Growing the Future

Chris Unrau has a number he's watched for twenty years: $3,500 an acre. That's roughly where land values sat when the phone started ringing with tile drainage questions, not before.

Unrau, who built his tile drainage business from scratch in Manitoba after a decade managing a potato farm's excess-moisture problem, joins fellow producers Daryl of Beaver Creek Farms and Jim Palace of Palace Farms to talk through what actually drives the decision to tile: rising land values, competition for limited acres, and the difference between a luxury input and a crop input that pays for itself. Beaver Creek Farms alone has tiled 9,000 of its 9,700 acres.

What's Inside

- Why rising land values, not just wet fields, are what actually triggers a tile drainage conversation

- The difference between farmers who see tile as a luxury and farmers who call it a no-brainer crop input

- What happens to corn and edible beans on tiled versus untiled ground in the same field

- Why some operations choose to tile existing acres instead of buying more land

- How a third-generation farm decided tile was worth investing in before the results were fully proven

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STARS flies more than eleven missions a day across the Prairies, and nearly four thousand in a single year. Most people only hear about it on the worst day of someone's life.

Darren Entner, Clinical Operations Manager at STARS in Regina, joins Dan to talk about what air rescue actually looks like for rural communities: the kinds of calls the crews respond to, how the technology and logistics hold together under pressure, and how community support keeps the whole thing flying. Dan also explains why he agreed to be dropped into a remote location for a fundraising challenge on STARS' behalf.
 

What's Inside

- What kinds of missions STARS flies, and how scene calls differ from hospital-to-hospital transfers

- How the technology and operations behind a critical care aircraft work in rural areas

- How province-to-province differences, including Manitoba, change what a mission looks like

- Why patient stories, not statistics, are what the crews carry with them

- How community fundraising keeps STARS in the air

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In the summer of 2023, Calem Watson got in a canoe in Fort Smith and didn't see a familiar face for 122 days. By the time he reached Tuktoyaktuk, he'd covered 3,000 kilometers alone.

Watson, a Regina-based adventurer who only picked up canoeing during the pandemic, joins Dan to talk through what that much solitude actually does to a person, the real risk calculus of traveling alone in remote wilderness, and why he thinks the danger of an expedition like this gets wildly overstated. It is a different kind of conversation about independence and self-reliance than the one farmers usually have with each other, and a surprisingly direct one.
 

What's Inside

- Why Watson treats every trip as if rescue isn't coming, even with a satellite messenger in his pack

- What a few years of progressively longer canoe trips taught him before he attempted this one

- The real difference between going alone and going with a partner, both the cost and the reward

- What a person's mind actually does after months away from constant information and noise

- Why he thinks wilderness travel is less dangerous than people assume, if you respect it

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Every bushel that leaves a farm gets a grade, and the farmer rarely has a say in how it is decided.

Kyle Folk, founder and CEO of GroundTruth Ag, pitches a new approach to on-farm grain grading automation, and he does it to the people who would actually have to trust it. Matt Wallington, Brett Casavant, Riley Kushniruk and Scott Maurer, four Saskatchewan producers, press him on what it takes to earn their confidence, with live polling and audience questions in the mix. It is the first episode in the What Farmers Want series, presented by Cornerstone Credit Union's Rural Tech Activation initiative.

What's Inside

• Why new ag technology so often fails to get adopted, and what producers say would change that
• The real-world problem with how grain quality is assessed today
• What a panel of working farmers asks a founder before they believe a pitch
• How the live audience poll lined up with what the panel said
  
  
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Outlook, Saskatchewan has a housing shortage, and it's a good problem to have. The irrigation industry around it is thriving enough that farm companies are buying houses in town just to put workers somewhere to live.

Ryan Husband runs that irrigation industry as executive director of Irrigation Saskatchewan, and runs the town as its mayor, while also co-owning Husbandry Farms with his wife Alicia, ten acres of haskap berries and garlic outside Outlook. He joins Dan to talk through what 250,000 acres of center-pivot irrigation actually takes to manage, why Saskatchewan has more water storage than Alberta but far fewer irrigated acres, and what it's like running a small town's infrastructure on a highway and a bridge that haven't been fixed in decades.

What's Inside

- Why Saskatchewan has more water storage capacity than Alberta but a fraction of the irrigated acres

- What it actually costs to expand a small town's infrastructure when the industry around it is growing

- The ten-acre math that makes a small high-value crop operation pencil out

- Why most of Saskatchewan's irrigation districts still don't have a full-time engineer

- How an engineer who planned to farm full-time ended up running a town instead

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Soil Health Revolution: Unlocking the Potential Beneath Your Feet | Growing the Future Mastermind 

Join host Dan Aberhart in the 'Engine of the Soil Igniting the Evergreen Revolution' webinar as he speaks with Greg Patterson, CEO and founder of A&L Canada Laboratories. 

This webinar, presented by A&L Canada Laboratories and Growing the Future Productions, gathers a powerhouse of agronomic expertise to discuss soil health and its transformative potential in agriculture. 

Greg shares his 40 years of experience and unveils a comprehensive soil health series that will bring agronomic insights to farmers in Western Canada and beyond. 

The session explores the history of green revolutions, the importance of soil microbiomes, balanced fertility, and innovative techniques to boost crop yields while maintaining environmental sustainability. 

Engage with the discussion, learn about the groundbreaking Soil Health Index, and discover how proper soil management can revolutionize agricultural productivity. 

Stay tuned for future sessions and masterclasses aimed at elevating agronomy practices globally. 

00:00 Welcome and Introduction 

01:30 Excitement for Soil Health Series 

03:04 Greg Patterson's Vision and Goals 

06:00 Historical Overview of Fertility 06:18 The First Green Revolution 

08:23 The Second Green Revolution 

09:24 The Evergreen Revolution 

09:50 Plant-Microbe Interactions 

11:36 Soil Health and Microbial Activity 

16:18 Case Study: Potato Production 

19:49 A&L Biologicals and Soil Health 

25:56 Balanced Fertility and Nutrient Management 

33:14 Q&A Session: Soil Health and Fertility 

47:59 Impact of Agriculture on Organic Matter 

49:46 The Role of Sulfur in Soil Health 

52:47 Microbial Activity and Soil Moisture 

01:02:10 No-Till Farming and Soil Stratification 

01:09:29 Soil Health Index and Microbial Populations 

01:23:21 Introducing the Growing the Future Mastermind

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A fertilizer quote in Western Canada is the last step in a chain that starts with export policy, damaged infrastructure, shipping lanes and industrial gas prices on the other side of the world.

Josh Linville analyses that chain for a living. Recorded ahead of the 2025 season, this conversation walks through the specific pressure points that were moving the market, and in doing so lays out how the market is actually built.

What's Inside

• How an export restriction in a single country removes millions of tons from global trade and what that does downstream
• The pipeline and port infrastructure losses that took a large share of global ammonia export capacity out of service
• Why a concentration of urea production in one region makes a handful of shipping chokepoints into a pricing input
• What high natural gas costs did to European nitrogen production, and why that puts European buyers in competition with North American ones
• The phosphate picture: reduced exports, trade duties, and what that leaves for regional supply
• Where potash actually comes from, and why trade politics matter more than supply does
• What pushed sulphur and ammonium sulphate, including a driver most producers have never thought about
• Why a local price can move for reasons that have nothing to do with anything local
  
  
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Most farm risk plans are built on break-even. The market does not care what your break-even is, and neither does the insurance behind it.

This live session, presented with Global Ag Risk Solutions, put four perspectives on the same problem: Dave Sullivan from Global Ag Risk, Dean Klippenstine and Tyson Kenneth from MNP, and producer Carl DeConnick Smith, known for a contrarian but disciplined approach to planning. They work through how insurance options, AgriStability, and forward pricing fit together, what a well-thought-out plan does for a farm when volatility hits, and how a young farm with no history gets started. Live questions from the audience shape much of the conversation.

What's Inside

- How the major insurance options and AgriStability work together, and where each one stops

- Why a plan built before volatility arrives changes how a farm behaves when it does

- How a new farmer with no production history approaches coverage

- What one producer's plan looks like when everything seems to be going against him

- The one number the panel agrees every farm should know before it plans the year

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Wade Barnes says he had about twenty eight million dollars of value on paper the day Farmers Edge went public at seventeen dollars a share. He sold at roughly thirty cents.

This is Part 3, and it is the part he says he had never told publicly before. It covers the fundraising treadmill, the investor who insisted everyone hold the same class of shares, the decision to go public into a market that was screaming for technology listings, and what it felt like to watch the number fall every morning.

What's Inside

- The trap he walked into without seeing it: growth has to be shown to raise again, and spending is how you show growth

- The fork he still thinks about, where he could have stayed a profitable business at a fraction of the size and did not, because he was afraid of being swallowed

- Why the investor everyone warned him about turned out to be the one who insisted on treating every shareholder equally

- The exits he believes were missed, and the tension that comes from an investor who is genuinely committed to the business

- The advice he was given before the listing to leave carbon out of the story, the call from a former investor telling him the opposite, and which one he regrets following

- What it is like to be the seventh most subscribed listing of the year and still watch the share price go one direction

- Where he thinks the real advantage in farm data sits now, and why he does not think it sits with the companies making the loudest claims

- Starting again at 350,000 acres with people he worked with before, deliberately not trying to rebuild what he had

Related Episodes

Wade Barnes Part 1: What Happens When the Data Company Loses the Farmer

Wade Barnes Part 2: competing with Monsanto and John Deere

🎧 Why You Should Listen:
Wade provides an honest look into the pressures of being a tech entrepreneur in agriculture, including what he would have done differently and why he believes a more personal touch with farmers is the key to success. Whether you're in agribusiness, tech, or just love a great entrepreneurial story, this episode is packed with valuable lessons and insights.

Connect with Growing the Future

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Subscribe to the Growing the Future Podcast wherever you listen, and register for Convergence Conference 2027 at convergence.ag.

Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.

Wade Barnes spent the early years of Farmers Edge quietly terrified of two companies. Not competitors his own size. Monsanto and John Deere.

This is Part 2 of a three part conversation. It picks up at the beginning, with a name chosen because he wanted the word Edge in it, and a field day where he walked twenty farmers through an oat crop where the strip with no nitrogen was the only part starting to lodge. The value was obvious. What was not obvious was how a Manitoba company was supposed to hold on to it.

What's Inside

- The early proof that variable rate worked, and why the farmers standing in that field could see it before the industry could

- Why he never trusted agronomic models, going back to risk advisories that arrived during stretches with no rain at all

- What changed the day Monsanto acquired Climate Corp, and the strategy he built in response: in-cab data, weather stations, and better inputs rather than more analysts

- The weather station finding that quietly explained years of variable rate complaints, once he could see three inches of rain difference inside three quarters of a mile

- A binding agreement worth more than twenty million dollars that evaporated when the counterparty was acquired, and the months of panic that followed while investors walked

- How he thought about data ownership, and the line he would not cross on selling farmer data

- Why he believes the grain trade made its money on information rather than on grain, and what the internet did to that advantage

- The partnerships that followed, and the independent dealers who told him they could not stay once he chose their largest competitor

Related Episodes

Wade Barnes Part 1: What Happens When the Data Company Loses the Farmer

Wade Barnes Part 3: the raise, the IPO, and starting over

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Subscribe to the Growing the Future Podcast wherever you listen, and register for Convergence Conference 2027 at convergence.ag.

Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.