by DAVID SCHMIDT
CHILLIWACK – When Henk van Wijk decided to emigrate to Canada with his young family in 1988, the officer in the Canadian embassy in the Netherlands (ironically, from Chilliwack) asked him what he intended to do to make a living. The young man, who had been operating a small dairy, grain and sugarbeet farm in Holland, wasn’t sure.
“I told the officer I had two strong arms and was willing to use them,” he recalls. And use them he did. “I did all kinds of labour that first year.”
He bought a small five-acre farm in Greendale and some equipment, and started offering his services to local dairymen. It was something he had already done in Holland, as his farm had not been big enough to “keep me going all year.” It was a struggle at first.
“When I started, people really didn’t know what custom work was. It was just farmers helping their neighbours. It’s different with me. This is all I do.” Van Wijk persevered, slowly building up his credibility and his clientele. Now he has over $1 million worth of high-tech cultivation, spraying, planting and harvesting equipment, employs his sons John and Hans and another full-time worker and up to six part-timers and serves 150 to 200 farms from Sumas Prairie to Agassiz.
“We do custom-plowing, liquid manure spreading, cultivating, side-dressing, fertilizer and chemical spraying, corn, pea and bean planting and corn and grass harvesting. For some farms, it’s full service, for others we just do one job,” van Wijk says. “Our season starts at the beginning of March and continues to mid-November.”
The three winter months are spent with family and preparing the machinery for the next season.
Although the number of farms have decreased dramatically in the past 20 years, that has actually helped van Wijk’s business. As the remaining farms become larger, farmers no longer have the time or manpower to do all the work. “When a dairy farmer has to plant his corn or harvest his grass, he either has to hire extra help or fall behind on his other jobs. Because this is our only work, we don’t fall behind other jobs.”
Using a custom worker is also a more judicious use of capital.
“If a farmer buys a $400,000 harvester, he only uses it a few days but has to pay $5,000 a month for it. That’s a cost of $60,000 per year. If you bring us in, it can cost you a quarter of that,” John explains. “They can use the rest of the money to buy more quota or a few more cows.”
He adds that their equipment has much more capacity than the equipment most farmers can afford.
“Using their own equipment, it would take them two weeks to do a field we can do in just hours.”
Their equipment also features the latest technology.
“Technology is advancing so quickly – individual farmers just can’t keep up.” And van Wijk prides himself on always having the latest technology. In 1995, he became the first person to use liquid fertilizer in the Fraser Valley and now uses it exclusively.
“I had problems with dry fertilizer because it was heavy and cumbersome and not at all accurate.”
While he admits farmers were initially skeptical, the results convinced them. “Now almost all farmers use liquid fertilizer,” van Wijk notes.
Not only is it much more accurate (Van Wijk’s computerized equipment manages the gallons per minute application rate to four decimal points), but the results are much better “especially on grass in a dry summer.”
They are also adding GPS. It is already in four of their units and will soon be in all six.
Hank likes it because it allows him to get straight lines in the field, laughingly noting that “appeals to my Dutch heritage.”
But John quickly adds it is also an incredibly useful tool. Not only does the GPS make all operations more accurate, it provides complete mapping capabilities. “All fields we planted with this equipment are now mapped. We even have elevation maps” he says. “Most farmers don’t invest in GPS but we do.” The GPS is linked to an on-board computer which in turn is linked to a yield monitor on their harvester, allowing them to record not only how much each field produces but each variation in that field.
“For example, while a normal corn yield might be 20 tonnes per acre, the yield monitor shows us that one part of the field only yielded 12 tonnes while another part yielded 24 tonnes. We collect information every year and have variable rate planting and fertilizing equipment so we can plant and fertilize based on that information.”
The GPS marks the exact location of the equipment at all times, allowing the computer to draw a picture of what area has already been covered and what remains. This may not be critical during harvest as that information is obvious to the naked eye but is very useful when spraying fertilizer or herbicides. “Our goal is to have farmers rely on us to have the latest technology,” Hank says, with John adding “each year you only have one chance to do it right. If you have the technology and the records, you can improve your odds.”
And that is critical to the van Wijk’s continued success.
“This is all I do. I have to have the farmers’ trust that I have the capacity and ability to do what I say I will do when I say I will do it,” Hank says.
He has built that trust, which is why John came back to join the family firm after earning his degree in agricultural mechanics and agriculture production at Olds College.
“We have a good future here,” he says.