Afleveringen
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Robert Andjelic has been bearish more often than not for three years. In January, he stood in front of a packed room and called a capital squeeze. This time he came back fired up about something different: three converging forces he believes put Canada in the strongest agricultural position in a generation.
What follows is Robert defending three years of public predictions, line by line, before laying out the new one.
Topics and Timestamps
0:00 -- Dan opens. Robert's backstory: escaping Croatia as a boy, building a commercial real estate empire, the Saskatchewan land bet that started at $400 an acre
5:00 -- Audience poll: who's bullish, neutral, or bearish right now
8:00 -- Why farmer suicide rates stay high even when the numbers look good
12:00 -- The fall 2023 call to lock in farm debt, revisited
18:00 -- Mark to market: the Saskatchewan farmland call, three years of FCC data
21:00 -- Why Robert owns zero acres of farmland in the United States
23:00 -- The eight early signs of credit tightening, in order
30:00 -- What a major operator's financial trouble this year means for the rest of the industry
41:00 -- Rent versus buy: the framework Robert actually uses on his own land
45:00 -- Why the smaller rural towns keep shrinking
52:00 -- Why Canada is technically in a recession as of mid-2026
59:00 -- The Hormuz oil shock compared to the 1979-81 shock
1:04:00 -- How the live audience rated Robert's three-year track record
1:06:00 -- The cattle herd rebuild that's still years from equilibrium
1:10:00 -- The bullish thesis: the Strait of Hormuz, a developing super El Nino, and the aquifers running dry
1:13:00 -- Robert's probability breakdown for an agricultural super cycle, 2026 to 2028
1:20:00 -- Why Robert doesn't trust AI to predict what happens next
1:21:00 -- Inside the Strait of Hormuz: vessels waiting, insurers pulling back, years to rebuild
1:29:00 -- Closing: investing by the numbers, not the narrative
Resources Mentioned
FCC Farmland Values Report -- cultivated land value data cited for Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta
NOAA El Nino Watch, issued May 14, 2026
Reuters reporting on Strait of Hormuz vessel traffic and tanker movement
Connect with Robert Andjelic
Canada's largest private farmland owner, 450,000+ acres across Western Canada
Connect with Growing the Future
Website: growingthefuture.ca
YouTube: Growing the Future
Instagram: @growingthefuturepodcast
LinkedIn: Growing the Future
Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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The math of buying in has changed. The math of staying in has too. David Widmar of Agricultural Economic Insights and Eric Olsen of MNP Farm Management bring the US and Canadian numbers together to examine what farmland affordability, cash rent pressure, and the post-ZIRP interest rate environment actually mean for producers running a farm in 2026. Two countries. One calculator. The gap between what land is worth and what it can earn has never been wider.
Topics and Timestamps
0:00 -- Dan opens: the 16-year cash rent stat and what it signals about the moment we are in
0:07 -- David Widmar: how ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) inflated asset values from 2008 onward
0:08 -- New Fed chair Kevin Warsh: five review areas, inflation as priority one, what it means for rates
0:09 -- Eric Olsen: Canadian interest rate outlook -- stable to slightly up, no major jumps expected
0:11 -- David: US row crop squeeze -- lower commodity prices, stubborn cost structure, Iran conflict pushing energy and fertilizer back up
0:12 -- US government ad hoc payments: second highest since the 1920s, and why that carries risk
0:14 -- Eric: Canadian farm support programs -- AgriStability, crop insurance (98% participation in Manitoba), GARS
0:17 -- David: How ARC and PLC work -- risk management programs with a built-in payment delay problem
0:19 -- David: "Musical chairs" -- why ad hoc programs create systemic risk rather than resolve it
0:20 -- Eric: AgriStability explained -- margin-based, plannable, based on your numbers not a county average
0:23 -- Eric: "Farmers are sophisticated businesspeople" -- the $2-3M floor that surprises people outside agriculture
0:24 -- David: The paradox of risk management -- tools that reduce short-term pain can build long-term fragility
0:30 -- Dan introduces the farmland affordability calculator David built for registrants
0:31 -- Metric 1: Down payment years -- Indiana at $15K/acre, $326 rent, 35% down = 16 years of cash rent saved (was 6 in the 1990s)
0:34 -- Eric: Canadian read on Metric 1 -- $8,500/acre in the Regina plains, $180/acre rent, nearly identical ratio
0:36 -- US vs Canada land ownership structure: 60%+ rented in Illinois regions, 70% owned in western Canada
0:38 -- Harry Siemens (audience): How does the farm community make sense of high land values and next-generation transition?
0:39 -- David: Path to equilibrium -- lower land values, lower interest rates, slower appreciation, or some combination of all three
0:41 -- Eric: The case for separating the real estate business from the farm operating business; barriers to entry for young producers
0:44 -- Harry Siemens: Are large corporate landowners (200,000+ acres) healthy for the industry?
0:45 -- Eric: Supply and demand reality -- large land releases will affect prices; the market is starting to work
0:47 -- David: How lenders managed large land holdings in the 1980s crisis and what that signals for today
0:49 -- David Schmidt (Rabobank, Alberta): Are lenders shifting from asset-based to cashflow-based lending decisions?
0:49 -- Eric: Yes -- lenders taking a harder look at business fundamentals; younger producers will feel it first
0:51 -- Metric 2: First-year payment calculator -- US approaching 300% (3 acres to cover payment on 1), Canada at 195-250% depending on rate
0:56 -- Alex Clark (Rabobank): Not tightening so much as asking better questions -- creative lending options, extended amortization
0:57 -- David: Closing takeaway -- about half of US farmland appreciation since the 1980s came from falling interest rates; don't assume you are immune to rate risk if you own land outright
0:59 -- Eric: Thanks, upcoming MNP benchmarking series; Dan previews Robert Andjelic's return next week (bullish on commodities super cycle)
1:01 -- Dan closes: Building Your Operating System cohort update, August cohort opening
Resources Mentioned
Agricultural Economic Insights farmland affordability calculator (shared with registrants via event link)
ARC and PLC farm bill programs (US) -- risk management programs for row crop producers
AgriStability -- Canada's margin-based whole-farm income support program
GARS -- private margin-based insurance product for Canadian producers
Connect with David Widmar
Agricultural Economic Insights: https://aei.ag/overview
Connect with Eric Olsen
MNP Farm Management: mnp.ca
Connect with Growing the Future
Website: growingthefuture.ca
YouTube: Growing the Future
Instagram: @growingthefuturepodcast
LinkedIn: Growing the Future
Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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CONTENT WARNING: This episode discusses farm financial stress, identity, and mental health in agriculture, including reference to suicide rates in the farming community. If you or someone you know is struggling, support is available. Numbers are listed at the end of these notes.
Three to one is the male-to-female suicide ratio in agriculture. Most of the people carrying the hardest financial weight in farming right now are also carrying it alone, measuring their worth by what they produce. Corliss Rassyle has spent decades working in the space between what a farm earns and what a farmer is worth. Dan built this room for those people.
Topics and Timestamps
0:00 -- Cold open
1:30 -- Dan's disclosure: a company erased to zero and what the new start required
4:00 -- Welcome: who this room is built for and the three-to-one ratio in agriculture
5:00 -- Mom at the Easter griddle: "I've done nothing with my life"
6:30 -- Why we get the measure of success wrong and where it starts
9:00 -- Saskatchewan is resource-rich -- so why do so many people in agriculture feel unfulfilled?
10:00 -- Subconscious programming: the belief systems formed in childhood still running adult lives
13:00 -- The 1,111 vision: how Lead Conference Canada came to be
15:00 -- Sitting in the back row of the venue: the moment the number confirmed itself
17:00 -- Workshop begins: Corliss takes the room
22:00 -- The question to sit with: what belief are you holding about yourself right now?
23:00 -- Thoughts create emotions, emotions create actions, actions create results
27:00 -- The Five A's: Aware, Acknowledge, Assess, Affirm, Accept
29:00 -- The five most powerful sentences: I am, I can, I will, I release, I forgive
30:00 -- Acceptance: Corliss's brother and the question "Why won't you let me help you?"
33:00 -- Dan's experience: what happened when a room of men did this work together
37:00 -- Same rain, two different meanings: the drought and the wedding
38:00 -- Corliss's divorce: rebuilding one step at a time from a two-bedroom apartment
43:00 -- Love what you do: Corliss's father and 60 harvests
47:00 -- 86 tickets on launch day vs. a goal of 1,111: what fear does and what vision does instead
52:00 -- Mom gives permission for the TEDx: "You should use it to help people"
54:00 -- You have full power over your story
55:00 -- Corliss's programs and how to connect
Resources Mentioned
TEDx Talk by Corliss Rassyle -- search "Corliss Rassyle TEDx" (Dan to confirm link)
Lead Conference Canada 2026: corliss.ca/led2026
Called to Lead (self-paced personal development program): corliss.ca
Do More Agriculture Foundation: domore.ag
Saskatchewan Farm Stress Line: 1-800-667-4442
This episode is brought to you by Bone Trail Originals, Crop-Aid Nutrition, Hammond Realty, and GRIPP.
Connect with Corliss Rassyle
Website: corliss.ca
Lead Conference Canada: corliss.ca/led2026
Connect with Growing the Future
Website: growingthefuture.ca
YouTube: Growing the Future
Instagram: @growingthefuturepodcast
LinkedIn: Growing the Future
CRISIS SUPPORT
If you are struggling, please reach out.
Canada -- Talk Suicide Canada: 1-833-456-4566
Canada -- Saskatchewan Farm Stress Line: 1-800-667-4442
Canada -- Do More Agriculture Foundation: domore.ag
U.S. -- Call or text 988
Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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Somewhere between the farm and your plate, the story of how your food is grown got hijacked. Not by farmers. By people who have never touched a seed, never watched a crop fail, never had to explain to their banker why the weather won.
Dennis Bulani is a fourth-generation Saskatchewan farmer, CEO of The Rack -- one of Western Canada's most respected independent ag retailers -- founder of the Trust Your Plate movement, and author of What a Farmer Wants You to Know About Food. He sat in a room full of entrepreneurs in Arizona while a speaker told everyone that modern farming was poisoning the world. He went home and wrote a book about it.
Nine in ten people trust farmers. One in five trust modern farming practices. This is the conversation about how that gap happened -- and what to do with it.
Topics and Timestamps
0:00 -- Dan's open: "Somewhere between the farm and your plate, the story got hijacked"
1:07 -- Dennis on the farm right now: wheat year, 1,000 acres, single-crop rotation
1:28 -- The one-crop-per-year strategy and why it works for a busy CEO-farmer
4:15 -- Pulse rotation research: 15% average yield lift across all other crops
5:52 -- Solving phomyces root rot: 5-year research taking peas from 25 to 75 bushels
7:37 -- Published in the American Journal of Plant Science
8:49 -- The Rack's research program: PhD scientist, 6 agronomists, 12 field trials annually
10:00 -- The 100-bushel canola goal and what the "kitchen sink" trial actually proved
13:06 -- How "Rogue" was born: Dr. Bill Brown, manganese-zinc surfactant, and 10-12% yield lift
17:10 -- Rogue in Liberty Canola and what glyphosate actually does to manganese and zinc
18:36 -- Dennis's animal science degree: balancing plant rations is the same science as balancing cattle rations
22:13 -- From Eli Lilly to building The Rack: how an animal nutritionist ended up selling gas
26:00 -- Strategic Coach and the size of the problems Dennis is now willing to take on
30:00 -- The Arizona room: a speaker says modern farming is poisoning the world. Dennis goes home and writes a book.
35:00 -- The trust gap: 9 in 10 people trust farmers but only 1 in 5 trust modern farming practices
38:00 -- The MSG story: how one bad idea gets into the bloodstream of a culture and never leaves
39:39 -- Fertilizer supply chain: urea forecasting, import terminals, and the 2026 seeding sprint
41:13 -- Trump and geopolitics: the Straits of Hormuz theory and what it means for urea prices
43:05 -- Are farmers making money? The 2026 economics at $820 spring wheat
44:09 -- Why Canadian farmers are the most resilient in the world -- and the crow rate story that explains it
47:06 -- "The most advanced, educated farmers in the world" -- how adversity built Western Canadian agriculture
50:52 -- Biological products: the seaweed trial, what the research actually showed, and how to think about new claims
53:48 -- Zinc deficiency in 70% of soil tests -- the right form, timing, and strategy for zinc
59:27 -- Phosphate threshold: 20-25 ppm as the floor that separates good yields from great ones
1:04:29 -- The Rack spends $600,000 a year on replicated research -- and shares results with competitors for free
1:07:00 -- The retail landscape is changing: what separates partners from order-takers
1:08:53 -- AI and the future of ag retail agronomy
1:17:57 -- The novel: 60% true story, Kyrgyzstan, post-communist winter wheat, and Fibonacci numbers
1:20:07 -- Writing the book for "Aunt Nancy from Vancouver" -- and hiring four fact-checkers
1:22:13 -- "Never have we lived longer, never have we been healthier" -- Canada's 84-year life expectancy
1:26:07 -- Aunt Nancy from Vancouver: why farmers avoid the conversation -- and why they shouldn't
1:27:09 -- TrustYourPlate.com as a reference tool for farmers to use in the moment
1:30:42 -- The three biggest myths in consumer agriculture
1:31:15 -- The eyedrop analogy: one-third of one drop per square foot per year is all the chemical farmers apply
Resources Mentioned
What a Farmer Wants You to Know About Food -- Dennis Bulani (book, available on Amazon, Kindle edition)
Trust Your Plate -- trustyourplate.com (reference tool for answering food safety questions)
The Rack -- Rack Petroleum, Bigger, Saskatchewan (ag retail, fuel, fertilizer, research division)
Rogue -- The Rack's proprietary manganese-zinc surfactant product (developed from Dr. Bill Brown's research)
American Journal of Plant Science -- published The Rack's pea phomyces root rot research
Ultimate Yield -- The Rack's agronomy division
AgLink Canada -- independent ag retailer association (Dean Falls, Director)
Nutrients for Life Canada -- distributing the book to school teachers across Canada
Dr. Aaron Corey -- PhD scientist, The Rack research division
Dr. Bill Brown -- glyphosate and surfactant researcher, Ontario; Hellfire surfactant
Strategic Coach -- Dan Sullivan's entrepreneurship program
CAAR -- Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers
University of South Dakota / University of Nebraska -- crop rotation and phosphate research referenced
Connect with Dennis Bulani
Website: trustyourplate.com
Book: What a Farmer Wants You to Know About Food -- search Amazon
LinkedIn: Dennis Bulani
Connect with Growing the Future
Website: growingthefuture.ca
YouTube: Growing the Future
Instagram: @growingthefuturepodcast
LinkedIn: Growing the Future
Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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On the Bone Trail: What Farming Does to Fathers -- Jeff Bennett, Unfiltered
12 days before Father's Day, Jeff Bennett -- a fourth-generation Saskatchewan farmer whose dad's farm sits 800 feet from his own door -- sat down to say the things most fathers in agriculture are thinking and nobody will say out loud. The debt. The legacy. The math that doesn't add up. Whether the farm is a gift or a burden. And whether he can pass it to his sons without crushing them. No panel. No slides. No consulting-speak.
This is Episode 1 of On the Bone Trail -- Growing the Future's foremost live briefing series built around the farmers who are still standing, still building, and still trying to figure out how to hand something worth having to the next generation.
Topics and Timestamps
0:00 -- "12 days from now, it's Father's Day." Dan's open on what the farm costs a father
0:57 -- Platform and partner acknowledgments: Bone Trail Originals, Crop-Aid, Hammond Realty, GRIPP, Convergence 2027
4:47 -- Jeff: "When you're a father, you're also a son. You're living in both worlds -- the past and the future."
6:12 -- How becoming a father changed everything: from "how do I expand" to "how do I pass this off"
7:05 -- The three-son plan: each gets a trade first -- mechanic, electrician, carpenter -- then comes back to the farm
12:46 -- The belt and the combine: two generational philosophies about when to call the dealer
18:44 -- "What did your dad envision for you?" Jeff: "I honestly don't know."
23:51 -- "The problem with farming now is it's not farming then, and I don't think that generation understands it"
26:48 -- 2021: "absolutely kicked my ass" -- the brutal math begins
28:56 -- Input costs tripling: UAN from $100 to $600+ per acre; rent from $35 to $90 per acre
30:05 -- The Manette situation and what it says about the farming model
31:17 -- "I hate owing people money. I'll pay all my bills. They're just not gonna be on time."
31:47 -- Why still want this life for your sons? "Purpose is what drives a man. There is nothing more purposeful than farming."
38:07 -- What Jeff is doing better as a father: being present, being stable, being open
40:56 -- Two years ago bad news broke me. Now I put the phone in my pocket and keep picking rocks.
41:38 -- The on-an-island reality: "My kids are way too young to do this. If I can't do this, there's no one else."
43:43 -- What farming specifically does to fathers: the physical presence advantage
46:12 -- The four dark years: deleting social media, talking to no one, shutting everything off
50:09 -- Dan: "You were a ghost. A shell of a man." And the Farmer Stress Line conversation
49:58 -- The Bone Trail moment: Jeff shows the Bennett Code piece -- "Protect your family, honor the elders, always leave your mark"
53:27 -- The 3D crystal gift: how Dan gave his dad a piece with the farm map and portrait for his 75th birthday
54:53 -- Last question: What do you want your kids to know as a farmer and a father?
55:20 -- Jeff: "You can do it. And it's worth it."
56:29 -- Final word: "The most useful advice my grandfather ever gave my father was: pick that rock. You'll never be closer to it."
Resources Mentioned
Bone Trail Originals -- custom laser-engraved glass, wood, and 3D crystal pieces. bonetrail.ca
Farmer Stress Line -- 1-866-327-6701 (mentioned by Dan; referenced in context of Dallas LeDuc)
AgTalk -- domore.ag/agtalk -- anonymous, farmer-to-farmer online space, clinically moderated
Crop-Aid Nutrition -- platform partner, Saskatchewan-based soil health
Hammond Realty -- platform partner, Ag Exits and Acquisitions
GRIPP -- platform partner, farm data and QR code systems
Convergence Conference 2027 -- GTF flagship event, Regina, Doubletree
Connect with Jeff Bennett
Bone Trail Originals: bonetrail.ca
Instagram and social: search Bone Trail Originals
Connect with Growing the Future
Website: growingthefuture.ca
YouTube: Growing the Future
Instagram: @growingthefuture
LinkedIn: Growing the Future
Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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Content note: This episode includes open conversation about mental health, suicidal ideation, and personal crisis. If you are struggling, please know you are not alone. In the U.S., call or text 988. In Canada, call Talk Suicide Canada at 1-833-456-4566.
A conversation with Trevor Muir -- leadership coach, keynote speaker, poet, and co-founder of SurePoint, the Alberta-based company he helped scale from $4 million to over $120 million in revenue while holding on to its people through a near-bankruptcy and a pandemic.
This is not an episode about farming or fuel prices. It is a conversation about what happens when you get everything you thought you wanted and still feel empty on the bathroom floor of a condo you own. It is about terminal uniqueness -- the belief that nobody could possibly understand -- and the slow, expensive way most of us learn it isn't true.
Trevor and I met earlier this year in a leadership course he was teaching with Corliss Russell. I broke down in the intro. A room full of oilfield and farm guys went there with me. This episode is the conversation I wanted to have with Trevor once the dust settled.
Topics and Timestamps
0:00 -- Introduction: Trevor Muir, Lean In to Lead, and why this episode exists
6:57 -- SurePoint: how ten farm kids from Grand Prairie built a $92M company
8:17 -- The bathroom floor: Edmonton, 2011, the worst and best day of Trevor's life
10:44 -- Dr. Gons and the life coach: "I get it. I totally get it."
13:13 -- Terminal uniqueness: the belief that nobody could understand your pain
14:21 -- Mount Kilimanjaro and the billionaire: testing whether all humans feel the same
20:00 -- SurePoint near-bankruptcy: going full-vulnerable with team, vendors, and clients
23:00 -- Buying the company back in 2018 and the pandemic decision
25:43 -- The pandemic pay cuts: 10%-35%, keeping every employee
27:39 -- $30M to $98M to $125M: how caring became a competitive advantage
30:00 -- Scale Like You Give a Shit -- Trevor's book in progress
37:00 -- "Change Your Someday to Today": the poem, Marty's CPR story, and Brian's car
43:11 -- The three A's of change: awareness, acceptance, action
44:34 -- The flooding basement analogy
51:00 -- Affirmations: "I am enough, I deserve abundance, I love you [name]"
57:02 -- 30 days in the mirror: the NASA research and Jack Canfield connection
1:00:04 -- Gratitude as the number one brain hack
1:07:29 -- Wave of fortune: Dan's Thailand story and Vadim Zeland's Transurfing
1:15:00 -- Walking one kilometer every day for 365 days
1:27:00 -- How Trevor works with business owners now, and where AI fits in
1:35:12 -- Trevor's closing challenge: change your someday to today
Resources Mentioned
Addiction to Poetry -- Trevor Muir (book, available on Amazon)
Lean In to Lead -- Trevor's podcast, launching soon
Scale Like You Give a Shit -- Trevor's book in progress on the SurePoint story
Jack Canfield -- affirmation and manifestation framework
Mindvalley / Vishon Lakhiani -- gratitude research
Wim Hof Method -- 90-day cold exposure and breathwork program
Transurfing -- Vadim Zeland (wave of fortune concept)
12 Rules for Life -- Jordan Peterson (lobster and serotonin, referenced by Dan)
Corliss Russell -- Conversations with Corliss podcast; LEED event Saskatoon, November 2026
Connect with Trevor Muir
LinkedIn: search Trevor Muir -- he reads his messages and responds, especially from people who are struggling
Lean In to Lead podcast: launching soon
Connect with Growing the Future
Website: growingthefuture.ca
YouTube: Growing the Future
Instagram: @growingthefuture
LinkedIn: Growing the Future
Crisis Support
If you or someone you know is struggling:
Canada -- Talk Suicide Canada: 1-833-456-4566
U.S. -- Call or text 988
Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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Tim Hammond opens with one frame: most buyers are reactive. The phone rings, the land is available, they start figuring out whether they can buy it. Tim's position is that question should have been answered two years before the call. The prepared buyer already has the number. The unprepared buyer watches somebody else close it.
Wade walks the Four Ds from the buyer's seat -- Define (kitchen table, ambitions, logistics), Discover (compile, blueprint), Design (three options, pros/cons, recommendation), Deliver (execute). Tim notes the process is not linear; in practice they cycle back to Define as new information surfaces. The container for all of it is the war room: accountant, lender, lawyer, and real estate advisor in the same room at the same time. Poll 2 found zero percent of the audience had done this. Tim was not surprised.
The second half opens the capital question. Wade is working a live deal where a seller with a $70M holding is willing to retain $30M to make the transaction possible for a buyer who cannot finance the full amount. Tim names the industry horizon: not enough capital exists in the system to transition all the farms that need to move in the next two to three decades, and creative structures -- tranches, seller retention, equity partnerships -- will become the standard, not the exception. Two topics flagged for future episodes: right of first refusal (common, well-intentioned, six-figure exit consequences if set up wrong) and the young farmer entry question (Joshua from Lethbridge, land at $20K-$30K per acre -- Tim's answer: start the conversation before you think you need to).
KEY TOPICS
- Poll 1: 55% said biggest barrier is structure (no entity or plan); 33% said finding land; 9% financing; 0% timing
- Poll 2: 0% have a war room with all advisors at the table; 40% partially; 30% no; 10% did not know that was the move
- Poll 3: 33% actively looking or in a deal; 8% positioned and waiting; 17% thinking about it; 25% harvest mode; 17% advisors here for the framework
- Four Ds applied to the buyer: Define, Discover, Design, Deliver -- not linear, frequently cycles back to Define
- The war room: accountant + lender + lawyer + real estate advisor in the same room at the same time
- Most expensive mistake in 30 days: buying land that doesn't fit your operation (Wade: "You've just spent $500K to $1M on a quarter you shouldn't have bought, and now when the right one shows up, you might not be able to")
- Seller retaining $30M on a $70M deal: creative structure enabling the deal to close for a buyer who can't finance the full amount
- Capital supply gap: not enough capital in the system to transition all farms needing succession in the next 2-3 decades
- Saskatchewan: average farmer owns 2/3 of the land they farm -- highest ratio in the world (US is 40%, Europe is 10-20%)
- Cap rate gap: investors require 2.5-4%; farmers outbid investors because they capture both land return and operating return
- Right of first refusal: flagged as common-but-misunderstood tool with major exit consequences -- future episode
- Young farmers question: Joshua from Lethbridge, land at $20K-$30K per acre; Tim's answer: start the conversation before you think you need to
CONNECT
- Tim Hammond and Wade Berlinic: hammondrealty.ca
- growingthefuture.ca
Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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Dan opens in the water off Koh Lanta, Thailand. The science: a 133-foot tsunami wave registers as zero in deep water. Depth neutralizes force before it ever arrives. The wave only becomes a wave when the ocean floor rises to meet it. That is the operating principle for this session: the operators who get hurt in an AI-disrupted industry are not the ones who were too far away from the change. They are the ones who were too shallow when it arrived.
Dan then goes personal. The company collapse. Ten years of revenue, one email in Thailand, zero in January. A leadership meeting where he broke down in front of his team. A vision board that had to be rebuilt around actual DNA rather than borrowed aspiration. Kolbe 7-2-9-2: Quick Start 9, Fact Finder 7 -- the profile that explains why he was always ahead of the room and always restless inside frameworks built for Follow-Thru operators. The session is a product launch, but the argument for the product is rooted in scar tissue, not pitch mechanics.
The second half is live demos. Personal Operating Diagnostic: a multi-instrument synthesis agent that reads your personality assessments and outputs a build order for your first three AI agents, sequenced to how you actually work. Robert Andjelic GPT: asked where to buy farmland in Western Canada, it answered with the specificity of a researcher and the posture of a trusted advisor. Melissa the nutrition coach GPT. Then: a full website built in 35 minutes with Claude Code -- the same work that cost $5K and months with a contractor. Dan's own fleet of 50 agents, all running on a markdown brain. Agents include a completion system, a voice-lock drafting agent, and a decision brief agent. The demos are not proof of concept. They are the product, already running.
The offer: GYFOS Cohort 1. $1,997 USD one-time. 90 days. 12-13 live sessions. 8-12 operators per cohort. 30-day money-back guarantee. $29/month continuation access after the cohort closes. The pitch is precise: this is not a course. It is a guided build. You leave with an operating system that reflects how you think, not a certificate that something was completed.
KEY TOPICS
- Wave physics as positioning strategy: depth not distance, get in the sweet spot before the ocean floor rises
- Dan's company collapse and rebuild arc -- scar tissue behind the GYFOS product design
- Kolbe 7-2-9-2 and core values (Integrity, Growth, Wisdom) as the foundation for AI agent design
- Personal Operating Diagnostic -- multi-instrument personality synthesis, AI build order output
- Live demo: Robert Andjelic farmland GPT, Melissa nutrition coach GPT, 35-minute website build with Claude Code
- Fleet of 50 agents on a markdown brain (completion system, voice-lock drafting, decision brief)
- Adoption context: 1.8% of Western Canadian agribusiness using AI; 19% of all businesses; 41% of workers
- Historical wave pattern: horses to tractors, zero-till (called "trash farming"), internet (2.6M users 1990 to 2B by 2010)
- Three takeaways: You are not late. Start with yourself, not the AI. Learn to orchestrate, not operate.
- GYFOS Cohort 1 offer: $1,997 USD, 90 days, 8-12 operators, 30-day guarantee
CONNECT
- Dan Aberhart: growingthefuture.ca
- GYFOS enrollment: growingthefuture.ca (GTF Mastermind)
Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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Dan opened the session by noting that a billion-dollar Prairie farming operation had entered creditor protection -- and that nearly 40 farms were in or near distress that year. Robert Andjelic had received roughly 40 calls from farms across Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and elsewhere, all with a common thread: lenders were tightening, some operators could not access input credit, and they wanted to sell land and rent it back while keeping their equipment running and their family farming. Robert completed four of those transactions. He was direct about the others: they either did not fit his land criteria or could not be executed on terms that made sense. The session poll showed roughly half the room believed the current stress is both structural and cyclical -- a hard stretch exposing cracks that were already forming.
Robert provided a compressed history of farm size in Canada, from 1925 when 10,000 acres was considered enormous, through the post-2000 acceleration driven by GPS auto-steer, massive air seeders, zero-till, low interest rates after 2008, normalized leasing, and aging operators. His conclusion: one modern operator now does what five to ten farm families previously required, and that trajectory will continue. Tim Hammond placed the hardest growth window at 2,500 to 6,000 acres -- the point where a family operation transitions from one set of implements to multiple, and from family labor to hired crews with all the human resource and financial management that demands. After 6,000, Tim argued, the next logical step is to think in enterprise pods -- another 6,000 acres, another labor module -- rather than organic farm growth. Robert's position: there is no correct size. He has tenants farming 1,000 acres who are as profitable as his 30,000-acre operators. His own loan-to-value sits below 24 percent because he built over 60 years when land was cheap. Cap rate on Prairie land purchased today: 1.5 to 3 percent, maybe 3.5 if the seller needs cash. He was blunt about marketing: "A lot of producers are very good at producing but they are shit poor in marketing," and that gap -- benchmarked by MNP at roughly $70 per acre -- is a large part of what separates farms that survive downturns from those that do not.
The sharpest exchange of the session came when Dallas LeDuc joined. He is the fire chief of RM 44, a small rural municipality where Robert is likely the largest landowner. Dallas had recently stopped spraying to respond to a fire on land Robert owns. He argued that absentee landlords should pay a modestly higher property tax rate -- not punitive, maybe 10 to 15 percent higher -- to fund the fire trucks, training, and equipment that local volunteers maintain and use to protect land the landlords will never physically see. Robert's counter was structural: his tenants are local and respond to fires; making tax exceptions for agriculture creates red flags with institutional lenders; and the most important thing he does for Prairie producers is not visible -- it is the 12 to 13 years and more than $50,000 he has spent flying to Toronto to sit with bank decision-makers and explain to them that agricultural lending does not work like commercial real estate. His argument: when a lender in Toronto extends patience to a distressed farm instead of foreclosing, every producer in Western Canada benefits -- and no individual operator has the leverage to make that case to the head offices the way he can. Dallas was not persuaded. He closed with the line that his great-grandfather left France in 1904 to get away from doctors and lawyers owning the land, and he is afraid that is exactly where the Prairies are heading.
Key Topics
Farm credit stress in Western Canada 2026: nearly 40 farms in distress; Robert Andjelic received 40 calls from operators wanting to sell and rent back; completed 4 transactions Live session poll: roughly 50 percent of audience said the current crisis is both structural and cyclical History of farm scale in Canada: 1925 to today -- from 10,000 acres enormous to 50,000-plus now common What drove post-2000 farm growth: GPS auto-steer, massive air seeders, zero-till, post-2008 low interest rates, aging operators, normalized leasing Tim Hammond's growth framework: hardest growth is 2,500 to 6,000 acres; after 6,000, think in enterprise pods Robert Andjelic's cap rate reality: Prairie land bought today yields 1.5 to 3 percent; his own LTV is below 24 percent built over 60 years "A strategy is what you say no to" -- Tim Hammond on the discipline of farm scale decisions Marketing gap: roughly $70 per acre difference between producers who market well and those who do not (MNP benchmark referenced) Absentee landlord taxation debate: Dallas LeDuc (fire chief, RM 44) vs. Robert Andjelic -- rural community burden vs. capital market access argument Robert Andjelic's Toronto bank work: 12-13 years, $50,000+ in meetings, translating agriculture to commercial real estate lenders Kevin Hursh on retiring farmers: those who rail against big farms all their lives tend to sell to the biggest neighbour when retirement comes; breaking land into smaller parcels would give next-generation operators a chance Robert's macro thesis: higher commodity prices incoming due to Strait of Hormuz disruption, fertilizer supply constraints, and a potential super El Nino cycle Family farm vs. corporate model: Tim Hammond -- corporate farms must learn family commitment; family farms must learn corporate structure; the marriage of the two is the futureConnect
Kevin Hursh -- Western Producer columns; hursh.ca Robert Andjelic -- farmland.ca Dallas LeDuc -- Bunnyhug Farmers Podcast; TikTok growingthefuture.caRegister for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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Tom Wolf opened with the frame that carried the session: doing the right thing at the right time. Take away the right time part and the right thing is irrelevant. Spraying has changed dramatically -- operators who used to make two passes a year now make three to five, and the equipment cost running at roughly $400 an hour means every minute away from spraying is measurable. The first section covered water quality, built around five numbers from a standard water test. Darren Sander opened with the operator's version of the lesson: Crop-Aid's farm pulls from a cold well at 1,200 TDS, so they tank it into black poly storage and spray from the warmest tank first. Cold water hurts efficacy -- especially glufosinate. Tom then walked through pH (most mixes fine; what matters is the final mix pH, not source pH), TDS and conductivity (under 500 is clean; most Prairie wells come in over 1,000; the number tells you whether to look further), bicarbonates (500 ppm is the threshold; above it, ammonium sulfate is the most versatile fix), total hardness (calcium carbonate equivalent; Jeff Bennett's water had very low hardness but elevated sodium, which still antagonizes glyphosate and glufosinate), and turbidity (aluminum sulfate as a flocculant for dugouts; stir and leave 24 to 48 hours). Jeff's live water test from Agvise became the worked example. Tom's verdict: low hardness, elevated sodium, ammonium sulfate recommended.
The coverage section opened with a number that reframed the whole conversation: according to a Mesonet researcher in North Dakota, 100 percent of nights in the state experience thermal inversions. Some are worse than others, but the baseline is total. Under an inversion, fine droplets go where they want -- downhill if there is topography, anywhere if there is not. Tom's prescription: start on the downwind side of the field, spray perpendicular to the wind, turn into the headwind on every pass. Never spray down and then back against the wind. The droplet size discussion followed: coarser nozzles, deployed early in Canada before most countries, allowed operators to spray in slightly windier conditions without adding drift risk. Air induction tips are the go-to for general spraying. Spray pressure -- as low as 30 psi for AI tips -- adjusts droplet size one category in either direction. Water sensitive paper laid on the ground is the cheapest coverage check available. On water volume, Tom's position was direct: more is better. Complex tank mixes behave better with more water. More water allows coarser droplets without losing coverage. Later-season applications -- PGRs, fungicides, desiccants -- want 10 to 15 gallons per acre. Cutting back on water to improve logistics is a trade with a real cost.
The logistics section brought Jay Peterson into the conversation. He runs a 1,600-gallon machine with a 120-foot boom and a dedicated water truck driver. His fill times on easy mixes: seven to nine minutes on three-inch plumbing. Complex mixes with dry products that need to hydrate: 15 minutes. Tom confirmed those numbers are right. The tendering revolution changed spraying fundamentally: a 30-minute fill is now a five-minute fill, which means filling is the stressful moment and spraying is the calm one. Continuous rinsing systems collapsed a three-quarter-hour triple rinse down to five minutes. Tom's recommended exercise: when the sprayer engine is running, write down what you're doing if you're not spraying. Data entry, monitor troubleshooting, looking for a menu -- every one of those is a round you did not spray. The session closed on the same line it opened with: an important job is worth doing well.
Key Topics
The five water quality numbers: pH (final mix matters more than source), TDS/conductivity (500 clean threshold), bicarbonates (500 ppm action threshold), total hardness (calcium carbonate equivalent), turbidity (aluminum sulfate flocculant) Ammonium sulfate as the most versatile water conditioner -- binds hard water cations AND improves herbicide uptake Warm water and spray efficacy: glufosinate works significantly better with warm water; Darren Sander's black poly tank system Thermal inversions: 100% of nights in North Dakota are inverted; fine droplets go where they want under inversion Spray direction strategy: downwind start, perpendicular to wind, headwind turns on every pass Coarser nozzles and Canada's early adoption: air induction tips as the go-to for general spraying; pressure adjusts droplet size Water volume: why cutting back hurts complex tank mixes, coverage flexibility, and late-season applications Sprayer logistics and the tendering revolution: three-inch plumbing, five-minute fills, continuous rinsing systems Time accounting: write down what you're doing when the engine is running but you're not spraying Foam management: turn off agitator while filling; Halt defoamer for high-salt tank mixesResources Mentioned
Sprayers 101 -- sprayers101.com (Tom Wolf, Dr. Jason DeVos) Crop-Aid Nutrition -- cropaidnutrition.com (Darren Sander) Spray Water Cheat Sheet -- Tom Wolf / Crop-Aid co-branded, distributed to all registrants Agvise Labs -- water testing (Jeff Bennett's water test source) ALS Labs, Saskatoon -- water testing Saskatchewan Research Council (Innovation Place, Saskatoon) -- water testing Nozzle Ninja, Stettler AB -- nozzle parts, mail order (nozzleninja.com) Agri Auto, Saskatoon -- nozzle parts, expanded store north end Water sensitive paper -- available at Agri Auto Saskatoon and Nozzle Ninja Halt defoamer -- high-salt tank mix defoamer (Darren Sander recommendation) Aluminum sulfate -- dugout turbidity flocculant; source via municipalities or water treatment suppliers ClearTech -- aluminum sulfate supplier (mentioned by Mike Green in chat)Connect
Sprayers 101 -- sprayers101.com (click Tom Wolf name at bottom of page) Crop-Aid Nutrition -- cropaidnutrition.com growingthefuture.caRegister for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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Dan opens with a Call of Duty analogy that lands: you keep getting smoked because they can see you, but you cannot see them. That is the position of a Canadian canola or wheat farmer every time they price grain. The buyers on the other side of the trade know what has been sold, where it is going, when it ships, and what it cleared for. The farmer does not. In the United States, any large grain sale must be reported to the USDA within 24 hours, and the weekly export sales report has been publicly available since 1973 - a direct response to the Great Grain Robbery, when U.S. grain companies oversold and nearly emptied the country's supply. Canada never built the equivalent. The port load data that used to come out of Vancouver every Friday - commodity, volume, destination - disappeared when the Wheat Board ended. The room has less data than it had 20 years ago.
Marlene Boersch, who has spent her career studying the architecture of how Canadian grain moves, presented findings from two commissioned reports. The 2021 "Data Requirements for Transparent Markets" study mapped what data growers would find useful and found near-zero timely information on the export side - Stats Canada data runs 2-3 months behind execution, 4-6 months behind the farm decision. The 2024 supply chain impact study tried to put a number on the silence. Using U.S. data as a simulation proxy, it found that a 5% improvement in data availability translates to a minimum of 5 cents per acre in wheat, and that export sale announcements in the U.S. improve basis by 6-14 cents per bushel for 1-3 weeks following publication. Across Canada's export volumes, the conservative estimate is $56.5 million per year in foregone farm income. Boersch emphasized these were the most conservative assumptions possible - one variable, one commodity window.
John De Pape, who was trading from a Vancouver Cargill desk in 1984 and watched the market explode past $700 per ton because no one knew what anyone else had sold, made the structural argument plainly: this will not be solved by private industry because grain companies have grain company hats on. When he built pdqinfo.ca after the Wheat Board ended - a price transparency tool that aggregated posted bids from seven major grain companies - it required Jerry Ritz to explicitly threaten legislation before the companies cooperated. The current moment, with Bunge-Viterra merged and Grains Connect folded into P&H, makes the concentration problem worse, not better. De Pape also flagged target contracts specifically: when a farmer signs a good-till-cancel grain pricing order with one company, they are selling a call option without receiving a premium, while the buyer covers a hidden export position and no one in the market knows the trade happened. Short-duration GPOs only, or none at all.
Key Topics
The Canadian grain data gap: Stats Canada export data runs 2-3 months behind; USDA reports weekly and same-day on large sales Marlene Boersch's 2024 finding: minimum $56.5 million per year in foregone farm income from lack of export sales data The Great Grain Robbery (1972) and why the U.S. built export transparency - and Canada never did How grain company consolidation (Bunge-Viterra, Grains Connect-P&H) makes information asymmetry worse John De Pape on target contracts: selling a call option without getting paid for it Why private industry cannot solve this - PDQ/pdqinfo.ca as proof that legislation was required even for posted bid transparency My Grain Exchange (MGX): private platform building real actionable bid transparency, 75 traders, 15 trades in May 2026 Saskatchewan Crop Commissions government relations push - Ottawa in-person meetings scheduled for the week of May 25, 2026 Ryan Bonnett's call to action: grassroots farmer petition modeled on the Quebec dairy lobby Marlene Boersch's closing framework: start from the end goal (maximize Canadian ag exports and GDP), then build the system that gets thereResources Mentioned
Marlene Boersch (2021): "Data Requirements for Transparent Markets" - commissioned by Saskatchewan Crop Commissions and APAS Marlene Boersch (2024): "Supply Chain Impact of Export Sales Data Transparency" - PDF shared with attendees pdqinfo.ca - John De Pape's posted bid price transparency tool, built post-Wheat Board with Alberta Grain Commission My Grain Exchange (mgx) - Luke Derkson's private real-bid grain trading platform saskoilseeds.com/export-sales-reporting - Saskatchewan Oilseed Producers export sales reporting resource (shared by Blair Goldade) Real Ag webinar on this topic (shared in chat by Andrea Lauder)Connect
Ryan Bonnett: ABB Solutions Marlene Boersch: Mercantile Consulting Venture John De Pape: pdqinfo.ca Luke Derkson: My Grain Exchange (MGX) Blair Goldade: Saskatchewan Crop Commissions growingthefuture.caRegister for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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The Prairie farmland market has changed in ways the traditional listing industry has not kept pace with. A quarter that traded at $300 an acre in 1967 now moves north of $5,000 to $15,000 in some areas. A 10-quarter farm that was worth $500,000 two decades ago may now carry a value of $5 million to $10 million. The advice infrastructure around those transactions has not scaled with the numbers. Tim Hammond and Wade Berlinic started Hammond Realty with a conviction that a $30 million event could not be managed with a sign at the end of the lane and a handshake at the elevator. In 2024, they moved a 15,000-acre operation in three months. The family's children did not know it was for sale until the family was ready to tell them. Neither did the staff. Neither did the neighbors.
The Ag Exits and Acquisitions Advisory Framework is their answer to the gap. Four phases: Define, Discover, Design, Deliver. Define locks the agreement and expectations before any marketing begins. Discover maps every asset -- land title structures, yield history, landlord relationships, equipment, grain -- and identifies the tax and structural questions that need to be resolved before the farm is positioned. Design produces a blueprint with options, including a draft purchase and sale agreement built around what the seller needs, before any buyer has been approached. Deliver is the market phase -- and it is the only phase the traditional listing model touches. Wade and Tim bring in the lawyer, the accountant, the lender, and the wealth advisor together, often for the first time. They described sitting with a pair of brothers and watching the stress leave the room after that first coordinated meeting. The advisors who are in the room frequently say afterward that they have never done it that way before and should have been doing it all along.
The live audience polls gave the conversation its sharpest moments. When asked what worries them most about a farm exit, tax exposure and family conflict tied at 33 percent each. Getting the right price was essentially an afterthought. Wade's response: the highest price after tax does not necessarily start with the highest price to begin with. Structure matters more than the number on the listing. On team coordination, only 19 percent of the room said all their advisors talk to each other. Thirty-one percent said: what team? Tim noted that roughly 20 percent of the people they sit with have done the hard work of building a coordinated plan. The rest range from partial to none. Ryan Hillstead from Core Wealth confirmed the pattern from the wealth advisor side: too many families arrive after the transaction is already done and ask to sort out the taxes. Harry Siemens closed with a dairy succession story from Grunthal, Manitoba, where a family had no plan when their father had his first heart attack. They built one after he recovered. When he passed from a second heart attack, the plan worked. Harry's words: had they not had it, it would have been a complete disaster.
Key Topics
The Ag Exits and Acquisitions Advisory Framework -- four phases: Define, Discover, Design, Deliver Why the traditional listing model cannot hold a $30M farm transition Confidentiality in farm sales: employee retention, landlord relationships, coffee shop exposure Live poll results: tax exposure and family conflict tied as top seller concerns; 31 percent of room had no advisor team Enterprise value vs. listing price -- why documented yield history, land block continuity, and structure can be worth $500 per acre Build to sell mindset: treating the farm as a business from day one, not just at exit Advisor coordination as the turning point -- getting lawyer, accountant, lender, and wealth advisor in the same room together Timing the market: best time to list a farm is July, when the crop is growing, not winter Emotional dimensions of a farm exit -- processing the transition over 1 to 2 years vs. a one-month market sprintResources Mentioned
The Ag Exits and Acquisitions Advisory Framework -- Hammond Realty proprietary process Hammond Realty -- hammondrealty.ca Core Wealth -- Ryan Hillstead (wealth advisory, Saskatchewan) Strategic Coach -- referenced by Tim Hammond as the framework for naming the Unique MethodConnect
Hammond Realty -- hammondrealty.ca Tim Hammond -- LinkedIn Wade Berlinic -- LinkedIn growingthefuture.caRegister for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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The format is a pitch competition. Three operators come in cold, each shows the room exactly what they have built, and the audience votes. No PowerPoints about what AI could do. No vendor demos. Just a farmer, a coach, and an entrepreneur holding up real work.
Trevor Muir went first. After leaving SurePoint Technologies - which he scaled from $4 million to over $120 million in revenue before buying it back from U.S. private equity and handing it to the employees who built it - he found himself without a team and without a system. He built one. He started by asking AI to construct a board of directors for his goals, then turned each board position into a persistent custom persona. The result is Serena - a named AI executive assistant and strategic thinking partner Trevor has used for more than a thousand hours, exclusively by voice. He has never typed into a chat window on a computer except twice, for demos. On the call, he introduced Serena live; she spoke, answered Dan's questions about hallucination and memory, and explained her own purpose more clearly than Trevor could. He has since deployed the board-of-directors framework inside ten companies and has a course in development, not yet public. His warning to the room: AI will validate you when it should push back, and information overload - not a lack of data - is the actual problem most operators face.
Steve Langston pitched AI literacy, not AI tools. A Manitoba entrepreneur and video producer who has renovated 25-30 rural properties, cycled 35,000 kilometres, and written a book on rural community revival, Steve spent the first 45 minutes of an 8-hour AI consulting engagement delivering everything the client needed - then had to rethink what consulting even means. His practical framework: block an hour to be curious, not productive. Stop using AI like a search engine. Create an AI brief - a persistent context document about your business and yourself - so the tool knows who it is talking to. The example that resonated: instead of asking for a shareholder's agreement, ask AI to surface the 10 questions it needs to build one properly. On rural communities and AI displacement, his position was calm and direct: if it is a repeatable task, it is at risk. But rural communities have trades, proximity, affordability, and quality of life that no algorithm replaces. He sees rural Canada as structurally insulated and, if anything, better positioned than the urban centres.
Chris Unrau closed with the session's most surprising arc. He opened humble - told Dan he would be a disappointment - and then spent fifteen minutes describing a full vibe-coding operation built on Base44 while watching hockey games. He replaced a $10,000 custom app with a $40-a-month subscription that does more. He built a credit card receipt tracker that scans email, assigns expenses to eight companies, and generates reports. He built a crew field-tracking app with scoreboards after his team asked for one. All in evenings. He also told the room about using ChatGPT to handle Manitoba Health's roastery licensing questions 100% by AI - and getting approved - and about using AI to navigate the adoption and care of three boys with trauma backgrounds. His therapist endorsed it. His takeaway for the room: if you have an idea for an app, tell the tool what you want and it will make it. His next hire will likely be an AI specialist to maintain the growing ecosystem he cannot document fast enough. Tracey Wiedmeyer gave Chris the edge for demonstrating AI's widest surface area in a single operation - business, personal, relational, and creative all at once.
Key Topics
Trevor Muir's Serena: how to build a custom AI board of directors and executive assistant using only voice, over time The board-of-directors framework: identifying the advisory roles you need, then building them as persistent AI personas AI validation problem: AI will agree with you when it should push back - how the Serena system is designed to counter that Steve Langston on AI literacy: curiosity over speed, smart prompting, and the AI brief as a persistent context document The prompt is you: why context about yourself is the highest-leverage input, not the question you ask Rural communities as AI-insulated economies: trades, proximity, quality of life, and affordability as structural advantages Chris Unrau on vibe coding with Base44: building custom apps in evenings with no technical background Replace before you subscribe: why Chris is rethinking every SaaS tool his companies pay for AI for personal and relational challenges: all three operators shared non-business AI use cases Gripp June cohort: 20-producer training cohort launching in June 2026 (links shared in event chat)Resources Mentioned
Serena - Trevor Muir's custom AI executive assistant / board of directors (voice-only, built in ChatGPT; course in development, not yet public) Base44 - no-code / vibe coding app builder used by Chris Unrau ($40/month subscription) Small Town Big Dream - Steve Langston's book (available on Amazon) Gripp (grip.ag) - farm operations platform for tracking equipment, tasks, maintenance, and team communication Suno - AI music generator (Chris Unrau uses for making songs about friends) Convergence Conference 2027 - February 2-4, 2027 (links shared in event chat)Connect
Trevor Muir: LinkedIn (most active) Steve Langston: Dirty T-Shirt Productions; Small Town Big Dream on Amazon Chris Unrau: Precision Land Solutions Tracey Wiedmeyer: grip.ag growingthefuture.caRegister for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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Every farm family eventually needs a conversation about who inherits what, who doesn't, and why. Almost none of them finish it.
Patti Durand β family business advisor and author of The Future Leader β has built her career on being in the room when those conversations happen. Her business partner Chris Corbett grew up as one of five kids on a Manitoba farm and left at sixteen. Between the three of us, every side of the non-farming sibling story shows up at this table.
Patti's working claim is a plain one. Unspoken expectations become resentments. What gets left unsaid at a twenty-million-dollar kitchen table gets paid for later β in estate litigation, in family silence, in the farm that stops functioning.
Across an hour, Patti walks through three questions she has carried into hundreds of family meetings. Each one is designed to bring heirs to the table without handing them the keys. What surfaces is harder than a will and more uncomfortable than most farming parents expect.
Guests: Patti Durand and Chris Corbett of Bright Track Consulting β brighttrack.ca
Subscribe to Growing the Future for new episodes.
Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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Weather is the one thing you cannot plan for. But you can plan around it.
That difference β between being caught off guard and being positioned for whatever comes β is what this session is about.
Drew Lerner has been reading the atmosphere for 47 years. Commodity markets, food companies, and producers worldwide rely on him. He is the kind of guy who can draw the jet stream on a whiteboard in real time and make it feel like a kitchen table conversation. That is exactly what happened here.
Darren Sander runs a farm south of Rosetown, Saskatchewan. He has spent years figuring out how to reduce the damage weather does to his operation before the weather ever shows up. He opens the session by laying out the practical side β what farmers actually do to protect their crops from a season that has already made up its mind.
Together, the three of them cover a lot of ground.
Topics Covered
How prairie farmers mitigate weather before it arrives Seed timing, variety selection, soil biology, compaction, and why the first 30 days dictate maximum yield potential. Darren explains the logic behind building resilient crops when the inputs are already fighting you.
What the drought monitor is actually showing β and what it is missing The North American drought monitor does not capture long-term soil depletion well. For producers entering their eighth or ninth year of persistent dryness, the map looks more encouraging than it is. Drew explains why, and what to watch for as temperatures climb this spring.
The ridge of high pressure problem β and why the US dryness matters to you When soil is dry, ridges of high pressure intensify and hold. When soil is wet, ridges collapse. Right now, the Rocky Mountain snowpack and the US Plains are running significantly below normal, which means any summer ridge could anchor itself, amplify, and push north into the prairies. This is not the official forecast. It is the official worry.
What a Montana low means for the Southwest prairies Montana lows have been rare in recent years. That is a big part of why southern Alberta and southwest Saskatchewan have been so dry. One showed up in April 2026. Drew explains why that matters and what it signals about the pattern shift that may be coming.
The two competing weather patterns fighting over the prairies right now A ridge-dominated western pattern and an active US trough pattern have been alternating all winter. Neither one has been generous to the Canadian prairies. Drew explains when and how the jet stream will shift northward β and what that means for when moisture actually arrives.
The 18-year cycle and what it says about 2026 The lunar cycle is one of Drew's most reliable long-range tools. He walks through what it is, how it interacts with El NiΓ±o, and why 2026 looks meaningfully different from the worst years of the recent drought.
El NiΓ±o β what it actually means for the prairies, and what it does not El NiΓ±o is coming. The hype is overblown. Drew separates the signal from the noise, breaks down timing versus intensity, and explains what the transition from La NiΓ±a to El NiΓ±o typically looks like for June, July, and August across different regions of the prairies.
The solar cycle, commodity markets, and the window you are in right now Drew overlays the 11-year and 22-year solar cycles with corn and canola futures prices going back to the 1970s. The pattern is real and it matters for how you think about marketing. The 2020β2023 drought was not random β it was consistent with the solar minimum-to-maximum period. We are now two years past the solar maximum. That changes the outlook.
Why the Northeast prairies and Manitoba face a different set of problems Too much snow. Heavy soils. A wetter June on the way. The challenge in the east is almost the opposite of the challenge in the southwest, and Drew addresses both.
Peace country β is it going to be wet all spring? The short answer: yes, there is real risk of delayed seeding. Drew explains the pattern and what to watch for.
Weather modification β does cloud seeding actually work? Drew gives a genuinely honest answer to a question that generates a lot of heat in agricultural communities. Worth listening to.
Forest fire smoke and its effect on crop temperatures An uncomfortable truth: in 2021, smoke from northern fires may have actually moderated temperatures enough to reduce crop losses. Drew explains the physics.
Global market drivers to watch in late 2026 and into 2027 El NiΓ±o's impact on Southeast Asia, India, and the pulse markets. Coffee, cocoa, palm oil, and what to pay attention to if you're thinking about canola.
Timestamps
[00:00:00] Welcome and context β 420 registered, 250 live [00:01:00] Introduction to Drew Lerner and World Weather Inc. [00:02:30] How probabilities work β and why no weather forecaster really knows what they're doing [00:05:00] Darren Sander on farm-level weather mitigation β seed primers, soil biology, compaction [00:08:10] Drew on how farmers in the US approach weather risk [00:13:00] AI, machine learning, and the future of weather forecasting [00:19:00] The North American drought monitor β what it shows and what it misses [00:22:00] The ridge of high pressure β basic atmospheric physics and why the US dryness is your problem too [00:27:00] Nine years of drought in southwest Saskatchewan β when does the drought monitor catch up? [00:27:30] The Omega block explained β live whiteboard illustration [00:31:00] Soil moisture assessment heading into spring 2026 [00:35:00] Snow cover β who has too much, who has too little, and what happens next [00:39:00] The two storm systems coming in April β what to expect in your area [00:41:00] Why the Montana low is encouraging news for southern Alberta [00:43:00] Manitoba β a different problem, a wetter spring coming [00:44:00] The primary influences on 2026: La NiΓ±a fading, El NiΓ±o arriving, the 18-year cycle, the solar cycle, ocean temperatures [00:50:00] Warm ocean temperatures globally β why that matters for storm moisture [00:52:00] The upper air pattern that has dominated since November β and when it breaks [00:58:00] US frost risk and potential market opportunities for prairie producers [01:01:00] The 30-day outlook β less precipitation coming after these two storms, then a pattern shift [01:06:00] El NiΓ±o timing and what the 18-year cycle data says month by month: May, June, July [01:13:00] The 1972 comparison β why Drew does not like it as an analog, and what is different this year [01:17:00] Drought monitor data collection β how granular is it, really? [01:19:00] Weather modification and cloud seeding β does it work? [01:26:00] The solar cycle and commodity futures β a 50-year correlation worth understanding [01:37:00] Global market drivers: Southeast Asia, India, pulse crops, coffee, cocoa, and canola [01:39:00] India's monsoon β El NiΓ±o timing versus the Indian Ocean Dipole [01:42:00] Final questions, closing remarks, and gratitude from the room
About Drew Lerner Drew Lerner is the founder and senior agricultural meteorologist at World Weather Inc., a subscription-based service relied upon by commodity markets, food companies, and producers worldwide for over four decades. His forecasts cover the Canadian prairies, the US Plains, and global crop production regions. To subscribe or get in touch: worldweather.cc
About Darren Sander Darren farms south of Rosetown, Saskatchewan, and has spent years building a farming system designed to withstand weather stress β from seed to harvest.
About Growing the Future Productions Growing the Future Productions is a live, interactive briefing platform for prairie producers and agricultural professionals. We run monthly sessions with the best minds in prairie agriculture β weather, markets, land, technology, policy, and the things that actually matter on the farm.
Subscribe to the Growing the Future Podcast wherever you listen. Follow Growing the Future on LinkedIn and Instagram. To find out about upcoming live sessions, visit growtingthefuture.ca
Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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FCC just dropped the 2025 farmland numbers. Canada up 9.3%. Manitoba leading at 12.2. Saskatchewan at 9.4. West Central Saskatchewan at 4.8 β roughly half the provincial move.
That split is what this episode is about.
Dan hosts a live panel with four guests who are in the data, closing deals, and financing purchases right now. Not forecasting from a distance. Actually in it. Together they work through what the headline number isn't telling you, why buyers are getting more selective, what lenders are seeing at Q1, and what comes next for a market that has run hard for twenty-five years.
The honest answer from every person on the panel: the market is not the same everywhere, and it hasn't been for a while.
Topics and timestamps:
0:00 β Introduction. The division forming between good land and everything else. FCC 2025 numbers across the prairies. 5:00 β Panel introductions: Tim Hammond (Hammond Realty), Bobby Montreuil (Hammond Realty / active producer), Courtney Thevenot (Scotiabank Ag), Conrad Olson (FCC, West Central Saskatchewan) 6:00 β What the market is telling the people actually closing deals β that the FCC report won't show until next year 8:00 β Why 30 pre-approvals per tender became 4 or 5. Less players. Not less land moving. 10:00 β West Central at 4.8% vs. the provincial 9.4%. What tighter margins and rougher crop years look like in the numbers, lagged. 13:00 β Live audience poll: where do you think farmland values are going in your area in the next 12 months? Results: 53% flat, 18% down, 24% up. 17:00 β How fortunes get made in land. The cap rate reality. Why the guy who paid $2,100 when everyone said $1,800 was the ceiling was right. 19:00 β Where are producers actually getting their local farmland values? Neighbors and coffee shop vs. realtor vs. lender vs. FCC. (Spoiler: coffee shop was first pick for 26%.) 23:00 β The Saskatchewan Comparable Farmland Reports and Farmland Security Board database as a tool for area-specific data. 28:00 β "They're not making any more land." How land buyers pencil it out when input costs keep rising and commodity prices stay uncertain. 29:00 β The lender's view: it's never about one parcel. It's about the whole operation. Cash flow. Equity. Fit. 33:00 β Large land packages and what potential Manette-scale offerings might signal for market dynamics. 37:00 β Next audience poll: what is your most likely land move in the next 12 months? 45% hold. 25% buy. 11% sell. 20% rent before purchase. 38:00 β Strategic efficiency purchases. Buying to right-size. Selling what's far away and consolidating closer to home. 41:00 β The Pareto Principle and farmland: 80% of what's for sale is weaker land. Was true in the 2000s. Still true now. 44:00 β Succession pressure and what it means for supply. 65% of Saskatchewan farmland owned by someone 65 or older. What happens when no one's taking over? 46:00 β Lending health check. Are declines increasing? Short answer from both Scotia and FCC: not really. Agriculture is holding stronger than the general business community. 51:00 β Creative financing structures for land that doesn't pencil on its own. Interest-only periods. Phased purchases. Part-buy, part-rent. 54:00 β Final round: one takeaway from each panelist. Bobby: still long on farmland. Courtney: Canadian ag is set up to shine. Conrad: hesitancy with a strong dose of optimism β know your numbers and stay agile. 58:00 β Audience takeaways read live, plus upcoming episodes: Drew Lerner on spring weather, non-farming siblings and succession, Steffes auction on whether now is the time to buy iron.What makes this one worth your time:
You have an FCC lender, a Scotiabank ag lender, a real estate professional who is also actively farming, and one of Saskatchewan's most experienced farm real estate agents β all in the same room at the same time. No rehearsed answers. No unified talking point. Just four people telling you what they're actually seeing in Q1 2026, with an audience of producers pushing back in real time.
The takeaway isn't a prediction. It's a map. Good land in good areas is behaving differently than average land in average areas. Lenders are still lending. Buyers are getting more selective. And succession is quietly building pressure underneath all of it that the headline numbers don't capture yet.
Guests:
Tim Hammond β Founder and CEO, Hammond Realty. 25 years in Saskatchewan farm real estate. Expert in farmland transactions, succession advisory, and M&A. Based in Biggar, Saskatchewan. hammondrealty.ca
Bobby Montreuil β Farm real estate agent with Hammond Realty and active prairie producer. Both sides of the deal, every day.
Courtney Thevenot β Agricultural Lender, Scotiabank. Part of the Build Your Ag Dream Team. Sees the deals before they close and the ones that don't.
Conrad Olson β Agricultural Lender, FCC Rosetown. A decade financing West Central Saskatchewan land purchases. Knows the dirt.
Stay connected:
Growing the Future Productions β growingtthefuture.ca LinkedIn: Growing the Future YouTube: Growing the Future Podcast available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.
Hammond Realty β hammondrealty.ca Scotiabank Agriculture β scotiabank.com/agriculture Farm Credit Canada (FCC) β fcc.ca
Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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The steel-wheeled tractor was a fad once. So was the fax machine. Nobody's laughing at those now.
AI is moving through agriculture whether the industry is ready or not. The global AI and agriculture market is approaching five billion dollars and growing at over 26% a year. Eighty percent of agribusinesses say they understand its potential. Only twenty percent have adopted it. And who's actually getting results? Closer to five percent.
That gap is what this Growing the Future Productions live event is built to close. Dan Aberhart puts three of the most plugged-in AI power users in ag β Rob Saik, Tim Hammond, and Damon Johnson β in the same room for the first-ever episode of The AI Farm. No vendor pitches. No vague future-casting. Three people who are deep in this every single day. Audience vote at the end. Winner gets bragging rights. You get the ideas.
Where AI Actually Disrupts Agriculture β And Where It Doesn't
Rob Saik opens with a reframe: agriculture at the farm level ranks low on AI disruption β not because it's behind, but because farming is inherently hands-on and judgment-dependent. The bigger disruption is upstream, in realty, insurance, and the machinery sector. Prediction is where AI excels. Judgment still belongs to you.
(00:07:40) β Rob walks through the tools he uses daily: Perplexity, Claude, Notebook LM, and a custom Dossier Builder that profiles anyone he's about to meet. His starter recommendation for producers new to AI: Perplexity. It's reference-based, cites its sources, and aggregates across multiple AI models. If you're perplexed about AI, that's your on-ramp.
(00:21:07) β A Power Farm member built a complete grain marketing program by uploading his inventory and contracts into Claude. That's not a future possibility. That happened.
Tim's Pick: A Custom GPT That Makes Decisions for Your Team
Tim Hammond is in the top 1% of ChatGPT users globally β 26,500 messages, 800-plus threads in a single year. His big move: he fed 1,200 pages of regulatory knowledge into a custom GPT, locked it to that knowledge base only, and deployed it to his whole team. Now they ask the bot before they ask Tim.
(00:23:14) β The framework from Jeff Woods' book The AI-Driven Leader: Context, Role, Interview, Task. Most people skip the Interview step. That's where AI surfaces your blind spots and assumptions before it gives you an answer. The farm application: 12,000 acres is the HR ceiling where most operations stall. AI helps you scale past it without adding headcount.
Damon's Pick: A Full Farm Dashboard Built in 12 Minutes
Damon Johnson β economist, active grain farmer, insurance builder β built a fully integrated farm management dashboard the night before this call. Six tabs. Google Maps field borders. Grain marketing scenarios. Input cost tracking. Seeding date calculator. Spray window tool. Twelve minutes.
(00:38:00) β He uploaded years of historical farm data into a Claude project and prompted it to build what would previously have cost millions and years. His framing: Claude is now a prototype partner. Fail fast. Iterate. Build.
(00:56:47) β He reads the exact prompt live: a grain marketing calculator for a 7,000-acre Saskatchewan farm, three marketing scenarios, net revenue comparison chart. Type it. Get it.
The Poll Results β Where Producers Actually Are
19% haven't touched AI at all. 42% have played with ChatGPT but nothing on the operation. 27% use AI tools regularly for at least one part of their business. 10% have it built into multiple parts of the operation. (00:20:26)
What's holding people back: a third don't know where to start. 17% don't trust the technology. 15% are worried about farm data being used.
Also covered: Machine learning vs. AI explained without jargon (00:48:08). How to stop AI hallucinations (00:52:36). Drones, Starlink, and Goldman Sachs' $264 billion precision ag disruption number (00:54:24). Dan's live demo: using Claude inside Gmail to scrape 100-plus webinar registration emails and extract every question in seconds (00:46:20). And Whisper Flow β because typing is starting to feel like a fax machine.
Final word from all three panelists: Start. Pick one pain point. Play with it. You'll find out what works.
Featured in this episode: Dan Aberhart β Host, Growing the Future Productions Rob Saik β Founder and CEO, T1 Technology Corporation / Ag Advisor Pro Tim Hammond β Founder, Hammond Realty Damon Johnson β EVP, Global Ag Risk Solutions / Hub International
Resources mentioned: Perplexity AI, Claude (claude.ai), Notebook LM, Whisper Flow, Grip farm management software, The AI-Driven Leader by Geoff Woods, Ag Advisor Pro
More from Growing the Future: Podcast: growingthefuturepodcast.ca YouTube: Growing the Future Productions Ground Truth Daily: Available wherever you listen to podcasts
Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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Somewhere on the prairies, there's a producer trying to do it all. The agronomy. The marketing. The books. The succession. The banking. The strategy. And they're wearing every hat at once β running hot, making decisions with incomplete information, and wondering why the numbers never quite tell the full story.
The top farms? They stopped doing that a long time ago.
This Growing the Future Productions live event puts Dan Aberhart at the table with seven of the most plugged-in financial and business minds working in Canadian agriculture right now: Evan Shout (Maverick Ag / Farmer Coach), Brian Mack and Justin Simpkins (Grow Lytics), Travis Gerrard and Roxanne Olynick from MNP, and Courtney Thevenot and Tanner Gerwing from Scotiabank Agricultural Banking. The conversation runs nearly 90 minutes and covers the full spectrum β from bookkeeping basics to billion-dollar family legacy questions. Not a panel of polished talking points. A real room of real advisors who already work together behind closed doors, and now you get to hear it.
What gets covered in this episode:
The 2% / 18% / 80% Split β Where Does Your Farm Land?
Evan Shout opens with a number that should stop people cold: over the last 20 years, as farm revenues have gone up and risk has increased, financial acumen in the industry has actually gotten worse. The top 2% aren't just profitable β they're operating with a completely different level of financial sophistication. The next 18% are closing the gap. The other 80% are still treating finance as a back-seat discipline.
(00:07:00) β Evan breaks down what separates the top tier, and why building a team is the single most powerful thing an operation can do to move up that ladder.
Access to Capital vs. Strategic Advice β They're Not the Same Thing
Grow Lytics started by reverse-engineering the perfect credit deal. Not by handing out money β by working backward from what a lender actually needs to say yes, and building the farm's story from there. Brian Mack draws a clear line between knowing your costs and knowing what the bank is looking at when you walk through the door.
(00:10:00) β The panel unpacks the difference between getting financed and being financially positioned. You don't want your banker to tell you it's a bad deal. You want to already know that before you show up.
What Scotiabank Actually Looks For β And It's Not Just the Numbers
Courtney Thevenot is direct: lending decisions aren't just financial. Management strength, character, who you've got in your corner, whether you're trying to do it all yourself β that all goes into the picture. A farm that walks in with a team behind them sends a completely different signal than one that shows up with a stack of paper and no story.
(00:12:00) β Courtney makes the case for the banking relationship as an ongoing partnership, not a transactional event. Quarterly calls. Farm visits. The relationship should be built long before you need something.
The Mental Health Moment Nobody Planned β But Everybody Needed
An audience member, Harry Siemens, drops a question about the farm suicide rate β 3.5 times higher than any other industry. Dan opens the floor. What follows is one of the most honest conversations this panel has. Evan doesn't give the diplomatic answer. He gives the hard one: farming culture has tied identity and legacy to a business in a way that makes failure feel unsurvivable. That's not the truth. But it's the pressure people are carrying.
(00:27:00) β Justin Simpkins adds context from time spent in Australia, where the numbers are even more stark. Courtney mentions the Canadian Centre for Agriculture Wellbeing as a real resource. Roxanne talks about peer groups as one of the most underrated tools for connection and permission to be honest. This segment wasn't on the agenda β but it might be the most important twelve minutes in the episode.
Benchmarking, Peer Groups & the Trucker Who Blew Everyone's Mind
Travis Gerrard talks about what happens when you put a trucking company's operational metrics in front of a room full of grain farmers. Nobody expected it. Everyone walked away wanting to know their numbers that much better. The benchmarking group MNP runs is covering 14% of Saskatchewan farmland β and the data is clear on what the best operations have in common.
(00:19:00) β Travis and the panel dig into the power of cross-industry benchmarking, and why getting outside the agriculture bubble β like Dan's example of Strategic Coach β can be the jolt that resets how a producer sees their own operation.
AI, Data & the Role of the Farm's Next Hire
The panel lands on something the audience was clearly hungry for: the missing seat at the table isn't another accountant or banker. It's a CTO. A tech integrator. Someone who can get real-time data flowing β from grain cards, JD Ops, harvest profit, bookkeeping β so that the advisors in the room can do insight work instead of cleanup work.
(00:44:00) β Evan lays out the vision clearly: AI isn't replacing thought leadership, but it will replace data entry, and that changes everything about how fast good decisions can get made.
The Third Generation Curse β And the Harder Question Nobody's Asking
John Gibson brings it live from the audience floor: why do so many family farm operations succeed through two generations and fall apart in the third? The panel doesn't flinch. Evan talks about the knowledge that gets lost when the generation that built through hard times doesn't transfer that context. Brian Mack says something that stops the room: are you trying to preserve the farm, or are you trying to preserve wealth for future generations? Because sometimes those are two different decisions.
(00:49:00) β Evan makes the case for the family office model β keeping the farm intact across generations rather than selling it off every 40 years to settle estates. The math at today's land prices makes the traditional approach nearly impossible.
Succession Planning β Separate Rooms, Real Conversations
Travis's point lands hard: get the kids in a separate room. Get the parents in a separate room. Because what the next generation actually wants β and what mom and dad assume they want β are often two very different things. That gap, unaddressed, is where farm transitions collapse.
(00:38:00) β Roxanne talks about seeing a generational shift in how clients are bringing younger family members into meetings earlier. Evan talks about farm operations actively recruiting external CEOs to run the business while family members stay involved as shareholders. The structure is changing.
Who's Missing from the Dream Team?
Lawyers. The panel admits it freely. Wills, shareholder agreements, prenups, joint venture agreements β verbal handshakes between multimillion-dollar operations. Evan doesn't mince words: Walmart isn't doing verbal agreements anymore. Neither should you.
(01:23:00) β The closing segment also touches on life insurance, climate advisors, agronomists as financial team members, and the AI-specific skill set that's becoming the next frontier for farm advisory teams.
Featured in this episode:
Dan Aberhart β Host, Growing the Future Productions Evan Shout β Maverick Ag / Farmer Coach Brian Mack & Justin Simpkins β Grow Lytics Travis Gerrard & Roxanne Olynick β MNP Courtney Thevenot & Tanner Gerwing β Scotiabank Agricultural BankingResources mentioned:
Canadian Centre for Agriculture Wellbeing (CCAW) β free counseling and support resources for ag producers across Canada Sask Ag Matters β crisis line and no-cost counseling for Saskatchewan farmers Do More in Ag β mental health resources for the agricultural communityConnect with the panelists:
Maverick Ag / Farmer Coach: maverickg.com or farmercoach.ca Grow Lytics: growlytics.ca MNP: mnp.ca Scotiabank Agricultural Banking: Contact your local Scotiabank ag banking teamMore from Growing the Future:
Podcast: growingthefuturepodcast.ca YouTube: Growing the Future Productions Ground Truth Daily: Available wherever you listen to podcastsRegister for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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The data is in. Farms that perform better... perform a lot better. And the gap isn't luck.
In this live webinar event from Growing the Future Productions, host Dan Aberhart sits down with three of the sharpest minds working on Saskatchewan farms right now β Darren Sander of Crop-Aid Nutrition, Dave Norris of Norris Crop Consulting, and Todd Rowan of IXL Innovations β for a frank, no-sugarcoating conversation about what separates the producers clearing big margins from the ones leaving money on the table.
The number? Somewhere between $50 and $100 per acre. Every single year. Compounded over a decade β it's not a number. It's a different life.
What gets covered in this episode:
Soil Health & the First 30 Days β Darren makes the case that the first 30 days of a crop dictates maximum yield potential. Not the last 30. The first. That reframe alone is worth your time. He also talks about how a soil health program let his operation move from a three-crop rotation to two β and pencil out better. Earthworms optional, but encouraged.
(00:04:00) β Darren breaks down the incremental gains philosophy: fertilizer protection, stress reduction, nutrient use efficiency, and how every acre should be growing the crop it's best suited to grow.
Grain Marketing & the Probability Game β Dave Norris and Todd Rowan don't predict the future. They work with probabilities. And when warships started heading toward the Strait of Hormuz, they texted their clients to fill their fuel tanks. Fuel was $1.02. The downside risk was 93 cents. The upside was $1.50. That's not a prediction. That's a risk-reward conversation β and the producers who had that conversation in advance came out a lot better than the ones who watched the news.
(00:09:00) β The panel unpacks why so many producers make decisions after it feels urgent, and why the best time to act is almost always when it doesn't.
Crop Insurance, In-Season Pricing & the 2025-26 Landscape β It's the worst crop insurance environment since before 2021. The panel digs into what that means for in-season pricing on canola, wheat, and durum, and how to think about layering agri-stability on top when the base numbers aren't what they used to be.
(00:22:00) β Dave and Todd walk through the mechanics of in-season pricing, the cash flow timing issue with SCIC payments, and how to think about selling new crop canola when fertilizer costs are still wildly elevated.
The Fertilizer Problem Nobody's Talking About Enough β An estimated 400,000-tonne shortage of urea in Saskatchewan this year. Producers who didn't pre-buy are scrambling. The panel discusses how this reshapes planting decisions, top-dressing options, foliar programs as a partial substitute, and why the supply-demand models for yield estimates may be fundamentally broken this season.
(00:33:00) β Todd flags what this means for crop rotation flexibility. When the only crop penciling out is canola, what happens to everything else?
Macroeconomics, Gold, Oil & the Commodity Supercycle β Dave Norris had a supercycle bias since November. He didn't have a war in March as the trigger β he thought it would be El NiΓ±o. He wasn't entirely wrong. The panel talks about money flowing into commodities, what governments printing money means for grain prices, and why canola at $700 a tonne may not be the ceiling.
(00:40:00) β The canary in the coal mine: when gold and silver started ripping, the smart money was already watching inflation and currency hedges. Farmers paying attention to macros have a structural edge over those only watching local basis.
The $70 Poll β What the Audience Said β Dan ran a live poll with over 150 producers on the call. The majority landed between $50 and $100 per acre as the value of strong management decisions. Todd shared a real-world example: in 2021-22, clients who didn't over-contract and took in-season crop insurance pricing pocketed $18/bushel versus $12. Clients who panicked after 2021 and froze in 2022 took $17 off the combine when $22 was on the board. The math on those decisions β compounded over 10 years β is a different farm.
(00:56:00) β The close. Dan pulls together the final takeaways from the audience word cloud, and the panel leaves producers with the most important thing of all: knowing when to act, and not waiting until it's obvious.
Featured in this episode:
Dan Aberhart β Host, Growing the Future Productions Darren Sander β Crop-Aid Nutrition Dave Norris β Norris Crop Consulting Todd Rowan β IXL InnovationsMore from Growing the Future:
Podcast: growingthefuturepodcast.ca YouTube: Growing the Future Productions Ground Truth Daily: Available wherever you listen to podcastsRegister for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.
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2,333 days ago, Jeff Bennett was the second guest I ever had on this show. Different world. Different market. Different men. Since then we've lived through bull markets, bear markets, a pandemic, and all kinds of crazy in our personal lives.
Jeff runs a grain farm in Saskatchewan while quietly building a parallel business out of his garage β custom laser engraved glass and wood pieces, high-end 3D crystal branding work. He didn't start building because it was trendy. He started building because five rough crop years forced a simple question: what do you control when the weather and the banks don't care?
This conversation is not polished. It's not motivational. It's a farmer sitting across from me telling the truth about debt, structure, generational disconnect, and what it actually takes to keep going when the math doesn't work.
If you farm, you'll feel this one. If you don't, you'll understand something about resilience you didn't before.
Timestamps
[00:00:00] Cold open β "What breaks first in your life?"
[00:01:00] Dan's intro β 2,333 days since Jeff's first episode
[00:03:00] What breaks first β Jeff on why breaking isn't an option
[00:04:00] What Jeff refuses to depend on anymore
[00:05:00] If your kids copied your current operating model
[00:07:00] Why Jeff rates himself "just below jaded" on the industry
[00:08:00] Five rough crop years and the financial reality no one talks about
[00:10:00] "Agriculture is not struggling. Farmers are struggling."
[00:11:00] What makes a good farmer β passing it to the next generation
[00:13:00] Diversification that isn't just more agriculture
[00:15:00] The difference between being tough and being stubborn
[00:17:00] Why Dad can't help β the generational disconnect in farming
[00:20:00] The economics gap β when a $100K off-farm job won't cover your nitrogen
[00:24:00] Succession planning and the kind of help that actually works
[00:25:00] "I don't think farming is a good business" β the structural problem
[00:27:00] Who's actually making the money in agriculture?
[00:29:00] The equipment deal Jeff regrets β and what it cost him
[00:32:00] What Jeff would do with $5 million (the answer is boring and brilliant)
[00:34:00] What people romanticize about farming that's just wrong
[00:36:00] If everything works, what does Jeff's life actually look like?
[00:38:00] His son Axel, a 3D printer, and teaching your kids they're not just farmers
[00:41:00] If the farm disappeared tomorrow
[00:43:00] Has Jeff ever thought about quitting?
[00:45:00] "Farmers feed the world" β a belief Jeff doesn't hold
[00:50:00] Advice to his younger self: "Buckle up kid. She's about to get rocky."
Connect with us
Growing the Future Podcast
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