The Brielmann family runs a farm of 9,600 acres in the Pinewood area, growing corn, canola, soybeans and wheat, but over the years their operations have expanded, now serving farmers across the District.
In addition to their own farm, the family also operates Pinewood Crop Services which serves agriculture operations across the district, Rainy River Grain Co., which buys and sells grain from farmers in the area, and Baseline Transportation which delivers product to market and also brings in inputs like seed and fertilizer.
There was even a time when the Brielmans kept animals on the farm but they went all in on crops when Timo Briellman came back from school, he says.
“We moved to Canada from Germany when I was two months old. Then when I came back from (post-secondary) school we started tiling, that’s when the program started with NOHFC,” Brielmann said. “We switched over to grain farming. It was something I dreamed about and we spent a lot of time and effort cleaning up fences and rocks.”
Briellman started young, buying land to farm in 2011 around age 21 when he finished university and bought into the family business. He credits his parents with being very forward-thinking and helping the business grow.
“I was very fortunate, and I’m still fortunate to have parents willing to help me,” Breilmann said. They’re industrious and business minded and know how to move forward and they were planning for my future.”
As they grew they found the need for grain storage. At first it was their own crops but it soon grew and Pinewood Crop Services was born.
After the tiling project began with the Rainy River Future Development Corporation and Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, the Brielmanns started to build their own grain bins but as the project moved across the district and more grain was being produced they realized that not everyone had the resources to store their product.
“There’s a tiling project going on with Geoff Gillon at Future Development through Northern Ontario Heritage Fund. It’s creating all this land that is producing grain and everybody’s busy cleaning land and picking rocks, clearing brush and tiling. They’re growing their farms and trying to buy equipment, they might not have the energy or the time to build grain bins for storage, so it’s important that we had that and we expanded it a little bit.”
The business grew as local farmers came to them for help.
“We first started with four bins and then we added two more bins and then we had to build a dryer for ourselves,” Brielmann said. “Then guys started asking if we could haul their grain or dry their grain for them and it just kind of snowballed from there.”
In 2014 the family expanded with a grain elevator and they now have a very modern facility.
“We’re the only facility with a high amount of storage and a certified full-length scale and we have a grain dryer and everything’s computerized,” Brielmann said. “Then we have a trucking company called baseline transport that trucks grain from the elevator to market and it’s also bringing in crop inputs and fertilizer, so that’s busy.”
They have an owner-operator as well as two trucks the company owns and employees drive them.
As with anything agriculture related a “good year” is tied to the weather and soil conditions, via Pinewood Crop Services (PCS) they help local farmers try to get the best margins for their products.
“It’s not a very high margin business, so every dollar counts that you spend,” Brielmann said. “We have to be very careful, and that’s what we do with our growers that buy things from PCS and sell grain to us.”
In an industry where margins are as tight as ever and the weather can cause drastic changes from year to year, the current economy hasn’t been easy for farmers so they are working to get farmers the best bang for their buck.
“Everything’s expensive, even if you go to the hardware store for a box of screws, they’re three times what they were before COVID,” Brielmann said. “It’s even worse with farm machinery, tractors are expensive, parts are expensive and hard to get. Guys are still making due with what they have. Also, input prices have gone up and grain prices have tanked.”
Add to that difficulties with politics like China imposing heavy tariffs on Canadian canola things have been very difficult for farmers across the country.
PCS does its best to help local farmers get the best bang for their buck when it comes to planting, fertilizing and protecting their crops.
“When growers come with questions about applying the right crop protection they come to us and they ask questions like ‘what should I do? What’s the rate?’ We help them through it,” he said. “What’s the best application rate, what’s the best water volume, wind conditions, timing of the crop and which product is the best. We try to really make sure growers fit into a growing program and help make sure that everybody knows how much it costs per acre to grow a crop and how to grow a good crop. It doesn’t have to be the highest yielding crop, it has to be the highest margin crop.”
