By Alice McFarlane

Hope and the Future: grain producers have a positive outlook for 2021

Dec 28, 2020 | 8:00 AM

The COVID-19 pandemic makes 2020 a year many may prefer to forget. While we’re not out of the woods yet, farmnewsNOW has chosen to produce our usual series of end-of-year stories with a focus on hope and the future.

Grain farmers are feeling good about the 2020 harvest and that optimism is spilling over into 2020.

Marcel Van Staveren farms in the Weyburn/Estevan region. He describes his operation as a cooperative family farm that seeds canola, durum and red lentils, hard red spring wheat, soybeans, and red lentils on 22,000 acres.

Van Staveren said he is grateful for the opportunities that presented themselves this year.

“We were able to get some more land, so the farm has been growing. Our team has been growing as well,” he said.

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Van Staveren said typically the January and February calendar is full of meetings to attend. The pandemic has forced the cancellation of these events.

“I enjoy them, and I love the contact with people. I rarely miss Saskatoon’s Crop Production Show and then transition to Brandon Ag Days. It’s an opportunity to learn and hear great speakers,” Van Staveren said. “The extra time this winter will be used to get a few administrative items in order.”

But being at home has Van Staveren thinking about what improvements can be made to the farming operation like setting roles and responsibilities for the team and building on the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) will be a priority.

“To better articulate better for everyone involved what their job is, build our SOP for some of our basic operations. It’s all on our What’s App chat groups but a year from now we will lose that. We’re going to do that this winter. We have no excuses,” he said.

Other items on the ‘to do’ list will be to set up more formal paperwork on the servicing of equipment and the parts inventory. Sending staff away for training won’t be possible this year but the silver lining is ZOOM training can be done from the comfort of the kitchen table.

Van Staveren said Saskatchewan farmers enjoyed great harvest weather and commodity prices have been excellent this winter. This has him looking forward to putting in another crop in 2021.

“There is a lot to be excited about,” he said.

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On twitter: @AliceMcF