Reading Time: 6 minutes The death of the family farm is widely bemoaned. Activists ask, “What do we really know about these corporations that produce our food?” As it turns out, it’s the same question that many farmers are asking themselves, although in a very different context. How can I be sure that my farm corporation is the best […] Read more
Family farm corporations on the rise
Depending on your farm objectives, building a trust into your corporation may be your best first step
Are Canadian farmers ready for the succession challenge?
HR toolkit designed to assist farmers with transition and to help ensure the farm's continued success
Reading Time: 6 minutes Succession planning has become a pretty sexy topic in agriculture. Every hip and trendy professional office for farmers is mailing out their own shiny leaflet to everyone they know about it, and no self-respecting event planner would even think of hosting an agricultural conference without at least one workshop on transferring the farm to the […] Read more
Lookout Holsteins and Jerseys ‘start from scratch’
Like a growing number of Canadian operations, Quebec’s Lookout finds success by heading in a direction all it’s own
Reading Time: 6 minutes Wrong turns are part of steering any business to success, as are some unexpectedly bumpy roads. There is no such thing as a perfect roadmap, with the upshot that many young farmers suffer indecision along the way, and some even abandon their course at times. All the same, the story of Lookout Holsteins and Jerseys […] Read more
So close, so far
Farming in eastern Ontario takes a special breed
Reading Time: 6 minutes The area isn’t for everyone, Charles Forman tells me. Squeezed between three of Canada’s most densely populated urban centres — Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto — farming here is almost eerily anonymous. Even other farmers across the province or all across the country easily overlook the farming that goes on in eastern Ontario. Not that the […] Read more
Create a farm advisory board
Advice is easy to come by. Most times, you don’t even have to ask for it. Good advice, though, is much scarcer, and thrives on planning and structure
Reading Time: 5 minutes Advisory boards are becoming trendy. Both Forbes Magazine and the Harvard Business Review published articles last fall advising small business owners not only on why they should use advisory boards, but also on how best to organize them. You might dismiss these articles as “advice about getting advice,” but the recommendations are serious business, including […] Read more
Hard wired
Several factors are encouraging the return of an old pest enemy — the wireworm group — that had long been a thing of the past for Canadian farmers
Reading Time: 5 minutes They live quietly in your fields for as long as two or three seasons, silently but slowly damaging your crops and undermining your farm’s profitability. Their top hosts are grassy crops such as corn, but they’ve even been known to feed on potatoes, scarring the tubers with long feeding holes. Wireworms damage grassy plants in […] Read more
Driving a bargain
Are you actually as good a negotiator as you think?
Reading Time: 4 minutes If you ask a non-farmer what skills you need as a farmer, the answer at the top of their list may be driving a tractor. Ask a farmer, and it’s more likely to be driving a hard bargain. Negotiating skills have been an essential part of farming for generations, so it’s no surprise that farmers […] Read more
The right partner
In today’s farming, partnerships make more sense than ever… as long as you know how to find the right partner
Reading Time: 5 minutes Partnerships and agriculture are so closely entwined that even the smallest children know from singing about the farmer in the dell that the farmer’s first job is “to take a wife.” If only farm partnerships were so easy. With the farm community shrinking so fast, and now accounting for a mere 1.5 per cent of […] Read more
Corn losing the acreage battle
Across the east, farmers like Elliot Lowry are dropping corn from their 2014 plans
Reading Time: 5 minutes Be prepared to see noticeably less corn in Canada’s cornbelt next year as farmers in southern Ontario and Quebec continue to switch acres to soybeans. The 2011 federal Census of Agriculture documented a 33 per cent jump since 2006 in the number of acres farmers are planting to soybeans, and it isn’t at all hard […] Read more
You want to fire Dad?
There's almost always a better solution, says our panel of experts. Try these strategies to get everyone living happily together again
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s a movie standard. When the mob turns angry, they start wielding pitchforks. Whether it’s a monster that incites them or an invading army, when the local population goes berserk, and when they suddenly get transformed into nightmarish creatures of violence, the first thing they reach for is the nearest farm implement. It’s a scene […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
