Andrew McClelland
The Advocate
Ross MacDonald doesn’t necessarily believe that success is all about business savvy and making the right decisions. For the south Saskatchewan rancher, luck and timing are factors, too.
And MacDonald will be the first one to tell you his success is a prime example of that.
“The largest single determinant in business success is timing,” said MacDonald, who grazes beef cattle, a Hereford base herd crossed with Angus genetics.
“If you just sit back and wait for the timing to click, you might not recognize it. But the thing is you have to be searching, MacDonald said. “Things might not always click, but if you’re not searching, you’re not gonna find it.”
The timing first ‘clicked’ for MacDonald growing up the son of lawyers in Lake Alma, Sask. – just 20 kilometres from the Montana border. Many of his parents’ clients were local agricultural producers, and meeting them instilled him with a respect for ranching and grasslands.
MacDonald learned to rope and ride as a teenager and took an animal science degree at the University of Saskatchewan. Upon graduation, the research and teaching being done at Montana State University influenced him as a young grad student.
Broadened his horizon
“In Montana, I got exposed to some very different thinking than I grew up with in terms of agricultural production systems and low-input cow systems,” MacDonald explained. “It really planted a seed of creativity within me. It sort of became my goal to try and capture a piece of grass of my own.”
The timing was right in the early 2000s, when grassland prices were at low-value prices in Saskatchewan. To build his land base, MacDonald was able to parlay small purchases of land with conservation easements and grazing leases with the Nature Conservancy of Canada and Ducks Unlimited Canada. Today, he grazes his herd on about 5,000 acres of prairie grassland.
“I’m pretty risk-averse when it comes to huge financial risks,” MacDonald told participants of a QFA videoconference held Oct. 2. “But I’m not too risk-averse on relationships when it comes to non-typical agricultural relationships, whether that’s with conservation organizations or trying to get further up a supply chain.”
Enter A&W
Having conversations further up the supply chain is what made the timing and the luck really click in MacDonald’s career. When fast-food chain A&W started its “Raised Without” program in 2013, marketing beef raised without artificial hormones or steroids, MacDonald realized that the company’s commitment dovetailed nicely with his production practices.
More, he suspected that the company he was selling his cattle to — Spring Creek Ranch of Vegreville, Alta. — was one of the suppliers for A&W.
“I went to a local producers’ meeting where one of the vice-presidents of A&W was taking questions from ranchers — a lot of whom were really upset by the Raised Without program,” MacDonald explained. “And I said to (the VP), ‘I’m a small ranch that sells into your supply chain, I think there could be a lot more to this story of ‘Raised Without’.”
That encounter developed into a relationship with A&W that has lasted years. MacDonald and his wife Christine Peters began discussing their production with executives at the restaurant chain, ultimately appearing in their commercials and being featured in a series of short documentaries about Canadian ranchers.
And it expanded from there
“During one of our conversations, they said to me, ‘How do you feel about grass-fed?’” MacDonald said.
“I said: ‘Well, really, that’s where the logic of my production system is going, but we don’t have a commercially viable market in Western Canada for grass-fed.’”
That’s how MacDonald contributed to A&W’s decision, in 2020, to use all grass-fed and grass-finished beef. He didn’t tailor his production practices to suit their market — he was searching for opportunity and the timing just clicked.
“Each of those big events in my life has been the result of searching for it,” MacDonald said as he reflected back on his trajectory in the business. “So when the opportunity arose, I was ready for it. Sure, it also came with an education, a steep learning curve, and a cost. But it has been a lot of fun, and I’ve learned a tremendous amount.”