Dennis Bulani is a fourth-generation Saskatchewan farmer and CEO of The Rack, an independent ag retailer based in Bigger, Saskatchewan, who spent 40 years farming, built a $600,000-per-year in-house research division, and wrote a fact-checked book about food safety after sitting in a room full of Arizona entrepreneurs while a speaker told everyone that modern farming was poisoning the world. The conversation moves from the agronomics of his own farm (single-crop rotation, 75-bushel peas, 96-bushel canola attempts) through the research that built The Rack's competitive moat (phomyces root rot solutions, the Rogue manganese-zinc product, phosphate threshold studies), to the trust gap that drove the book: nine in ten people trust farmers, but only one in five trust modern farming practices. Dennis's argument is that Western Canadian farmers are the most advanced, educated producers in the world, shaped by adversity, the crow rate, and the absence of the brown envelope and the only thing missing is their willingness to tell Aunt Nancy from Vancouver she is wrong.
Somewhere between the farm and your plate, the story of how your food is grown got hijacked. Not by farmers. By people who have never touched a seed, never watched a crop fail, never had to explain to their banker why the weather won.
Dennis Bulani is a fourth-generation Saskatchewan farmer, CEO of The Rack -- one of Western Canada's most respected independent ag retailers -- founder of the Trust Your Plate movement, and author of What a Farmer Wants You to Know About Food. He sat in a room full of entrepreneurs in Arizona while a speaker told everyone that modern farming was poisoning the world. He went home and wrote a book about it.
Nine in ten people trust farmers. One in five trust modern farming practices. This is the conversation about how that gap happened -- and what to do with it.
Topics and Timestamps
0:00 -- Dan's open: "Somewhere between the farm and your plate, the story got hijacked"
1:07 -- Dennis on the farm right now: wheat year, 1,000 acres, single-crop rotation
1:28 -- The one-crop-per-year strategy and why it works for a busy CEO-farmer
4:15 -- Pulse rotation research: 15% average yield lift across all other crops
5:52 -- Solving phomyces root rot: 5-year research taking peas from 25 to 75 bushels
7:37 -- Published in the American Journal of Plant Science
8:49 -- The Rack's research program: PhD scientist, 6 agronomists, 12 field trials annually
10:00 -- The 100-bushel canola goal and what the "kitchen sink" trial actually proved
13:06 -- How "Rogue" was born: Dr. Bill Brown, manganese-zinc surfactant, and 10-12% yield lift
17:10 -- Rogue in Liberty Canola and what glyphosate actually does to manganese and zinc
18:36 -- Dennis's animal science degree: balancing plant rations is the same science as balancing cattle rations
22:13 -- From Eli Lilly to building The Rack: how an animal nutritionist ended up selling gas
26:00 -- Strategic Coach and the size of the problems Dennis is now willing to take on
30:00 -- The Arizona room: a speaker says modern farming is poisoning the world. Dennis goes home and writes a book.
35:00 -- The trust gap: 9 in 10 people trust farmers but only 1 in 5 trust modern farming practices
38:00 -- The MSG story: how one bad idea gets into the bloodstream of a culture and never leaves
39:39 -- Fertilizer supply chain: urea forecasting, import terminals, and the 2026 seeding sprint
41:13 -- Trump and geopolitics: the Straits of Hormuz theory and what it means for urea prices
43:05 -- Are farmers making money? The 2026 economics at $820 spring wheat
44:09 -- Why Canadian farmers are the most resilient in the world -- and the crow rate story that explains it
47:06 -- "The most advanced, educated farmers in the world" -- how adversity built Western Canadian agriculture
50:52 -- Biological products: the seaweed trial, what the research actually showed, and how to think about new claims
53:48 -- Zinc deficiency in 70% of soil tests -- the right form, timing, and strategy for zinc
59:27 -- Phosphate threshold: 20-25 ppm as the floor that separates good yields from great ones
1:04:29 -- The Rack spends $600,000 a year on replicated research -- and shares results with competitors for free
1:07:00 -- The retail landscape is changing: what separates partners from order-takers
1:08:53 -- AI and the future of ag retail agronomy
1:17:57 -- The novel: 60% true story, Kyrgyzstan, post-communist winter wheat, and Fibonacci numbers
1:20:07 -- Writing the book for "Aunt Nancy from Vancouver" -- and hiring four fact-checkers
1:22:13 -- "Never have we lived longer, never have we been healthier" -- Canada's 84-year life expectancy
1:26:07 -- Aunt Nancy from Vancouver: why farmers avoid the conversation -- and why they shouldn't
1:27:09 -- TrustYourPlate.com as a reference tool for farmers to use in the moment
1:30:42 -- The three biggest myths in consumer agriculture
1:31:15 -- The eyedrop analogy: one-third of one drop per square foot per year is all the chemical farmers apply
Resources Mentioned
What a Farmer Wants You to Know About Food -- Dennis Bulani (book, available on Amazon, Kindle edition)
Trust Your Plate -- trustyourplate.com (reference tool for answering food safety questions)
The Rack -- Rack Petroleum, Bigger, Saskatchewan (ag retail, fuel, fertilizer, research division)
Rogue -- The Rack's proprietary manganese-zinc surfactant product (developed from Dr. Bill Brown's research)
American Journal of Plant Science -- published The Rack's pea phomyces root rot research
Ultimate Yield -- The Rack's agronomy division
AgLink Canada -- independent ag retailer association (Dean Falls, Director)
Nutrients for Life Canada -- distributing the book to school teachers across Canada
Dr. Aaron Corey -- PhD scientist, The Rack research division
Dr. Bill Brown -- glyphosate and surfactant researcher, Ontario; Hellfire surfactant
Strategic Coach -- Dan Sullivan's entrepreneurship program
CAAR -- Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers
University of South Dakota / University of Nebraska -- crop rotation and phosphate research referenced
Connect with Dennis Bulani
Website: trustyourplate.com
Book: What a Farmer Wants You to Know About Food -- search Amazon
LinkedIn: Dennis Bulani
Connect with Growing the Future
Website: growingthefuture.ca
YouTube: Growing the Future
Instagram: @growingthefuturepodcast
LinkedIn: Growing the Future