Travel unlocks a better business
For this producer, two mid-career trips to Europe were a turning point for his farm enterprise.
Ever feel guilty about taking a day off? Innisfail, Alta. farmer Rod Bradshaw once took 110 days off and he’ll tell you
it’s the best thing he could have done for his business.
“Back in 1992, we were involved in a vegetable growers’ association, and the general manager organized a group trip to Europe,” says Bradshaw. “On that trip, we learned first-hand about vegetable marketing channels in Northern Europe and the U.K.”
For Bradshaw, those lessons couldn’t have been timelier. He and wife, Shelley, had founded Beck Farms in 1986, but were struggling to market vegetables profitably through wholesale channels. The European vegetable growers he met tended to bypass wholesalers and deal directly with retailers or even consumers.
The organizer of the 1992 trip was a former Nuffield Scholar, who encouraged Bradshaw to apply to this well-known agricultural scholarship program. Nuffield Scholars, chosen each year from six countries, including Canada, design and follow a travel plan that
reflects their personal interests, later sharing their newly acquired knowledge through a report and public speaking.
In the fall of 1994, after an application and review process, Rod Bradshaw was named one of Canada’s Nuffields Scholars for 1995.
The value of a fresh perspective
As part of his Nuffield experience, Bradshaw visited several European countries, toured agricultural points of interest and met many European vegetable producers during 110 days in 1995.
He returned to Canada intent on marketing more of his vegetables directly to consumers. To get the volume needed, he and Shelley started a co-operative with four other farm families, known as Innisfail Growers. The Bradshaws grow carrots, while the other families focus on peas, asparagus, beans, tomatoes and strawberries.
Looking back, Bradshaw believes the mid-1990s were the right time for him to take those short sabbaticals from farming and consider the wider world.
“I was about 39 years of age then,” he says, “old enough to have done something, but young enough to do something else. I’d say that 90 per cent or more of what we’re doing today is based on what I learned during those two trips.”
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