Rob Burtonshaw, a third-generation drainage contractor, has dedicated the past year to the study of land drainage. His passion for the business came naturally, but his pursuit to learn new techniques, find innovative technologies and talk to industry professionals is what makes him stand apart.Burtonshaw is committed to studying land drainage and its role in farming’s future. In 2012, he was named one of approximately 75 Nuffield scholars worldwide. He is the first Nuffield scholar to focus solely on land drainage, and the award provides his travel funds for one year to bring new ideas back to Britain’s farmers and drainage industry. Burtonshaw shared his learning experiences and preliminary outcomes with Drainage Contractor magazine in our November 2012 issue. His final research and conclusions will be presented to the Nuffield Annual Conference in November 2013. Until then, he continues to travel – talking to farmers, equipment manufacturers, researchers, and contractors – about what he knows best: land and field drainage.DC: What is the land drainage industry like in your area (United Kingdom)?RB: Agricultural land drainage in the U.K. has been shaped by the introduction and removal of government grants. After the Second World War, British policy focused on increasing agriculture production, and drainage was subject to grants, encouraging farmers to drain their land and increase yields. However, during the 1980s, the British government changed its policy and the grants were removed, but not before farmers invested heavily in land drainage, taking advantage of the grants while they were still available. Since then, very few hectares of land have been drained in the U.K.Farmers in our area experienced one of the wettest years on record this past year, exposing many old drainage problems – and the need to drain fields could not be clearer. It’s no surprise many farmers are keen to talk about drainage now. With the under-investment of drainage in the U.K. for the past 30 years, there is opportunity for industry expansion and I hope to use the Nuffield Farming Scholarship to improve our own drainage company, while promoting the importance and effectiveness of drainage.DC: How did you determine where to travel and whom to meet?RB: I started by asking people here in the U.K. for names and contacts of people they knew abroad. From these initial contacts I sent out inquires, asking to visit, and for recommendations of others I should meet. And then things just snowballed, and I had difficulty narrowing down the people to visit and fitting them into my travel schedule.I was eager to travel to Canada and the U.S., where drainage research is more common. I tried to meet as many people as possible – including more than 60 contractors, eight machinery manufacturers, seven universities, six pipe manufacturers, countless farmers and representatives of local governments. I have stacked up a lot of miles throughout my travels. And while some machinery salesmen may have travelled farther, my travels have been unique because I’ve talked to people in every aspect of the industry – from farmers to researchers, and fellow scholars to contractors like myself. I’ve traveled to Canada, the United States and the Netherlands. I also took the time to visit with industry representatives in the U.K., because the last thing I wanted was to travel halfway across the world only to be told about someone from home. DC: What have you learned so far?RB: The most important lesson so far is that enthusiasm is vital to any business. It can be difficult when a breakdown occurs or something goes wrong, but being positive and trying to drive the job and your company forward is what’s most important. Each place I visited had its own strengths and weaknesses. For example, nearly all the drainage crews in Ontario seem to be slick and work very efficiently, the trencher was never still for very long. I also noticed many American contractors seemed willing to embrace technology and use it whenever possible.I have a long list of ideas I’d like to apply to our own drainage company at home. It ranges from small things like using a pipe cutting “spade” used by most contractors in North America to alterations to our own machinery. GPS grade control is another idea I hope to take back home.DC: Were you surprised by any of your observations or outcomes?RB: I found that only by speaking to farmers, the end users of drainage, was it possible to gain a complete understanding of the entire drainage market in the areas I visited. Similarly, one of the advantages to meeting pipe and machinery manufacturers was to learn about their perspective of the whole industry. As contractors, we often work with our heads down and forget about the bigger industry picture.It was encouraging to meet fellow contractors who were very welcoming and open. This allowed me to gain an understanding of how they ran their companies and provided me a unique opportunity to learn from them, watching how others do the same job I do. I’ve often joked that my mission has been to take everyone’s best idea and copy them.DC: Did you learn anything about yourself along the way?RB: I feel very comfortable about my topic and area of research, and while most of my previous knowledge came from my father and grandfather, I now feel like I have a more rounded education and that I have seen more than most. And I’m more comfortable speaking in public now, already having spoken at a number of events about my research and the importance of drainage.DC: What have you learned from fellow international Nuffield scholars?RB: It’s almost impossible not to learn something when meeting a Nuffield scholar. Nuffield carefully chooses people with opinions and a willingness to express them. To be a Nuffield scholar you have to be involved with food production, so the expertise ranges across the farming industry. I have likely learned more about farming by talking to fellow scholars than from visiting thousands of farms each year, because when a drainage contractor visits a farm, the conversation focuses mainly on drainage rather than farming. A number of scholars in recent years have focused on soils, exploring subjects such as how to increase organic matter through cover crops or how to reduce compaction. While neither of these directly relate to drainage, drainage is all about soils – and the more information I can learn about soils the better.DC: What do you predict to be the next big step in technology for land drainage?RB: I suspect most contractors would agree GPS grade control will be the future, and for many this technology is already the present. There will come a time when laser graded machines will no longer exist, though I’m not sure if that will be five, 10 or 20 years away.Satellite images are also likely to play a larger role in this industry because, like many others, I already use Google Earth regularly. The resolution of these images is improving and there may come a time in the near future when we will be able use them to conduct level surveys.DC: What are your conclusions on the role of land drainage as it relates to the future of agriculture?RB: While my studies aren’t complete yet, I’m convinced drainage is underappreciated and that we, as an industry, need to be more active in promoting its benefits. Buried a meter below the ground, it’s easy for farmers to forget about, or overlook the work drains actually do.If predictions about world populations are correct, we are going to have to feed many more people, and we can only do this by becoming more efficient because we can’t produce more land. I’m also convinced that, despite vast improvements that can and probably will be made in the developing world, much of the grains will be produced in the most fertile and advanced areas. Drainage is a proven technology that can be installed almost immediately, and the resulting yield increases are significant. I can’t see how yields can be increased to the necessary level without drainage.Farmers will still be draining land in 50 or 100 years from now . . . as long as we grow crops, we’ll be draining land. Here in the U.K., many fields still rely on drains that were installed in the 19th century. These drains have provided great service, but nothing lasts forever and many systems are starting to fail. Land drainage will continue because, after all, drains don’t last forever.There is a moral duty to use the land as efficiently as possible, especially as pressure on the land increases. I can only see the amount of drained land increasing.To read our first interview with Burtonshaw, click here.

Back in the late 1800s, investors averse to large risk held a major portion of their wealth in railroad bonds. Everyone agreed it was the safest place to keep your money to earn a modest but dependable return. But many people followed this practice without understanding the risks involved. The unforeseen emerging importance of the automobile resulted in the bankruptcy of so many railroads. Overdependence on conventional wisdom and following the crowd is only one of myriad risks facing investors.  Nowadays, there are many more risks that are not necessarily market related. Many of today’s investment dangers are difficult to detect and manage. In the business of managing your wealth, investment behavior can be driven by career risk. At some levels of the investment business, there is a tension between protecting clients’ money and protecting your job. Driving this tension are the monthly sales quotas that many firms expect to be met by their sales force and the pressure not to be wrong on your own. We have all heard advisors say, “Well, everybody lost money last year.” To prevent being wrong all alone, many advisors watch what others are doing and flock for safety. The resulting herding action drives prices above or below fair value. Hidden fees – When purchasing mutual funds or segregated funds from an advisor, there are several ways he or she may be paid. You, the purchaser, ultimately fund all of these fees and commissions. If you don’t know what questions to ask or are not prepared to read lengthy documents, you may never be aware of the money that actually changes hands as the result of your transactions. In addition, the annual embedded fee charged by the fund company can run as high as three percent or more, before any returns get into your pocket.Regulatory bodies – You may never know if your advisor has been found guilty of breaking the rules as set down by the body that licenses him or her (for example, MFDA for mutual fund salespeople or IIROC for brokers). This is worth looking into. Results of an investigation will be posted on the regulatory body’s website; however, victims of wrongdoing and other clients are not normally notified. Before agreeing to work with any advisor, do your homework and visit the relevant website.   Third-party verification of prices – Where do your statements originate? Are they produced on your advisor’s letterhead in his or her office? Is the information on the statement independently verified? As your first line of basic safety, insist that your money be held at an independent custodian from whom you can obtain clear reporting and disclosure on a timely basis. Fiduciary duty – A fiduciary duty is the highest standard of care in equity or law. A fiduciary must act at all times for the sole benefit and interest of the client. The fiduciary can make a profit, by consent, but he must not put his personal interests in front of his duty of care. It is appropriate for you as a client to ask your advisor if he or she has a legal fiduciary duty to you. If not, ask if you can have a fiduciary pledge signed. It is a contractual commitment that helps ensure that your advisor can’t profit at your expense. Darryl Cailes is executive vice-president at Enriched Investing Incorporated. He can be reached at dcailes@enrichedinvesting.comThis document is for information only and should not be construed as an offer, or a solicitation of an offer, to buy a security or investment service. Before making an investment, prospective investors should review offering documents that summarize the objectives, fees, expenses and associated risks.

I have lost count of the number of times I have said this, but I recently found a new reason to say, “Your closest competitor is not the next contractor down the road from your operation.”The first time I used this line of reasoning was sometime around 1978, at the Drainage Contractor Workshop in Indianapolis, to illustrate that the biggest competitive threat to contractors was the sales-savvy machinery dealer who would persuade the farmer to buy new iron rather than spend his money more wisely by investing in tile drainage.Now I say it for another reason. Maybe that contractor down the road is, in fact, your ticket to a healthy retirement. How is this?Let’s start with some perspective. There are fewer contractors around now than there were 10, 20 or 30 years ago. They are, in many regions, installing as much or more pipe with fewer machines than they did previously. They have more productive equipment, better technology and crews who have been coached and fine-tuned towards productivity as a daily goal. What’s more, they are likely providing their customers with better quality installations. Now, let’s now look at your customers. They are farming more acres than before, they have more sophisticated equipment than before and they know better than ever how to make money producing their crops. They have the wondrous GPS-based yield monitor that tells them what we’ve been saying all along: tile drainage pays. And, if they are worth their salt, they will soon be thinking, “Joe the contractor must be thinking about retirement soon. When he quits, who’s going to install tile on my farm?” If his contractor has not started his retirement plan, to pass along the business to his son or daughter, other family member, key man, or whoever, he will begin thinking, “I’ll have to look for another or buy my own piece of expensive iron.” Let’s not kid ourselves here: I’ve heard some farmers have already started doing this!For these reasons and more, contractors need to think about their own short- and long-term futures and the impact their decisions will have on the industry at large. If future demand for tile drainage work cannot be met by contractor capacity, other less-qualified operators will fill the void. Contractors need to have a plan and need to work their plan.I spoke recently on this topic to the Land Improvement Contractors of Ontario. Many of them have already passed the stage of handing on their businesses, but some have not. I suspect the situation is no different in the United States and other parts of the world. My message was: determine now that this has to be done. Then, get expert financial advice to make the transfer as seamless as possible and to reduce your tax exposure the best way you can. Meanwhile, make the financial burden on those who are taking over as low as possible. At the Ontario meeting, a local financial advisor, Ken Farrow, of Farrow Financial Service, based at Belmont, Ont., offered some tips in this regard. We presented several scenarios to represent typical contracting operations at the LICO conference. Farrow offered some advice to fit each of these scenarios, and advised seeking expert assistance from financial advisors and tax planning consultants. Case study no. 1Father and two sons (or sons-in-law): two drainage machines and crews, 3.5 million annual footage.Have already begun shared ownership transferHave been expanding the business base (more than tile drainage)Want to expand further, exploring optionsCase study no. 2Father, no second-generation that wants to take over: one drainage machine and crew,1.5 million annual footage.Option: key man wants to take over Consideration: buy new equipment, share costs with key man wanting in Option: sell out to neighboring contractor who is looking for growthConsideration: operate until the machinery wears out, then close downConsideration: buy new equipment, share these costs with nearby contractor as part of business transferCan you “get along” with the other guy during the phase-out?Case study no. 3Two brothers own the business, one wants to retire (or exit). One son wants to get in: one drainage machine and crew, 2.5 million annual footage. Father wants to treat both his sons equally, perhaps also a daughter who does not want to enter the business.Each contractor has a territory within which his business is generated. Going back to that Indianapolis workshop, we presented how to do this. On a regional map, draw a circle around your home base to encompass your customers. This is your trading area. Now draw a circle around the trading area of your nearest neighboring contractor and the next one, and so on. Some of these will overlap, (perhaps more than you’d like!). If you close down your business, which one of these will take over your territory? Perhaps your best retirement bet would be to approach one of them, who might have children already coming into the business, so that you can phase out while letting them phase into your area. They might buy out your equipment and pay you an honorarium as you ease out. They might need some of your financial stability to help finance this, but you may stand to gain from this too. The trick here is to think outside the box when looking for a solution. If you harbor ill feelings toward the one fellow who is the most likely to make a success of this because he’s been a tough competitor for so long, maybe it’s time to start the healing process. Most successful strategies are those that have been well planned and executed over a reasonable time frame. Succession plans are no different. At the end of the day, ask yourself what it is you want to leave behind. Do you want to retire with financial security? Do you want your customers to think you have done your best to ensure they continue to get the type of service you built your livelihood on? If the answers to these questions are yes, then begin planning now, if you have not already. Envision the situation that fits your operation. Then, begin a plan with your own financial advisor. Once you have your plan started, you can explain to your customers that you have secured the future of your service to them and now you can reap the rewards throughout your retirement.