By Angela Lovell
When a farm business grows from just over 2,000 acres to 20,000 acres in 20 years, there are a lot of challenges along the way, but what’s essential is a focus on strong business management and having the right people in the right roles.
Not only did Holman Farming Group, near Luseland, Saskatchewan, experience this growth, the Holman family also added other enterprises over the years. Additions included an elevator with an adjacent rail siding and a grain processing and bagging facility, while also diversifying into new export markets.
Representing the fourth generation to operate the farm, originally homesteaded by his great-grandfather in 1908, Dan Holman focuses on three distinct areas: finance and administration, operations, and sales and marketing, with key people managing each area. Production manager Bailey Tweddle oversees the day-to-day operations of the farm, while Holman’s business partner, Jesse Bruce, manages the processing plant.
Meanwhile, Holman manages sales and marketing, building on his education and experience. With his bachelor’s degree in crop science and master’s degree in agricultural economics, he moved back to the farm with his wife, Stacey, to join his parents, Rod and Gayle, and worked as a grain merchandiser before joining the farm full time in 2012.
“Working at the grain elevator, I was selling grain into the world markets, and was introduced to how the banking system works, and things like margins and interest rates swaps, trading letters of credit, and how futures markets work,” he says. “One of my tasks was to create a risk management program for the company, so I set up a hedging program using U.S. dollar futures to hedge Canadian grain. As I built those systems, it gave me an understanding of how world grain markets work.”
A vision of serving export markets
Armed with this experience, Holman had a vision of selling grain directly into export markets but wasn’t sure how to overcome the logistics of shipping and quality control. In 2019, when he got the opportunity to purchase an old elevator with its own rail siding, the shipping problem was solved, but after several years of cleaning and shipping grain to new domestic and export customers, Holman realized they needed to upgrade their facility to be able to clean and package other crops, such as pulses, that would help them further diversify their markets.
Dan and Stacey also realized they couldn’t do it alone, so they approached longtime friends, Jesse and Shauna Bruce, about partnering on a new venture. Together they established a new jointly owned company, NourishPro Agro, and set about building a state-of-the-art processing plant that was completed in 2024.
The processing plant, which is ISO 22000, HACCP, kosher and organic certified, has allowed the team to diversify into different crops to meet the specific quality specifications of their customers, adding value to the end price and allowing them access to new market opportunities.
By 2025, they were shipping grain to customers in Canada, South America, Asia and Europe, interlining with both national railways, CP and CN, to deliver railcar and container loads for export destinations, alongside their own fleet of trucks and trailers to deliver to domestic customers.
This summer, NourishPro Agro will complete the process of obtaining a Canadian Grain Commission licence that will allow the company to act as a licensed primary elevator and market other farmers’ grain as well as their own.
“Our farm is now a supplier to NourishPro Agro, which is then marketing the grain around the world,” Holman says. “Because NourishPro Agro and Holman Farming Group are two separate companies with separate accounting systems, there’s a clear boundary of the values that are being paid for grain, so one is not being subsidized through the other.”
Technology a key component
Holman has developed a management system using a platform called EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) that is popular with many entrepreneurs, but not as common in the agriculture sector. The system employs technology at every level, from cameras in the elevator and automated systems in the processing plant to collaborative content sharing applications like Microsoft’s SharePoint and OneNote for digital note-taking. Holman and his team hold regular virtual meetings with each other and outside professionals – like the company’s CFO – providing access to expertise without the need to be on-site.
“One of the essential pillars is accountability, so everybody is assigned things they’re accountable for,” he says. “Microsoft SharePoint has allowed us to collaborate so much better because now we have shared documents, and with these tools in place it allows for remote work but also accountable remote work.”
People matter most
While the technology links everybody and helps to keep them on track, it’s still the people that matter the most in the system, and so defining and assigning roles and responsibilities has been a huge part of creating a system that ensures efficiency in operations for the farm and the processing facility.
“From the person sweeping the shop floor to the person who’s making the decision to buy lentils or fertilizer, no one is more important than the other; everything has to function together; we have different people with different accountabilities,” Holman says. “As our farm grew, we had up to nine people who I was managing directly, and all the decisions basically had to run through me. When we started designating roles and delegating management, that’s when our business started growing even more because then I could focus on things that make the business advance.”
Once those roles and responsibilities were defined, they needed to document them through SOPs (standard operating procedures).
“We needed a system so that we have continuity between people, because when you delegate management and leadership positions, if that person needs to move on for whatever reason, you can’t have a big black hole,” he says. “It forces you to view the processes differently, basically acting on the premise that a person is not going to do the job forever. But it often makes people stay because the process is better.”
Preparing for the next generation
The Holmans have four daughters – Lily (16), Claire (15), Harper (13) and Stella (10) – who will soon be starting to think about careers. The business structure is designed to facilitate the next generation stepping into whatever role they want to do, and the management roles don’t necessarily have to be family members.
“We have full-time people on the farm, and I’m the only one with the last name Holman who works on the farm every day,” Holman says. “We really try to separate out the financial risks that are associated with being an owner, accountabilities that are associated with management, and daily responsibilities that are associated with doing the work. I am excited that some of our employees’ children and spouses are working on the farm. We think this is a huge testament to the culture we have created that our team would like to see their family members be a part of the business.”
