FarmWorks has a simple philosophy, and businessman Paul Hill is a wholehearted believer

Paul Hill was taken aback the first time he encountered Linda Best.

He’s the owner of Hill’s Jamaican Jerk Sauce and Hill’s Maritime Foods, she’s the director of the FarmWorks Investment Co-operative in Nova Scotia; they were both scheduled to speak at a 2016 event with local food producers. Best spoke first, and as she shared her message about the importance of supporting East Coast growers and makers, Hill realized he had a problem.

“I was like ‘Oh my God, she’s saying everything I was going to say,’” Hill recalls with a laugh. “We share the same goals and everything.”

Passionate on the subject himself, Hill ad-libbed some new remarks and got through his own talk. The hubbub of the event prevented him from connecting with Best that day, but a few years later, business brought them together, as Hill opened his new manufacturing facility in Harrietsfield, NS, and sought funding to expand the growing business.

Both local food evangelists, they hit it off at once. Helping people like Hill succeed is Best’s whole job.

“FarmWorks is keeping very busy for Nova Scotia,” she says. “People invest and we take those funds and loan them to food-related businesses across the province ... We’re a volunteer board. We work with businesses from one end of the province to the other.”

 
Linda and Paul with some locally-grown den Haan tomatoes.

The hugging bankers

Shareholder profit is the lodestar for most financial institutions. At FarmWorks, there’s a bigger prize in mind. “Our aim is healthy farms, healthy food, healthy people, healthy communities,” explains Best. “This is about the whole picture. We’re trying to put food back where it belongs, in the communities that produce it. It’s the key to everything else. Good, healthy food is the only way to decrease health-care costs.”

That philosophy makes FarmWorks an excellent ally for food producers like Hill. After immigrating to Canada from Jamaica in 1994, he discovered people loved his jerk sauce. Friends urged him to make it into a business. “I can’t make a living just off jerk sauce,” he recalls thinking. “If I’m going to do this, I want to do it the right way.”

Being a FarmWorks client gets him funding for that dream, but also a partner who wants to help him succeed. “We’re called the hugging bankers,” Best says. “We don’t invest in businesses; we invest in people. We lend to people. In some cases we are the only lender, we’re their bank. Borrowers discuss the partnerships they’re considering. We bring mentoring and those various pieces together.”

Best came to meet with Hill at his manufacturing site shortly after it opened, and it didn’t take her long to see what he needed. “She looked at the facility and said, ‘This is beautiful but you don’t have any bottles,’” he laughs. “She was already looking for opportunities to help me out. Got a loan and got my bottles and realized I’m going to need more cash flow. Got money to do that, then needed more. If it wasn’t for her…my goodness. We were able to get our first shipment to Sobeys. That wouldn’t have happened without FarmWorks."

 

Back to the country

Linda Best grew up on a farm in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, then knocked the mud off her boots and went to Acadia University, intending to become a doctor. She ended up as a medical researcher, a job she enjoyed for about 14 years. Then she moved from her condo, buying a friend’s house in the Greenwich countryside. She wanted a garden and a woodworking shop, but found more.

“When I moved back, I realized I was part of the problem,” she says. “I was going to the chain stores and buying whatever I wanted without thinking where it came from or the impact. We were losing farms across Nova Scotia, and I was part of that. It was a real wakeup call.”

She began reacquainting herself with people from her childhood — the local farmers. In 2009, she arranged a local food summit that drew 45 speakers and 250 attendees. Much of the discussion was about that fact that Nova Scotia, like the other Atlantic provinces, produces very little of the food it consumes: only about 15 per cent. This packs an environmental toll and makes customers vulnerable to supply chain disruptions.

“We need to pay attention to where our food comes from,” Best says, pointing to American lettuce growers and their problems with drought and flooding. “We need to become more resilient. No country that’s unable to feed itself can be considered sustainable. And we’re close to that. The real level of food inflation should be three to five per cent. Meanwhile, Loblaws is paying shareholders its highest dividends ever, so there’s a lot of systemic issues.”

Everyone who has a pension fund and investment is part of the problem, she adds: “We’re looking for the highest returns, coming from the corporations that are buying up small business and making it harder for them to survive.”

Those problems aren’t new, but recent disruptions, like food shortages due to the Russian war on Ukraine and the climate crisis, call them into sharper focus. And that’s why FarmWorks is important. It has about 90 clients in Nova Scotia, but its impact is broader.

 
Ann Anderson, a founding director of FarmWorks; co-chair and treasurer Linda Best; and Paul Hill look over some of Hill’s Maritime Foods products.

Beyond jerk sauce

Paul Hill started out making jerk sauce. Now he has a suite of his own products for sale in grocery stores. “We’re in a great place,” he says. “We’ve been able to start a new company called Hill’s Maritime Foods. We want to support our farmers, create more local brands. We could not grow the company to the fullest just on jerk sauce.”

Hill is producing ketchup, salsa, pasta sauce, and more, all using locally grown tomatoes from spots like Elmridge Farm in Centreville, NS, and den Haan greenhouses in the Annapolis Valley community of Lawrencetown. “That all came from the start we got with FarmWorks,” he adds. “I know if we need more funds, I can go to Linda.”

While he’s growing his own brands, Hill’s factory can also bottle products for other small makers, helping them take a critical step. “Most of these companies need their products made in a certified facility before grocery stores will take them,” he says, rattling off a list of other local businesses, makers of everything from spice to kimchi. “We help a lot of different companies get into the grocery store. We help those companies grow their business and build on what they have.”

Linda Best sees a good chance for local-food champions like Hill to succeed.

“If we’re only producing 15 per cent of our food, that means there are a lot of opportunities,” she says. “With what FarmWorks is doing, we’re punching way above our weight ... This is an inflection point. We haven’t moved in the way we needed to move to support our local agriculture. We’re not really paying attention to much of the capacity we have.

“We’re doing our due diligence and we’re realizing these 90 active businesses are the people who are making life better for Nova Scotia, and those are the people we’re investing in.”

Not charity

FarmWorks is qualifying more businesses as potential clients, aiming to bring together many partners. “We need to pair people in the industry with clients,” Best says. “Farmers have to be businesspeople, financiers, promoters, manual labourers.”

People sometimes look at supporting local producers as charity more than a business decision, a misconception Best rebuts, pointing out that FarmWorks has amassed $4.6 million in investments over the last decade, and loaned out about $8.2 million. “And we haven’t lost much money,”
Best says. “Our relationships with clients means they’re eager to work with us.”

For investors, there are returns more tangible than the warm feeling of helping your community. Best rattles off: “We have 505 shareholders who have invested over 11 years. They get a 35 per cent income tax credit for five years, 20 for the next five, then 10. If they put that money into FarmWorks through RRSP, they also get tax deferrals. In 10 or 15 years, they get back their original investment, plus an equivalent amount in tax credits. Most people invest because they understand benefits, but are also grateful to get that return.”

For Hill, FarmWorks is letting him proceed with a dream that runs back to his home country. He often thinks about Grace Foods, a Jamaican company he’s long admired. Founded as a small food trader in the 1920s, it built strong relationships in the Caribbean, embraced regional flavours, and has grown into an international empire.

“I want to be Grace Foods of Canada, create as much local products as we can, using local ingredients,” Hill says. “Get more young people into farming, into food manufacturing. We produce a lot of food here, and we end up shipping it somewhere else to be manufactured, and then we buy it back, which doesn’t really make a lot of sense.”

“There’s an opportunity to do something great for this country that’s been good to me."