Reading Time: 9 minutes You might call it a sort of succession plan in reverse. Young farmer Dustin Krahn isn’t related to Ken Wiebe, the established farmer who has found a way to help Dustin get a leg up. Meanwhile, though, Dustin is also helping Wiebe’s 22-year-old son, Zack, learn the ropes and get started in farming too. Are […] Read more
Not related, but farm hopeful gets all he needs
Dustin Krahn gets no land, no equipment and no pay — but thanks to farmer Ken Wiebe, he gets opportunity
The wide view: How a working ranch wowed Jamie Oliver
A half-hour west of Calgary, CL Ranches is winning the battles that all of agriculture may soon face
Reading Time: 9 minutes Cherie Copithorne-Barnes knows the feeling. Ranching at Jumping Pound, Alberta, just 30 minutes west of Calgary, she looks at today’s agriculture and sees it producing the healthiest, cheapest food the world has ever known. But she also looks around her and sees an agriculture under intense scrutiny from the beneficiaries of that food, and also […] Read more
Execute on that business plan
If your business plan is gathering dust, here’s how to put it into action
Reading Time: 6 minutes We’ve all been there. You’ve just come back from an amazing course that has guided you through the arduous process of developing a business plan for your farm business. You have identified your core values, you have articulated a vision, and you have chosen the strategies to get you to where you want to go. […] Read more
A new spin of farming
Business is booming for farmer and mud-scraper manufacturer Mark Devloo, but that doesn’t mean it gets easier
Reading Time: 7 minutes Mark Devloo never watched much television as a kid growing up on his fourth-generation family farm. He was too busy outside fixing things, learning to weld, and building go-carts with his father, Gerry, who came up with the design ideas. It wasn’t much different 40 or so years later when, after getting frustrated by not […] Read more
Turn around
When brothers Ryan and Noel Flitton signed up for business school with their father, it helped their Alberta farm turn a critical corner
Reading Time: 9 minutes The allure of farming runs strong in the Flitton family, so neither Gary Flitton nor his sons Noel or Ryan make any apology for having been drawn for the same reason back to the family’s 12,000 acres of scenic Alberta grain land east of the Rocky Mountains near Vulcan. They want to live a rural […] Read more
How much can you pay?
First, ask yourself these six questions
Reading Time: 3 minutes “When you see that ad in the local paper for land for sale, there are six things you need to consider before you pick up the phone,” says Jacqueline Gerrard of Backswath Management. 1. Carrying cost: “Think of this as your interest or opportunity cost,” says Gerrard. “In other words, what will it actually cost […] Read more
Too young to grow?
Canada’s next generation of farmers are smart, ambitious — and trapped on small acreages
Reading Time: 7 minutes As land prices ride high across Canada, it’s a struggle for young and mid-career farmers to compete against established farms and outside investors to buy land, or even to find it. They also need to ask themselves some tough questions. How much can I afford to pay? Can I service the debt? And then there’s […] Read more
A long way to go
Mobile technology is paying big time for Gary Sanocki. The challenge is, he wants it to pay even more
Reading Time: 8 minutes Here’s a question that your iPhone can’t answer. With all the phones and tablets out there, how much value can you expect mobile technology to add to your farm, and how much cost can you expect the learning curve, the program limitations, and the lack of connectivity to your PC to add to your farm? […] Read morePlowing the glass ceiling
Reading Time: 5 minutes The farm wife of 1962 has become the farm partner of 2012. In operations all across the country, she has gone from keeping the accounts to managing them, and a lot more besides. Plus, on a growing number of farms, it’s a woman in charge. It took a long time coming. But now that it’s […] Read more
The plan
When farmers call themselves “producers” is it any wonder our kids struggle with their business skills?
Reading Time: 6 minutes There is a whole lot of doubting going on at Assiniboine Community College when Chad Bodnarchuk first addresses the students. Bodnarchuk volunteers as a mentor for the business plan project, a compulsory part of the college’s agribusiness diploma program. “I tell them it’s going to take hundreds of hours to complete their business plans,” he […] Read moreA message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
