DAVIDHANSEN President & Chief Executive Officer Canterra Seeds 28 GERMINATION.CA JULY 2018 CHANGE THE GAME Growing up in British Columbia, David Hansen didn’t see him- self in agribusiness. In fact, he had no understanding or appre- ciation of agriculture. He felt his destiny was in law enforcement and the RCMP. “When I graduated high school, I was in fact too young to apply to the RCMP. I went to Saskatchewan for a brief holiday that included time with relatives who owned a small family farm in the Melfort area. This first-ever harvest experience literally set the stage for what would become a lifelong career in ag. Farming, agriculture, livestock, field crops, but most importantly the farmers I met — this was truly an amazing experience for me compared to the life I knew as a kid growing up in Victoria,” says Hansen, the 59-year-old president and chief executive officer of Canterra Seeds in Winnipeg, Man. Today he has a front-row seat for what he calls the next game-changer in ag: the new generation of cereals. He’s arrived at where he is by learning the following lessons. Question Old Wisdom “Hybrid canola was both the evolution of a crop that has domi- nated the Prairies for the past 20 years and of the private seed industry in Canada at the same time. In the early years, marketing and selling hybrid canola was very much a different ball game. We had a unique opportunity to do something very different. To bring a new value proposition to the farmer. We started out doing simple things, such as creating a brand, seed packaging, revising seed dis- tribution channels, learning how to actually sell both the concept and the value of hybrids. It was something new and something exciting for everyone.” Think Big “If we are serious about feeding the world, we also need to be seri- ous about wheat. The tools are all there and now is the time for the next crop revolution. And just as we have seen what can be done with corn and canola, we can and will do the same for wheat.” Be Prepared for Things to Take Off As a young man Hansen was offered a position with Continental Grain working in a small country grain elevator. In the mid 1980s he moved to the organization’s global seed business, Conti Seed, which was in the very early stages of commercializing the very first Polima-based canola hybrids. “At the time, I didn’t know how significant an event this was in setting the stage for what would become a complete revolution in terms of the advancement of canola industry in Western Canada. Who could have predicted what was to come?” TOP 20INFLUENCERS