The vast majority of businesses throughout Canada have felt the impact of Covid-19 over the last two months.
Some businesses have had to close, some have had to adjust with employees working from home or switching to an online service system, but essential services have remained open.
The agricultural industry is one of the most important essential services still operating, providing food for Canadians during an unknown and stressful time.
Farmers aren’t the only ones who must continue operating during this crisis, other businesses in the agriculture industry need to continue providing services to keep the industry churning.
Mack Auction embracing change
For the Mack Auction Company the ban on large gatherings changed the fundamental method of how they operate.
“The Mack Auction Company and its farm customers decided to postpone April sales,” said Mack Auction Company owner Norm Mack. “Just for the fact that this came about pretty fast and crowd restrictions came down so quick from to 250 to 10 people.”
“Therefore we just decided to postpone those April sales until later.”
Due to the need to physical distance Mack Auction’s shifted from in-person auctions to an online format to continue business during the pandemic.
“Now what we’re doing is, we’re going with timed online auctions,” said Mack. “It’s usually a five day option on the internet only so there’s no crowds and people can go inspect the equipment they’re interested in at the farmers location.”
“Then they can come back after inspecting the equipment and have a week to place bids on the equipment.”
“We’ve done the same with land sales,” said Mack. “We’ve made them timed online auction only and they’ve proven to work really well.”
With the unknown timeline of Covid-19, Mack Auction has adjusted so that they can continue online for as long as they need.
“Our June sales will be timed online as will some of our July ones,” said Mack. “We’re just waiting for government announcements.”
“Maybe we can go back live later in July, but we’re prepared to do all of our sales this year time online only.”
Since Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe’s announcement on plans to re-open the province in phases, Mack says they’ll be doing online auctions only for the foreseeable future.
“We made some adjustments and it’s working out really well,” said Mack. “You know agriculture through all this still has to go on and for the most part most farmers are isolated anyway with their equipment.”
“The agriculture industry is essential business and it must move on and with that farmers are still going to need updated or new equipment, and they still have to sell.”
“We’ll see what the impact is for pricing, but so far everything looks strong,” said Mack.
The adjustments to move the operation completely online has been smooth and using a predominantly online format could be the something they continue once Covid-19 has passed.
“It’s not that hard adjusting for us,” said Mack. “We were setup with timed online auctions anyhow.”
“We were prepared all along over the last couple years with the software so for us it wasn’t a big adjustment.”
“Trying to convince some farmers that this is probably the way it’s going to be this year, they understood totally and for some of them it may have been tougher to understand. This is the future in the auction industry,” said Mack. “I’m sure we’ll still see some live auctions, I’m not sure when, but it’s business as usual for us after doing some juggling.”
At the end of the day, Covid-19 has impacted everybody and Mack is just pleased it wasn’t detrimental for their service.
“Was it an inconvenience for us? Sure it was, just like it was for every other business,” said Mack. “We had to do some quick jumping and phoning and rearranging, but I’m sure it will all work out in the end.”
With the live auction business revolving around large gatherings and travel, Mack says, continuing their online auctions just seems like smart business.
“I think for the most part, gatherings of any sort whether it be auctions or sporting events, it’s going to take awhile for the general public to gather shoulder to shoulder in large numbers again,” said Mack.
“As far as the auction industry, even our live auctions we broadcast live over the internet, so farmers are bidding on their phones while they’re working or so they don’t have to travel.”
“You may see at our live auctions smaller crowds, but as you see smaller crowds our numbers on the internet are increasing every year,” said Mack.
Farmers still need to purchase equipment and need to repair it if it breaks down during the pandemic and Rocky Mountain Equipment has been operating with changes to provide the agriculture industry with that option.
Adjustments at RME
“It’s day-to-day adjustments,” said Rocky Mountain Equipment Branch Sales Manager Jason Miller. “Store traffic has been the biggest change.”
“Long-term for the agriculture industry there are so many unknowns out there, but short-term I don’t see it having a huge impact locally or on us,” said Miller.
“Guys still have to get their stuff fixed and have to get the crop in the ground. It’s business as usual for the most part.”
The changes are constant and many essential businesses have had to opt for remote options to continue working.
“It started out on the fly with changes as restrictions got more and more and the other part of it is we’ve got customers who expected it so everybody has realistic expectations and they’re quite accommodating,” said Miller.
“We’ve got limitations when guys enter the store and distance is kept and we’re encouraging orders ahead of time so we can send stuff out.”
“It’s lots of phone transactions and phoning and texting people on the sales side,” said Miller.
Despite the lack of physical interactions and the different adjustments being made, the amount of work to be done in agriculture industry has not changed.
“It’s drastic for us in sales,” said Miller. “It goes against everything we’ve been taught in the sales world, but for the most part it’s kind of status quo for agriculture.”
“The crops got to go in, guys are going to seed, and people have got to eat.”
“The service guys still travel for field fixes and stuff like that,” said Miller. “We’ve all been coached and told what to do as far as distancing.”
“Farmers are well aware on the importance of distancing and nobody is really skirting around the rules, it’s something everybody is taking seriously.”
“We’re fortunate to be in an industry during this time where you get up and get to go to work everyday still,” said Miller. “One benefit of living in small town Saskatchewan is we’ve sort of come through this relatively unscathed.”
PH keeping safe
For Parrish and Heimbecker, they provide services from crop input products to grain contracting options and that can’t stop during Covid-19 leading to them making adjustments.
“We’ve locked our front doors so no producers are allowed in, we started mailing our cheques out, in the driveway we’ve made it so they can’t come into the office either,” said Parrish and Heimbecker Manager Cory Woywada.
“We’ve also spent more time cleaning everything.”
“I think it’s going to be like this for awhile and we’ll adopt more of the practices and try to continue to physical distance.”
Ultimately, everybody involved in the agriculture industry understands the adjustments are necessary and their work must go on.
“It’s just different, change is always different,” said Woywada. “I think everybody seems to get it, there’s been no backlash.”
“It wasn’t too difficult to implement the changes. We have an HR staff keeping us up to date. It’s just hard to get supplies that we need.”
“Some of our sales reps are working from home and we’ve only got half the administrative staff here to help physically distance,” said Woywada.
As Covid-19 continues, Woywada thinks tougher adjustments could have to be made as seasons change.
“I think it’ll get harder as we get into the spring season here,” said Woywada.
“Usually we have chem reps stopping by all the time updating the new programs and chemicals and they can’t do that physically, they have to do that over the phone.”
Overall, the agriculture industry has adapted to the changes being made to operate during Covid-19 and will continue to do so as an essential service.
“It hasn’t really impacted the amount of traffic we’re seeing because the producers are still working too,” said Woywada.
“You just don’t have the producers coming in for coffee and visiting anymore, it’s more of just business.”
