Reading Time: 6 minutes Triticale was introduced to Canada in the 1960s and got a bit of extra fanfare from a mention in the famous Star Trek episode “The Trouble With Tribbles.” Interest soon waned, but the wheat-rye hybrid is now getting some renewed attention as a versatile crop with potential for grain, forage and ethanol production. Breeding programs […] Read more
New life for triticale
High yield, high nutrition, disease resistance and swath grazing potential are among the attractions of this wheat/rye hybrid
Early warning signs of a business in trouble
Whether it’s your farm, or a company or a farm you deal with, it’s never good to be the last to know
Reading Time: 3 minutes Unfortunately some businesses will fail. There can be any number of contributing reasons, such as an economic downturn, competition, bad customer relations, bad internal management, changes in markets, government regulations or unforeseen events. Even so, there are a number of warning signs that could signal the business is in trouble, says Jerry Lupkowski, a senior […] Read more
Farmers and focus groups
More companies are asking more farmers to sit in on focus groups. Should you agree? What rules should you expect?
Reading Time: 8 minutes From the day the first farmer put the first seed in the ground, there’s never been a farmer who didn’t have a wealth of opinions. Nor have there been very many farmers who take much if any persuading to share what they think. In today’s more sophisticated world, however, the game has changed. Companies want […] Read more
Protecting your farm’s assets
These six strategies will ensure you get much more than just the tax benefits of forming a farm corporation
Reading Time: 7 minutes Many farms that incorporate do so for tax purposes. After all, there are definite tax advantages available to a corporation and its shareholders that are not available to individuals or partnerships. But farm businesses should be careful that they don’t let the tax tail wag the dog, says Jerry Lupkowski, a senior partner with MNP […] Read more
Last of the first-born tradition
There’s less and less room for entitlement on today’s family farm
Reading Time: 7 minutes If you’re the first-born male, it used to mean you had won the lottery. You got to inherit the biggest share, you got to take over as boss, and you got to sit at the head of the family table. But today that kind of European hierarchy is quickly fading on the family farm. Except… […] Read more
Is a family trust right for you?
A trust might be an efficient tool for protecting your farm business or for managing family issues at succession, but they aren’t for everyone
Reading Time: 5 minutes Family trusts are commonly used as a convenient way to own shares in a company and as a succession tool for commercial businesses, but they can also be incorporated into a family farm structure…depending on the circumstances. “A farm corporation may have at its disposal favourable tax rules that may allow it to achieve the […] Read more
He knows the weather
Meet Larry Romaniuk, long-range weather specialist at Country Guide
Reading Time: 3 minutes When you spend 60 years doing something, you get pretty good at it, and Larry Romaniuk is very good at forecasting the weather at least 75 per cent to 80 per cent of the time. Romaniuk prepares the long-range weather forecast for Country Guide, and he’s been doing it for 23 years since retiring from […] Read more
Sometimes the best advice…
Going a distance to talk business with similar farmers injects fresh thinking and insight into these operations
Reading Time: 5 minutes Farmers love to talk to other farmers, as anyone who has ever spent five minutes in a country coffee shop knows. But it’s not always easy to have productive discussions with your peers if they are also your neighbours, and if you’re competing with them to rent or purchase land, or to sell grain at […] Read more
Finding a new way for agricultural success
Theirs may be among the smallest loan the Manitoba Ag Services Corporation has on its books, but business is looking up
Reading Time: 7 minutes Agriculture has always attracted all kinds, including from the fringe. There have been the hippie back-to-earthers of the 1960s and even the New Agers of just a decade ago, all of them dreaming of an escape from the confines of city life partly so they can commune with nature on a handful of acres with […] Read more
After the farm tragedy…
It takes a combination of legal and financial preparedness on the one hand, and human understanding on the other to keep the farm together
Reading Time: 7 minutes The Connery family thought that it was probably more prepared than most farm families for succession, and in many ways it was. But no one anticipated the sudden death of its two principal farming partners, or that the farm business would transfer to a daughter-in-law. When brothers, Doug and Jeff Connery died within six months […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
