Blog

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1. Tell us a bit about yourself: what do you do for a living? I am the President of Ag Business & Crop Inc. – a distributor of Precision Agriculture – Wintexagro.com (automated soil samples) and Vice President of CartoCanada – a national distributor of drones and Lidar.
2. What makes you passionate about your career or field?  I’ve always really enjoyed helping people in a field that I love, which is Agriculture. That, and my passion for new technology and precision ag equipment, is how I ended up creating my company.
3. Why did you apply to be part of AALP? My wife, Bernice, is a graduate of Class 17. I saw first-hand what you could learn by being part of this program. I believe in pushing myself to learn more and there is always something I can do to improve on.
4. What is one thing you have learned in your time in AALP?   AALP in the time of Covid has been a learning curve. It has shown me the different ways people can act or react to events. It has pushed me to work on areas that are new to me. AALP helped me to get to know myself from a different aspect.
5. How has technology impacted your leadership journey? 

As one of the first adapters of drones in Agriculture, technology impacted me in the sense that it was new and I learned to make use out of it and make it work for me and others in the industry that were also exploring this technology.

Covid pushed me to develop areas of my business that were on the ‘I will get to it eventually’ list. I redesigned our website and set up an online portal.In the early days, we quickly embraced opportunities given through various grants and programs (I really want to encourage others to do the same).

With a Student grant, we filmed a series of maintenance, repair and information videos that our clients could access when and where they wanted.This saved time for both parties and it could be done within the Covid restrictions.

Another program through local Economic Development gave us the opportunities to have ongoing support from business professionals who worked with us on the operational, managerial, and financial aspects of our business. We also were able to access social media, and marketing specialists who upped our game in the use of technology as the agriculture promotion, marketing, and business landscape has changed. 

6. Is there a personal experience you had that shaped your professional life? I immigrated to Canada by myself when I was 20 years old and only knew three words of English.  That experience taught me to not look back and look forward, and that we all make mistakes. This experience also really taught me to be informed when I make decisions.
7. What is the top issue impacting agriculture now?

I would say one of the top issues is how agriculture is perceived. The challenges with trying to communicate. Also, agriculture sometimes does not send a ‘unified’ message to make things clearer for the general public.

8. How would you encourage younger people to pursue leadership opportunities in agriculture?  

Just take the opportunity. There is never a perfect moment in life. What I see from both Bernice’s AALP class and my own are young people that took the initiative to take on a program like AALP. In both classes someone had a baby during the program, others balanced young children, job changes etc.Now that I am in AALP I wish I had done it a lot sooner!