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Farm business

Farmer Types on tablet computer with combine harvester in the background
Guide Business, Management

Build a learning farm

This summer, start your lifelong educational strategy

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Reading Time: 9 minutes Farmers always have their hands full, so it’s not always easy to think that signing up for a seminar, conference or training course is a wise investment or a good use of time. The business case, however, is pretty clearly in favour of doing just that. “If you look at it purely from an economist’s […] Read more
farmer loading grain
Crops, Guide Business, Livestock

Know your farm financial numbers

Which financial ratios could you be tracking this summer to make the best decisions this fall?

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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
We would be 100 times more successful if we went to politicians with 20- to 30-year-old directors,” says Jason Reid, Beef Farmers of Ontario board member.
Guide Business, Livestock

Young farmers are on board and looking ahead

Innovative training programs are raising the leadership capabilities of Canada’s youngest farmers

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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
Tom Button
Opinion

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

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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
Guide Business, Succession strategy

The first-born quandary

What if your eldest son isn’t actually the best choice to lead your family farm into the future?

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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
This is not for the faint of heart,” says co-op investor Dan Ohler. “It’s not easy. It takes courage.”
Guide Business

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

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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
Shawn Brenn of Brenn B Farms.
Crops, Fruit/Vegetables, Guide Business

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

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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
Canola farmlands in rural Central West of NSW at sunset, the last rays spread their warm light on the golden canola. Panorama
Crops, Guide Business, Livestock

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?

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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
Brother and sister Tom and Suzanne Pettit didn’t grow up thinking they’d farm together, but once they hit their 20s, they started seeing how well it might work. Today, they are consistently hitting their quality and financial targets, and they have learned how to help each other perform at the top of their game.
Dairy Cattle, Guide Business

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

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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
Guide Business, Guide HR

The new employee

Are your HR skills holding your farm back?

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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

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