With big splashy headlines about regen ag, growers are concerned the fundamentals of the work they’ve been doing for years is being forgotten.
Two years ago, when McCain Foods announced its ambitious plan for all potatoes used by the food processing company to be grown with regenerative agriculture practices by 2030, growers were surprised. At the time, some growers hadn’t heard anything from their contacts at the processing company alluding to a change of this magnitude.
“My initial thoughts would be that they’re sort of rushing into things. We’re involved in doing some work with (McCain) to try a few different trials and things like that. I do see some potential still, agriculture is always evolving. But what I had to keep driving home is I’ve been doing this myself for 25 years,” Paul Adriaansen says in a Zoom interview.
Adriaansen runs Spud Plain Farms in the Wellwood, Man. area. The potato farm grows processing potatoes for McCain’s and J.R. Simplot’s Manitoba plant, along with growing their own seed potatoes. Simplot has also made sustainability pledges, just not as publicly as McCain. Simplot plans to reduce its energy and water usage by 15 per cent by 2030, along with other targets for its facilities.
McCain did do some outreach before the big announcement, according to Spencer Karabelas-Pittman, the company’s North American agriculture sustainability manager. The plan for the announcement was run by select growers from each growing region. Local field teams also conducted wider grower outreach ahead of the announcement.
“We’ve maintained transparency and open communication with our growers throughout this process and we know they are the most important stakeholders in the regenerative transition,” he added in a phone interview. “I think every one of our field managers would have gone out and spoken to different growers.”
Adriaansen isn’t the only grower who was concerned by how McCain is approaching its regen ag goals. Kirk Davison with Davison Farms in the Wellwood area grows processing spuds for McCain’s and feels the company rushed the announcement.
“If we go rushing into this too quickly, we’re going to take one step forward for the environment and two steps back economically. Some of the trials are already showing that we’re hurting yield,” he explains in a Zoom interview. “We can’t afford to lose any more yield if we’re going to keep going, we have to have a more with less goal here and regenerative ag needs to get on board with that first.”
Karabelas-Pittman says the response to the regen ag pledge has been varied with growers. Some have been excited about it, while others have been apprehensive about what it could mean for their operations and relationships with consumers.
“It comes down to just being able to run and work at a field-by-field level. We don’t want to put forward any practice that’s going to be economically and socially unviable,” he explains. “It is really difficult to create a program that works across every geography and across every farm operation. But we’re willing to work with every single grower on every single one of their fields to figure out what their best foot forward can continue to be.”
Both Adriaansen and Davison agree, while they have been doing what they can to preserve their soils and other resources for decades, there’s still more they can do. Since McCain made its regen ag announcement, the growers have been approached by the company to work together on the goal and were asked what they have been doing previously. Some of the practices Adriaansen and Davison have been using, which fall under the regen ag banner, include variable rate fertilizer application, cover cropping, dam and diking, variable rate irrigation, along with zero and minimum tillage.
“(The processors have) definitely opened the window. They are drawing on a huge resource of people that are looking at this too now. It’s not just one farmer trying to do a trial in his backyard, there’s a lot of people working on this,” Steve Saunderson explains in a Zoom interview. Saunderson runs a crop consulting business and works with both Adriaansen and Davison on their farms. He has spent years working with them on practices that would fall under the regen ag banner.
Since making the announcement, McCain has launched various resources for growers to help them with the regen ag pledge. In June 2022 McCain released its regen ag framework, a document outlining the company’s regen ag indicators for growers and how progress will be measured for each of the indicators. They also launched training partnerships in each growing region and several financial partnerships to cost share regen ag work or reduce the costs related to using regen ag practices, Karabelas-Pittman explains.
Even though it may seem that McCain and other processors are just now putting money towards researching sustainable ag practices, Adriaansen and Davison say that isn’t the case. Both are active members of the Keystone Potato Producers Association (KPPA) with Davison being a current board member. Through KPPA growers fund and make decisions on what research researchers such as those at the Manitoba Crop Diversification Centre in Carberry, Man. will do. Growers aren’t the only ones who fund this research, with processing companies also providing funding and support.
“As far as the plants, like McCain, Simplot, they’ve been very supportive on research projects and stuff too, all the way along — it’s always been a shared venture,” Adriaansen explains.
For McCain, the processing company started looking closer at sustainability about 10 years ago when the IPM Institute launched the Potato Sustainability Alliance. Karabelas-Pittman notes McCain and Simplot, amongst other processors, are members of the North American organization which includes growers as members.
“We’ve continuously worked to develop methods of having conversations with growers and with gathering data, understanding their story and their practices, and then using that to tell a transparent and verifiable story of sustainable potatoes,” he said, adding that the regen ag framework builds off of this previous work by taking it into account with the targets.
There’s one part that really concerns Adriaansen and Davison — public perception. With food processing companies promoting regen ag and sustainability publicly, it has them concerned consumers aren’t having it explained to them that growers have been doing this work for years not just because of the current publicity push.
“This industry has done so much research and put so much effort into it. As long as I’ve been part of it, which is basically from the beginning (of it in Manitoba), I was born in ‘63. So, I’ve seen a lot, I’ve seen what everybody did do, and I’ve seen all the changes,” Adriaansen says.
Davison does see opportunity though to educate consumers about the work growers are doing to preserve their soil and resources. Through more consumer education, he thinks it could help those working in agriculture be able to access resources, such as water, that they need.
McCain has been doing consumer education as part of its regen ag pledge. This past year, McCain began experimenting with regenerative-branded products, Karabelas-Pittman says. This included trialing special edition “Regen Fries” through food trucks in select cities. The company also sponsors a “Regen Ag Voices” story series with Spud Smart, along with a monthly paid story series featuring growers sharing information about the regen ag practices they use. In the United States McCain has a similar partnership with Spudman.
“We’re not just looking from this point forward, we’re actually looking back on the investment that growers have already made and trying to better tell their story in the sense of not only what they have done, but also what they continue to do,” Karabelas-Pittman adds.
Adriaansen, Davison and Saunderson agree regen ag and other sustainability practices are important for growing potatoes, but working together, growers and processors, on the messaging and actual practices used, is paramount.
“I don’t think anyone’s butting heads with (the processors) over it. It’s just how we join together, and we think the message was lost a little bit about how much is being done already,” Saunderson explains.
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