ESTEVAN - Dan Pandolfo of Oxbow has been involved in the livestock industry for his whole life.
For years he's been raising horses and running a cow-calf operation in southeast Saskatchewan. And for years, he's been working to make ends meet in this high-risk industry. But eventually he came to a complete understanding that some innovations were needed to make it better for producers.
Through years of experience, Pandolfo has acquired knowledge to start the change.
"I've lived in southeast Saskatchewan on a ranch all my life until just recently. And the challenges of making a living in agriculture are vast, especially in the livestock industry," Pandolfo said, sharing his story and the history of his business, Danco Forage. "And because of that background of actually doing it – and then having all those connections with that peer group, the cow-calf producers, the horse breeders, the horse enthusiast, my customer base for my horses all over the States and feedlot experience – I understand nutrition, livestock nutrition, as well as equine nutrition. So, all of these things assisted me in putting this company together."
In 2013, he started Danco Forage Ltd., an agricultural corporation exporting forage, fibre and grain/oil seed by-products for livestock nutrition, livestock management products and soil amendment products to their own company-controlled distribution network that is primarily located in the U.S. Danco Forage equine nutrition cubes and pellets are currently distributed through different locations in several states, Pandolfo says.
Pandolfo continued ranching until 2018 while also working to market his knowledge. Since they sold the ranch, Pandolfo has put his efforts into developing and growing a business, which offers a product and also opens many opportunities.
"Before I was forced to sell the ranch, my goal with Danco Forage was to build a production facility on the ranch, so that we could market our own crops. And of course, that's where you get into this goal of value-added direct marketing for a rancher, for an agricultural producer. If we can eliminate the middleman of dealing with multinationals, create products from our land and sell it directly, then we get all the money, then we can pay our bills,” Pandolfo said.
“Because the biggest challenge today is getting by companies that are multinationals that control the markets, that control the end value that we get, and we are overwhelmed by them.”
Aiming at that goal and utilizing his years of knowledge and experience, he was able to come up with a specialized feed made out of locally grown ingredients – Omnis Complete Performance cubes and pellets.
He said, his goal was to facilitate being able to accomplish value added for local raw natural products that are grown on the farms and ranches in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta. Besides, he wanted to create products that did not exist in the market and the multinationals had no experience or real knowledge in creating, nor had a capacity to manufacture or process. And he believes that the product has a lot of potentials to grow, especially with raising prices of transportation and other changes in the current world.
"Because of my knowledge in nutrition, and my knowledge of the horse industry, I discovered that there are some very safe, historically-proven products that horses thrive on. And they're all grown right here in Saskatchewan. I did the math and I built the nutritional platform that I wanted in that queue,” he said.
“And then we matched the value of the nutritional value of the ingredients and figured out how to blend them and get them to stay in that cubed, freight efficient format, that wouldn't fall apart. And that was the challenge as well. But basically, what we have now is a complete ration for a horse in a bag or tote. And it's extremely safe, it's extremely potent. Because it's the right balance.
"A horse can only digest so much of each energy, fat, protein, carbohydrates, they can only eat so much and efficiently utilize it, all the rest is bypassed. It's a matter of efficiency for the industry. So, I created a very, very efficient product that has less nitrogen bypass, which means it has less methane bypass, which is a big thing in today's world. And of course, because [cubes] do not overwhelm the GI tract, the horse utilizes every bit of what is in that cube. And all the people have to do is gauge how many calories their horses going to burn, and how many pounds of pure protein the horse needs to grow. And that they can do by the pound."
Pandolfo provides producers with the graphs and instructions he developed.
The horse industry is fairly close-knit, so after a few years in the business, a lot of producers turned to Danco Forage for their equine nutrition needs, he said. By 2016, Pandolfo had identified there was a lack of processing capacity for his business to expand and he started working towards further progress.
"The problem is there is virtually … one cuber in Saskatchewan in existence, one company and they only have so much capacity. And I couldn't expand. So I decided okay, well, I can't grow my company, so what am I going to do?" Pandolfo recalled.
He bought some equipment and started learning the processing.
In 2019, when he was ready to grow his company, he turned to Dennis Bode, a local family farm banker and a real estate agent.
"[Dan] said we need your expertise and knowledge of banking and finance to get this thing off the ground," Bode recalled how he joined the business.
"I was getting to the point where I couldn't do everything myself. The management of the money, the accounting, the strategy. I got to a point where I have to be able to have a forward vision and forward control, I have to know where we are right now … So I needed his help," Pandolfo added.
At that point, they had a unique full-spectrum product that was popular with many customers, as it would satisfy the needs of performance horses, growing horses, brood mares and geriatric horses. And they also had an understanding of the region, the market and the opportunities. So Danco Forage was ready to build a processing plant to expand.
"For Danco Forage to become a powerhouse in this unique forage industry, we have to build our own facility, there is no alternative because there is no existing facilities to engage and commission to expand," Pandolfo said.
They researched different locations seeking a perfect place for their plans, and Estevan came out as an ideal candidate.
They plan on creating an agricultural park in the Estevan area, which will become home for the Danco Forage processing plant, but will also have other businesses in the industry joining them so that everyone could benefit from collaboration.
"We are developing an agricultural park, where agricultural products will be built and made right here in Saskatchewan, in the Estevan area because we have very good logistically efficient connections with highways and railways at this location, and we are so close to the United States," said Bode, who helped to find the location for that development.
The detailed plan for the plant is in place and they say they now have about 85 per cent of the major primary equipment. As they build, they will also have to acquire what it takes to overcome the challenges of moving high volumes of forage.
The processing plant will allow Danco Forage to expand, but it will also open many other opportunities for further development.
"Once we build this, it's a dehydration process, so it opens up so many different markets because we can dehydrate anything, we can dehydrate straw, we can dehydrate certain grain products, screenings, and all types of silage crops that can be pelleted or cubed for world markets,” Bode said.
"And grain products that get damaged. If you can dehydrate them, clean them up with the heat process, and then pelletize them, that makes them a world market commodity, so it upgrades the bottom end of the spectrum of the commodity market on the inside," Pandolfo added.
And on the forage side, with the processing plant in place, they can use every class of forage all the way from the bottom to the top.
"Anything that gets frozen or heated or rained on or whatever, and all the screenings that come off of these big terminals. We can use it," Pandolfo said.
The plan is to have processed right here in Estevan, as it sits in the middle of a developed truck transportation system, plus has both CN and CP rails going through.
"We can bring products in from the Northwest Territories and everything in between. We can bring products in from northeastern Saskatchewan and Manitoba to be processed. We can ship them all the way to Mexico, or to the East Coast, or West Coast, because the Soo Line is owned by CP, CP just bought the Kansas City Rail. So this makes this line that comes through Estevan more viable than the BNSF [Railway] coming to Ceres Global Ag in Northgate because that's a dead end. They can't feed that by rail. They have to feed it by truck. Any processing plant that gets built here can be fed by the CN and the CP from all of Canada. As long as that product is coming south to be densified or upgraded by processing here before it gets to the States, it'll work," Pandolfo said.
"We want the value added here in Canada, in Estevan, not shipping the raw products, get it manufactured and then buying it back," Bode added.
The company is in the planning stage for building a plant.
For most of its history, Danco Forage has been producing equine nutrition for exporting. Now their cubes with added mineral blend, created by ADM Animal Nutrition out of Lethbridge and meeting the government regulatory specifications, are available at the new Co-op Agro Centre, and they plan on developing.
In the future, they say they also will be able to develop freight and feeding efficient cubed and pelleted products for the beef and dairy sector.
