OLD SCHOOL AG VALUES

What I Learned in Conversation with Trevor Thiessen, President of Redekop Manufacturing ...

Great advice early in one's career can make all the difference.

The wise words that Trevor Thiessen received from John Cross at Philom Bios as a "moronic 25 year old marketing guy" lead to a life long passion for serving the farmer, and laid the foundations for his acquisition of and subsequent success at Redekop Manufacturing in Saskatoon, SK in 2014.

"I remember John Cross, who was the founder of Philom Bios, used to walk the halls. He was a passionate Welsh guy and just had this crazy love for farming and agriculture. And he would come into my office and slap me on the back and say, 'Trevor, You should consider yourself to be the luckiest person in the world to serve farmers. It's the most noble profession. It's one of the oldest professions. And that's our job, is to help farmers produce more.' And at first you hear that a couple times ... you're like ... whatever, this guy's just telling me a story. But over time, it became part of what I believed. The more farmers I met, the more time I spent in the industry, the more I just knew this was a career for me. Over the years I've had a number of chances to leave agriculture with job offers that would've taken me away. I never left. I found this to be the place that I made a decision to commit to this for the rest of my working career. Probably for the rest of my life, I'll always probably be involved in agriculture in some way."

Serving the farmer means only selling something that they actually need and can afford.

"I had a great boss there when I started. His name was Sandy Glenny, and then John Cross, the founder. They were so passionate that we should never sell to the farmers unless they had a need for that. One of the best examples of that was when I was sales manager. I had one of my sales guys come up to me and say, 'Hey, look, I got a real problem.' I was at a farmer meeting. There's about 20 guys there. They represent about half a million dollars in my sales of nitrogen inoculant, which was a lot for us back in the day. He said they all had two years of drought in this area. If you have drought for a couple of years and you've applied nitrogen, the plants are kind of lazy. It'll take the easiest form of nitrogen, so it won't form a nodule with the inoculate, it will just use the background available nitrogen. So if you've applied a lot, haven't had a crop, haven't used up some of that nitrogen, there's gonna be a lot of background nitrogen. So our sales guy, Kevin, just said, 'Hey look, I don't think you guys should use our product this year. It's not gonna nodulate for you. You're not gonna get a benefit. You're just gonna waste your money. Just top dress. If you run outta nitrogen because you have a bunch of background nitrogen, you probably should be okay.' He called and he was really worried about it. And because it was so wired into our company's DNA that that was the right thing to do for a farmer that we celebrated that we didn't get upset about that. We just said that was great. And by doing that, I think you build trust with your customer base. Farmers have a tough time, and it's always hard when you go do a farmer presentation and they say, 'Hey, look, if we did everything that all you guys come and tell us to do, we would get 250% yield increase.' Yeah. You're a hundred percent right. I mean, we can't all be right. So it was a great journey and those products are still on the market today."

Bringing a product to market means knowing how to solve problems for the farmer that actually exist.

?"I think what I learned was patience is important. Don't rush it and don't think that you have to get it all done today. There's always this sense of urgency and panic. I remember launching a product where there was a granular based inoculate, and I wasn't the only person making the decision, but we got a little excited. It looked good in testing, but we scaled it up and we sent out tens of thousands of bags of this stuff. And what was happening is we hadn't tested real field conditions and it was bridging up in the seed tanks overnight. We seed into pretty cool conditions around Saskatchewan and the prairies and, the moisture was causing it to turn into a brick. We had guys just pissed at us because they had to chisel this stuff out. They were climbing into their tanks and literally chiseling it out. I learned going fast doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna win. It just means maybe slow down because you need to test another year or two, and the sales setbacks you get from going too quick might offset any gains you might have potentially got, so be patient. And most importantly was just listen to farmers. Not all of us understand that we have a problem that we need to solve, right? Sometimes someone needs to help us understand that problem. We still need to listen to what the farmer's saying is happening on his farm and why it's happening, and not rush to a conclusion that we've got the perfect solution, but work with them and test it and alert early that what we test in a lab or what we test in a small field scale doesn't always translate to a farmer's field.

As a corporate career progresses, the journey can take one farther from the producer at the ground level. For Trevor, it has always been important to talk to farmers directly.

"I found great joy in meeting farmers and I had to deal with all my teams no matter where I was. You can have me come to a grand opening of something in Vietnam or wherever ... I'll come ... but we have to go talk to farmers. It can't be just some meeting in a hotel or an airport lobby or something. I just want to get out into the field and those are my best memories and best experiences of that time. I remember we were selling a product into India and I got to go over there, I think it was my first or second trip to India and I said, 'Okay, I gotta meet some farmers who are using the product. I just want to talk to them.' You walk out into a field and of course it's all through a translator, but it's very traditional Indian garb. The farmer comes up and when he found out that I was the president the company that was supplying him the product, I actually got a hug from him. I asked why he was so happy and he said, 'Your products helped me produce enough food to sell on the market, not just to feed my family.' And that was the first time that had happened in a number of years for him. This is a guy who farmed maybe four to five acres, a very small field. His whole family was involved and you just started to appreciate his struggle. But at the same time that farmer is the same as a farmer here who might have 30,000 acres. I just managed to go to an event where Kristjan Hebert talked, who's got a large farm down by Moosomin, Saskatchewan there, and his passion for the land, for stewardship, for the next generation, and all the things that are important to him on this huge farm, which would be a incomprehensible thing to this Indian farmer, was no different than the Indian farmer's passion for the stewardship, his family, the next generation who is going to farm that land. And that's this cool common thread that I've seen around the world with farmers is their love for the land. When I think back to John's words about we should consider it an honor to serve these guys and to help them produce more food, I wake up every morning really grateful that I've had a chance to help farmers. That's a real privilege for me."

In the end, farming is really about providing for people, not just sustenance for our bellies, but for our souls.

"When I think back on my career and I think about all the successes I've had, they all come down to these people. It's always people. It's the friends you made, it's the connections you made. It's when I think about the people that I helped get to the next level in their career and the people who helped me. Those are the things that bring me joy. The guys like John Cross and Sandy who gave me a chance as a moronic 25 year old marketing guy. Those guys are the impactful things. The value of serving our farmers, but also serving our staff and putting people ahead of profits is really the foundation of who we try to be here at REDEKOP."

You can hear all about Trevor's journey in biologicals and becoming an entrepreneur in his mid 40's when he took over Redekop to continue to bring many innovations to the agricultural market at growingthefuturepodcast.ca or anywhere you listen to podcasts!