Kristjan Hebert rejects the popular, romanticized notion that farmers should wear plaid shirts, run small operations, “and maybe even have a piece of wheat sticking out of our mouth.”
It’s an image that runs counter to both reality and Hebert’s own decision to go big on the vast prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada, where he cultivates 30,000 acres of canola, malt barley, wheat, peas, oats, fall rye, and other crops.
Hebert grew up on a much smaller farm of 1,500 to 2,500 acres, where his father raised grain and about 1,250 head of cattle. Like many young farmers, Hebert rented land, growing crops in the summer and working as an accountant during the winter. But in 2008, he quit his job and returned to farming full-time. That’s when the expansion began as Hebert sought the sweet spot where he could afford to hire good people and spend more time with his family.
“Once we realized that people were the number one driver of our business, then it just seemed that the opportunities followed,” he recalled. “If you treat farming as a way of life, it's actually a pretty bad business, but if you treat farming as a business, it can be a really good way of life. So that was the method that we decided to grow our operation.”
Throughout the expansion, Hebert has been guided by the concept of sustainability, which he acknowledges “is a bit of a scary word. Because if you only look at it from one dimension, you can make some really bad decisions.” He takes a more holistic approach, as depicted in a big mural hanging on the wall of his farm office. The word “legacy” is spelled out in chrome lettering on the top, followed by a statement that defines the term as leaving the land, the farm’s financial statements, the community and the industry in a better state than he found it.
“I believe all of those things tie into sustainability,” Hebert said. “I do not want to have a negative impact on the land, and as we learn more and more, we get better and better at protecting soil health and even building it. But I am actually a really bad protector of soil health if I'm bankrupt. And so sustainable practices also have to tie into sustainable financials, which then also have to tie into sustainable rural economic development. Because farming can be lonely if rural society keeps going away.”
Hebert pairs his philosophy with practicality, noting that he’s practiced zero-till agriculture for at least 25 years to protect topsoil. “We've also been big supporters of technologies, such as sectional control to reduce input usage and variable rate to make sure our nutrients are in the exact right spots,” he said. “We've done lots of work around fall crops and starting to dabble in cover crops.”
Through adapting his own farming practices to meet such unique challenges as eight feet of frost and two feet of snow for six months of the year, Hebert has come to believe that it is possible to meet international goals around soil health, sustainability and climate change.
Still, he’s a huge proponent of “local solutions and [having] the data to prove what practices are actually reaching the outcomes we want. Things that work in Canada might not work in Brazil or in the EU or in China.”
One example is reducing agriculture’s carbon emissions. “My worry is that if the policies that go into place are all practice-based, i.e. if you go zero-till or if you use nitrogen inhibitors, it's not necessarily the best thing for each region,” he explained.
In response, Hebert has analyzed soil samples taken over the past 30 to 40 years and done bulk density and carbon burn-offs in a bid to prove exactly how much carbon is sequestered by each practice in his operation. The goal is to generate data that could drive policy around carbon credits, whereby companies can offset their emissions by buying credits from activities that sequester carbon. “It really could turn into a money inflow into agriculture,” he said. “It could literally be a rural revitalization fund for most countries.”
Hebert would also like to see more investment to “understand exactly what our soil is doing to help produce the outcome we want, which is healthy, nutritious food, and to ensure that we continue to always do that. We haven't done a really good job of understanding the four feet of soil that's growing our crop.”
Continually striving to understand both the global agricultural picture and the local situation is yet another way that Hebert embraces sustainability.
“We want to solve agriculture's puzzles,” he said. “It's not something you can jam together and break the pieces off. It's not something you're going to get done in 30 seconds. You just have to slowly figure out where each piece fits, and hopefully, at the end of the day, it's a good-looking puzzle. But don't ever quit trying.”
Watch Krijstan Hebert’s full interview here
Kristjan Hebert is a member of the Global Farmer Network, which amplifies the farmers' voice in promoting trade, technology, sustainable farming, economic growth, and food security. Find out more here.
