s stress on a farm.

“It’s best to start now,” said Betker.

However, farmers shouldn’t avoid debt just because they grew up believing debt is by nature bad. Debt and other forms of leverage can be vital tools for building and improving a farm if they are used appropriately.

Measures such as the debt servicing ratio can reveal whether a farm has too much debt or if it could comfortably carry more. If the cost of carrying debt is less than the boost to profitability that comes from investing more in the business, then taking on that debt could make sense.

Sometimes farms fall into a “negative liquidity cycle,” which can be hard to crawl out of. Sometimes it takes years. But it’s worth focusing on getting to a positive cash flow situation so that longer-term decisions can be made.

Keeping bankers on-side is essential, and they like to be kept updated on how farmers are doing. They don’t like surprises. Often those lenders can have ideas that farmers haven’t thought of. And Betker suggested that farmers ensure their equity isn’t unnecessarily tied up. Does a lender still have security on some land that’s now paid off? A farmer can ask for that to be dropped.

Long-term debt brings long-term implications. Decisions today can have long-term consequences, but that also means that good decisions today can bear fruit for years to come.

“You can do things today that can help,” said Betker.

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Since the 1970s, the number of farms has been steadily declining, but not all farms have been impacted equally — mid-size farms have been hit the hardest, as the number of small and large farms increases.

The mid-size farm category used to cover the majority of agricultural operations.

These tended to be operated by a single farmer working on a full-time basis to support a single farm family. Now, a range of farm sizes exist, with small ones often being operated by farmers with off-farm employment, and larger ones being run by several farmers.

While mid-size farms used to be the average, it is now difficult to define what the average farm is.

This has implications on determining the need for policy intervention and what that policy will look like. It’s clear the one-size-fits-all approach to policy-making no longer works.

Changes in farm size over the last two generations are illustrated in several ways. The first is through the decline in total number of farms in Canada. The number of farms has fallen by 44 per cent to 189,874 farms in 2021 from 338,552 farms in 1976.

Secondly, there was a significant decline in the amount of mid-size farms. While the total number of farms has fallen, the decline is particularly evident among mid-size farms. In 1976, most farms were mid-size, but by 2021 that number had declined 59 per cent to 21,587.

Thirdly, there was an increase in the share of the smallest and largest farm size categories. The number of large farms increased to 16,966 in 2021 from 7,868 in 1976. The number of small farms has remained relatively constant at 12,000 since 1976, but this now represents seven per cent of the total, whereas it represented only four per cent in 1976.

Lastly, the shape of the distribution of farm size changed from a bell-shaped, normal distribution in 1976 to a flatter, more uniform shape in 2021. Farms are now spread more equally across the different size categories. It highlights the shift away from the average farmer being the typical one in the middle category to farms more likely to be small or large.

The change in farm size distribution has several crucial implications.

The first is that the largest farms represent an increasing share of overall food production in Canada. While a surprising four per cent of farms had no sales in 2021, 10 per cent of farms had sales over $1 million, and four per cent over $2 million, meaning 10 per cent of all farms now generate over two-thirds of the sales in Canada.

The 70 per cent of farms with sales less than $250,000 represent less than 10 per cent of total revenue from the agricultural sector.

The increase in farm size and sales can largely be attributed to the technological advances over the last 45 years, which have allowed people to manage greater areas on their own. Canadian farms have had to evolve and modernize to keep up with the shifting agricultural landscape.

Farms now must operate in a highly competitive market with low margins, and as such have had to increase in both size and workforce to generate sufficient returns. Other farms have adjusted by selling food products at a premium to be able to exist on a smaller scale.

The changing size distribution of Canadian farms also has significant policy implications.

There is no longer an average farmer that can be targeted with extension or business risk management programs. Instead, there is an increasingly large share of farms with distinct needs, and therefore distinct policy approaches are also required.

For example, if local goods and rural development are the policy objectives, then consideration of smaller farms is necessary for creating comprehensive agriculture policies. However, if sustainability and competitiveness of the sector are the policy objectives, then the focus needs to be on the larger farms managing the most land and generating the most output.

In order to maintain its farm size diversity, Canada needs a variety of policies to support small, medium and large farms. In particular, policy-makers should seek to support small and medium farms without discriminating against large farms, since they play a critical role in the Canadian food economy.

This is possible, but will require dialogue to take place between the agriculture industry and the government in order to appropriately address the stratification that has been taking place.

– Alfons Weersink is an agricultural economist at the University of Guelph.

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The reality is that any talk of “the ‘average’ farm is all but meaningless,” says one of its authors.

“Today, increasing average farm size is not due to farms incrementally increasing in size step by step,” said Douglas Hedley, research associate with Agri-Food Economic Systems. “It is almost entirely explained by the increase in size of already large and very large farms, and the decline in medium-size and small farms.”

And this is not only a problem for ag policy-makers but for operators of large farms, too.

Many smaller farms (those with sales under $100,000) disappeared in the 1980s and early 1990s and those that remain get most of their income from off-farm work, added co-author Al Mussell.

That makes mid-size farms — generally defined as those with $250,000 to $1 million in sales — the most vulnerable, he said.

“Increase in average farm size is almost entirely driven by growth at the very large end. There are going to be many exceptions to this of course, but it is true in aggregate,” said Mussell.

“What seems to be exiting are the middle-size farms. They are maybe just not on the threshold size where a family member can come into the business, or they look at the machinery size and just don’t have the economic basis to replace aging machinery.”

If only the largest farms are profitable, or if only certain subsets can make new technology investments, this would challenge important assumptions and “seemingly comfortable historical views of farming in Canada,” the report suggests.

Used machinery market gap?

But while big farms may want the acres of their mid-size cousins, they also need them to stick around for a very important reason.

“The large farms have size economies that support investments in new equipment, but these acquisitions are partially financed by the value of trade-ins,” said Mussell. “Small and medium-size farms comprise most of this used equipment demand.”

This creates a downward spiral: The ability of large farms to acquire the biggest and most advanced equipment “sharpens the competition for land from large farms,” he added.

And every time a mid-size farm gets bought out, there’s one less customer for used equipment.

“As this dynamic plays out, it will weaken the demand for used equipment, and with it the value of trade-ins in financing of new equipment purchases by the large farms,” said Mussell.

The report argues the growth of large farms at the expense of smaller ones should be a policy issue.

Large and highly efficient farms are a linchpin in competitive agri-food supply chains, say the authors, while smaller farms are linked to the development and sustainability of rural communities.

But there are no policy objectives for farm structure, let alone programming, its authors argue.

By default, policy-related discussions on farm structure gravitate to extremes. They either encourage the largest and most efficient or protect small farms. The link between the two is never raised.

The report concludes that the accelerating trend toward larger farms may occur at such a rate that the process threatens to cannibalize itself, eventually slowing with the decline in demand for assets.

Reduced investment by large farms is a threat to Canada’s agri-food competitiveness, says the report.

The decline of medium-size businesses will weigh on larger farms at some point, said Mussell. Farm structure has to be managed, to encourage ongoing investment in the best technology and to maintain a vibrant, diverse sector.

“We have never attempted that before. I don’t know how we’d do it,” said Mussell.

“It would be great if we were dead wrong, because if our analysis is right, it creates some really difficult questions in what we’re doing with ag policy… It would be nice to have more discussion about where primary agriculture is going as a broad sector.”

Matt McIntosh is a contributor for Farmtario. His article was originally published in the Oct. 4, 2021 issue.

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Telus Agriculture and Rabo AgriFinance, which is headquartered in St. Louis and serves U.S. farm customers, announced Monday they’ve jointly bought software firm Conservis for an undisclosed sum.

Conservis comes to the joint venture already handling farmers’ financial reporting data via the Rabo AgriFinance platform since 2018, along with data from Climate Corp.’s Climate FieldView platform, the John Deere Operations Center and Crop Data Management Systems’ crop chemical database.

The Minneapolis company’s products are meant to allow a farmer to integrate as-applied and yield data directly from those platforms into a “unified view” of the business, with “no extra hardware or manual data re-entry required.”

Thus, “with all your activity records in one spot, you can decide to share reports with landowners, regulators and lenders using data directly from your fields at any point in the season,” Conservis says on its website.

“Understanding your true cost, including cost per bushel and per acre will help ensure you make informed decisions that yield higher profits.”

Calgary-based Telus Agriculture has been shopping for farm management platforms since before Telus created the new ag unit last year, among them Decisive Farming, Farm At Hand, Muddy Boots and Feedlot Health Management Services.

The joint owners said their vision for Conservis is to deliver an “even more robust” platform across a “diverse range of crops and livestock.”

For its part, Telus Ag’s existing tech portfolio is expected to “help enhance the Conservis platform’s functionality” and include access to Telus’ Agricultural Data Exchange (ADX) and Agricultural Services platform (ASX).

The new owners said they “remain committed to Conservis’ strict data privacy standards,” emphasizing farmers on Conservis will still own their data and will still control when partners — Rabobank and Telus Ag included — get that information. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The Vancouver company, one of Canada’s “big five” telecommunications firms, on Thursday formally launched Telus Agriculture, billed as “a new business unit dedicated to providing innovative solutions to support the agriculture industry with connected technology.”

“From farm to fork, by digitizing the entire value chain and linking these technologies together for the first time, we will facilitate a secure exchange of information to allow farmers and ranchers, agribusiness organizations, the agrifood industry and the consumer to make smarter decisions,” Telus CEO Darren Entwistle said in a release.

The new unit is set up to serve three distinct markets, Telus Agriculture Canada CEO Chris Terris said in an interview, referring to production agriculture; agribusiness; and quality assurance and traceability in food and consumer packaged goods (CPGs).

Telus, whose acquisitions in ag tech and farm management consulting so far include Irricana, Alta.-based agronomy and farm management firm Decisive Farming and Vancouver software developer Farm At Hand, among others, also expanded that roster again Thursday.

The company said Thursday it has closed deals for Florida-based AFS Technologies — “a global leader in sales and distribution solutions to the consumer goods market” — and Agrian, a California company with a “unified management platform for precision, agronomy, sustainability, analytics and compliance.”

It also announced Thursday it has a deal in place, pending certain conditions, to take up another Canadian company, Okotoks, Alta.-based Feedlot Health Management Solutions, billed as “North America’s premier feedlot consulting service.”

“Over the course of the last year, Telus has completed several key acquisitions, assembling a suite of assets that is unmatched in the agriculture industry,” the company said in a release.

“Together under Telus Agriculture, our team now has the expertise, experience, and relationships to connect every participant in the agriculture value chain, from seed manufacturers and farmers through to grocery stores and restaurants.”

Terris characterized the acquisitions to date as a “quilt,” in the sense that the whole is expected to be of greater use than the sum of its parts, better connecting farmers and livestock producers to the food side of the equation.

Outside Canada, the new unit’s acquisitions so far also include:

• TKXS, a North Carolina-based firm offering “specialized software, program management and data solutions deliver(ing) critical information to agribusinesses;”
• U.K. software firm Muddy Boots, whose products link “production and food quality data to create a smoother flow of information to help improve decision making and production;”
• Hummingbird, a U.K. company, offering “advanced imagery analytics;” and
• AGIntegrated, a Pennsylvania company which bills itself as “the integration leader in the precision agriculture industry,” using APIs (application programming interfaces) to simplify data flow between platforms.

In all, Telus Agriculture said, the unit now supports over 100 million acres of farmland and employs over 1,200 people across Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Mexico, China, Brazil, Germany, Slovakia and Armenia. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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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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But how a farmer plans his or her business — and associated risks — can help lower that statistic.

The report, titled “Healthy Minds, Healthy Farms: Exploring a Connection between Mental Health and Farm Business Management” sought to improve understanding of how business and lifestyles influence a farmer’s mental health.

“The Canadian farming population is more stressed than the rest of the population within Canada, for sure,” said FMC executive director Heather Watson.

Ontario-based Wilton Consulting Group worked with FMC to conduct the study, which found 62 per cent of Canadian farmers are categorized with mid-stress scores and 14 per cent with high stress.

Watson said the report follows other recent studies calling for improved mental health supports for farmers, including one conducted by a parliamentary committee in 2019.

“We’ve kind of always felt that business management practices must be impacted by mental health, in terms of your ability to make decisions, think rationally, handle stress and have coping mechanisms,” she said, noting that was all more anecdotal. “We hadn’t really looked at it from an analytical point of view.

“Throughout the research, we kind of had two sides of the same coin: how does mental health impact farm business’ management, and how does farm business management practices affect mental health?”

Overall, the report indicated 21 per cent of farmers regularly follow a risk management plan, while close to half – 48 per cent – do not.

There is evidence suggesting that should change, as 88 per cent of farmers who reported using a written business plans say it contributed to their peace of mind.

“When they did do a business plan, it seemed to result in doing other business practices as well,” Watson said, noting those same farmers were the ones more likely to use advisors or do budgeting.

Watson said 88 per cent of those who had written business plans could look to those plans as a “guiding light” during difficult times.

“Having business management practices isn’t going to reduce the stresses out there. Stressors are out there, whether it’s the weather or markets or whatever, but it does impact how you react to those stressors,” she said. “We found farmers who had business plans had more positive coping mechanisms.”

‘Stuck in an office’

Those who do not have a written business plan often cite their success without one as the reason why – and the thought of making a plan can be stressful.

“I’m interested to see if the context we find ourselves in today (with COVID-19) might shift that thinking a little bit, because business isn’t very good for the majority of farmers right now and it’s a completely blindsiding situation,” she said, questioning if business plans that included a worse-case scenario contingency plan may have helped farmers now.

The report found some demographic differences, with women and younger farmers
showing signs of higher stress levels. For young people, the study suggests they are generally less effective at coping with stress and less likely to practice business risk management plans.

Business planning “is not something that farmers like to do, or want to do,” Watson said. “It doesn’t resonate with them, they didn’t get into farming to manage people or be crunching numbers stuck in an office, so how do we bridge that gap?”

To better support farmer mental health, FMC says continued awareness on the importance of it is needed alongside support in improving mental health literacy within agricultural circles.

FMC also says it and the broader agriculture community need to deliver business management advice, focusing on risk management literacy as a means to face uncertainty. It also calls for more advocacy to expand farmer-specific mental health support services.

“We’re hoping that a lot of groups will look at these recommendations and actions and say, ‘we’ll do a project on that,” said Watson.

In all, the report had 24 calls to action that resulted from an extensive survey involving 1,735 farmers, 14 focus groups and 72 one-on-one interviews with farmers and industry representatives.

Watson and FMC are hoping the study can be used as a reference during the next round of policy development for agriculture.

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

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Calgary-based Cervus — which operates 21 Deere dealerships in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia along with 42 other machinery dealerships in Canada, Australia and New Zealand — announced Thursday it plans to have a new dealership open at Nipawin, Sask. by about April 15.

“We are establishing this greenfield location to provide quicker, more convenient access to agriculture equipment, parts and service for our customers in this thriving agricultural region,” the company said in its year-end financial report.

The Nipawin operation is to include parts technicians, three service bays “equipped with manufacturer-trained service technicians” and a mobile technician for in-field and on-farm repairs.

“This new facility will complement the services currently being offered from our store in Melfort, enhancing the customer experience and improving service levels for farming operations in the agricultural areas of Nipawin, Carrot River, Choiceland and Arborfield,” Cervus CEO Angela Lekatsas said in a release. Nipawin is about 90 km northeast of Melfort.

The company on Thursday reported a net loss for the year ending Dec. 31 of $8.618 million on revenues of $1.14 billion, down from net income of $24.777 million on $1.35 billion in revenues in 2018.

Part of the dip in revenue came from a 24 per cent decline in agriculture equipment revenue for the year, the company said, as the Canadian ag industry “faced a number of headwinds.”

Among those, Cervus said, were reduced 2018 farm income, increased input costs, reduced commodity prices and trade disputes, “all compounded by poor growing and harvesting conditions in parts of our geography.”

Farmers thus “chose to postpone new equipment purchases as many own late-model equipment acquired in recent years,” the company said.

That said, Cervus noted its largest increase in product support revenue was in its agriculture segment, as “demand for parts and service continued through the challenging harvest window.”

A difficult harvest in 2018 “also bolstered early season product support revenue in 2019.”

Cervus on Thursday also announced an “exclusive partnership” with Telus’ cloud-based farm management business Farm At Hand.

“This innovative farm management application enables the digitization of farm records to better manage farm activities, sales timing, field profits and equipment utilization, as well as integrating with the data and analytics delivered by John Deere Operations Center,” Cervus said in its year-end release.

Farm at Hand, Cervus noted, also integrates with the data and analytics delivered by John Deere Operations Center.

Cervus, in its release, said it will “bring these solutions to our customers as the exclusive provider of the Farm at Hand platform in our geography.” Further details weren’t available from Cervus on Friday. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Winnipeg-based AGI announced Thursday it has bought all outstanding shares in Oakville, Ont.-based Affinity Management Ltd., developer of the Compass brand of farm and agribusiness management software, among other business management tools.

Affinity, which was founded by Neal Dilawri in 2007 and built up through partnership with chemical firm BASF, today has 18 employees. Dilawri will now take a “senior leadership role” working on the AGI SureTrack platform and provide “vision and guidance” going forward, AGI said.

The Compass product line, which today serves over 8,000 individual farmers across North America, includes an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for growers and ag retailers and an agronomy tool, AGI said.

The ERP system “provides full accounting functionality, including management of accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll and inventory tracking.”

The Compass system, AGI said, “also acts as a central data repository and portal which allows for the sharing of information with a grower’s trusted advisors, including agronomists, accountants, lenders, and insurance providers.”

Affinity’s staff also includes accountants who provide bookkeeping services to the company’s grower customers, AGI said.

The Compass product suite is “highly complementary to AGI’s current offering and will be a key component of the full AGI SureTrack platform.”

The SureTrack platform, formerly known as Intellifarms, includes the SureTrack Farm system for use by farmers and the SureTrack Pro system for use by processors, merchandisers and grain buyers to source product directly from farms.

The platform is meant to bring together data from “across the farm, providing our customers with the ability to manage their crop production, manage their overall business, and market their grain based on content and robust traceability,” AGI CEO Tim Close said in Thursday’s release.

Compass, he said, “takes AGI SureTrack to the next level, adding comprehensive ERP capabilities for AGI dealers and agriculture retailers, and significantly adding to our offering for farmers.”

In an update Thursday on its fourth-quarter financials, AGI said it has “demonstrated the success of its AGI SureTrack subscription model” in 2019, by “increasing retail equivalent sales by 70 per cent, despite capacity constraints and a challenging U.S. ag market.”

In 2020, the company added, “that growth is expected to continue as AGI builds on existing relationships with processors, merchandisers, grain buyers and producers throughout North America.”

Investments in sales, marketing and technical resources for AGI SureTrack are meant to “address capacity and accelerate the future pace of new user additions, thereby increasing our recurring revenue stream and adding significant equipment cross-sell opportunities.”

Financial terms of AGI’s deal for Affinity weren’t disclosed in Thursday’s release, except to say the purchase was “funded from the company’s operating facilities.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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