CAAR is pleased to welcome Scott Van Alstyne to the team in the role of sales and marketing manager. Scott brings over three decades of experience working in various sectors of the ag industry to the position.

Before joining the CAAR team, Scott was the national relationship manager for Scotiabank’s crop inputs financing program. He managed the day to day operations of the program and helped it grow by adding additional qualified retailers.

Prior to that, Scott held various positions at United Grain Growers, Agricore United and Viterra. In his 25-plus years with those companies, he worked in the grain accounting and shareholder/patronage dividend departments and served as a liaison between the directors, senior management and farmer customers. During this time, he also participated with industry associations, serving as treasurer on the board of Crop Life Canada (Manitoba) and serving as president of Ag in the Classroom Manitoba for three years.

Coming Onboard

Scott joined the team mere days ahead of the 2019 CAAR Conference in Winnipeg – although it was not his first CAAR Conference experience. Scott had attended the previous two conferences as an exhibitor with Scotiabank, and enjoyed the chance to see the event in a new light from the CAAR perspective.

“Attending as a CAAR staff member, I could see that work on the next conference starts even before the current conference is complete,” he says. “As a takeaway, I saw how important it is to CAAR to have a conference that is current and relevant to the attendees and that they leave the conference feeling that they received good value.”

Scott says he looks forward to working with members and advocating on behalf of the industry, identifying issues that are relevant to CAAR members including issues effecting fertilizer, pesticide and seed regulations.

“As the sales and marketing manager, my goal is to continue bringing value to our existing members and to recruit new members to build on CAAR’s strength as a unified voice for ag retail,” he says. “Besides increasing membership, I will be focusing on growing other important areas of CAAR like The Communicator, the conference, training and education.”

Scott’s position is an evolution of the director of member services position following CAAR’s internal restructuring over the past six months.

“With personnel changes occurring, the association had an opportunity to redefine roles and responsibilities,” says Mitch Rezansoff, Executive Director of CAAR. “As the sales and marketing manager, Scott is the leader of member value, with greater responsibilities relating to membership, communications, publications, training, conference, sponsorship and advocacy.”