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Farm business

New owner Graham Sorgard’s respect for the work that the Kaedings had done helped create an impetus to make the complex sale come together.
Guide Business

Selling the farm

Inside the sale of a modern, diversified and complex family farm

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Reading Time: 10 minutes Once you decide it’s time to retire from farming, there’s a pile of planning, strategy and communication to fork your way through. Here’s how one couple from Saskatchewan proactively approached the sale of their seed farm, and how they captured value beyond piecemeal selling of their hard assets. Warren and Carla Kaeding and Roger and […] Read more
Guide HR, Management

Your own HR scorecard

Guide Excellence: These tools can help you assess your skills and figure out what strengths you can build on, what skills you need to sharpen, and where you should hire help

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Reading Time: 5 minutes There was a time when going up against your neighbours in a plowing match was the best and sometimes really the only way for farmers to assess their skill level. But that was then. Today, farm businesses have grown way more sophisticated and, although they still aren’t always easy to find, skills assessments have improved […] Read more
Before Alain (l) and Jean-Pierre Lavigne make new investments, they compare their profitability against their group’s numbers.
Guide Business, Management

Farm management groups have benefits

This farm finds that belonging to a farm management group improves their decision-making, and reduces their stress

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Reading Time: 5 minutes Alain Lavigne has belonged to a farm management group for 25 years and says he couldn’t imagine farming without it. “It puts the picture of the whole farm in front of you… it helps us evaluate our strengths and weaknesses,” says Lavigne, who farms with his family in Ontario, an hour east of Ottawa. “It […] Read more
Men in doorway of barn
Guide Life

Is your farm ‘too family?’

Guide Life: Put the emphasis on business, family experts say. It will reduce conflict for everyone

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Reading Time: 5 minutes For as long as there have been farmers in Canada, we have pointed with great pride to “The Family Farm.” Maybe, however, we’ve been taking too much pride in the family part of our family farms, and by doing so, we may actually be creating more conflict. Winnipeg business adviser and psychologist Pam Paquet suggests […] Read more
The Airseed Hoppers may be a great idea, but what makes it a great business are business skills and energy, says Kevin Lisafeld (r), who is now passing those skills on to son Brad as well as to long-term employee Cory Lischka (l).
Crops, Management

Forty years of farming requires a spirit for change

It turns out that successful diversification depends on the mindset you bring to it

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Reading Time: 5 minutes When Kevin Lisafeld was still a teenager, his mother, Evelyn, told him not to put all his eggs in one basket. That advice has served him well during a 40-year career as a farmer and businessman. But success doesn’t come from diversifying for the sake of diversification. Lisafeld has learned how to spot an opportunity, […] Read more
Tom Button
Opinion

Editor’s Desk: Stacking the odds

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Reading Time: 2 minutes Increasingly, the science that has the greatest potential to make a difference in agriculture is psychology. In recent years, we have come to appreciate the role of psychology in commodity markets, and in land markets too. We also think we have learned a lot about the psychology of succession planning, and even the psychology of […] Read more
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Guide Business, Management

Assessing risk in the farm business

AME Management: Develop a heat chart to see how your business can be impacted by adversity

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Reading Time: 3 minutes The process of assessing risk in a farm business is no different than in any other business. In agriculture, however, the types of risks in agriculture can be unique. How an individual views risk, how much they want to accept and how they manage it varies from person to person. Even so, there is a […] Read more
man in farmyard with haybales
Crops, Guide Business, Livestock

4 ways to structure farm diversification

Before rolling a new enterprise into the main farm, stop, think and talk about how this is going to fit into your operation long term

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Reading Time: 8 minutes Maybe it’s something you just want to do. It might be manufacturing a new farm widget or selling birdseed, or producing heritage pork, or grazing sheep. Or maybe your son or daughter has graduated from agricultural college and they want to come home after a few years working off farm. You know there’s risk with […] Read more
In Saskatchewan Trena and Myles find their peer group injects not only fresh ideas and new thinking, but a drive to achieve more too.
Guide Business

Sometimes the best advice…

Going a distance to talk business with similar farmers injects fresh thinking and insight into these operations

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Reading Time: 5 minutes Farmers love to talk to other farmers, as anyone who has ever spent five minutes in a country coffee shop knows. But it’s not always easy to have productive discussions with your peers if they are also your neighbours, and if you’re competing with them to rent or purchase land, or to sell grain at […] Read more
“There are lots of opportunities for growth,” Bernard says. “You just have to see them.”
Crops, Guide Business, Livestock

The new way into farming

After 10 years on the farm, these top graduates have succeeded by transitioning their family farms from conventional to holistic

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Reading Time: 9 minutes A decade ago, a fresh-faced group of graduates jumped into a grain industry beaten down by prices and Prairie drought, and a livestock industry ravaged by the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) debacle. It was hardly the best of times. By the end of 2004, a year and a half after the BSE crisis began, Canadian […] Read more

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