Reading Time: 3 minutes Bookkeeping for the farm business might not be anyone’s favourite chore, but staying on top of it can help your farm access the funds it needs to grow.
Five reasons why you avoid farm bookkeeping
When you prefer to be in the field or the barn, you can find lots of reasons to ignore bookkeeping. But if it doesn't get it done, your farm may be missing out
Farmland values: assumptions and realities
Expectations about future farmland values look different depending on what chair you’re sitting in — and what decisions you need to make
Reading Time: 3 minutes Where farmland values are headed and what decisions farmers should make
How to grow a finance team for your agribusiness
Building the finance team for your agribusiness requires the right mix of processes, technology and people
Reading Time: 3 minutes Typical growing pains for an agribusiness include managing the overhead of accounting and finance. I like to think of the operations and sales team as the invading army — looking to conquer more acres, market share and revenue. Meanwhile the accounting and finance team functions in a supporting role as the supply lines, providing current […] Read more
Why do farmers hate paying taxes?
There are plenty of reasons why farmers might hate paying taxes – and several ways to avoid it
Reading Time: 3 minutes It didn’t take long in my accounting career to learn that farmers don’t like paying income tax. No one does really, but farmers seem to have a particular disdain for sending money to Ottawa. I think there are a few reasons for this. One is cash basis income tax treatment which means farmers can often […] Read more
Farming in a high-cost environment
Reading Time: 4 minutes The cost to farm in Western Canada has doubled in the past fifteen years. What was $250/acre in annual costs to farm fifteen years ago (using accrual accounting) is now $500/acre in Western Canada. Cost increases are being seen across the farm income statement including on inputs, machinery and land. The more recent spike in […] Read more
Moving your farm’s books to the cloud
Reading Time: 2 minutes As far as topics go, farm bookkeeping and office administration don’t get a lot of attention. Why would they when there’s drought and drones, multi-million-dollar farm acquisitions, trade wars, tariffs and labour disruptions to focus on instead? But it’s a subject that’s creating a bottleneck, preventing some farm operations from reaching their growth potential and […] Read more
2022-Level Farm Profits are Over. What’s Next?
Reading Time: 2 minutes It looks like 2022-level profitability is over for farms in Western Canada. The decline of commodity markets combined with ever-increasing costs is pressuring 2025 farm budgets. So, if grain farming is back to squeaking out a profit for the foreseeable future, what can we do about it? 1. Confront the facts, but don’t lose faith […] Read more
Attracting the right kind of capital in agriculture
Capital is required to grow the farm business but sometimes it takes an innovative approach
Reading Time: 2 minutes Agriculture’s future will rely on attracting capital. In the past, capital typically came from banks or family. But the changing demographic of farmers and farmland owners means that many farms and a tremendous amount of farmland will change hands over the coming decade. To add to the list of challenges, inflation and farmland appreciation has […] Read more
The formula for farm growth
Capital + Risk + Execution = Farm SUCCESS
Reading Time: 3 minutes “Change is inevitable, growth is optional.” That’s how John C. Maxwell said it, and he might have said it best. It’s easy to look around the ag industry and see changes in the landscape. Suppliers, competitors and customers are consolidating and growing. Yet growth is often met with more scorn in farming than in these […] Read more
The building blocks of farm finance
Reading Time: 3 minutes In my career as a farm CPA and CFO I’ve noticed some recurring themes. Balance sheets and consolidation are increasing, debt servicing and cash – flow are top issues, and assets and growth are becoming more expensive Typically, advisors, consultants and fractional CFOs are engaged at the top of what I refer to as the […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
