Reading Time: 2 minutes This is my last issue at Country Guide. Retirement starts today. It begins practically the moment I hit “Send” on this column. No one could work at this job without a sense of the magazine’s history and its deep connections to Canadian farm families over the past century. I routinely get calls saying, “I’m cleaning […] Read more
Editor’s Note: See you at the airport
Building a farm succession plan for the whole family
Today there’s more opportunity than ever to write or tweak a succession plan to drive the success of your entire family. But there’s still a lot of opportunity for it to go off the rails too
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s been like a strain of Covid that attacks the farm business. It even started about the same time as the bug, ramping up in late 2020 when farmland values really began heating up. In fact, when you looked at the FCC graphs showing the spikes in land prices across Canada over the following months, […] Read more
How the farm succession landscape is changing
Eighty per cent of Annessa Good-Hassard’s clients come to her today wanting to gift or leave their farmland to non-farming children. And that may not be the biggest change in the new succession planning
Reading Time: 6 minutes It’s no secret. Succession planning involves bringing in the experts. But that’s nothing new. Farm families have been calling in lawyers, accountants and business advisors to help with their transition planning for decades. But don’t try saying there’s nothing new about those advisors today. Or about what they’re bringing to more and more farms. It […] Read more
Farm succession fundamentals
Despite all the social media and all the press stories, when it comes to succession, you’re still in the driver’s seat
Reading Time: 5 minutes Sure, some of the dollars are bigger. Sometimes much, much bigger. And some of the emotions around the succession table are bigger too, possibly bigger than the farm may ever have seen. Even so, when business advisor Rob Foster sits down with new clients to start discussions about farm succession, he still begins the same […] Read more
Editor’s Note: Time for your vote
Reading Time: 2 minutes Canada’s mainline farm organizations are struggling for your support. They deserve another shot. That’s not based on past performance. We all have questions about one policy or another or about one political connection or another. Instead, it’s because of the scale of the challenges ahead, and because the past decade has done so much to […] Read more
Editor’s Note: Yes, it’s time to get out of the way
Reading Time: 2 minutes We still read about baby boomers, naturally. And of course there are generations X, Y and Z. Now, too, there’s Alpha, and we’re even told the first baby born this coming New Year’s Day will usher in a new group that, whatever their feelings about the matter, will have to wear the label “Generation Beta” […] Read more
Summer Series: The uneasy middle
[Change Management] Canada’s mid-sized farms are under pressure. But don’t write them off quite so fast — at least not all of them
Reading Time: 8 minutes Of course any story on what’s ahead for Canada’s mid-size farms is going to start with a forkful of numbers. And of course, if you’re a mid-size farmer, those numbers aren’t exactly a joy to read. Instead, let us reprint part of an email from our in-box at Country Guide, just one of the more […] Read more
Summer Series: Lessons for young farmers on farm transitions
[Best Advice] As they get going on their farm transition journey, there's something all young farmers have to learn
Reading Time: 7 minutes Where can young farmers turn for help to figure out which pieces of the leadership puzzle to learn and when? And on top of all the facts and processes you must master as you step into an on-farm leadership role, how can you accumulate enough of the right insights and skills required? These three young […] Read more
Editor’s Note: A summer for decision-making
Reading Time: 2 minutes I admit I can hardly believe it. When I first signed on with Country Guide more than a decade ago, I used this space to ask a question that I honestly wondered about. The question? Can farmers grow their business productivity as fast as their crop yields? In fact, farmers have grown their professionalism at […] Read more
Editor’s Note: The character of change in agriculture
Reading Time: 2 minutes We like to draw straight lines. It’s nothing to apologize about. We all like to look around us at how things stand, then we latch onto what we see as the big trend lines and draw them out into the future, thinking that’s how to predict the world of 2030 or even 2050. It’s nothing […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
