Reading Time: 5 minutes Plan ahead,” we always say. “Make a plan.” In fact on the farm, the most familiar four-letter word has just about got to be “plan” — defined in this case as a scheme, program or method worked out beforehand to accomplish an objective. How often do we find ourselves saying, “It’s all in the planning,” […] Read more
Make It Happen
Big Deal – for Nov. 8, 2010
Reading Time: 7 minutes I can’t remember when I’ve heard so many apologies. The farmers I’m calling are bright, committed, take-charge people, but when I ask them how the new federal-provincial program AgriStability is going to make a difference for their farm, they stumble. As a group, they apologize for not understanding it better. They tell me they know […] Read more
The Large Versus The Small Of It
Reading Time: 5 minutes Some 22 per cent of Canada’s farms are responsible for 78 per cent of farm operating income. Yet all farms are counted as equal under existing programs like AgriStability. While total program payments make up as much as 50 per cent of operating income for farms that generate over $250,000 in gross sales, the number […] Read more
Field Team
Reading Time: 6 minutes As if marketing isn’t complex enough already, Ryan and Lauren Maurer have injected two extra complications. Their farm is above average in size, with 11,000 acres based at Grenfell, an hour and a half east of Regina. Plus, they grow and have to market a wide variety of commodities, including grains, pulses, oilseeds and niche […] Read more
The Marketing Puzzle – for Oct. 11, 2010
Reading Time: 13 minutes A call, a put, a naked writer. At-the-money, in-the-money, out-of-the-money. It s enough to make you think you re locked inside a jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces fit. In fact, though, if you go to some online dictionaries of grain marketing terms, you ll find these are a mere handful of the sub-categories […] Read more
Flood Relief – for Aug. 30, 2010
Reading Time: 8 minutes Growing a crop is always an exercise in hope, but the hellish crop year in much of the eastern Prairies has challenged even the most optimistic of farmers, catching them in a drama where hope didn’t even get on stage. Our farms are flooded. Record rainfall through May and June prevented much of the crop […] Read more
Corporate Citizenship
Reading Time: 11 minutes mage is important to any business. While media and other interest groups tell the world what traditional farmers are like and what they do, we who farm have been shut out of the conversation. We talk amongst ourselves of the unfairness of this. We complain and pontificate to each other. But maybe we need to […] Read more
More farms are getting transferred outside the family. But even though Peter and Elspeth Wile, top, and Andrew and Nikki Morine wanted the same thing, it still took months of legal and accounting delays to set up their non-traditional agreement
Reading Time: 9 minutes All across the country, farmers puzzle over it. Farm leaders strategize and vocalize about it. Even politicians get involved. Yet despite all the concern and all the programs, the situation doesn’t seem to change. Few young people see a future in farming, and even fewer see any realistic way that they could get their start. […] Read more
Canada’s farms are so over-machined, it’s a major, looming threat. So warn the accountants. But farming isn’t done on paper. Without machinery, you can’t do what you do. How lean should you run?
Reading Time: 10 minutes rant Vermeulen believes that farming with $150 in owned machinery per acre is agronomically possible. The harder question, he says, is whether it’s good business. In an industry that is increasingly built on cost control, the answer should seem obvious. But for Vermeulen and others across the country, it isn’t. Vermeulen farms with his brother […] Read more
Just like your seed and herbicides, there can be complex webs of self-interest and obscure agendas behind the leadership training you’re being encouraged to sign up for. Does it matter?
Reading Time: 2 minutes In a hotel ballroom in Saskatoon, farmers and farm advisors are listening to the speakers at a conference called Balancing the Bottom Line. The conference has been organized by the Farm Leadership Council, a wing of Viterra, Canada s largest ag corporation. It s also organized by the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, a farm […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
