Reading Time: 7 minutes This is the third time Country Guide has interviewed Natasha Vandenhurk, CEO of Saskatoon-based Three Farmers. If anything, this time it feels more urgent. The reason isn’t exactly the pandemic. At least, let’s put it a bit more accurately. It’s the opportunities that COVID-19 is creating, and the impetus for farmers to take more ownership […] Read more
Beyond startup
Launching a new supply chain is hard enough. But will yours have legs? Can you grow it into a sustainable business that will thrive through all the changes coming your way? Here’s what Three Farmers’ Natasha Vandenhurk has learned on her own road
Teamwork makes the dream work for this group of Alberta farmers
These five Alberta farms have built a co-op that reduces their costs, increases their efficiency, and gets them into markets they otherwise couldn’t tap. The big question is, could it work for you too?
Reading Time: 10 minutes For these five adventurous Alberta farmers, a co-op is more than a way to structure operations. It’s more, too, than the camaraderie and the mutual support they get from working together with the same goal in mind, important though that is. For this group, it’s also about profitability, and about efficiency, and about enhancing their […] Read more
You can’t do that!
Going direct to consumer can seem oh so trendy and oh such a diversion from real farming, especially for grain and livestock farmers. Maybe we should all talk to Alberta’s Edgar family
Reading Time: 9 minutes Admittedly, asparagus can be a love-hate thing. Many of us can’t wait for the season to start. Others, well, not so much. But maybe that’s just because those others have never had their chance to try the juicy, sweet asparagus from Edgar Farms. Okay, so it sounds like a sales pitch. But read on. This […] Read more
Meet me in the boardroom
How can this handful of Prairie farmers win, and keep winning, the contract to supply the malt for world-renowned Lagunitas?
Reading Time: 11 minutes Drive by any of your wheat or canola fields; what you’re seeing is probably going to end up in a loaf of bread or a bottle of oil. But which loaf or bottle? Where? That’s an entirely different question. When Sterling Hilton looks out at his malting barley fields near Strathmore, Alta., he can tell […] Read more
On board at WestGen
The unique co-op celebrates its 75th anniversary by focusing on its farm board’s “direct and protect” role
Reading Time: 7 minutes WestGen began life in Surrey, B.C in September 1944 under the moniker of the Lower Fraser Valley Artificial Insemination Association, and in many ways it’s the same group that currently operates out of Abbotsford, B.C., despite a litany of name and location changes over the years. Over those years, too, the co-operative-minded group has become […] Read more
Alberta Hutterite colony bottles water to diversify
Clear Lake Colony is challenging the definition of “value-added” with bottled water production
Reading Time: 8 minutes Across the West, Hutterite colonies are successfully diversifying into other business ventures, but this is a unique story at the very rural Clear Lake Hutterite Colony, an hour and a half southeast of Calgary. Clear Lake, it turns out, is home to a natural spring well — and to a group of very forward-thinking farmers, […] Read more
The look of leadership
Known for Sunterra’s bold, future-looking moves, what traits does Ray Price see in the farmers he thinks can up their game for the 2020s?
Reading Time: 9 minutes If Japan starts handing out honourary citizenships, you better believe Ray Price will be on their short list. Already, the Alberta-born farm boy has been to the Land of the Rising Sun more than 100 times representing Sunterra, the Price family’s storied, successful and diversified business. The Prices export a majority of their pork directly […] Read more
Their pattern of growth
On this farm, it isn’t the grand vision, it’s knowing how to make the individual battles count that drives farm success
Reading Time: 7 minutes The margin between good, great and outstanding in farming is not wide. In fact, it’s quite small, but it does make a difference, and their strategy of maximizing those gains has propelled Dallas Vert and Natasha Pospisil to the podium as Alberta’s Outstanding Young Farmers for 2019. The Kirriemuir, Alta. couple crops 11,300 acres of […] Read more
All for one
This innovative group of Alberta feedlot owners is redefining how to win by acting together
Reading Time: 11 minutes “Let’s get naked.” It’s not a phrase you expect (or probably want) to hear from a group of Alberta feedlot owners. But then again, you may never have met the five individuals who make up the Allied Marketing Group (AMG) in southern Alberta. Getting naked is their cheeky way of telling Country Guide how, metaphorically […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
