DOT debuted last year at Ag in Motion, but farmer interest in seeing it operate was still strong this year, judging by the number of observers.

Its U-shaped chassis and diesel power source is designed to connect with other compatible implements, and several have been developed.

Norbert Beaujot, president of Seedmaster and DOT inventor, said autonomous farm equipment is the way of the future and farmers are already becoming more comfortable with both the idea and its use.

“I think if you take a survey of the average farmer, yes, they’re skeptical, but the farmers who we’re selling to are the leading, larger farmers and they’re not skeptical,” he said.

“They’re ready, and a large number of them have already put deposits on units. So if they were skeptical at the beginning, they’re not anymore.”

In a speech at AIM, Beaujot talked about innovation, growth and excellence in agriculture. Innovation is something of a byword for the farmer and inventor, who has more than 50 patents in his name, most if not all related to farm equipment.

“I’m passionate about making things better but also simpler,” he said in his talk.

One of nine children, Beaujot earned a degree in agricultural engineering at the University of Saskatchewan in 1970.

By the 1990s, he had undertaken his quest to devise better and more accurate seeding equipment. He followed that with the establishment of Seedmaster and the invention of the SmartHitch, a method of seeding between stubble rows.

Many other innovations followed, but the autonomous DOT, which shares its name with Beaujot’s mother, is among the latest.

Farmers wary

He acknowledged that farmers are initially wary of driverless equipment, but the technology is the same as that used in driverless cars, which have also made a relatively recent debut.

“It’s the direction we’re going,” Beaujot said in an interview.

“The technology is all technology that’s been used for years. Farmers are just not used to seeing it the way that we’ve put it all together.

“At first it shocks them. A year ago, I think it shocked and scared people because part of the scariness is they have to adapt their farm to a whole new thought process. But they get more comfortable with it very quickly.”

A survey by Glacier Farm­Media in 2017 indicated that about 75 per cent of farmers said they wouldn’t be ready for autonomous vehicles for three to five years.

They cited loss of the human element, complexity and expense among the primary reasons. On the plus side, survey respondents liked the idea of saving time and lowering operating costs.

Beaujot said safety was an oft-stated concern when DOT debuted, but safeguards built into the units are designed with that in mind.

“There’s many safety features. We had more questions about that last year, but again, they realize that on private land in a big open field, there’s so few safety considerations compared to autonomous cars on the freeway. And we’ll have all the same technologies as autonomous cars.”

Software is designed to shut down the DOT if it deviates from its designated path, and a trip wire that hangs in front of the machine will also shut it down if it touches anything it shouldn’t.

Beaujot said DOT can help address the chronic agricultural labour shortage. That’s why farm equipment has become steadily larger, but accuracy and manoeuvrability have been sacrificed.

“I was uncomfortable with the way we were going because we were getting less and less efficient because of the bigness of the equipment,” he said.

“With the scaling and sizing of DOT, we’ve brought that efficiency back into line.”

This article was originally published on the Western Producer.

The post Farmers warming to autonomous farm equipment appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Marketing beef into Europe is not for the faint of heart, say producers who have run that gauntlet.

Cliff Drever is the former president of Prairie Heritage Beef, which marketed high-end beef to the European market from several Prairie cattle operations.

In the early stages, the Camrose cattle producer was surprised at how Canadian production is viewed.

“Canada is not well known at all for beef in Europe. It was kind of surprising to us, but they don’t think of us as beef producers,” said Drever.

“They think of us as maple syrup, and that’s about it. We have a pretty high opinion of ourselves actually, and you get humbled a little. You’re up against U.S. and Australian product. But they do appreciate the quality of our product, so if you send them a high-quality product, they’re very interested.”

Jason Hagel, a cattle producer from Three Hills, Alta., was part of the same group, and continues to provide beef to One Earth Farms, which bought Prairie Heritage in 2014.

Hagel said the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union is encouraging, but niche marketing to higher-end users is likely to remain the key.

“I don’t think we want to flog a bunch of beef over there because it takes so much to get it there,” Hagel said about the EU protocols that dictate how meat for that market must be raised and verified.

European buyers value quality, and describing the production of high-quality beef became a key to sales.

“We had a story behind us,” Hagel said.

“We took care of our animals and explained how we did that, and I think the biggest thing is the story, not just the beef. We could put a face to the beef and explain how we raised it, and did animal husbandry and whatnot, so that’s what they really liked too.”

Drever concurred.

“We started out thinking we would market Canadian beef, but we ended up marketing Heritage Angus. They like a story to go with it. They know about ranchers and the Wild West over there, so that’s kind of the image they have,” he said.

“We had a lot of the chefs from Europe come over here. If we could get them to come over, we pretty much had the deal sewn up. They simply fell in love with the country, the story, the quality of the product… That’s really important to them.”

His advice to those planning to target Europe once CETA reduces tariff barriers is to cultivate relationships and aim high.

“Europe’s a special place,” he said.

“If you just want to sell beef, you’re better off in traditional markets. Europe is the high end of the high end. It’s a good market and there’s loyal buyers over there too, but you have to be prepared to do everything right.”

Dennis McNight of the Innovators is a marketer, researcher and tour organizer who helps individuals and companies explore food export markets.

He believes Europe will be more of a niche market for Canadian beef even after CETA is ratified.

“We’ve got to stop trying to convince the whole world to eat beef and appreciate that it is maybe a niche market,” McNight said.

“And what’s wrong with a niche market? Because you then provide higher-quality meat to the market that consumers pay more for, but it’s a better-quality product when they have it. That’s a market I think we can play in.”

McNight acknowledged the burgeoning consumer demand for protein, though that is less of a factor in Europe than it is for Asia. However, he also sees that demand being fulfilled through plant protein rather than meat.

“There are niche markets all over the world for beef, absolutely, but it’s a niche market, in my view,” he said.

“If you look at where the whole world is going, they’re not going in the same direction as the beef industry. I don’t know anyone who’s eating more beef. If anything, we’re eating less.

“Those who really study world markets will tell you the real protein battle, the bare-knuckle fist fight that’s going to happen out there, will be between fish and chicken.”

The post Selling beef to Europe requires commitment to high quality appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

When John Masswohl toured the central London wholesale meat market in December, he found some Canadian beef for sale.

But not very much.

Five boxes of Prairie Heritage beef, from animals raised in Alberta and Saskatchewan, were on offer beside hundreds of boxes from the United States and entire pallets from Argentina, Uruguay and Australia.

“For every box of Canadian beef, he had at least 100 boxes from somewhere else,” said Masswohl, who is the director of government and international relations at the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association.

Marketers told him Canadian beef was expensive, in part due to tariffs. Technical issues also make it difficult to acquire.

That situation could change dramatically when the trade deal between Canada and the European Union, called the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement, comes into force.

“We’ve got an outstanding quality product and an outstanding eating experience that goes with it, and I think for a price, that would be very comparable to what Europeans are used to paying if we didn’t have to deal with all these tariffs and other conditions,” said Masswohl.

• Read more: Beef industry watching how new Liberal government proceeds

The deal will allow beef and veal exports worth an estimated $600 million, generated from 65,000 tonnes of new duty-free access to Europe. About 50,000 tonnes of that is in fresh beef and the balance in frozen product.

Using an estimate of 100 kilograms of fresh beef available per animal, it could translate into a market for 500,000 Canadian cattle, if they meet the EU requirement of being raised without the use of additional growth hormones.

“How many cattle do we have in Canada being produced according to EU standards, or could be if they were properly documented? I’d only be taking a guess,” said Masswohl, “but I think right now, today, somewhere less than 100,000 head. But with the incentive there, I’ve talked to lots of guys who say, ‘if the incentive is there, I’ll do it.’”

Not so sure

Feedlot owner Rick Paskal of Picture Butte, Alta., isn’t so sure the incentive will be enough to encourage more production of beef that meets EU specifications.

“They don’t recognize the science of the day, so we’ve got these free trade agreements with them, but it’s still just the same. We don’t meet their criteria for trade, which is not science based,” said Paskal.

“I don’t understand why we would have negotiated an agreement like this. It sounds like we’ve got an opportunity to put Canadian beef in Europe but we don’t and we never will.”

Paskal said use of growth hormones reduces beef production costs by about $250 per head through better feed conversion and shorter time to fatten. Price premiums offered in Europe for beef free of added hormones would have to cover that, and he thinks that is unlikely.

“It’s good that all the people around the world get talking to one another and they want to expedite trade and reduce trade barriers, but they’ve got to go back and… really, if there’s a spirit of trade, just address the science.

“It’s got nothing to do with food safety. We’re all big proponents of food safety, your product, your animal handling, the animal welfare aspects are very, very important. We’re not saying we’re ever going to circumvent them, but it’s got to be based on science.”

Opportunity

Doug Price, who runs Sunterra beef operations, said he sees opportunity through CETA for more beef exports but the price has to be right.

“We have the cows and the feedlots. I’ve got a pretty good handle on what it costs me to produce non-hormone, traceable cattle. It’s really easy for us to do that, but I need to know how much premium will I get for that before I do it,” he said.

Price suggested opportunities in Europe might better suit smaller, more nimble operations that can cater to higher-end niche markets.

“If we get some of our product over there, I think they’ll pay quite a premium for it. So I think the opportunity for sure is there. We just have to put all the pieces together,” said Price.

“Our genetics here in Canada and our technology inside the cow-calf right through to the feedlot to the plant is as good as anybody in the world and I think the genetics are even better. There’s less variability. So any kind of a quality market, man, we’re sitting real good there.”

Small scale

Producers involved in Prairie Heritage Beef have been meeting EU requirements and building their niche for years but on a relatively small scale.

Before selling the brand to One Earth Farms in October 2014, Prairie Heritage was selling beef from about 5,000 animals into Europe and another 5,000 domestically, said former president Cliff Drever of Camrose, Alta.

Christoph Weder, a cattle and bison producer in Hudson’s Hope, B.C., was the primary marketer for the branded beef line before its sale. In his view, Canadian producers won’t be able to fill the entire EU quota unless the two major packers in Western Canada, JBS and Cargill, develop separation of hormone-free and commercial beef.

He and others hold out hope that Harmony Beef, the former Rancher’s Beef processing plant in Balzac, Alta., that is expected to market specialty beef into Europe, will open soon. That would add to output provided by Canadian Premium Meats in Lacombe, another EU-approved plant.

However, Harmony Beef has been beset by water issues and various other objections put forward by the city of Calgary and has yet to start operation.

Producers with an eye to producing beef for Europe must meet specific requirements subject to Canadian Food Inspection Agency oversight.

Jason Hagel, a Three Hills, Alta. producer with Prairie Heritage, said those requirements might be enough to discourage greater production.

“I don’t think it will change much,” said Hagel.

“The program that Canada has in place is very onerous on producers to actually want to do it, with all the paperwork and CFIA vets having to come and make sure everything’s in place.

“Which we need, but it’s a lot easier just to take your cattle to market and sell them to a feedlot than going through a bunch of paperwork and having to keep track of the animals that you do send, have an inventory list and all that kind of stuff.”

Quotas and tariffs

Until CETA goes into effect, certain quotas and high tariffs remain in place so few producers are raising animals now with a view to the EU market.

“Right now it’s not worth it because you’re not getting any more money by doing that, as a cow-calf producer, than taking them to the market and just selling them in the open market,” said Hagel.

He said One Earth can’t afford to pay much more than the commodity market at present because any premium from Europe doesn’t cover the extra cost involved in producing the beef.

He also wonders if December’s repeal of country-of-origin labelling (COOL) in the United States, which used to discourage Canadian cattle sales across the 49th parallel, will prompt producers and packers to take that easier path.

“We have two American packing plants in Canada. They have pretty good connections in the States and can move the beef easier. They’re not going to chase after a market that has to change the way they do business in their own plants and cost a lot more.”

Not yet approved

And speaking of plants, the safety methods employed by Canada’s major packers have yet to meet the approval of the EU. That’s another hurdle that must be overcome before Canadian beef benefits from CETA.

These technical considerations are not part of the CETA agreement, but they exist in a side arrangement that says the two parties will work toward equivalence in their respective meat inspection systems.

That equivalence has yet to emerge, said Masswohl of the CCA.

“Our idea of equivalence means that we can do things our way. They can do things their way. Not everything needs to be harmonized but the end result, the outcome, is equivalent in that we both produce safe beef,” Masswohl said.

“What we’ve learned is Europe’s idea of equivalence is they want us to do it their way. But we’re not doing it their way. Our way is much safer.”

Canadian plants use various antimicrobial carcass washes and safety techniques after cattle are slaughtered to destroy E. coli and other bacteria. Europe does not use the same methods.

Their way

The big three plants in Canada process more than 90 per cent of the country’s beef. The volume of animals, the distance they travel and the weather all play a role in sanitary and phytosanitary considerations at the plants.

Europe, in contrast, has hundreds of slaughter facilities, many of them processing small numbers of animals delivered in small trucks from nearby locations.

“They say the animal needs to be clean before it comes into the slaughter facility,” said Masswohl. “So how does that work in our scenario where we have much colder temperatures to deal with for much longer periods of the year?

“The idea of washing animals outside when it’s below -20… it doesn’t seem like humane treatment for the animal. It seems impractical.”

Europe has agreed to the use of lactic acid as a sanitary measure and more recently approved the use of recycled hot water but approval will be needed for other safety-related treatments that have become standard in Canadian plants.

“They just don’t do any of that and they just can’t fathom doing anything else,” said Masswohl.

“We rather suspect that they like the system the way it is because it keeps imported beef out of their market. We rather suspect that that’s a big part of the motivation for the way they do it,” said Masswohl.

“If we don’t resolve this, then the (CETA) agreement is of very little value for the Canadian beef industry. If we do resolve it, it’s huge value for us. It’s worth working on.”

The post CETA deal will open up new markets for Canadian beef appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Canadian cattle and beef interests that expected to benefit from a trade deal with the European Union rejoiced Oct. 18, 2013, when the Conservative government announced a deal had been reached.

Negotiations on the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement continued through August 2014, when a consolidated version of the agreement was made available.

However, it has yet to be ratified in Europe as various factions contemplated some of its non-agricultural implications, primarily the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) process.

The ISDS issues were resolved in early March, but those in Canada’s beef industry are among those watching developments and hoping the promise first extended in 2013 will culminate in greater market access.

“Any new market is the right thing for Canada,” said Doug Price, who operates the beef side of Sunterra, the Alberta company operated by his family.

“We need to diversify our marketplace so we’re not totally reliant on the United States, so I’m pretty excited about that.”

It’s an opinion that is widespread among those in the beef industry, but CETA isn’t a done deal.

• Read more: CETA deal will open up new markets for Canadian beef

“Despite us having had several announcements that the deal was done and the negotiations were done, it doesn’t have the feel that it’s done,” said John Masswohl of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association.

Trade historian Laura Dawson of the Canada Institute in Washington, D.C., also has her doubts.

“I am skeptical about the ability of the EU parliaments to ratify the agreement. Canada negotiated a good agreement and our negotiators did just fine, and the EU negotiators said, ‘great, got to do a legal scrub, got to translate it into all those pesky languages and we’re good to go.’”

The deal was negotiated by what was then Canada’s Conservative government. Since then, a new Liberal government was elected and is presumably getting up to speed on what CETA may entail.

“I think these next several months are going to be important,” Masswohl said in December.

“With the CETA agreement, I think there was a number of announcements about how the negotiations were concluded. Now you’ve got a new government… and it’s probably learning that the negotiations are not quite as concluded as perhaps the previous management would suggest.

“Our message to the new government is, the potential is there. This is an outstanding market, excellent potential. It deserves to be done. It needs to be done because this is an excellent agreement not just for Canadian beef producers, but for Canada overall. But it has to be what we think it is.”

The post Beef industry watching how new Liberal government proceeds appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Canadian producers came to understand the folly of overdependence on one market when BSE was discovered in Canada in 2003 and the United States closed its borders to cattle and beef.

That message was further solidified when the U.S. imposed country-of-origin labelling, which again reduced marketing opportunities across the border.

The portions of COOL that applied to beef and pork were repealed in December, paving the way for improved and relatively efficient sales to the U.S.

Will that cool the industry’s enthusiasm for shipping to the European Union under the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement?

After all, the U.S. market is close and the Canadian domestic herd is at its smallest in years, limiting the number of cattle available for shipping to any location.

“I don’t see a whole lot more (beef) going over there (Europe),” said Christoph Weder, a beef producer from Hudson’s Hope, B.C.

He sees more opportunity for bison than beef because CETA will eliminate the tariff on Canadian bison while U.S. product will continue to face a 20 per cent duty.

Canadian Bison Association executive director Terry Kremeniuk said he has high hopes for bison sales potential under CETA.

“For the Canadian industry, the European market is certainly very important,” he said.

Once implemented, CETA will provide 3,000 tonnes of tariff-free quota for bison. That’s a separate allotment, rather than the previous arrangement of inclusion under the Hilton quota for Canadian and U.S. red meat.

Kremeniuk said the new quota equates to $50 million and is equivalent to 10,000 to 12,000 animals. The new quota will be 25 times larger than the current level of EU exports.

As for beef, Weder said he wonders if large numbers of Canadian producers will employ the hormone-free production methods that the EU demands.

Aging demographics in the beef business also play a role.

“The Canadian beef industry just blows me away,” said Weder.

“We’ve theoretically hit the peak (of prices), and Canada never even expanded (the herd). So we’re on the downward slide already… If anything, I think the Canadian cow herd is going to get even smaller.”

John Masswohl of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association doesn’t think that is true. He said producers will use the opportunity for additional exports if and when CETA is ratified.

The Canada-Europe deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the recent agreement with South Korea are signals for herd expansion in Canada, he said.

“It’s the phasing in of new market access through these various trade agreements that’s going to keep the expansion going and be our insurance policy against the down side of the cattle cycle,” he said.

“We had a prolonged period of expansion (after the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed) because we suddenly had new unlimited, quota-free, duty-free access to the United States and to Mexico as well.”

CETA and the TPP could prompt the same thing, he added.

Jason Hagel, an Alberta rancher who provides beef to One Earth Farms for the domestic and EU market, suggests the TPP could prove easier for producers than CETA will because it is less restrictive.

“It’s such an onerous program to get into, for one thing,” he said.

In contrast, when shipping to Asia, “you just send the beef and that’s it.”

CETA meat quota

CETA will provide new market access opportunities for beef, pork and bison. CETA establishes tariff rate quotas for each product, giving Canadian farmers yearly duty-free access for up to:

• 80,000 tonnes of pork (including consolidation of existing quota of approximately 6,000 tonnes);
• 50,000 tonnes of beef; and
• 3,000 tonnes of bison.

In addition, CETA will give farmers duty-free access for high-quality beef under existing quota of nearly 15,000 tonnes (Hilton beef quota, current duty of 20 per cent); and for processed beef, pork and bison products.

Source: AAFC

The post Will it be beef or bison? appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.