Ambassadors of Food

While aprons and wellies serve their function, they aren’t defining accoutrements of a life in agriculture for women of this generation. Three innovative Alberta women are reshaping the word ‘farmer’ on a local, national and international scale 

- By Teri McKinnon

Sweet success on the home front

Cherie Andrews of Okotoks should be a dance critic. The co-owner of Chinook Honey Company keeps a practised eye on the swing and sway of her honeybees. The bees dance for each other to communicate; it’s critical to the success of the hive.

“The basic requirements in life are honesty, integrity and the energy to work hard. With those tools you can achieve anything,” Andrews says. Now 52, she’s a relative newcomer to agriculture. With a background in meteorology and aviation, she changed track to become a beekeeper in 1995. She’s focused on building Chinook Honey Company (which she runs with husband, Art) into an apiary observation and apitherapy beekeeping operation. The crowded Okotoks retail space, open since 2004, smells of golden honey and Andrews is its queen bee.

Andrews maintains there’s nothing but opportunity ahead for women in agriculture. “Proficient marketing, thinking outside the box, creating value-added products and connecting with people frequently tend to be more female traits,” she says.

While most of us would consider honey a staple for tea or toast, the value-added components of beekeeping are extensive. The Andrews process their own honey, beeswax and pollen, make caramel honey sauces, honey jams and syrups and sell products such as body wash, hand creams, soaps and beeswax candles. They also sell propolis, which is used in apitherapy, the ancient medicinal use of honeybee products. Bees make propolis, sometimes called “nature’s penicillin,” from tree resin and beeswax to sterilize and repair the hive. Humans have used it as a medicinal agent for thousands of years for its remarkable antibiotic properties.

Since 2006, the Andrews have been working to get the licences and permits necessary to build a cottage winery. Chinook Arch Meadery, Alberta’s first honey winery, opens its doors on the farm this May. “It’s ground-breaking stuff,” says Andrews, “and a lot of hard work. We’re a small-scale commercial apiary and we want to maintain that. I’m more about quality and legacy and although it’s more work, it enables us to give more attention to the bees and our customers.”

“Farmers are great keepers of our western landscape.”

Provincial problem solver

If Viterra’s ability to deliver sound technological advancements, crop application development and profit-driven commodity trading relies on its frontline communication, then Denise Maurice is Viterra’s very own neon billboard on an eight-lane highway.

Maurice is manager of agri-product marketing for Viterra, one of Canada’s largest grain handling and agriculture retail networks and a company that connects farm fields to customers around the world. She embraces the fundamental need for problem-solving and listening skills in business advancement. Her smart, direct manner is engaging and she’s the kind of person who makes you feel like you’ve known her since high school. She says it’s the personal touch that lies behind her success.

“It’s a continuum, defining the problem, researching the solutions, communicating and closing the loop with the farmers’ feedback,” says Maurice. “That’s my reality check – marrying the farmer’s needs to those of the company.”

Raised in Winnipeg, Maurice started her career in agriculture studying weed control in such crops as canola and various cereals at the University of Manitoba in the early 1980s. “I had a professor there,” she recalls, “Dr. Ian Morrison, who insisted that we get out of the classroom and go out to talk to farmers.”

It was on these field forays that Maurice discovered that her strength lay in communicating. She found she could explain solutions to challenging weed problems to them in a way that informed and reassured farmers. This led to an expanded role for her with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. Later, at Westco, she broadened her work to all areas of crop production. As technology advanced, so did the opportunities.

“You prove yourself able to solve one problem, that success gets you invited out to solve another problem and it builds,” Maurice says. “It’s a very collaborative way of doing business.” She feels women are strong consensus builders and can work through multiple options to find a solution.

“One of the highlights of my career was that I got to lead an amazing team that brought everything together,” Maurice says. “Researchers, technical experts, scientists and technical tools, all working together to build solutions.”

Maurice has never lost sight of collaborating with the producer, rather than handing down a prescriptive approach. She admits that she had to get past being “the expert.” “Coming from the science side of things, I had to learn that not every solution has one clear formula. Balancing each producer’s needs with the science is the best solution.”

Maurice believes farmers are great stewards of the land. “Canadian farmers are great keepers of our western landscape and they should be recognized, celebrated and supported,” she says. “They’re global leaders.”

“You share a meal with the locals and earn their trust and acceptance.”

International influencer

International agriculture isn’t for the faint of heart. Shifts in trade patterns, advances in technology and volatile political systems make navigating the scene challenging, never mind the banquets. And it needs a level of affection for local farmers, no matter what country their land lies in.

Kate Kolstad, vice-president and co-owner of Alta Exports International Ltd., would know. From the comfort of her Calgary office, Kolstad recounts highlights from her more than 15 trips to rural Russia and 30 to China. This is her territory; it’s where her clients are. She relishes meeting her far-flung producers. Travel in the countryside can be difficult and the trips are punctuated by banquets, offering both delicious and unusual local fare.

“They offer whatever they have,” Kolstad says. “In 2001 we went to Heilongjiang, in northwest China,” she says. “At one banquet we had deep fried sparrows and grasshoppers.”

“And deer penis soup,” calls her business partner Gary Smith from another room. “Don’t forget that.” Kolstad laughs.

“You share a meal with the locals and earn their trust and acceptance,” she says. “Studying and learning a country’s  cultures and traditions is essential in international business.” Her respect for culture makes Kolstad, 44, successful in international agriculture. “Success,” she says, “comes through knowing what people want and not what you think they need.”

Raised on a cattle ranch west of Granum, Alberta, Kolstad thought she was destined to be a rancher’s wife. But her ambition to travel and desire to step out of small-town life directed her into a career in cattle production, genetics and embryo transplants. She studied Animal Health Technology at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and Olds College. She worked as an embryologist with Davis-Rairdan Embryo Transplants, travelling to Western Canada and abroad, to Australia. In 1994, she coordinated a Boer goat embryo program for Alta Genetics.

In 2000, after six years with Alta Genetics, Kolstad and co-worker Gary Smith formed their own international livestock marketing company.

Alta Exports International markets livestock – and expertise – in embryos, genetic technologies and semen for both beef and dairy cattle.

Kolstad believes diversification is essential. “We’re not locked into specific traits of one breed,” says Kolstad. 

In a single shipment in October 2007, AEI shipped 2,217 Canadian purebred cattle to Russia – including Angus, Holstein and Hereford heifers and bulls. The cattle were sourced in six Canadian provinces from more than 400 farms and the combined sales netted close to $4 million for the Alberta livestock farmers involved.

“We listen to the traits that our customers want. We negotiate down to what we know we can supply at the price they are willing to pay, and we find it.”