Reading Time: 6 minutes When human resources consultant Janice Goldsborough first gets a telephone call from a farmer, it’s usually with questions related to employment standards. “They might be asking about whether they have to pay overtime, the rules around statutory holidays, or is their farm even covered under employment standards; those are typically the kind of questions that […] Read more
Top HR issues for farmers
Concerns about employment standards and employee performance are driving more farmers into HR training
Smarter than you think
Here’s what your kids come home having learned about business at ag college. It’s much, much more than even a few years ago
Reading Time: 9 minutes When Colin Penner enrolled as a student in the University of Manitoba’s agricultural diploma program 10 years ago, he had to prepare a business plan for his farm. Today, he is back at the U of M as an instructor, teaching other students how to complete today’s planning assignments, which are miles ahead. Preparing a […] Read more
More than a rotation crop for feed
Demand is increasing for this officially ‘heart healthy’ crop, but growers need to pay attention to quality
Reading Time: 5 minutes New varieties that consistently yield 120 to 140 bushels per acre. Increasing demand, with buyers paying a premium. Competitive against weeds, with good resistance to fusarium. That hardly describes a feed crop you seed last because you need it in rotation. Demand for milling oats is on the rise and processors have announced expansion. Some […] Read more
Growing quality oats
Recommendations for oat agronomy from the new POGA Oat Growers Manual and research across Western Canada
Reading Time: 6 minutes Soil and rotation Oats grow best in black and grey wooded soil zones that have higher moisture, but can grow on sandy loam to heavy clay soils as long as they have good drainage. To reduce disease pressure and optimize yields, oats should not be grown after cereals. The best rotational crops include canola, hay, […] Read more
Corn adoption on the Prairies set to speed up
Projections of eight million acres may be optimistic, but breeders are making fast progress in adapting corn hybrids to Western Canada
Reading Time: 7 minutes Two years ago, Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer announced ambitious plans for expanding corn acreage in Western Canada to eight to 10 million acres within 10 years, and grain corn acres have indeed increased in traditional corn-growing areas like southern Manitoba, where growers seeded a record 410,000 acres in 2017, up more than 18 per cent […] Read more
Don’t just fly your drone out of the box
New regulations make flying a drone more complicated for both recreational and commercial users
Reading Time: 5 minutes You’ve invested thousands of dollars in that unmanned air vehicle (UAV), and you’re anxious to see it perform. You take it out of the box, plunk in the batteries, and off it goes… forever. It happens, says Matthew Johnson, owner of M3 Aerial Productions, a Winnipeg company that offers UAV training and aerial imagery and […] Read more
Drones have their limitations
Aerial images provide useful information, but an aircraft might be a better option for larger farms
Reading Time: 4 minutes Are drones the next big thing in scouting technology, or the latest toy that will be forgotten in a few years? Greg Adelman, owner of Crop Command Agronomy at Southey, Sask., says UAVs provide researchers with a great tool for assessing small research plots, but when it’s necessary to cover thousands of acres, they can’t […] Read more
Courting disaster
When farm families end up in court, winners are few and very far between. Still, more and more families are ending up before a judge
Reading Time: 10 minutes The British press has given Welsh farmer Eirian Davies her own nickname, the “Cowshed Cinderella,” even though the court case that she brought against her parents, claiming they had reneged on a promise that she would inherit the family dairy farm, certainly didn’t have a fairy-tale ending. When the courts awarded a C$2.2 million settlement […] Read more
The little railway that did
These Manitoba farmers show how much can be achieved with superior leadership skills
Reading Time: 14 minutes Remember The Little Engine that Could? It’s a story about optimism, hard work and determination, which pretty much sums up the story of the Boundary Trail Railway Company (BTRC), a producer-owned, short-line railway in southern Manitoba. In 2008, a group of Manitoba farmers, with no clue how to run a railway, signed a piece of […] Read more
The best crop row spacing is…
A multi-year study suggests there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question
Reading Time: 6 minutes The question of the best row spacing has been asked even more often in recent years, and it turns out that the answer is the same as for many other questions in farming — “It depends.” But on what? A multi-year study by researchers at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Indian Head Agricultural Research […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
