Reading Time: 5 minutes On a sunny morning, early last September, a large crowd of growers gathered for an open-house event at Ceresco, a major soybean-specialized seed company and exporter in Quebec. After touring the plots, groups sat in a shed for a talk about the IP soybean market with co-owner Thierry Gripon. Gripon had a few public confessions […] Read more
Grow it or lose it
IP soybeans are at a crossroads. We need to grow more, but will the higher premiums drive Japanese buyers away?
Harvesting on turf
Quebec farmers have solved the corn cover crop puzzle. They grow grass under the canopy
Reading Time: 4 minutes When Raymond Durivage drives his Lexion 585R combine into a cornfield, he knows he’s in for a smooth, worry-free ride. The two front tracks ensure excellent flotation. But that’s not all. The combine is also rolling on turf, with a thick green mattress of ryegrass between each corn row that provides for less compaction and […] Read more
Farming the cloud
Cloud farming is no longer just a concept. The way you manage data on the farm is about to change for the better
Reading Time: 5 minutes At Maxime Cardinal’s potato farm, there are more than 120 fields, some of them with more than one variety. From the first pass working the soil in the spring through to harvest, machinery will enter any given field up to 15 times. That’s a lot of information to keep track of! Cardinal, his father, Yvon […] Read more
Simon Parent Saint-Paul-D’abbotsford, Que.
Reading Time: 2 minutes IF YOU THINK INFLUENCE COMES WITH AGE,getting to know Simon Parent might help change your mind. At 33, he had already become a key figure in Quebec’s strawberry industry. Then, just a year ago, he became the president of the North American Strawberry Growers Association (NASGA). Parent’s business is strawberry transplants. In 2002, he started […] Read more
Innovation
Reading Time: 6 minutes With pressure from media, company buyers changed minds In an agriculture that is rapidly evolving, these three Quebec farms have found innovative ways to diversify, to access markets and to make farming attractive to the next generation Jean-Luc Baril: potatoes for the North Direct sales to your customers may always be a good strategy, especially […] Read more
In an agriculture that is rapidly evolving, these three Quebec farms have found innovative ways to diversify, to access markets and to make farming attractive to the next generation
Reading Time: < 1 minute Jean-Luc Baril: potatoes for the North Direct sales to your customers may always be a good strategy, especially when you are a produce farmer. But what if you don t farm in the suburbs? What if you farm in an isolated, northern and sparsely populated region? Jean-Luc Baril created his own solution. First, Baril says, […] Read more
New Solitudes
Reading Time: 6 minutes If you believe agriculture will thrive best with unregulated markets, and that it must be driven by smart, profit-minded individuals, maybe you should stop reading now. CFA president Laurent Pellerin and you may not get along. Agriculture needs much more than articulate farmers, says Laurent Pellerin, long-time president of Quebec’s powerful UPA farmers’ union. It […] Read more
Fresh Start
Reading Time: 6 minutes you’ll only be good enough to milk cows on my family’s farm,” a fellow student once jeered at Mathieu Barbeau. “In a few years,” came Barbeau’s answer, “I’ll be big enough to buy you out.” Barbeau, now 28, figured the odds were against him. Everyone else figured it too. He’d heard it hundreds of times […] Read more
Sweet Success
Reading Time: 7 minutes If the taste of sour fried pork with mango and maple syrup is hard to imagine, what about an Asian shrimp omelet with tomato-maple chili sauce? These and similar recipes are among the creations of chef Yoko Arimoto, a Japanese food celebrity hired to promote maple syrup in a country that may not be known […] Read more
Parlez-vous francais? Quebec’s Coop fédérée emerges as the new powerhouse in Canadian ag retail, and Claude Lafleur isn’t done yet
Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s the forces of capitalism.” CEO Claude Lafleur outlines his strategy for La Coop fédérée. “You get bigger or you disappear.” It means the co-op— the largest in Quebec with 95 retail outlets, plus active involvement in meat processing and petroleum — is looking far beyond Quebec’s borders. In fact, executives at the co-op had […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
