Reading Time: 11 minutes We’re a long way from hippies in ponchos and bare feet. Urban agriculture has graduated. Today, it’s all about serious professionals who know that growing food is a business before anything else. A way of life? Only if it turns a profit. And there’s something else that’s curious too, especially for operations designed as vertical […] Read more
Changing places
There’s a new kind of farm in Calgary — yes, it’s right in Calgary — and it’s surging ahead with its business plan to make money, be environmentally conscious, and destroy the import market
Everywhere he looks: How does this Alberta farmer find so much opportunity?
“There are opportunities everywhere,” says Alberta farmer Glenn Logan. “You just have to pick and choose what might work for you.”
Reading Time: 13 minutes Glenn Logan has two projects on the go that are taking a pile of his energy at a time in his life when many farmers are happy with what they have already accomplished. And once again, his projects are raising eyebrows. Partly, that’s because the Alberta farmer has decided to take 920 acres out of […] Read more
A drive to succeed
How much energy and ambition does it take to succeed at value adding? Get ready for a serious reality check
Reading Time: 11 minutes Cutthroat. Vicious. Not for the faint of heart. Adjectives like these usually get saved for Wall Street bankers, high stakes poker or perhaps bull riding. It’s rare to find a person who’d apply them to making and selling potato chips. Take it from Ryan Albright, though. If anything, they’re much too mild for what this […] Read more
Wild Rose Country is like nowhere else
Guide Canada: With their incredible blend of the traditional and the cutting edge, the ranches in Alberta’s foothills are unique not only for their lifestyle, but for their approach to business too
Reading Time: 3 minutes In the articles below, we travel to southwestern Alberta to hear first-hand what it’s like to ranch in the foothills, a region that’s every bit as romantic as it sounds, dominated by scenery, wildlife, unbelievable weather and pristine glacial rivers that feed Canada from the Rockies all the way east to Hudson’s Bay. For conservationists […] Read more
Like Nowhere Else: Mike Roberts
Guide Canada: Waldron Ranch is a grazing co-operative of 261 square kilometres
Reading Time: 5 minutes Waldron Ranch is 65,000 acres of unbroken foothills wedged between the Porcupine and Whaleback Hills in Alberta’s eastern slopes, and it is one of Canada’s most important ecological sites. These acres are a mixture of deeded, leased and forested areas. In the summertime the ranch is stocked with up to 8,000 cattle at a time. […] Read more
Like Nowhere Else: Tanis Cross
Guide Canada: "It’s so important to keep my mind open,” says Cross.
Reading Time: 3 minutes As you pull up the main drive to the A7 Ranche, you get a feeling there must be real history and tradition at work here, and you’d be right. This ranch been running cattle for 135 consecutive years, back to when Calgary had only been a town for three years. Tanis Cross represents the newest […] Read more
Like Nowhere Else: John Smith and Laura Laing
Guide Canada: For Smith and Laing, it has to be the right technology, whether new or old. Often it’s horses. Sometimes it's drones. And it’s always sustainable
Reading Time: 5 minutes In the same country that’s been ripped open by controversy over a new generation of massive open-pit coal mines, the husband-and-wife duo of John Smith and Laura Laing trail their cattle to pasture the way ranchers always have, by horseback. They could use ATVs but the horses generate less noise and keep the animals’ stress […] Read more
From the inside: Breaking through with the Kolks in Alberta
These days, when it’s so pricey to expand, diversification can look right for even the most dedicated commodity farms. As Alberta’s Leighton Kolk found, though, it takes some serious smarts. And courage
Reading Time: 11 minutes What do you get when you cross one of Canada’s most competitive farm regions and a producer who just can’t say no to a good risk. You get Kolk Farms. It’s no joke, either. Leighton Kolk, a southern Alberta farm and feedlot owner, seems to have a knack for not only finding risk, but embracing […] Read more
Building intangibles on your farm
Reading Time: 2 minutes There can be many reasons why an additional farm business may succeed or fail. Often, it actually has nothing to do with farming. For the Kolks, a series of decisions over the years paved the way for the K3 Seeds acquisition. Professional development: Both Leighton Kolk and son Jordan believe in professional development. Kolk is […] Read more
Farming’s hottest boomtown
Guide Canada: Lethbridge has emerged as one of Canada’s hottest centres of farm and ag entrepreneurialism. How hot is that? Well, read on…
Reading Time: 11 minutes Ask anyone what they think of when they think of Alberta, and the same handful of images always come to mind. Think Banff, Jasper and the rolling foothills for a start. Now, add Lethbridge, especially if you’re a farmer. Then think excitement. Young people might be fleeing other parts of rural Canada, but not here. […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
