Agriculture and agri-food are vital contributors to the country’s economy, employing an estimated 2.1 million people, and generating Can $134.9 billion, approximately 6.8 percent of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP).

To achieve this, many of the country’s 189,874 farms, whether small or large, use chemical fertilizers to enrich their soil, provide plant nutrition, and increase crop yields. Used for decades, some chemical fertilizers contain potassium, ammonium phosphate, and nitrogen, used in the formation of protein.

So the Government of Canada’s announcement that it was targeting a 30 percent reduction in nitrous oxide emissions from synthetic nitrogen fertilizer by 2030 to reduce greenhouse gases met a fiery reaction from farmers and associations like the Alberta Wheat Commission.

Calling for greater clarity, the Commission said the 2030 target “has fueled confusion and frustration due to a lack of clarity on what will be measured and how,” adding that farmers were not consulted over the proposed nitrogen reduction, which is aimed at “what seems to be an arbitrary and unachievable target.”

Some, like Joshua Day Chief, CEO at AdvancedAg, and son of the founder, Dr. Phyllis Day Chief, believe farmers suspected that limiting nitrogen in fertilizers was inevitable, but there was uncertainty over when it would happen.

“I felt a lot of farmers knew something like this was coming,” says Day Chief. “And whether or not they thought it was going to be federally mandated—even for their own farms—they knew what they were doing for years wasn’t sustainable. It just wasn’t.”

The future of farming
Described as “A family-owned Canadian business to the core,” AdvancedAg was created in 2016, yet the roots of the company go much deeper than that. Beginning long before the company—and its unique focus on using innovative, cutting-edge biology to improve soil and water health—even existed, founder Dr. Phyllis Day Chief worked at Alberta’s Lethbridge College as a technical writing instructor for almost 35 years.

Working with other entrepreneurs across North America, Phyllis saw a new technology being developed out of Cleveland, Ohio, for cleaning wastewater and ponds. Approaching the supplier, she asked if anyone in Canada was working with the product. The supplier replied by asking her why would anyone want to treat bodies of water that are frozen half the year.

Through her college connections, Phyllis met Cal Koskowich, Industrial Technology Advisor at National Research Council Canada, and formed a partnership with Lethbridge College’s Aquaculture Centre of Excellence.

“During the early stages of our business, we partnered with them, and the research we were doing turned out to be quite important,” says Day Chief. Now 36, Joshua remembers helping at AdvancedAg as a kid, moving boxes and getting a feel for the Indigenous-owned business and its research. Later, attending Lethbridge College and graduating from the Environmental Assessment and Restoration program, he briefly worked in the reclamation industry before entering the family’s business full-time in 2014.

“It was mom and I, and we were focused on water treatment at the time, setting up presentations to talk to municipalities,” he says. “Our bacteria are capable of so many things depending on how we grow them, but we decided we wanted to focus on water remediation—large lake and storm pond remediation for municipalities—rather than spread ourselves too thin,” says Day Chief.

Growth throughout Canada
Making annual trips to Cleveland to meet with their head scientist and suppliers, AdvancedAg was shown a biotechnology that was being used on high-value crops such as pineapples, avocados, aloe vera, and bananas, centred mainly in developing countries where crops were treated with backpack sprayers.

However, the company also knew that the research it was conducting, and the bacteria it was culturing for large-scale operations, were relevant to Canadian crops and conditions. So, the next year, AdvancedAg applied the technology to a farm and saw positive results right away.

Partnering with several third-party consulting agencies and research centres to get replicated trial work done on the crop side of things soon saw data come back. “It was incredible how the bacteria were responding in the soil, producing larger plants and roots and increasing overall biomass, which was leading to healthier crops,” says Day Chief.

“So that’s really where it all started. Being here in Canada, in such a small, tight-knit community of agriculture—I’d say not just in the prairies, but across Canada coast-to-coast—you’re probably only a couple of people away from knowing everyone in the agriculture industry.”

Word about the company and its results spread quickly, and Day Chief was approached by farmers who said they wanted to focus on their soil health and soil biology—that they had hit a wall. Already using too many expensive chemical fertilizers and synthetic products, they were compelled to use more and more to get better crops.

Soon, circumstances prompted them to begin envisaging AdvancedAg as a leader in improving soil and water through 100 percent natural, organic-certified products, supported by decades of research and innovation. “Since 2016, we now have about 50 locations brewing our bacteria across the country,” Day Chief says, “and we have a couple in the U.S. as well. It’s really taken off for us.”

In 2020, AdvancedAg won the Environmental Stewardship Award, as well as the Technology and Innovation Award in 2022 at the Lethbridge Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year Awards. The company is now being considered by the Alberta Chamber of Commerce for the Indigenous Business of Distinction Award.

Natural by nature
The team at AdvancedAg sees a day soon when its all-natural bacteria products are widely available—ideal for both small and large farming operations, parks and recreation, golf courses, water treatment, and home and garden. AdvancedAg has recently launched a retail division for customers outside of large-scale agriculture called A*LIVE Bio. The company is now in many SiteOne Landscape Supply locations, helping customers create more vibrant and healthier lawns, gardens and flowers.

“It’s not just farmers that need a better way to grow things,” says Day Chief. “Other people want that too, to put something on their lawn or garden that’s safe enough to have your kids or dogs run right through it after applying. With a lot of chemical fertilizers, they can’t do that. We’re seeing huge growth on the retail side as well.” (As an aside for home gardeners, Day Chief notes that the product also works well to repair dog urine burns on grass.)

At present, the company’s line of eco-friendly “A*LIVE” bioproducts are available at 15 SiteOne locations in Western Canada and should soon be in other stores across the country.

“A consortium of function-focused microbes”
The bacteria in AdvancedAg’s ACF-SR “perform key functions in the soil, including fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere, solubilizing essential nutrients, such as phosphorus and potassium, and producing phytohormones, which provide the full spectrum of plant growth promoting (PGP) functions in the soil,” according to the company.

“Yet it isn’t a fertilizer that you apply to your lawn and it’s lush in a day or two,” emphasizes Day Chief. “It can sometimes take a couple weeks. We’re fixing the soil for improved root development so plants can grow healthier for longer, using sustainable practices and technology.” He also says the company is moving away from the word “bacteria,” using “microbes” instead, since bacteria seem to have a negative connotation for some.

“What we’re using is a consortium of function-focused microbes,” says Day Chief. “Each species of microbes we use has one or many functions for plant growth. And when we use similar ones for water treatment, each one of those species has a function for nutrient cycling, like breaking down solids, or outcompeting algae for food,” he explains.

“It’s just incredible how we are able to train these bugs. We put them through a series of tests so we know what they’re going to do when we apply them, and that’s also something that separates us from many other biological products.”

Saving money and nurturing growth
Along with being better for the environment and free from chemicals, AdvancedAg’s products are considerably cheaper than fertilizer, resulting in cost-savings for farmers and other customers.

“Even if we are able to achieve the same yields as farmers had before, but they’re cutting back 20 percent of their fertilizer, that’s money in their pocket,” he says. “We also know the quality of the crops is much higher, and long-term, it’s also an investment in their soil, so their kids can take over the farm in a better spot than where their parents and grandparents left it.”

Through AdvancedAg’s products, farmers are saving money and nurturing future growth by building root development and increasing available nutrients in the soil, seeing better results year after year.

“The farmers who have used ACF for multiple years are seeing better results than the first year,” says Day Chief. “We’re really changing things in the soil, so it’s more of a regenerative approach, compared to historically, where farmers were putting down so many pounds of fertilizer and hoping for big yields that year.”

Along with improving overall soil conditions for farmers, AdvancedAg’s products are being used by municipalities to improve the condition of water in storm retention ponds, which are used to collect nutrients and waste. “You have green spaces, parks, baseball fields, people’s lawns. We know that only roughly 40 percent of all nitrogen applied to any type of crop is used by the plant; 60 percent of that runs off into our water, and about 50 percent of phosphorus is used by the plant, so these fertilizers aren’t very efficient,” Day Chief explains.

“We know that by using bacteria and utilizing what’s already in the soil and atmosphere—as opposed to putting something on—plants are going to use nutrients efficiently and we’re going to have zero harmful runoff at all,” he says.

AdvancedAg isn’t out to replace synthetic products such as fertilizer—which is extremely important, although it has had bad press in the mainstream media. The issue, says Day Chief, is that producers have become over-reliant on synthetic chemicals because there has been a lack of options to meet yield requirements.

“We are just hoping to create more of a balance, and we know we can cut back [on fertilizer] and put something else in place where we’re going to get a better long-term result,” he says. “It’s a balance. I think agriculture, and the way we’ve been fertilizing and using chemicals, has been way off balance over the last 50 years.”

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Named after founder August Claas in 1913, the company has expanded its reach globally to more than 160 countries across five continents. But while the group’s harvesters first reached North America in the 1950s, the CLAAS of America sales unit was formally organized in 1979. Today, there are two operational units in the U.S.; CLAAS Of America Inc. handles sales, while CLAAS Omaha Inc. manages the production of combines for the North American market.

We spoke with CLAAS of America President and General Manager, Eric Raby, in March 2018. More than three years later, it is a very different world but still one that requires agribusiness. Raby and CLAAS Omaha’s new President, Matthias Ristow, laid out the company’s groundwork moving forward. Ristow, who has more than seven years of experience with CLAAS, has recently taken over responsibility at CLAAS Omaha and is supervising the company’s production of new cutting-edge line of combine harvesters.

Now in their second year of production, the company’s LEXION 8000-7000 Series harvesters boast the highest capacity in their class combined with unprecedented fuel efficiency. The machines harvest an average of 20.3 acres per hour, which the company calculates to as much as 31 percent higher than other harvesters. This is largely due to its patented APS SYNFLOW HYBRID threshing and separation system. Pre-separating up to thirty percent of the grain before it even reaches the threshing units and twin separation rotors, the unique system provides higher output using less fuel while not damaging the crop itself. “This is a completely new range of combines, from top to bottom,” Raby remarks. “You never think that combines can any get more capacity or more efficient, but we find ways to do it.”

In addition to its harvesting efficiency, the LEXION DYNAMIC POWER system helps farmers reduce fuel costs by being up to thirty percent more fuel-efficient than competitors. This helps the machine harvest up to 7,240 bu/hr and unload more than five bushels per second. Finally, a DYNAMIC COOLING system and central lubrication system help keep the engine and all moving parts running smoothly, reducing maintenance and downtime.

The new LEXION is merely the newest addition to CLAAS’s extensive product line, which extends from combine harvesters, forage harvesters and tractors to mowers, tedders, rakes, and square and round balers. The new harvesters also sport the company’s seed-green color. Raby hopes this will reinforce the company brand beyond traditional marketing.

As Raby described, the company is in the midst of a transition that began before the pandemic. For the past five years, he estimates, CLAAS has been increasing its distribution network. The result, he says, is more cohesive; far from increasing complexity by adding more vendors and products, the practice actually helps simplify the distribution network—in defiance of traditional logic. “It’s really easy to make things complex,” he says. “It’s more difficult to make things simple.”

By diversifying the distributor network, the company offers a closer relationship with its dealers and end-users, superior to a simple transactional relationship. Raby says the results have been positive, with no signs of abating. “We’ve seen good growth in the past few years, and it looks like the current trajectory, especially with current trends in the market, will continue to propel us forward.”

This growth may well help CLAAS continue to diversify its product line. Raby points out that, while CLAAS of America’s product line is extensive, it does not yet supply equipment for planting, tillage or spraying—all vital components of the farming process. Yet he and the leadership team hope that, by expanding its distribution network, the company’s suppliers may be more amenable to this development.

“Over time, not only do they become more dependent on us, but we become dependent on them,” he says, developing a relationship that is more than a mere convenience of transaction. “We partner with dealers on the basis of promoting that business together,” he continues. “When we’re dependent on each other, it becomes a relationship that seems to be much more synergistic.”

This reflects CLAAS’s desire to develop close relationships not merely with suppliers but with end-user farmers as well. The company has a history of staying in touch with vendors and customers long after agricultural shows. On a smaller scale, the company goes directly to the source. In ‘customer clinics,’ company sales representatives and product specialists meet with dealers and customers to discuss harvesting practices and harvesting issues, and to collect performance feedback from customers.

As an essential business related to food production, CLAAS of America was largely unaffected by COVID shutdown measures; indeed, Raby relates that, though many employees worked remotely, the company more than rose to the challenge. “Despite the adversity that the pandemic brought, we were still able to deliver our best fiscal year ever.”

Yet, so much of CLAAS’s business model remains face-to-face. It is difficult to demonstrate a combine harvester virtually, after all, and the company is looking forward to resuming in-person farm shows throughout the country.

Thanks to successful pre-pandemic planning and CLAAS’s role in an essential industry, its goals remain steady and ambitious. “Our goal, over the next five years, was to double the size of our business in North America,” Raby recalls of the 2019 decision. “That’s a pretty tall order.” Yet bold new developments are keeping the company on schedule to achieve this.

It recently opened a trailblazing new tractor factory in Le Mans, France. The product of three years of development and €40 million in investment, this ‘Future Factory’ will utilize the latest digital technologies such as virtual reality throughout all stages of assembly. Additionally, new automated guided vehicles (AGVs) move tractors around the facility and are capable of moving up to twenty tons of material at a time. The result is unprecedented production totals. When fully up to speed, CLAAS predicts the factory will produce up to 13,000 tractors annually.

The company’s move into automated vehicles is further reflected in its new minority shareholding stake in Dutch start-up AgXeed, which is working to advance automated farm machinery. Raby describes this, like its customer relationship, as symbiotic. “This gives us an opportunity to start to leverage the technology that they have…with some of the tractor savvy that we have. So that’s very exciting.”

But closer to home may be where CLAAS’s most effective development is taking shape. The company’s new training academy, 20,000 square feet of space in Omaha that is the product of two years of development, heralds a bold new chapter in the company’s labor recruitment, workforce development and dealer training. The academy hosts the company’s new apprenticeship program, mirrored on the same system, which has built and maintained the German economy for centuries.

Apprentices work at CLAAS in a laboratory setting, learning the intricacies of agricultural machinery. The second half of the program, partnered with Omaha’s own Metropolitan Community College, provides further academic and practical training. After three years, apprentices take an exam administered by the German American Chamber of Commerce of the Midwest. The program is globally respected and provides candidates with accreditation that opens doors to employment anywhere in the world. Ristow says that this particular apprenticeship program, while new to North America, will help provide a steady supply of skilled labor. “It’s pretty much the backbone of the German economy, a continuous supply of qualified employees,” he says.

This global reciprocity that makes the apprenticeship program powerful, as Ristow notes that CLAAS operates similar programs in Russia and Hungary as well. “Everyone who has that certificate is known to have a certain level of knowledge,” he says. Finally, while the program is designed to move employees into CLAAS’s production side, they can easily move to service as well. “They have the training; they have the know-how,” Ristow says, “and they should be of interest to our service team as well.”

With these developments and despite increases in steel and fuel prices, CLAAS’s team is confident about the future. The company earned the Equipment Dealers Association’s dealer choice award just before this writing, its third such award in four years, demonstrating its strong customer service prowess. Yet new product developments are on the horizon, and the company is already increasing its production capacity to accommodate them. Despite the cyclical nature of agriculture, CLAAS remains a constant. As it looks ahead to future decades of service, the company will always be outstanding in its field—in every sense of the phrase.

The post Farming For the Future: New Developments, Facilities and Labor Practices<p class="company">CLAAS of America</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Outgrowing its space, the company relocated to a 2,400-square-foot facility in 1997, followed by another move in 2002; an extension of 12,500 square feet in 2010; a 20,000-square-foot shop in 2013, with extra-wide shop doors, high ceilings, and overhead cranes; and finally, an additional 20,000 square feet added this year to boost assembly output of all the company’s product lines. At Schnell, the team takes promises seriously, and is able to handle any project that comes its way.

Opportunities to help
Big or small, every Schnell project is given the attention it deserves, with the company embracing the opportunity to help its clients get the quality and service they need.

“We’re a family type of business, so that’s the kind of service we provide,” says General Manager Brent Dueck. “We provide customer service based on relationships, so it’s about helping customers first and asking questions later. We have a lot of friendly, knowledgeable staff that come from many different backgrounds, whether hydraulics, electrical, structural, or design, so depending on the questions people bring forward, we have a lot of different resources to help our customers with,” he says.

While there is one dedicated customer service manager, any one of the company’s different departments brings the same level of assistance depending on what’s relevant.

“Obviously, without customer service we wouldn’t be here,” says Dueck. “We built our business up from good customer service. It started with my dad back in ’94. He was all about helping the customer first and making sure the job was done well and everything was fair so everybody was happy. That’s our motto. It has to make everybody happy, otherwise it doesn’t make sense to do it.”

That’s also the company’s approach when it comes to dealing with three dedicated product lines. Although roughly 50 to 60 percent of what Schnell does is sub-contract work for multiple different manufacturers that need more capacity, the company thrives on its niche market of products including transloaders, Sweep-All, and planter hitches, which Dueck refers to as the company’s long-time bread-and-butter.

“The planter hitch is something that was designed here and we ended up patenting it,” he says. “It’s turned out to be a very good product.”

Planting is one of the most crucial tasks farmers and agricultural businesses do, and to ensure the work is done effectively and efficiently, having the best available tools is vital. Schnell’s conversion planter hitch does away with expensive modifications to tractors or planters, making existing equipment more adaptable and powerful.

“It’s a niche market,” Dueck says. “All the products that we build for our product lines are niche markets in a sense. Our planter hitch is only for farmers that grow crops like corn or soybeans. They’re the only ones who actually have the equipment that our hitches are used on.”

While it may be niche, it’s a market that exists because other big companies simply can’t offer what Schnell is providing with its unique hitch. “It’s been a great market, and it’s the easiest-selling product we build. Either the farmer needs it or doesn’t. If he needs it, he’s calling us. We’re the only manufacturer of that product because it’s patented and exclusive to us.”

While this means there’s essentially no competition, Dueck says the product is priced fairly and built well, and Schnell follows up to ensure any issues are taken care of.

Taking the load
The company’s transloader conveyors are essential pieces of machinery that enable quick, effective loading and unloading for items shipped via several modes of transportation, and also act as a safe transition from one container to another, preventing spills and waste. The biggest products Schnell builds, transloaders have held steady for the company since 2014.

“It’s a market that isn’t just for the oil and gas industries, as frack sand was, which is what the transloader was originally designed for,” says Dueck. “We sell these now anywhere that they load or unload granular product from rail cars or into rail cars.”

This versatile product does have competition, but Dueck says Schnell’s product is top of the class in this product line, with more attention to detail, better performance, and higher-quality components within the machine.

“It’s a nice sealed machine that doesn’t seem to have a lot of dust issues,” he says. “We’re just trying to make things more user-friendly with our product. It has very high capacity on some of the machines that our competition struggles to compete with, so that’s been one of our selling points.”

Sweeping the turf
Finally, the company’s Sweep-All line runs within Schnell Industries, but is a somewhat separate entity with its own website, sales team, and assembly department.

An opportunity that arose about six years ago led to Schnell buying a small, struggling company, turning it around and making it profitable, resulting in a very high-end turf sweeper product able to collect grass clippings, leaves, acorns, pine needles, apples, trash, gravel, twigs, and aeration plugs, to name a few, plus clean and sweep, dethatch, and core aerate.

While there are some similar products on the market, none has quite the wide work range of Sweep-All, says Dueck.

“As a whole, it’s another niche market,” he adds. “Not every homeowner is going to buy one. They’re pricey, but there are also high-quality components on there.”

Sweep-Alls are hand-built and assembled at the company’s Winkler facility, ensuring quality from start to finish, and are probably the company’s fastest-growing product line, Dueck says.

Training as opportunity
Along with quality products, Schnell also offers some unique training programs to young welders looking to gain experience in a real-life setting.

Although many companies have struggled with labour shortages, Schnell’s “significant” growth over the past few years has made sourcing experienced welders a challenge. Tackling the issue, the company decided to find young guys out of school and train them. Potential candidates entered into an open-ended, no-commitment deal for two sessions of two hours, experiencing real-life welding at the Schnell facility.

“Usually after the first test we could tell if they were worth bringing back a second time or not,” Dueck says. “Think of it like doing cuts on a team: you pick the best out of the young guys and say, ‘come back for another two-hour session.’”

A Schnell welding supervisor worked alongside them, giving points and tips and tricks before then leaving them alone for half an hour to do their own thing.

“That’s our biggest thing with welding—getting people to relax. People perform way better when they’re relaxed and we try to provide a relaxed atmosphere so they can just settle down and do their thing.”

These sessions have provided roughly 25 to 30 percent success rates of those who “made the cut” and are now full-time employees. But even those not chosen walk away with some free and useful experience gained in a real-life scenario.

“This is the real world, this is the big welding shop,” Dueck says. “We put them in a safe corner away from all the commotion in the building, but it gives them the real vibes. Some guys can’t handle it, but for some guys it’s just natural.”

Once hired, the welders still have to prove themselves, but the hands-on training jump-starts their confidence and readiness to grow. “It’s one of the more challenging positions we hire for,” Dueck says. “There’s a lot of raw talent a person needs. It’s not just tightening a nut and bolt. There’s more to it than that.”

And it’s an important factor in Schnell’s overall success. The company needs roughly 60 to 70 percent more welding staff than assembly staff to build any one of its specific products.

Going bigger
Currently sitting at 50 employees, Schnell just came through a big transition phase from being a good small company to being on the large side of small companies, says Dueck, with more growth coming in the next three months, including a dozen or so new staff for some big contracts coming up.

“We’ve got our eyes on some goals,” he says. These include a dedicated shop that processes all its steel instead of relying on other companies’ laser and water jet-cut parts, machining, torch, and plasma work, and powder coating, all of which is currently outsourced.

“We’re very good at the welding, we’re very good at the assembly, the diagnostics, the hydraulics, and the electrical,” says Dueck. “We’re very good at designing a machine and assembling and welding it, but some of the processes to get it there we’re still working on. That’s what we want to bring in-house over the next little while.”

These goals will mean a larger building and more employees, he says, in part to handle ongoing product-line growth, particularly for Sweep-All, which has experienced 40 percent growth each year for the last three years.

“We’re very diverse in that way,” he says. “We’re not bulletproof, nobody is, but we’re very stable. So hopefully that growth can continue to happen and we can expand as needed.”

Doubling up
The company has already doubled the size of its building in the last year, creating one of the biggest challenges—and most stressful experiences—of Dueck’s career, with supply chain issues, work disruptions, and tight deadlines, but the building was completed virtually on time.

“It was a month overdue, but I wasn’t going to complain,” he says. “I was terrified I was going to be six months overdue which would have really hurt us. Working with our contractor to find solutions and work through all of the funny issues was a challenge and an accomplishment that we managed to somehow pull out of the hat.”

Along with an ability to get things done, what else sets Schnell Industries apart from similar companies?

“I’m trying to think, are there similar companies out there?” says Dueck. “We do such a wide variety of products and builds. Yes, some companies do that, but we also actually still do a lot of custom work.”

That custom work could mean a literal walk-in order, he says, with a customer driving up and ordering a variety of lengths of steel. “We do that; we’re very diverse that way. There are two other companies in this town that do that, but I’ve got a lot of family throughout the U.S. and Canada and they say there just aren’t places that do big-time production and still take care of the small farmer. That’s us.”

Taking care of the small as well as the big needs is a point of pride for Schnell. “If you stop in tomorrow and say you need certain mesh or something for a little fire pit project in your backyard, we help you out with that.”

Saying yes
Providing that home family feeling is a big part of what makes Schnell the success it is, particularly when it comes to relationships.

“It’s just the ability to say, ‘sure, we can do that.’ We’ve tackled projects probably about three times bigger than our plant size here. We’ve done some stuff that’s been a little bit over-the-top, very big, crazy stressful,” he laughs. “Big-time equipment and at the same time, we’re building these little sweeps. People ask, ‘wow, how do you even make that work, make the big stuff and the little stuff?’ but it’s [thanks to] an attitude of, ‘don’t say no.’ If we feel we can do it, we’ll do it.”

That includes having an open mind, approaching everything with a different perspective and not sticking to just one product, he adds. “Variety is our thing.”

The post Agriculture Gets Unique Solutions: And Everyone Gets a Yes<p class="company">Schnell Industries, Inc.</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.