Reading Time: 8 minutes Farming is a tough business. Weather risk, volatile markets, potential trade issues, input costs, and the steep investment in land and equipment mean today’s farmers must have formidable management skills to weather the storms and grasp the opportunities. In that context, your financial numbers are a lot like the numbers you get from the field, […] Read more
Know your farm financial numbers
Which financial ratios could you be tracking this summer to make the best decisions this fall?
Young farmers are on board and looking ahead
Innovative training programs are raising the leadership capabilities of Canada’s youngest farmers
Reading Time: 7 minutes Imagine that tomorrow, you wake up and every commodity group and farm association you can think of needs to have an election. All their boards need entirely new directors, and there’s been a scramble to nominate the right people to fill those spots. How many of the candidates would be in their early 30s? Or […] Read more
Editor’s Note: Why we believe in summer business
On your neighbours’ farms, 2017 is emerging as the most important year of the decade for making — or not making — key farm decisions
Reading Time: 2 minutes Farmers make decisions every day, of course, but with time it often seems that every year has its one big decision that really influences the next five years for that farm, and sometimes much more. If that’s true, what will shake out as your biggest decision this year? Or maybe you will look back and […] Read more
The first-born quandary
What if your eldest son isn’t actually the best choice to lead your family farm into the future?
Reading Time: 6 minutes For centuries, it worked for royalty. If you happen to be the first-born son, you were on the path to the throne, no questions asked. And it happened on the farm too. The eldest son was automatically in line to take the reins when Dad got old enough that he needed to step aside. Increasingly, […] Read more
A co-op for Sangudo
Times were getting tough in the rural Alberta community. Then, local farmers and businesses built a co-op to help local businesses grow and thrive
Reading Time: 7 minutes It was a scene that is all too familiar for rural communities. In 2005, the local school division threatened to close Sangudo’s high school. The move “really ticked people off,” says Dan Ohler, who lives in the area, and a “huge roomful” of people met to figure out what to do. Ohler is a certified […] Read more
The challenge of optimism
A look inside a modern Ontario hort operation finds a farm family wrestling with issues that may soon dominate the farm agenda coast to coast
Reading Time: 8 minutes Some days, farming is more fun than others. Although he’s driven by a belief in agriculture, and although he’s working hard to keep building their farm enterprise, Shawn Brenn, president of Brenn B Farms Ltd. at Waterdown, Ont., admits there are also days when the frustrations can make him wonder. Every farmer knows the feeling. […] Read more
Building a new Agriculture Policy Framework
After a decade of “Growing Forward” programs, Ottawa is developing a new five-year Agricultural Policy Framework this spring. What should be in it?
Reading Time: 7 minutes Canadian farmers are watching as the negotiations for the next Agriculture Policy Framework (APF) gyrate to completion, paving the way for the launch of the new, five-year plan in the first quarter of 2018. This new document will be immensely influential, defining how federal and provincial government ag spending will be allocated for the following […] Read more
The brother and sister advantage: Tom and Suzanne Pettit of Misty Glen Holsteins
There can be a kind of magic in a brother-sister relationship that helps them run a better farm business
Reading Time: 5 minutes A small but growing number of brother-and-sister farms across Canada are rewriting the rules on how families farm together in a new spirit of gender equality. Even more than that, though, they’re showing the rest of the industry how to step up their productivity with new management strategies that let every member of the team […] Read more
The new employee
Are your HR skills holding your farm back?
Reading Time: 8 minutes Farms keep getting bigger and more complex. But at the same time, farm families keep getting smaller, with farming couples having fewer kids, just like other Canadians. On many farms, this collision of demographic and economic trends means the days of running the farm by putting the family to work are gone. You can’t even […] Read more
Editor’s Note: The other side of the success story
At Country Guide, we do get criticized for seeming to print only stories about successes, not failures, but we don’t get as much flak as you might think… and we all know the reason why
Reading Time: 2 minutes You can see it again in the lineup of stories we bring you in our March 1 issue of Country Guide. For the next generation of Canada’s farmers, “average” won’t cut it. Our future farmers must run farms that score an A if not an A+ in every category… or they will face tall odds against […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
