Articles Written by Angela Lovell

The next decade could see a return to smaller fields due to the higher-intensity management made possible by driverless technology such as the DOT.

Changes in agriculture are coming your way

These production challenges mean we’ll all have to stay sharp through the 2020s

Reading Time: 4 minutes Just because we can predict many of the production challenges heading our way doesn’t mean they’ll be easier to avoid, or that they’ll be easier to manage. In fact, by the time the new decade starts winding down in 2030, Canadian producers will have their hands just as full as they are today, if not […] Read more

Talking about your future plans and how you want to grow is important.

Guide Business, Succession strategy

Getting inside a retiring farmer’s head

Knowing the questions that your older neighbours are asking themselves as they start winding down their farms could give you the inside track

By Angela Lovell November 29, 2019

Reading Time: 9 minutes Mom and Dad just had coffee with their neighbour, talking about how it’s time to start preparing for retirement. Not just thinking about it, but actually doing it. They’re only a fenceline apart, but they’re in very different situations, though, which for farmers in the area who want to expand could make all the difference. […] Read more

Many major trends experts foresee are already underway and will continue to play out in the ag sector over the next decade and beyond.

Features, Guide Business

What the future farm could look like in 2030

Future farm: Maybe it seems more like fiction today, but every year brings this picture of the future closer

By Angela Lovell November 27, 2019

Reading Time: 6 minutes Big change is coming. In the words of Shrek, “Change is good, Donkey!” It’s also inevitable, which farmers probably know more than anyone else. There are, of course, differing opinions about what farming will look like 10 years from now. Will farms be larger? Probably. Will weather be more unpredictable? Almost certainly. Will technologies like […] Read more

University of Manitoba associate professor Yvonne Lawley and graduate student Virginia Janzen have just begun a trial at Carman Research Farm to assess the impact of different termination dates for a fall rye cover crop seeded with soybeans the following spring.

Crops, Soybeans

Seeding soybeans into rye

Green growth in spring helps to manage excess moisture, provides early-season protection from soil erosion, and also suppresses weeds

By Angela Lovell November 5, 2019

Reading Time: 5 minutes Grain farmers across Western Canada are showing interest in cover crops, but few have taken the step, as many North Dakota farmers have, of green-seeding soybeans in the spring into a fall rye cover crop. “The context of green seeding is to push that shoulder season fallow period out of the rotation by using annuals […] Read more

For Dean, Devin, Darren and father Bernie, on-farm manufacturing provides a kind of balance. But make no mistake… this is a farm first, with all the challenges that implies.

Equipment, Guide Business

Auger-steer invention drives farm family’s business success

Diversifying into manufacturing creates more opportunity for the Toews family, but there have been many lessons along the way

By Angela Lovell October 18, 2019

Reading Time: 12 minutes It was 2008 and things just weren’t working out for Bernie Toews. From his tractor cab, he’d tried again and again to manoeuvre an auger around a tight corner on the family farm near MacGregor, an hour and a half west of Winnipeg, and it just wasn’t going to happen. Now, Toews was backing the […] Read more

Guide Business, Management

Investment model offers opportunity for farm expansion

Could Joelle Faulkner’s partnership concept work on your farm?

By Angela Lovell September 11, 2019

Reading Time: 9 minutes It’s a common scenario: Farmer Bill has been renting land from his neighbour for years but the time has come and he is ready to sell. He wants Bill to have first refusal on the land, but Bill has just financed a new barn and bought a new combine, so he’s too over-extended to raise […] Read more

After the first time that farmers visit with the social group, Jill Rennie says she doesn’t have any trouble getting them to come back.

Features, News

Retired farmers show they have a lifetime to share

Support for these farmers stopped the moment they left the farm, until Jill Rennie developed this innovative dementia support group

By Angela Lovell August 13, 2019

Reading Time: 8 minutes Retiring from the farm can have a massive impact on farmers’ mental and physical health. It can seem the lucky ones are those who can still live on the farm site, do a few odd jobs, run some errands or help out at busy times. Indeed, the ones who end up moving away from the […] Read more

The only in-crop products registered for grass control in flax are Group 1 chemistries: sethoxydim (Poast Ultra), clethodim (e.g. Centurion) and quizalofop (e.g. Assure II), and broadleaf products such as clopyralid and MCPA (Curtail M).

Crops, Oilseeds

Don’t rely completely on the herbicide’s label for advice when seeding flax

Making sure the crop receives good fertility, planting into warm, moist soils and bumping up seeding rate can all help improve the outcome.” — Michelle Beaith, Sask Flax

By Angela Lovell August 1, 2019

Reading Time: 5 minutes If your flax isn’t looking as healthy as it should, you might consider the usual suspects — disease, insects or nutrient deficiency. But you might add another to the list — residual herbicides. “The main concern is impact on the crop such as decreased emergence and reduced plant stand,” says Michelle Beaith, an agronomist with […] Read more

Owen Fijala of Manitoba was only 16 years old when he set his sights on dairy farming.

Dairy Cattle, Guide Business

Early days

How young is too young to make major farm decisions? Meet Owen Fijala, and get ready to rethink your assumptions

By Angela Lovell June 12, 2019

Reading Time: 11 minutes Just like any farm kid, Owen Fijala grew up helping out on the family grain farm near Manitou in south-central Manitoba. Things got a bit different, though, when he got a part-time job helping out a neighbouring beef farmer and he began to get interested in livestock production as well. He’d kept his eyes open, […] Read more

“Not having family members that were farming made some things more difficult,” Lydia Carpenter says. “In other ways, it was an asset to us.”

Guide Business, Livestock

The way it happens

How do new farmers get a start in Canada? Every story is unique, but so often it starts, as here, with the right people somehow getting together

By Angela Lovell May 30, 2019

Reading Time: 10 minutes If, as the Roman philosopher Seneca said, “Luck is what happens when preparation and opportunity meet,” Lydia Carpenter and Wian Prinsloo are the living embodiment of it. They have always had an interest in food production, yet neither had grown up on a farm, and when they set out to follow their passion in their […] Read more

U.S. livestock: CME cattle, hogs firm on winter weather woes

CGC revises domestic canola usage downward

Prairie cash wheat: Bids mostly lower

GFM Network News