Reflecting on 2025 at Century 12 Farms Ltd.

As we say goodbye to 2025, I like to reflect on all that we accomplished this year, both professionally and personally. 2025 was a busy year. A few negative events, but so many positive ones!

Here is our year in review:

January: Roger spent the first week of January in Iowa meeting with Senators and Ag Ministers to discuss agriculture trade and CUSMA (Canada US Mexico Agreement, known as USCMA in the US) With President Trump threatening 25% tariff on Canadian canola, it's important to have good relationships with the people who actually understand agriculture. Under NAFTA, which President Trump signed in 2015, there were certain US imported goods that Canada had import quotas on, any amount over those quotas, there were tariffs applied. However, because our population is so much smaller than the US, those imports never went over quota. Meaning, there was never a tariff applied to US eggs, dairy, cheese, barley, or wheat.

Roger (center front at Iowa State Capital)

February: Roger and I joined life-long friends, Jim and Donna Moore, for 24 days in New Zealand! It was fantastic! We toured all of the North Island, from Auckland south to Wellington, canoeing at the Waitoma Glowworm caves, eating "second breakfast" at Hobbiton, learning Maori culture at Rotorua, and bike touring to wineries in Napier. From Wellington we flew to the southern-most city of Queenstown and drove the South Island up to Blenheim. On the South Island we did a boat cruise on Milford Sound, toured Christchurch, kayaked with the seals in Kaikura, examined the stars of the southern hemisphere at Mt. Cook, and wine toured all of Marlborough!

From Blenheim we flew back to Auckland, and then drove up to Paihia on the Bay of Islands - absolutely stunning beaches on the South Pacific! A great place to relax after a fantastic 3 week tour! New Zealand is such a beautiful country with a diverse landscape and friendly culture.

March: Roger, Jacqueline, Rosie, & I went to Phoenix for 10 days. Well, Roger only went for 5 days and then he flew to Winnipeg for CCGA meetings. China, our second largest canola customer, had just introduced a 100% tariff on Canadian canola oil and meal. Roger was interviewed by the Globe and Mail and by Ian Hanomansing on the "The National."

Roger spoke about the importance of the canola industry in Canada. It provides $43.7 billion and more than 200,000 jobs in Canada. The reason for the tariff by China is the the Canadian 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles. Canada does not have an EV industry, but placed this tariff on behalf of the US, who recommended we do so.

This tariff is still an ongoing battle for Canadian Canola Growers Association. Now CCGA is dealing with the Canadian Ag Minister to compensate Canadian farmers for this loss of market. The Federal Government's answer is to give farmers access to more loans. If the Canadian public feels that an EV industry is so important that we must tariff China, then all of the Canadian public needs to pay for it, NOT just farmers.

March ended with the Century 12 employees enjoying a few ball games at the Cactus League and quadding in Phoenix before the busy seeding season.

Roger was asked to join 2 more Boards: Grain Growers of Canada, and the Canadian Grain Commission.

April: Jac & I finally got to celebrate her 30th birthday (9 months later) by attending "Hamilton" on Broadway in New York.

We also toured Central Park, Hyde Park

(famous "Friends" fountain), the set of "Friends," Grand Central Station, Rockefeller Center, the Met, the Empire State Building, the 911 Memorial, and of course, Times Square. We shopped on Fifth Ave and had breakfast at "Tiffany's." It was only 4 nights but we saw it all!

Roger picked rocks

For Easter we had our annual Family Ski Trip, but this time it was just Jac,

Rosie, Stan and Sharleen.

We followed Derek to Lake Louise where he was skiing with a girl he met at an Oilers' game, and so of course, we had to go spy! Like Derek, we fell in love with Alison right away!

May 1: Seeding began! We seeded 1800 acres of Canadian Hard Red Spring,

then 1400 acres of Synergy Malt Barley,

and finally 2000 acres of Argentinian Canola,

bought from Bachelor Ag, our favourite Pioneer seed dealer.

We used two new seed treatments this year. One was BioniQ, from our favourite FMC dealer, Shelby Patey, and the other was PhycoTerra from our favourite Heliae dealer, Lexi Antos. We tried these treatments on 2 different quarters. The barley averaged about 90 bushels/acre and the wheat averaged 80 bushels/acre where we used these seed treatments.

We finished seeding on May 24. It was a smooth season without any major hiccups!

In the middle of seeding, Rosie turned one on May 9th!

June: Spraying did not go without any major hiccups! A broken boom meant we needed to call the neighbours for help. Darren Antos showed up to help finish spraying Liberty on June 22. The first time a red sprayer has crossed our fields! With a cost of over $200,000.00 we were not "dousing" our fields in chemical. It is applied at a very specific rate with a lot of water. We spray so that the weeds do not choke out our crop, and so that insects do not eat our crop. Our GMO canola allows us to spray with glyphosate at the rate of 4 ounces per gallon of water, so a pop can amount of glyphosate over a football field. The glyphosate is broken down by the plant and the amount of residue left is much less than the LD50 allowed for the chemical. Please don't worry about glyphosate in your cereal!

July: Roger had meetings in Quebec City with Grain Growers of Canada (GGC). I

spent the day touring with some other wives while he was in meetings. Then in the evenings we dined at some amazing restaurants! The farmers on this board are from all across Canada and we so enjoyed learning about farming in P.E.I., Manitoba, and Quebec.

We had some family time the last 2 weeks of July at our lakelot at Mara Lake, BC. Everyone had a great time surfing and Rosie enjoyed watching everyone surf. She loved the boat but not so fond of the life jacket. Roger did not get the full 2 weeks as he had to go back to Winnipeg for CCGA meetings.

August: Century 12 Farm hosted wheat traders from China. Four men and one woman came on August 12 to see how we grew our wheat and operated

our farm. This was also the day that the Chinese government added another tariff; this time 76% tariff on canola seed. The Chinese were very humble and simply stated, "we are here for wheat business. That is political, not us." They did state that the tariffs were a direct result of the tariff against Chinese EVs. They spoke excellent English and were very polite. Viterra treated them to a lunch hosted at Sippin Pretty and they gifted us Chinese bookmarks. They had lots of questions and really enjoyed the combine!

August 14: Bachelor Ag held his plot tour date. There were presentations by Point Forward Variable Rate (Derek Chevraux), Heliae seed treatment(Lexi Antos), FMC seed treatment (Shelby Patey) and tours of 7 different varieties of Pioneer canola grown on Derek's home quarter.

Day ended with a pig roast! Kyle Larkin, CEO of Grain Growers Canada, toured the plots and was very impressed.

August 17-20: The guys had a fishing trip for some fun before the VERY busy season of harvest. They had a great time at Winnifred Lake lodge and caught a lot of fish!

August 26: We began HARVEST! If you are not a farmer, you

have no idea how stressful this time of year is. The crop must come off before it rains, or a frost occurs so we work long hours every day to beat the weather. This harvest the men started each morning at 7am with greasing the combines, refuelling the combines and trucks, and doing basic maintenance. Then they are off to the fields. They run the combines and the trucks until about 11pm each night. There is no stopping for coffee or lunch breaks. They do get to have a 20-30 minute break for supper when I bring out my 1980 RV meal wagon! This gives them time to visit and take a mental break from driving. We finished combining the barley on Sept.6, Roger's birthday! The barley averaged 100 bushels per acre. Next to come off was the wheat and it averaged 77 bushels to the acre. The last crop to come off was the canola as it is heartier and can manage a bit of cold weather. It averaged 55 bushels to the acre. We finished harvest on Sept.24. Almost 30 days of 15-16 hour days of work. Everyone was ready for a break!

October: Roger was in Ottawa 3 times to lobby the government for compensation to Canadian canola farmers for loss of income. He met the Federal Ag. Minister, Heath MacDonald, Cody Blois, Parliamentary Secretary to the P.M., and Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, plus many other MPs and Senators. Minister MacDonald was non-committal. Poilievre was very supportive and wrote a letter to Prime Minister Carney in support of farmers.

November: Roger was invited by the head of Gowan Canada, Ralph Tessman, to give a Canadian Farmer's perspective on trade at an event in Yuma, Arizona. There were 800 employees from world wide and their guests. It was a wonderful event and we got to see some incredible technology being used to weed and harvest lettuce and other vegetables. Roger spoke as a Canadian farmer on a panel with 2 American farmers and a Brazilian farmer. American soybean farmers are getting 12 Billion dollars in subsidies due to the Chinese tariff on soybeans. China is currently purchasing most of their soybeans from Brazil. Since the Trump presidency, the Brazilians have increased their productive land base by over 30 million acres. These acres support 2 crops per year: soybeans and corn. With the help of the Chinese with the "Belt & Road Initiative" Brazil has increased rail and port facilities to accommodate the increase in production. Brazil has always been a large competitor to the oilseed sector, and now it will be an even larger competitor. This extra production will have an influence on oilseed (canola, soybean, palm oil) commodity prices worldwide for years to come. This is a detriment to Canadian farmers.

December: Century 12 Farm got a new cold storage shed built: 80 ft wide by 240 ft long by 20 ft high. Hopefully this is big enough to store all our equipment for years to come!

Roger spoke at the Grow Convention in Calgary. He was on a panel with a member of the Canadian Food Industry. The topic was about the need for Canadian farmers to collaborate better with the Food Industry so that consumers have a better idea where their food comes from and how it is grown and so that farmers know what consumers want.

Dec. 13 we held our Staff Christmas Party. It started with an Amazing Race Challenge at 6 different businesses around Killam and ended with dinner at Bruce Steak House. A lot of fun was had by everyone and we certainly appreciate all that everyone does for our farm.

We just bought all of our inputs for next year: fertilizer, seed, and chemical. These inputs are extremely expensive and will only continue to go up. They will not come down even though the price of our commodities have declined by a third or more in the last couple of years. Land prices have also gone up and even rental prices. Land to rent around Killam is about $135.00 per acre and to buy, it is about $1.2 million per quarter. Machinery costs are also going up for 2 reasons: 1)the Federal Industrial carbon tax on steel, and 2) the US tariff on steel makes it more expensive for US companies making our farm equipment. The Industrial Carbon Tax has also made fertilizer prices higher; a lot of natural gas is used in the manufacturing of fertilizer. These high input costs and low commodity prices make it very difficult for a young farmer to start out.

To end on a positive note, we had a very safe and productive year. We were lucky to have all of our family home for Christmas, except for Derek, who was in Japan with Alison! But our oldest son, Brant, and his daughter Maddie joined us from Hines Creek, Jac, Devon, ad Rosie came from Amisk, and Roger's brother and wife came from Edmonton, and of course, Roger's parents!

And our long term employee, Ron Palmer, begins his 50th year with us! He has worked with 3 generations of Chevraux managers. Ron knows as much about the history of this farm as we do and we are certainly blessed to have him.

We wish all of you a very Happy New Year! May 2026 be a wonderful year!