Reading Time: 2 minutes Country Guide is taking a hard look at where we’re heading and how we’re getting there. Are we getting the job done for you? Is it the right job? How can we make a bigger difference? It’s a healthy thing. Here at Country Guide we’ve launched a kind of performance review over the past several […] Read more
Editor’s Note: If you were steering the ship
Editor’s Note: It’s time to ask the question
Reading Time: 2 minutes Family businesses are different. A non-family business’s goal is to make money. A family business’s goal is both to build legacy and create opportunity. And it’s more than that too Most likely, we’ve all heard it. Almost as many of us have said it, and at least as many actually do believe it. It can […] Read more
Editor’s Note: Competent, not boastful
Reading Time: 2 minutes Like every other issue of Country Guide, our pages show Canada’s farms are getting more and more individualistic. That’s a good thing. It’s a professional thing. And it won’t stop If you’re having a bad day, you’ll find our January 2023 issue of Country Guide a pretty easy target. That’s okay. For example, Richard Kamchen […] Read more
Editor’s Note: That thing about young farmers
Reading Time: 2 minutes Today’s mid-career farmers have got things figured out. They know they’re different. They’re more professional, they’re more management oriented, they’re more strategic, but … But, as a group, they’re at risk of getting outshone by the young farmers in the next generation that are starting to show what they can do. You’ll see it in […] Read more
Editor’s Note: Who’s that driving down the lane?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Compare the yard and buildings outside your back door with that tired old stretch of Main Street in your nearby town. It’s obvious where you’d rather do business. Or is it? It’s rarely wise to generalize in agriculture, so let me put this generalization down in print right away and we can move past it. […] Read more
Editor’s Note: The real thought leaders in agriculture
Reading Time: 2 minutes Once again, the big revolutions in agriculture are taking us in directions that no one really expected, led by people that so many said would never be leaders — our farmers Our days here at Country Guide are spent trying to keep pace with Canada’s farmers. It’s a bigger challenge — and a more relevant […] Read more
Editor’s Note: More than a crystal ball
Reading Time: 2 minutes In all of Canada’s history, will this be the most important winter ever for scoping out what you’ll need your farm to look like in five and in 20 years? I’m always saying that the thing consumers don’t know about farming is that it’s a life of decision- making. When you factor in the value […] Read more
Editor’s Note: A test to restore faith in the farm
Reading Time: 2 minutes Two questions keep many farm families awake at night. Can your next generation be reasonably expected to preserve and grow the farm’s net value? Could you do it, facing what they face? As I wrote some four years ago in this space, “Fortunately, science can help.” Every issue of Country Guide deals with this issue. […] Read more
Editor’s Note: A valuable change in our thinking
Reading Time: 2 minutes Reinventing the farm can feel like a concept that’s being pushed down the throat of today’s agriculture. Instead let’s call it what it really is: “reinventing the farmer.” Change is never simple on the farm. It’s so much easier to keep doing things the way you’ve always done them than adopt something new. “Easier, and […] Read more
Editor’s Note: Making up your mind in 2022
It’s what people who aren’t business leaders rarely understand. Leadership means knowing how to make big decisions when you don’t have full information, like this year
Reading Time: 2 minutes I have been asking myself this question all spring. I’m sure you have been too. Five years from now, when we look back at 2022, who are we going to say made the best decisions? Who pulled the right levers? What choices turned out to be the right decisions? Which turned out to be not […] Read moreA message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
