A brilliant, out-of-the-box idea can certainly revolutionize a farm business. But there’s another route – nurturing an idea with potential and seeing where it leads you.
Does it take a light-bulb moment to transform a farm business?
The producers featured in this edition of the Canadian Farm Manager are all innovators. But the transformation of their farm businesses started out in a surprisingly small way – a bug population boom, a piece of equipment prone to breakdowns, a goal set half in jest, and a home garden with too many carrots.
For Dustin Williams, it was a connect-the-dots sort of process. After his father switched to no-till in the 1990s, the straw-strewn surface of their fields began exploding with insect life, including ‘beneficial bugs’ which helped to keep their crop-wrecking cousins under control. That meant less spraying and less cash out the door. Today, Williams and wife Laura McDougald-Williams employ a host of practices aimed at simultaneously boosting soil health and lowering input costs.
One thing led to another on Gerald Renkema’s layer operation. It started with installing a more reliable feeding system and ended with a well-timed expansion into cropping. The Ontario farmer’s story is also a practical example of what it means to be ‘working on your business, not just in it.’
Joas and Lisa van Oord wanted to take over the family dairy farm without being buried under a mountain of debt. Joas didn’t know exactly how he could do that, but joked that one way would be to increase productivity by 25 per cent. Which is exactly what’s happened since van Oord put that ambitious goal in his business plan and began examining every practice on the farm in a bid to wring out more efficiencies.
And if Helen Green and Andrew Cassidy hadn’t overdone it when seeding carrots in their home garden, there likely wouldn’t be fresh local produce for sale in Hay River, NWT. While their market garden is a part-time operation, Green and Cassidy have gleaned insights into consumers’ attitudes toward food that their southern cousins could benefit from.
This is the second of two editions of the Canadian Farm Manager exploring the theme of innovation. The common link to all of the producers featured is that their bright new ideas didn’t come in a blinding flash. The kernel of innovation that transformed their farms was just that – something that started off small, was nurtured, and grew and grew.
These stories also suggest the seeds of change are all around us, waiting to be planted in fertile ground.