Murad Al-Katib told a room of listeners in Prince Albert about his plan to turn summer fallow fields into pulse crops. (Susan McNeil/paNOW)

By Susan McNeil

Big ag during small business week

How a first generation Sask. resident helped end summer fallow

Oct 19, 2023 | 5:00 PM

Murad Al-Katib was born in Davidson, SK to Turkish immigrants. His father was the town doctor for 50 years and his mother went from learning English watching Sesame Street with her children to becoming the community’s mayor.

Al-Katib told his story and how he ended up as the president of a $2.8 billion agriculture company to a group of engaged business leaders in Prince Albert as part of Small Business Week.

“It was a time in Saskatchewan when we were going through what I would call a massive transformation in agriculture,” he said. “The wooden elevators were closing. It was a race for the concrete terminals.”

His father, who farmed 4,400 acres of his own while being a full-time doctor, decided that one of his two sons would likely want to be a farmer as well but at 16, Al-Katib told his dad he loved the business part of agriculture rather than spending his days on the land.

He got a commerce degree in Saskatoon before going to Arizona State University for his master’s and then got his first job at the Canadian embassy in Washington.

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In the mid-1990s, he met Premier Roy Romanow on a visit to the embassy and told members of his entourage that Saskatchewan had a big opportunity in emerging markets and needed to up its game.

He wrote Romanow a letter that outlined what he thought Saskatchewan should do about emerging markets and international trade and three weeks later the deputy minister asked him to come see him.

That led to a dilemma for Al-Katib who was really interested in international trade.

“I wanted to be in the big pond of the world but I’m a small fish,” he said. He decided there might be an opportunity and took a job with the Government of Saskatchewan.

In that job, he spent a lot of time touring various countries in the 1990s including Ukraine, Kazakstan, and India with Premier Brad Wall.

“That trip, we were like rock stars. We went to India and all they wanted to talk about was lentils, uranium, and potash,” Al-Katib said.

He took that information and looked at farmers who were putting fields to summer fallow every third year.

“My bold prediction – which wasn’t very bold – was that 15 million of summer fallow would largely transition to pulses and today about 12 million of those acres are in pulses,” he said.

READ MORE: https://farmnewsnow.com/2023/03/10/western-canadian-grain-committee-recommends-new-pulse-varieties/

“The opportunity existed that summer fallow acres would become pulses, somebody just had to give the direction and give the enthusiasm and give the markets to the farmers, and they would embrace pulses.”

Embrace they did, with millions of acres now planted every year into pulses such as lentils and field peas, developed at the University of Saskatchewan’s agriculture program and suitable for growing in Saskatchewan.

D 148311058 © Mathia Coco Dreamstime.com

Al-Katib then quit his job and created the company in his basement which is now known as AGT Foods.

The Regina-based agricultural company has 46 manufacturing and processing facilities around the world, owns two railroad shortlines, and adds value to the raw lentils and other crops it buys from farmers before it ends up on people’s plates.

Al-Katib said he has never understood why the raw materials need to leave Saskatchewan to become a more refined product elsewhere before returning in the form of shelf-ready goods in the store.

A major push for AGT is getting Saskatchewan moving forward with the idea of irrigation. Being able to control the amount of water available for crops is key to growing enough food for the future, he said.

With the world population expected to hit 10 billion by 2050 and the growing middle class in Asia, increasing food production is more important than ever.

“The UNFAO says that in the next 40 years, the world has to produce the same amount of food we produced in the last 10,000 years of civilization,” he said.

Al-Katib also pointed out that modern young consumers have many different expectations of both the places they work and the businesses they patronize.

His daughter is in her 20s and is not an environmentalist but very representative of her generation.

“She’s not an environmentalist. She grew up in a time and a culture where she knows nothing but environmental sustainability,” Al-Katib said. “All the things that we had to learn growing up, she knows nothing different.”

“She makes her decisions today ion a consumer basis based on a company’s social purpose and what they do for the environment and the world, how they treat their people.”

Companies wanting to attract and keep young workers need to keep in mind that along with competitive wages, they need to match their social purpose with their business methods.

Aside from agriculture, Al-Katib said that Saskatchewan is rich in some other resources that are or will be in high demand.

“When we look at the critical mineral side, 23 of the 31 critical minerals on the list are present in Saskatchewan and many of them north of this jurisdiction,” he said.

“This is the future of the economy here. Agricultural and critical minerals are going to be very, very important. Energy security is that intersection of elements of all of ag, mining, and energy.”

READ MORE: https://panow.com/2023/03/27/all-critical-minerals-and-rare-earth-elements-belong-to-first-nations-fsin/

Looking ahead, Al-Katib said the future is in plant-based products like food, animal feed, and biomass.

“Take that three-crop rotation – no more summer fallow – and what are we going to do with the wheat, what are we going to do with the canola and what are we going to do with the pulses? That’s the opportunity that is going to drive the next 20 years.”

New technology, such as what AGT Foods is currently working on with Federated Co-op, allows canola to be turned into bio-diesel that can be burned in a vehicle without causing damage like previous attempts did.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com