Andy Veenstra, with wife Dorothy, purchased farm land on 2nd Concession in Port Colborne 41 years ago to set up a cash crop farm. Today the business has more than tripled and now includes bio-diesel production.

Andy Veenstra takes stock of wheat pellets produced at his Port Colborne farm operation. Times have changed since he first planted some on the 200 acres he owned. The farm is now 1,800 acres of soy beans and wheat and includes a soy roaster and bio-diesel production.

Andy Veenstra has seen a lot of changes in farming since he bought the land next door to his father’s farm 41 years ago.

Changes, he said, that make it highly unlikely for someone to succeed in the same way if they were to make a start in farming today.

Having been raised on a dairy farm, farming was an industry into which the then 20-year-old wanted to get. But the dairy sector was not his choice.

“I always liked farming,” Veenstra said. “I wasn’t enthralled with the routine of milking cows, but I always loved working the lands.”

So he bought 200 acres next to the farm he grew up on and planted corn. A year later he married Dorothy. At the time getting into cash crops was an easy venture. The land was cheap and readily available and the competition was slim.

Every year after that Veenstra would gradually increase his land. Today he owns 1,400 acres of farm land in Port Colborne. But he no longer grows corn; that venture only lasted a few years until corn became too expensive to grow.

The biggest money maker for the family farm is soy beans. But Veenstra doesn’t just pick them and send them off to the open market — he roasts them, along with those of other local farmers. The roasting process adds value to the crop, which are then shipped across the border. Along with the soy beans, Veenstra also grows wheat which is baled or made into pellets.

Veenstra says he never would have predicted the growth. It was never a goal to see the small parcel of land grow into the incorporated business it is today.

“I never saw it growing like this,” he said. “It’s not like we had this as a goal.”

“We’re not in it for the money, either,” chimed in Dorothy. “It’s something we like to do.”

The farm has grown step by step from a one-building operation to a large scale farm operation with a grain elevator. The elevator was built in 1981 and was a major expansion for the farm. The Veenstras started taking in grain from surrounding neighbours which helped grow the business.

Of the nine Veenstra children, three remain at home on the farm. Two are full-time farm employees, the other is contracted for the farm’s newest venture.

Three years ago Veenstra added a new production to his business — the creation of bio-diesel. It started small — with a five-gallon pail, but has grown to a large scale production. Veenstra Farms produces 90 per cent of its bio-diesel, the 10 per cent he is not able to recover is due to the high gelling point of the diesel, -3 C. Through the production Veenstra has been able to cut his fuel consumption costs by 30 per cent.

It was the economic gain and the excitement of a new challenge that pushed Veenstra into the venture and it has paid off.

While the cost of production is taking a toll on other farmers, Veenstra said it’s not something he tends to worry about. “We do a lot of things here to keep the costs down,” he said, such as constantly testing soil to ensure they do not overfertilize the lands, with the high cost of fertilizer.

“And the roasting of the soy beans add value to the crop. It’s all the little things that keep the costs down.”

Roasting makes soy beans digestible for livestock and adds $30 to $35 a tonne to the price.

While pig farmers are dealing with high costs and tender fruit farmers are dealing with a dwindling market, Veenstra doesn’t see any big challenges in the future.

There was a scare in 2001 when the terrorists attacks on the World Trade Center closed the border to truck traffic. Veenstra Farms was shut down for three weeks.

The only thing that would worry Veenstra now is if the U.S. stopped accepting soy beans from north of the border — the farm would shut down indefinitely if that were to happen. But it won’t, he said.

When he started Veenstra Farms 41 years ago the land was worth less and there were no other cash crop farms in the area. Veenstra said he sympathizes with young families trying to break into the farming business today. When he first purchased his farm land it sold for as little as $400 an acre. He estimates his land would sell for anywhere between $1,200 and $1,500 an acre today.

“It’s too expensive,” he said. “This land was worth a lot less when we got started. If we were just starting out now it would be impossible.”

When he started farming 200 acres of land he would gross about $25,000 a year and the family could live off that. He estimates the business is now worth somewhere in the millions.

But farming isn’t a worthwhile prospect to get into these days, he said. While it has worked well for him and many other farmers, times have changed.

It would even be difficult to pass Veenstra Farms onto one of his nine children. It’s not as simple as handing down the reins, he said.

Because the value of the property has more than tripled, the estate tax burden would be a lot to bear. Still, he hopes one of his children will carry on with the business when he decides to retire. “The problem is the value of the farm now,” Veenstra said.

“They would have to take out so big of a mortgage to buy it all,” he added. “There would have to be a gift involved.”