By Angela Lovell
Mark and Nichole Neubauer’s farming career has been about seeing beyond the obvious to connect the dots to opportunities in ways others maybe don’t see.
A good example is how getting involved in agricultural education brought new opportunities for the farm to diversify into selling farm products direct to consumers in addition to building connections that benefit the whole industry.
With a background in early childhood education, Nichole Neubauer began her working career helping connect parents with very young children to specialized care and support services while at the same time running a busy farm with Mark. Moving in these two spheres made her realize there was a big disconnect and knowledge gap for kids and families about farming and food production.
“I thought the missing link was that kids needed to get out on the farm and understand more about where their food comes from, and create a positive association at a young age, so when they thought about a farmer, agriculture and food, that experience would lead to a positive memory,” Neubauer says.
She invited a friend, who was a kindergarten teacher, to bring her class out to the farm, and saw immediate positive results.
“It was an eye-opening experience,” Neubauer says. “I was well aware that some of the students in that group had significant developmental delays and sensory processing issues, and they were petting chickens, saying moo when they saw a cow, playing in the garden, feeling different kinds of plants and sampling different foods that they’d had aversions to. It was a motivational environment and the kids were thriving in it.”
The experience motivated Neubauer to write a business plan, reduce some hours at her off-farm job and open the farm two days a week during spring and fall for hands-on educational trips for children in the surrounding area. Over the past 20 years, the farm has hosted over 23,000 schoolchildren, and was a catalyst for the Neubauers to diversify into a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) venture selling produce from the farm garden to local customers.
“The CSA seemed like a natural fit. I already had an established customer base because so many people were visiting the farm and were interested in the garden and its produce,” she says. They signed up 40 shareholders in the first year and hired summer students to help with the expanded garden.
While the CSA is not by any means the core enterprise of their 2,000-acre mixed farm near Medicine Hat, Alberta, it has allowed them to interact with people who want to learn more about where their food comes from and dispel some of the persistent misconceptions that many people have about modern farming practices. These dialogues, they believe, are vitally important to their future as farmers and for agriculture as a whole.
“Even though we are conventional farmers and the CSA is a tiny sector of our business, it gave us that chance to build positive pathways with people, talking to them about food production, and define the why behind how we farm,” Neubauer says. “I think we need to remember that we’re growing food for people and those people are our customers. We’re not going to change our practices, but we need to be more responsive to the needs of our customers by taking the time to share the justification for how we farm and be empathetic to their concerns. It is through this process where we can build trusting relationships, which leads to trust in the food system.”
A decade of change
When the Neubauers took over the original family farm in 2015, they had a different vision about how it should operate than Mark’s father who was still summer fallowing, cultivating to manage weeds and growing only cereals. That meant a lot of changes were inevitable.
They started by improving the health of the soil through continuous cropping and adding pulses to the rotation, switched to minimal till, purchased an air seeder to reduce soil disturbance, and began to use fertilizer and chemical weed control. They switched their cattle herd to a new breed that is more conducive to their system of using rotational grazing to maintain the health of the native and tame grasses on their property. Next came major equipment and building upgrades and renovations.
“We needed to make the farm more manageable for us,” Neubauer says. “Even though we haven’t expanded the land base, we have basically more than doubled production just by using modern farming practices.”
The original Neubauer farm, established by Mark’s great-great-grandfather over 100 years ago, is near the small hamlet of Irvine, Alberta in an arid region, and back in 1991, Mark had purchased another quarter section of irrigated land closer to Medicine Hat so he could reliably grow hay for the farm’s cattle. He and Nichole built a house at the location after they were married in 1996, where they raised their two children, and still live.
They also bought a piece of land in a creek with a unique water licence agreement that allows them to flood irrigate in the spring. The heavy clay-based soil that was once a lake bed is highly productive for alfalfa, and can be used for additional fall grazing when it dries up later in the season.
Today, the Neubauers crop around 2,000 acres, lease 500 acres of grassland and are patrons of the Seven Persons Grazing Association. They run between 50 to 60 head of Hereford cow/Angus bull crosses that give them the desirable traits they want, like a calmer temperament for handling. They produce vigorous calves with a lower birth weight – around 80 pounds – that don’t go through as much stress during birth, and get up and start nursing sooner, which is easier on the cows that cycle and re-breed sooner.
Building a turnkey operation
Their two children have helped on the farm since they were young and still do when they can, but they have also taken their parents’ advice to follow their dreams before making any decisions about farming. Logan (21) is a commercial pilot, although he is adamant about becoming a farmer and is going to build a home on the original farm site in the future. Evie (19), who is taking an education degree, comes home every weekend partly because she misses the farm and also because she is building a herd of purebred Nigerian dwarf dairy goats that she is committed to improving through genetics and selective breeding.
But Mark and Nichole are also committed to making the next farm transition – if there is one – as smooth as possible. “We are committed to having a plan for the future of our farming operation,” Neubauer says. “Consulting with experts in financial and legal matters is such an important first step.”
The couple feel fortunate to have two children who are both deeply committed to the farm. “It defines the decisions that Mark and I make. We would like to keep expanding and refine our practices so the farm can be more productive and the land in the best shape possible. So, if our children do want to take over, it’s a turnkey operation for them. They are not going to be trying to rebuild something.”
Neubauer Farms received the Medicine Hat and District Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year Award in 2017, which speaks to the couple’s strong commitment to business and financial management.
“There is huge cash going out, and cash coming in and you’ve got to stay ahead of all of that and try to balance your risk with risk management programs and by making good marketing decisions,” Neubauer says. “At this stage in our farming career we make investments in things that are going to make farming a little easier. We place high value on that because we don’t want to be overburdened by manual labour jobs if we can replace them with a machine or use technology to make the job easier and more efficient.”
They buy good quality used equipment and don’t skimp on things like quality seed, seed treatments, vaccines, mineral programs, good feed for the cattle and preventative equipment maintenance.
“We work together on the monthly accounting, have meetings that include our children and collectively come to a decision about what the big spends are going to be,” Neubauer says. “Right now, we’re in a place where we would like to expand and we know what our spending threshold is for that.”
The future is bright but needs talent
The Neubauers are optimistic about the future of Canadian agriculture but feel there needs to be more emphasis on educating people about the possibilities and opportunities in the sector.
“We are on the verge of a revolution where technology is going to become such a big player on farms and ranches across Canada. We need to start attracting the best and the brightest to come and serve in our industry to help us become that global leader in food production,” Neubauer says. “We need to become more intentional as producers about how we support the education system to represent the potential for agricultural career pathways to students, then we need to provide meaningful hands-on opportunities for students to explore the industry.”
That’s not just a pipedream for the Neubauers. In 2021, their farm partnered with Prairie Rose Public Schools to build the Irvine School Agricultural Discovery Centre, a 200-ft by 200-ft fully functioning farm located at the K-9 school. The farm, operating from April to October, raises feeder steers, bottle calves, goats, lambs, hogs, chickens, bees and has a garden, all managed by the students. In three years of operation, it has generated $160,000 from selling livestock, grants and fundraising that have gone into developing a program called AgPro that offers agriculture-related courses for junior high students as part of their career and technology foundation program.
“What we’re trying to do is create a connection through hands-on experiential learning and subject matter experts to get these kids excited about agriculture and understanding that there’s a great career waiting for them,” Neubauer says. “So, when they go to high school, they pick the course content that they’re going to need as prerequisites to get into a school to become an agronomist or veterinarian or whatever pathway they choose. We want to open those pathways up for students.”
