Reading Time: 2 minutes I never agree with everything that’s said in our pages. I don’t expect you to always agree either. The trickier issue is when we decide we don’t agree with a story before we read it. So we never get beyond the first paragraph. In this case I ask you to consider reading associate editor Maggie […] Read more
Editor’s Note: A new think for supply management
If you haven’t re-thought your own attitudes about supply management, you’ll find it worth reading “Up for business”
Editor’s Note: Writing the book on Canada’s farms (2)
Reading Time: 2 minutes Two issues ago, I asked, what would it look like if the business section at Chapters was crammed with books about our farmers? Business books are popular for a reason. It’s easy to mock them, I know, especially the ego strokers that get written so breathlessly by ghost writers who understand there is only one […] Read more
Editor’s Desk: Strategic thinking about farm media
Canadian agriculture is incredibly well served by farm media. Only a couple of countries can rival us. But that has to be a foundation to build on, not an excuse to say the job is done
Reading Time: 2 minutes As you turn the pages in our March 1, 2016 issue of Country Guide, you’ll notice some changes. The pages look different, the type seems somehow different, the “feel” of the stories is different. You might even think this is what the changes are all about, i.e. a skin-deep bit of cosmetic surgery rather than real innovation. I […] Read more
Editor’s Desk: Writing the book on Canada’s farmers
Reading Time: 2 minutes I don’t quite mean what you might think by the headline above. I don’t mean writing the book about farmers FOR farmers. I mean writing it to inspire, encourage and empower other business owners and managers across the country. It’s a thought that comes to me almost every time I sit down to write this […] Read more
Editor’s Desk: Is this the last generation?
Reading Time: 2 minutes The above title caught my eye as I was thumbing through some 2011 back issues of Country Guide. Hmm, I wondered, have the last five years changed what I think about whether young people can successfully take over enough of our family farms to actually comprise a “generation?” Or will they even want to? In […] Read more
Editor’s Desk: Stacking the odds
Reading Time: 2 minutes Increasingly, the science that has the greatest potential to make a difference in agriculture is psychology. In recent years, we have come to appreciate the role of psychology in commodity markets, and in land markets too. We also think we have learned a lot about the psychology of succession planning, and even the psychology of […] Read more
Editor’s Desk: That hard as nails truth
Reading Time: 2 minutes Every neighbourhood has its own stories of farmers who had to be hard as nails to survive, but who turned out to also be fired by a vital spark that could not be extinguished even by the heaviest, most wearying toil. It’s this combination — the toughness and the humanity — that makes them such […] Read more
Editor’s Desk: It wasn’t my best week
Reading Time: 2 minutes I had been invited to speak to some accountants and lawyers who work largely in agricultural practices, and while it was clear we wouldn’t agree on everything, I thought we’d share support for one theme that I’ve been banging away at for as long as I’ve held this position. I showed them a list. I’ll […] Read more
Editor’s Desk: It’s all about values
Reading Time: 2 minutes “It isn’t what a person says that counts. It’s what they do.” Everyone on the farm learned this from the cradle, and over the years they’ve come to know exactly how sage this advice really is. Being in business puts your values into action. It proves, every day, exactly what your beliefs are, and what […] Read more
Editor’s Desk: A better marketing idea for agriculture
Reading Time: 2 minutes Marketing is in a class by itself. Nowhere else in agriculture is there so much more noise than information, or so many claims based on untested and untestable evidence. As a rule, of course, the entire financial and business ends of farming let us down in this regard, and I have complained in this space […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
