Ag tech companies must consider the financial concerns of farmers

Kristjan Hebert is a farmer in Canada and a member of the Global Farmer Network. He is an advisor with a Saskatchewan-based ag-tech accelerator and venture fund, where he gets to see the latest ideas and proposed solutions entrepreneurs are pitching to industry. In questu blog, Hebert shares the farmer’s view of important considerations as companies launch in the ag-tech space.

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Kristjan Hebert

Kristjan farms 28,000 acres in the southeast corner of Saskatchewan, Canada, growing malt barley, hard red spring wheat, canola oil, fall rye, yellow peas and oats. He returned from university in 2008, determined to grow the family farm from the 2,000 acres that it was as he was growing up.
Kristjan used his interests in finance (he's a CPA) and people to make the business decisions and assemble the team needed to grow. The farm forward contracts its crops and adjusts the crop rotation to some degree according to the sales contracts that can be accessed.
The farm uses no-till on most of its acres, with minimum tillage on the rest. Technologies include variable rate fertilization and a 6-9 year nutrient management plan that includes numerous ways to apply fertilizer. This offers some risk management in years like this one when fertilizer prices are high.
Kristjan is working in collaboration with his brother who raises livestock, to produce silage for the cattle, then grow a cover crop that's available for grazing, in turn adding manure fertilizer to the land. From an environmental viewpoint, he thinks it's important to get farmers and livestock producers working together.