Sollio Agriculture: an essential service during the pandemic

Sollio Agriculture is still closely monitoring the status of COVID-19 cases around the world and doing everything possible to limit the impact that this situation could have on its employees and operations. 

In these exceptional circumstances, we have prepared contingency plans for various scenarios and are prepared to deploy them to ensure business continuity should the crisis have any direct impact on our workforce.

Supporting farming families during the COVID-19 crisis

In these times, Sollio Agriculture wishes to reassure farmers that they can count on our teams to supply their farms. So far, our operational teams have been largely spared from COVID-19, and we have sustained relatively normal activity levels during this busy time of year for crop production.

Measures implemented

To date, seed screening is well underway, in line with our plans for the approaching planting season. Our various retail networks have been highly cooperative and are taking possession of orders as soon as they are ready, allowing farmers to prepare for the warmer weather to come.

Fertilizer supplies in our facilities and networks are sufficient to begin the spring season. Thanks to relatively dry weather conditions in the last few weeks, shipments from our distribution centres are slightly ahead of the previous two years. Spring supply is proceeding as planned, and the first ships with supplies for the second half of the season have already unloaded at our warehouses without issue. As we also receive several additional deliveries each year by boat and by train for spring and summer resupply, we have set up contingency plans with our suppliers and partners, including Transport Canada, to ensure business continuity and keep our networks supplied in the coming months.

Our feed supply is more than sufficient to continue our feed mill operations and supply our farmers. We are also working with the Livestock Production and Grain teams to keep our inventory levels high enough to avoid a possible supply slowdown should more stringent government restrictions be put in place.

Health precautions adopted

We have taken additional health precautions in all our facilities to avoid any business interruption that would affect our farmers. We are strictly enforcing handwashing, frequent cleaning of work surfaces and physical distancing between workers on a daily basis. These health measures have been implemented in our feed mills, hatcheries, distribution centres and seed screening centres. In addition, we are limiting farm visits by our agri-advisors to emergencies and those essential for farm operations.