Nuanced. - Taste of Abby: Amir Maan on Sustainable Strawberry Farming & Agritourism at Maan Farms

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Tune in as Amir Mann, director and farmer at Mann Farms, walks us through his family's cutting-edge vertical farming system, their proactive approach to climate change, their enthusiasm for local produce, and their enduring love for Canadian agriculture.Welcome to the Taste of Abby podcast mini-series! In this series, we'll explore Canada's largest farming community, connecting with farmers, creators, and restaurant owners. We'll dive into how they harvest from the land, strive towards sustainability, and strengthen our region. Join Aaron Pete as we deepen our connection to these lands and explore the tastes of Abby.Learn more about Maan Farms: https://maanfarms.com/Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Welcome to Taste of Abbey. I'm Aaron Pete from Chihuahawthal First Nation, and I host the Bigger Than Me podcast. In this series, we'll explore Canada's largest farming community, connect you with local farmers, creators, and restaurant owners. We'll dive into how they harvest from the land, strive toward sustainability, and strengthen the social fabric of our region. Join me as we deepen our connection to these lands and explore the Taste of Abbey. I am here with Amir Man, the director and farmer for man farms. It's such a pleasure to be with you today. Pleasure to be here as well. Can we start with how you got involved in the farm?

What pulled you in? What got you excited? I've been involved in the farm since ever since I've been born pretty much. Well, it's one famous story that I read everywhere and tell everybody is that when I was three years old, my mom and I were hanging out outside and actually crawled up the tractor and turned it on. And my mom didn't know how to turn it off back then. And so she called my dad saying, I don't know how to turn a tractor off. And he said, don't worry, if he turned it on, he'll turn it off. And I turned it off myself as well.

It doesn't mean that I was involved in the farm then. But as later on when I went through university, I was more had an entrepreneur spirit. And I liked to hang out with my dad out in the field and kind of see how we planted some small little plug or plant. And then all of a sudden you would harbor something with it and then pay your bills and you could do something with it. So I always love that concept to do something with your hands. I always loved being an entrepreneur. So I went to school for agriculture, and then ever since then, I just fell in love and I realized the possibilities. You love working as a family. You love this teamwork from my understanding. Am I correct?

Yeah, it's correct. It's great. It's all so hard at the same time, but it's awesome. How do you approach leading a team and making sure that everything here is rolled out properly? A lot of it I give credit to my parents. My dad set it up where all of his kids had different parts of the farm, and then we were able to excel and grow in those areas as well. But whenever each of us has any difficulties or we have problems, we always come. together, have team meetings, and we try to solve the problem together. So as you're growing and as you're innovating, innovation comes from a team. It never comes from one person from what, from my perspective, from what I've been taught, and from what I've seen around the world from some of the best companies in the world. You faced some pretty unique problems,

atmospheric rivers, heat domes, and then you had a very cold spell in May. Can you tell us about what you started thinking of when you started to run into these problems? Your problem solver, how did you approach this? We saw these problems from many years ago. So these are some of the more coin terminology that they started using, I saved a couple years ago. But as farmers, especially my dad and I, I've been farming for about 15 years. The last 10 years, or about five years, we've been seeing a really big shift in regards to what a normal summer or normal season is. When I first started, I always looked for a normal season. I always asked what was normal, what's different. And all the agronomists, our consultants, they always said, you know, this year is a little bit different

because of this. This year, we have winter. This year, we have summer. This year, you know, the rain. And slowly we realized there's never a normal season. And, And this normality that I speak of, it was, it did exist. Earlier on about 15 or 20 years ago, everyone knew around a week or two basis when the harvest would come, when it would stop, how long you'd have sunny days for, how much it would rain a year, it's very hard to predict now. So that unpredictableness leads to a farmer from having many challenges that they can't control. And so what do you do?

You put measures in place such as weather resistance policies or structures. such as the greenhouse that we're standing in to adhere to those. It seems like there was planning that went in over the pandemic, that you were focused on how do we address these issues for the long term? How do we become sustainable over 10, 20 years, rather than thinking just next year, as other farmers may have? Sure. As a farmer, you always look back at the end of the season, say, you know, how you did, how was your harvest,

what were the challenges you had, and what can you do better next year, like you're saying? And year after year after year, we kept growing. We grew from just about 10 rows of strawberries, which are this Alvian variety, to about 25 acres in a matter of about five years. And we started supplying some of the largest brands within the Fraser Valley. And these brands and also the stores, they wanted a regular consistent strawberry, but we couldn't produce it. So what would come in place would be California strawberries. But the local demand was so high. So we thought to ourselves, what can we do to make sure we have a reliable consistent fruit all the time?

and that was investing into somehow controlling the environment. We love shopping local. We love knowing that our food's local, but that puts responsibility and onus on the farmers to deliver that. And as you've kind of described, there's challenges that come with that. Can you talk about feeling the love for local, but the responsibilities that you have to take on to deliver that?

Yeah, rightfully so. You know, because of local, it gives you proximity to that farm and you can go ahead and literally go knock on that farmer's doorstep, opposed to buying from California, you really can't. You don't have that proximity. So having that connection with the community means that you want to do as good as a job for that community as you can. That's how I feel anyways. So from our perspective, as you saw, my son was walking around here, I can go in here and give them a strawberry off the plant and I feel completely safe with it because I know what I apply. I know how I grow it. I know the most

biological or the most safest way of growing strawberries. And I do that on a regular basis. And that's what it means to me, is being a steward for your community. Can you contrast that with what you know other farmers do, perhaps in other states, other countries, and the quality that you're trying to deliver in comparison? I think farmers around the world are doing the best they can with what they have. You know, I think everyone as a farmer is an extremely difficult times in many areas and many places of the world. I know some farmers who are in the California that have 900 plus acres, and they're on the brink of going bankrupt due to some of the economic challenges they're having. They've had some massive floods that you may have heard of and some five. that they're dealing with now as well.

Every farmer around the world is trying to do what I just spoke of, just in a different extent. In regards to how it's done in other areas, you know, the rules and regulations that you're allowed to apply on a plant are set by the government. And everything that you do above that is what you do based off of the knowledge and research that you gain. And what we do here at Man Farms is that we try to learn from everyone.

So we learn from California, we've learned from Holland, we've learned from Germany, meaning I've studied in Holland, studying in Germany. I was just there about two months ago as well learning. So I try to take the best I can from everywhere and apply here. It seems like you're really a student to the game. Like, you're really willing to dive in and learn. My understanding is you bought like 25 acres and you were trying to grow strawberries, outdoors, the usual way, and you face challenges. Your yields weren't as strong as you would have liked them to be. Can you talk about that and then transitioning into this space? That's correct. So there were some challenges in yield. In particular,

the challenge was due to the weather. We would go ahead and grow 25 acres worth of crops, but we lose half of the yield due to some unprecedented events. So like you're saying, for example, two or three years ago, if I remember correctly, in August we had almost 50 degrees Celsius. So we planted four acres, siltch, all gone. There were fairly young plants. Those ones died off early because they weren't established as other ones. But a lot of farmers do plant in the later part of July, the beginning of August, such as I did.

And those farmers also lost their crops. So that's one of the examples that, you know, if you go ahead and you apply as many inputs as you want, you can do the best fertilizer, the best growing practices outdoors, but the weather can come out and over and just say, hey, listen, better luck next year. Can you also talk about the weight that it puts on you as an individual? Like the stress that you feel when you have all of these plans, you've put in a lot of work to get there, and then there's no return, or the results weren't what you were hoping for. Of course, there's disappointment and there's problems and they arise and their surprises.

You know, like, I'm not that easygoing, but I'm easygoing enough to know that that's what comes from being a farmer. So this is what farmers do. They wake up in the morning and try to do the best job they can, not knowing what the weather is going to be tomorrow. Can you tell us about the logic of this place? Obviously, you were outdoors, your yields weren't as good. Can you tell us about transitioning into this amazing space and the strategies you implement?

Sure, yeah. Like you can see the strawberries are above us opposed to being below us. And that inherently has so many positive impacts from the farmer and also from the worker as well. So the worker can stand and prune the strawberries, cut off the leaves, remove dead foliage. Also, harvest everything is done from eye-level height. So it's more ergonomic. It's less stress on the human body.

And then in regards to making sure that you can be more economical, like you're saying, you can only get 17,500 plants outdoors in one acre, but indoors you can get 175,000 plants in two and a half acres. So that's five times the savings in space. So in our area, if you go look at local farmers that just got sold here, they're selling for a quarter million dollars an acre. So we're able to put that into two and a half acres. It's a space savings right there.

You take risks. You're willing to take steps that others may not be willing to. You're trying to inspire other people to say maybe this is the future. Maybe this is what it's going to look like moving forward. Can you talk about what it's like to kind of lead the way and show other farmers? This may be the future. This is the way to go. It is something that my parents have always done is they've always tried to help anybody else who comes and ask,

even about our goats or a goat yoga or even the wine that we do. And it's something that they've distilled in me is to share with others. And we inspire, where my siblings and I, we inspire to lead their path and to do as much positive as well as we can. So we invite everybody to come and learn a little bit about how we do farming here. I wouldn't say this is the end-all be-all. There's a lot of challenges with this system as well. But at the same time, we're learning as we go.

And even if we come here and we spend an entire day with you, we're sharing as much as we can with you. But at the same time, we're learning as well. So we love to have that give and take, and it's great for us. How many different strawberries are you growing here? We actually only have one main variety. It's Albion. This is what the entire Frasier Valley has been trained to love due to its high bricks content,

meaning how sweet it is, and the conical shape. So it has that kind of beautiful heart shape. And it's a variety, which is actually from California. They grow this variety in California, but the thing with getting albian strawberries from California is that they're picked a little bit underripe. they should be. When you buy them here locally, they're picked perfectly the day out. We'll be here well this morning because it's getting a little bit later in the day. We actually start at 5.30. We filled our vams up and then clock they're gone. So we pick everything and then they're on

our retail shelves such as Kins, Meridian Whole Foods, Fresh Street, right away at 11 p.m. And they're on the consumers table by 12 p.m. You cannot get a fresher strawberry anywhere around the world opposed to getting locally from your local farmers and that's what we try to advocate this from my understanding goes into the wine it's going into people's homes can you talk a little bit about all the different places these strawberries end up in people's lives yeah we we love value ad we love trying to do different and unique things with strawberries one of them is the strawberry wine like you just said which won tons of awards my brother makes all that um and then we also have pies jams jellies uh ice cream so so many different offerings you're able to be more confident in that you're

going to have a yield at the end of year. How does that feel for you to have sort of addressed some problems that would have stressed you out a couple of years ago? It is different. It's definitely different. It's deficiency aspect behind it is there. That's one of the biggest pros about being inside and being controlled. When you do have a rainstorm coming for four days, you're protected. You don't lose your crop, which we have in the past. When you have, like even today is such a hot day, we have shade blocker on or UV blocker on the roof here. And that, what actually does, it blocks out the heating element of the light spectrum. So you don't get that, but you get all the good parts about it.

So even though when it's 35 degrees outside, it's about 33, 34 degrees inside. So it's actually a little bit cooler. So you don't have that scorching of the plant. And the reliability aspect, it comes with all that. So you don't have to deal with some of these problems that you do have to deal with outdoors. And, you know, it's the second year doing this. So we're not sure how great it feels, but it definitely is a step towards the right direction. This has really transitioned for you because now things are going on more indoors.

you're able to access more agritourism, you're allowed to do goat yoga, you have more options with the land that you already have. Can you talk a little bit about what else is going on here at Man Farms? We're getting gearing up for the fall. You know, next week we're starting our Sampfar Festival or Sampfar Patch, correct me. And then what we have coming up in September is some of the first in Canada experiences that no one's ever actually experienced yet. So a pumpkin patch done differently that you won't ever experience anywhere, anywhere else. I think everybody needs to come to that from if you're two years old or even an infant all the way up to 99, that's something that you need to come and do.

In regards to our nighttime experiences, like we were speaking about a little bit earlier, we're offering a brand new story type like experience, which you're going to be just, it's going to blow your mind. It's a completely new type of way of going through a haunted house than no one's experienced before that we're so excited to roll out. And my team and I, we've gone, just like I said, for the strawberries, we go all around the world to learn about these tactics and strategies

that some people are doing great. We don't really find someone who does an amazing job, but we find some of the best people, put it together, put it on a whiteboard, and say, how can we offer this? So you always think about the consumer. We always think about what are the best way, what best experience they can have,

and we are so excited for Fall to come and provide this for you guys. There's so much people can take away from your story and your journey, your willingness to learn and discover new opportunities and new styles of doing things. I'm wondering, what advice do you have for people starting out on their journey, starting to plant something in their backyard for people on their journey of running a full farm. What's your advice for people moving into this area?

Yeah, I think farming is changing one year after the next. Just because you've thought things have been done a certain way, it does not need to be done that way the next year. A lot of things that I go out and see from my perspective, in particular, I see in Holland in regards to the agronomy particularly, are so far in advance. So go out, knock on your neighbor. If your neighbor can't give you a right solution. next neighbor, keep asking, come and talk to us, talk to anyone you want to, and ask them

how you can do a better job with the pot of land you have. And I'm sure you'll find the answer and you'll find your passion there. Can we start with the different levels? There's three tiers to this. What's the logic behind that? So it's about space savings. As we can't grow any wider, the best thing to do is grow taller. So now we have 175,000 plants and two and a half acres. An outdoor equivalent, that would mean about 35, 40,000 plants. So as you can see, almost five times the amount of savings. So we have here multiple different plants within a tighter space and that's the whole point of space savings.

Can you tell us about these plants? Yeah, so these plants, like I said, as Albany, they were actually planted at the end of February. It's a mature plant. We've just cleaned off and harvested our next big flush, which we already did. And now we're going to be going into our shoulder season. So meaning the next flush of berries

opposed to the ones which are already here, we'll be starting at the middle of September and push all the way through the middle. or even end of November, depending on how the weather's going to be. If last year's any predictor of this year, which usually it may or may not be, we don't know, we might have a nice warm October and November, meaning we will have strawberries here, maybe even until the beginning of December. Oh, my goodness.

And how different is that from how things were done previously? Oh, it's impossible. You can never do that outdoors due to such as disease pressures, the rain, just being outdoors and the cold and the wet, it's very difficult. Picking in carbon flats, which would go soggy, you can never do it. Are we able to try some of these? Yes, of course. So here's a strawberry right here.

It's a medium sized strawberry. All right, grab yourself one and we'll try one together. All right, let's do it. So I got another one right here as well. Cheers, man. Cheers. I really appreciate you being willing to do this. Of course, of course.

How are you going to eat it that way first? Best way to have it is from the back end first. What if I eat the whole thing? That's great too. They say the tip is the sweetest. Oh, those are so good. That's crazy. That's delicious.

That's awesome. Thank you so much. Oh, this is such a pleasure. What's your favorite type of strawberry? And it would be the ones that I grow. Yeah. Amir, it's such a pleasure to speak with you today. Thank you so much for being willing to do this.

Pleasure.