The COVID-19 pandemic is marking an unfamiliar milestone for auctioneer Blair Stenberg — the first time in three decades he’s been at home, missing the spring auction circuit.
“I really miss the road and the travel and the people and everything. This is the first April I’ve stayed home in 30 years, since I was literally 19 years old,” he said from his farm near Hodgeville.
Stenberg is an auctioneer with Ritchie Bros. He auctions farm equipment, but he’s also a regular at Canadian Western Agribition (CWA) in Regina, driving animal sales.
Thanks to the pandemic, he’s now among a broad swath of people and businesses in the agriculture industry adjusting to the times.
The auctions he works are still loud, but absent of in-person bidders, always at his home in Rouleau. He works in front of a computer screen, using Ritchie’s online auction registration system as potential buyers wrangle to win a fair price.
“It’s really different. It’s tough to get an upbeat feeling when all you’re looking at is a computer screen, right? … You’re selling to the world still, yet there’s no one there.”
Were it not for the pandemic, he’d have been working auctions in Edmonton and Chilliwack, B.C., in mid-May. Instead he worked both from Rouleau.
Bids are “yelled at us through the speaker and then we just go up from there. It’s just like having the ringman out in front of you; it’s all electronic though.”
Sales still seem strong, because farmers and producers still need equipment, Stenberg said.
But that doesn’t mean he enjoys driving up bids through pixels and bandwidth. “It’s a totally different world. The interaction’s way off.”
Ritchie Bros. says the shift to online-only auctions hasn’t hurt bidder-participation.
Vice-president Simon Wallan said they held 56 auctions during the spring session, seeing a “40- to 100-per-cent increase” in bidder registration and participation, compared with spring 2019. He oversees everything agriculture-related in Canada.
COVID-19 contributed in part to the percentage jumps.
“People shelter in or (follow) social distancing guidelines; (they) had more time to be online and to be watching, paying attention to and participating at these auctions,” he said.
Ritchie Bros. intends to keep running online-only auctions for its summer season, from June 15 until Aug. 8. If it returns to in-person, on-site auctions, it will use “real-time information” while contending with health orders from four different provincial governments — Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, Wallan said.
Come fall, Stenberg hopes to be in Regina for Agribition; this year marks the show’s 50th aniversary.
For now, Agribition CEO Chris Lane says it’s still “full steam ahead” planning the 2020 event.
Staff are brainstorming different ways to host it, whether in a different format or not at all in 2020, depending on what the coronavirus does and what social gathering rules governments order or loosen.
“We’re a Phase 5 event in every way, shape and form,” Lane said, referencing the province’s five-phase reopening plan. June 1 marked the final sub-section of Phase 1 (parks and campgrounds). Phase 5 of the plan increases public gatherings beyond 30 people. Like Phase 4, it didn’t yet have a date as of late May.
“We’re over 100,000 people (who attend), and so we’re looking to make sure that whatever the guidelines are around putting on an event that’s safe and allows people to do the business of agriculture, we’ll be nimble enough to fully comply,” Lane said.
If Agribition 2020 is outright cancelled, the Regina area stands to lose almost $45 million, based on economic impact data from 2017. “That’s jobs we create, visitors we bring in and what they spend shopping, eating and staying in the city,” Lane said.
The same data set shows a provincial impact of $75 million.
If the show goes ahead in a different form this year, Lane said the virtual-digital route is on the table. “For years we’ve been doing online streams of our shows. Online cattle sales are certainly not uncommon these days. If there was any lack of exposure to the ways of doing that business, I think we’re kind of overcoming that,” he said.
Similar to Stenberg, Grant Alexander is seeing steady interest in online auctions for pricey pure-bred bulls, most of which sell in the $4,000 to $8,500 range.
The Weyburn-area farmer is semi-retired, but he still specializes in selling bull semen and embryos, along with a few pure-breds per year. After selling his two bulls to buyers in Illinois and South Dakota on March 10, he hit this year’s target, just in time, too.
“None of us knew that any of this was coming down the pipe when we had our sale. If it had been a week later, we probably wouldn’t have had (it).” Once the province limited all social gatherings to 10 people or less, it killed all auctions, he said.
Since then, “a pile of bull sales have been held online.” Of those he watched, he’s impressed by how many bulls sold “with nobody in the stands.”
Alexander, now in his 70s, agreed breeders miss the familiar face-to-face, handshake way of reaching a deal. Such settings draw about 100 to 300 potential buyers.
“The old days of people just showing up on sale morning and going through the bulls and buying a bull changed this year,” he said.
But he says people are adjusting to the so-called new normal: Buyers scheduling appointments to assess a bull one-on-one with the owner; frequent telephone calls; and owners working as impromptu videographers to market their bulls online.
“We were moving that way, slowly, but this pandemic made it move a lot faster in that direction,” he said.
Unlike Agribition, Canada’s Farm Progress Show didn’t have time on its side: Organizers announced in late April they’re postponing this year’s event; it was to run June 16 to 18. Hosting it in 2020 is likely out.
But Regina’s Evraz Place, the hosting company, is using it as a chance to retool. It’s surveying producers and exhibitors for when each year they want the show scheduled.
“We’re trying to make a long-term decision about when the best timing is,” said corporate development vice-president Jerry Fischer.
“It’s given us an opportunity to step back and say, ‘when is the best timing for the show? Is June the best time? Is it in fact the time people want?’ And put that question to bed for the future,” he said.
That’s not to say the pandemic’s effects have been expected.
“When you’re in the major event world and everything comes to a complete stop, it’s just unprecedented.”