Reading Time: 6 minutes If you want to know what it’s like to deal with some serious energy issues, try keeping nearly one million square feet of space at a comfortable room temperature when the only thing between you and the bone-chilling -30 C of a Manitoba winter mere inches away from you is two very thin sheets of […] Read more
Fire It Up!
It’s All In The Plan
Reading Time: 3 minutes The transfer of farming operations is often the most difficult issue for producers. It is emotional and stressful, but also inevitable. Some producers have a natural succession plan with a child or children ready, willing and able to carry on the tradition. Others, for a variety of reasons, must look outside the family. It is […] Read more
Joint Success
Reading Time: 7 minutes It’s a question that Myron Teneycke asked five years ago, and the joint-venture owners of STR Farms at Young, Sask. haven’t looked back since. Nor has the farm. It has grown — going from 8,000 to 11,200 acres — and its staff has grown too. Today, STR pays a full-time managing couple, plus three full-time […] Read more
If You Died Today…
Reading Time: 7 minutes Jolene Brown was looking directly at the panel of three who had just lost their farming spouses. Then she asked the question. “If you had one more day, what would you say, what would you ask and, what would you do?” Brown knew it was a tough question. She’s a popular speaker, farm business adviser […] Read more
Five Paths To A Fair Rent
Reading Time: 5 minutes Recent tax interpretations have reaffirmed that most retired farmers can cash rent without jeopardizing their estate and succession plans. That’s taken the wind out of crop-share agreements, but it has also created an opportunity for farmers and landlords to look at newer and better ways to establish fair rental rates. A generation ago, crop-share agreements […] Read more
Learning More
Reading Time: 8 minutes Some people are driven to learn constantly. Clearly at 54 years old, Dan Wester is one of them. In the last few years, Wester has taken extended courses from the George Morris Centre as well as executive training through Texas A&M University, and he has signed on for a multitude of workshops and seminars. And […] Read more
Promanager
Reading Time: 7 minutes In some people’s eyes, Trish Fournier isn’t a farmer. That’s OK by her. She doesn’t think she’s a farmer either. Instead, she’s a farm manager, part of a new generation of managers poised to revolutionize North American agriculture. In the U.S., 15 per cent of farmers have already turned their operations over to professional management […] Read more
Payday
Reading Time: 6 minutes No matter what your age, or the ages of your family members, it seems there’s good reason to start paying yourself (and them) a wage, especially if you back it up with a well-structured system of bonuses. Farm financial advisers across the country report that more farmers are making the switch away from simply dividing […] Read more
Ben Loewith Ancaster, Ont.
Reading Time: 4 minutes IN THE LUNCHROOM IS A MAPof the world with pins that show where visitors to the farm are from. The map is covered because researchers and dairymen from around the world flock to the barn to talk with a family of farmers known for their practical intelligence and supreme management. Ben Loewith, his father Carl […] Read more
So Many Cooks In The Kitchen
Reading Time: 4 minutes Consider this situation. Three brothers inherit the family farm in the mid-1970s and grow it over a period of time. Each of the brothers gets married and has children. Some of the children participate actively in the business, some do not. As the decades roll by, the brothers share in the highs and the lows, […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
