By Angela Lovell
Growing up on a mixed farm didn’t help Chelsea Tomlinson much when circumstances dictated she diversify into a farm production system she knew almost nothing about.
Initially, after her parents retired and sold the family farm, Tomlinson persuaded some neighbours to allow her to continue renting their land and secured a small line of credit to purchase some basic equipment so she could start out on her own. But two years later, she lost access to most of the rented land when the owners’ relatives came back to farm, prompting her to consider how she could succeed on just 270 acres.
“I went into the seed business because I was working with a very small land base and I needed a niche,” she says, recalling the early days of True Seeds, her family-owned and operated pedigree seed farm located just outside of Redwater, Alberta. But as most of her experience was with the cattle side of the family farm, she had to start from scratch when it came to growing grain.
“I didn’t know how to run a drill or a sprayer, so all those things had to be learned on the fly,” she says. “I got a lot of help from the equipment dealers; they were fabulous. I had gone six hours away to buy my tractor and drill because that’s where the affordable price was, and the dealer was great. They did a demo to show me how to hook it up and run it, and when I was ready to start, they sent someone who stayed in the area for two days to get me up and going. Same with the sprayer; John Deere sent a sales guy out, who sat with me in the sprayer to show me how to run it. I don’t think there’s a lot of people who learn to run equipment like that.”
The value of role models and mentors
But she wasn’t totally on her own. Tomlinson’s mother, Terri – a strong role model for her daughter since day one – helped shuttle her amongst fields, made meals and even ran the auger to unload trucks. Meanwhile, her dad, Morris, who worked full time off the farm, would show up as needed to unload a truck or drive the combine.
She had other mentors along the way, including a longtime farmer in the area and fellow seed growers who were open to sharing their expertise on how to set things up from the basics like building a bin yard to what type of seed treatment system might work.
“Having a mentor is big when you are starting out in anything new, in any industry,” she says. “Especially in those extremely stressful years, when making every decision on the farm can start to feel overwhelming. It’s good to have someone to bounce those big decisions off when you’re hesitant to spend the extra dollars on the crop or a piece of equipment.”
She has also had support from some unexpected places.
“Another thing that was huge was the wealth of knowledge that my customers had,” she says. “I have learned probably 50 per cent of the things I know from my customers, where they offered suggestions, or changes, or things that I could try to make my farm better. It’s mutual learning from each other.”
Can she do it?
There is no doubt Tomlinson had some big obstacles to overcome in the early stages, including building relationships and trust with everyone from input retailers to grain buyers.
“When you are coming in as a rookie, it’s hard to develop trust and make sure that you’re getting the coverage and the service that you need,” she says. “I have been fortunate that my bank and financing have been rock solid right from the start, and I am still dealing with the same person who believed in me 25 years ago. That has helped me hugely.”
But one of the biggest obstacles Tomlinson had to overcome was convincing people she could actually make a go of it.
“I think one of the obstacles was getting people to take me seriously,” she says. “They would ask for my dad or my husband a lot. It did mean that I had to walk away from certain scenarios because they wouldn’t take me seriously or wouldn’t give me what I needed. There were some frustrations, but that is something that can happen to anybody who is new to the industry.”
That said, being a first-generation seed grower has some advantages, among them the fact that Tomlinson started with a clean slate rather than being hampered by tradition or too many competing opinions.
“The difficult piece that I see in multigenerational farms is that you are stepping into a role that’s probably already been determined for you,” she says. “Then there are multiple people involved in making every decision. Especially in a year that has some turmoil, when you have to pivot many times over the course of the year, I can just imagine the challenges that would create. I could see a lot of pushback if you maybe wanted to try new things or make changes because of how things were traditionally done.”
Standing out by attending to the details
To differentiate True Seeds from other seed growers, Tomlinson provides a personal service that focuses heavily on seed purity and traceability.
“We have a very strict standard that we are trying to hit on our farm that is far beyond the regulations or requirements,” she says. “For example, our oats hit a gluten-free protocol even though that’s not required of it. I want the customers to have confidence when they come into our yard, that they’re going to get a product that is 100 per cent pure.”
Tomlinson’s husband, Shane Wyness, joined her full time in 2010, and despite having no background in farming, she says he has been integral to their growth, which has included the addition of a mobile seed cleaning plant three years ago and a full-time operator to run it.
“Shane handles the yard and keeps track of all the rough grain coming in off the fields at harvest and where that grain is being stored, and does all grading off the seed plant,” she says. “At any time, we’re moving two or three seed lots within the yard, and they each have their own assigned auger systems. All the tractors, augers and trucks are labelled for each seed lot that they are handling. Then we use separate trucks and trailers to handle what is coming off the cleaning system versus what is coming off of the fields at harvest, so we ensure there is no contamination.”
The system requires a lot of tracking and extra attention to details.
“I have triple backups up on our farm in particular for tracking the bins. I will have a three-way system to make sure that I know what is in each bin and on each field,” Tomlinson says. “I follow where our grain has come from right from the start, before it even comes onto our farm to be grown, and then every step along the way, it is tracked and traced, and there is a paper trail that follows it. It is digitally backed up and everything is labelled and identified in the yard as well.”
Changes in the industry
Recent changes in the industry have made tracking and tracing seed through the whole supply chain much easier.
“The Canadian Seed Growers’ Association (CSGA) has gone digital and that digital platform has made it a lot easier,” she says. “There is a digital footprint of what’s been on all of our fields so that we can pull them up quickly. All the seed can be tracked back to where it has travelled, and where it has been planted across Canada, so that is a very tight system. That has made it a lot easier to implement a traceability program.”
Not all the changes in the seed industry have been quite so positive, and Tomlinson calls the recent cutbacks to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s breeding programs ‘scary.’
“What the breeders provide to us is huge, having somebody that’s covering what might be coming down the pipeline at you for insects or weather or any other kind of environmental factors,” she says. “That has been taken care of for us for a really long time.”
With the federal government now stepping back from that research, Tomlinson believes that leaves the agricultural industry, as a whole, at a pivotal point.
“We have to understand the value that has been provided to us, and that has kept us economically competitive on a world market,” she says. “I don’t think there’s a farmer who can say he hasn’t seen a growth in his yields over the course of his career across crop types. Every farmer has experienced the benefit of that.”
Tomlinson, who is also a CSGA director, says there are lots of meetings and discussions going on in the seed industry to try to develop a funding model going forward. But Tomlinson firmly believes it is going to come down to a decision by every individual farmer.
“Every farmer will need to decide if they are going to step forward and participate in whatever solution is put forward,” she says. “Farmers haven’t been required to spend a significant investment in the plant breeding side of research to date; the government has been facilitating and covering that off for us. But when you look at other aspects on our farms – like how equipment has come along, the technology advancements, the size, the efficiencies – because we saw the advantages of that, we were willing to pay more for those things. I think that’s the step up that’s going to be needed when it comes to funding plant breeders.”
Looking to the future
There are now three full-time employees on the farm besides Tomlinson and Wyness, as well as some seasonal employees, and their two daughters, Callie (13) and Lexxi (11), are keen to help out whenever they can.
“The girls helped out providing the meals for spring seeding this last season for the whole crew,” Tomlinson says. “They definitely have a strong understanding of what it has taken to do what we are trying to achieve on the farm.”
Although there are challenges ahead in the seed industry without a doubt, Tomlinson believes if farmers can overcome them, there are real opportunities too.
“Canada has done a good job of being a leader in strong genetics and the really pure seed that we distribute internationally,” she says. “Key now is trying to keep our grain moving and be ready for any opportunities that arise, whether that’s diversification of crops produced, bringing the next generation on board or handling the shifts happening in farm sizes. We want to move our farms forward, keep progressing and be the most efficient that we can be, and produce the best quality that we can while sustaining the land.”
