Many of the Prairie livestock producers forced by drought to make "difficult herd management decisions" in the 2022 income tax year are now eligible to defer the taxable income from those decisions. Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau on Tuesday released the initial list of designated regions in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan where livestock tax deferral[...]
Drop the Ball
I was going to start this column with“This one is for you, ladies!” as the main audience for the book is certainly women. But honestly, as Tiffany Dufu’s book Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less suggests, everyone could benefit by occasionally dropping that ball — especially during these harried, upsidedown times. It’s particularly[...]
‘Field of Dreams’ diversification
When they decided to start their own distillery in their hometown of Ayr, Ont., Cameron Formica and the brothers Jordan and Nolan van der Heyden decided to test the truth of the movie line “if you build it, they will come.” “Farming on farmland is good in theory,” Formica recalls thinking. He knows the “in[...]
Hanson Acres: Looking south with stars glittering in their eyes
When Dale and Donna Hanson drove home from their winter holiday in Yuma in January 2020, the biggest challenge they’d faced was finding a hotel room along the highway during a sudden blizzard. “Good thing we came back to Canada before COVID-19 hit,” they’d both said many times since then. After spending the rest of[...]
Farming in a postcard province
On the first of May every spring, Kevin MacIsaac heads out on the water with his son-in-law, a lobster fisherman, to set the 300 traps they’re allowed under their quota system. For the next month, the pair are back out on the water to empty those traps — daily, at four in the morning. On[...]
Missing the market
Five years ago, the spotlight was shining bright on a report from the federal government’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth. Few federal reports get much attention, but this report, named after council chair Dominic Barton, generated headlines as it predicted that a new era of value-adding would not only transform the country’s ag and food[...]
Value adding, with a flourish
When Dana Thatcher started getting compliments from the other teachers at school about the food she was bringing for lunch, little did she know it would lead to a thriving farm, food and agri-tourism business. “People were interested in what I was eating, and the fact that we had grown it,” Thatcher recalls. “That’s what[...]
MacDon to make draper headers for Case IH, New Holland
Canadian harvest equipment maker MacDon Industries will make draper headers for Case IH Axial-Flow and New Holland combines for the major manufacturers to sell through their own dealer networks in the new year. Case IH and New Holland, both owned by CNH, said separately Thursday they have partnership agreements in place with Winnipeg-based MacDon to[...]
Cargill close to resolving slow grain payments to farmers
Cargill is closer to fixing problems with paying farmers promptly for their delivered grain. "They [Cargill] have worked through most of the issues," Canadian Grain Commission spokesman Remi Gosselin said in an interview Tuesday. "Our understanding at the grain commission is that there should be no issues on a go-forward basis for future deliveries and[...]
Social financing
Climate change and the pandemic are turning more investors’ minds — and their money too — toward building resilient food supply chains across Canada, according to two experts in social financing. “There are more and more people who recognize that local, social financing is a bit of a vaccination against what’s happening with the global[...]
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
