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Risk, uncertainty and fear are the inevitable downsides of entrepreneurial life, Amy Stefanik says, but in every sector, including farming, it’s a chance to thrive.
Features, Guide Business

Double team

It can be a roller coaster ride if your farm spouse is highly entrepreneurial. It is in other business sectors too. Now we can all start learning from each other

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Reading Time: 11 minutes No matter what sector a person works in, and whether you’re husband or wife, if you’re an entrepreneur’s spouse, you are along for the ride, strapped in with no control over the steering wheel or the brake. On the farm, of course, both partners are dedicated, energetic and business-minded. But that doesn’t necessarily change the […] Read more
“Co-ops are a product of the times,” says Co-operatives First’s Audra Krueger. Today, that means adopting the goals of young, business-minded farmers.
Features, Guide Business

Capitalizing on co-operation

Agricultural co-ops are chasing new goals with the times. Could it be time for you to join a land-trust co-op? Or a branding co-op?

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Reading Time: 6 minutes At first, this example might seem on the edge, but it illustrates a bigger point. When Chris Bodnar and Paige Dampier started farming in 2007, finding affordable land was a major roadblock. So, as founders of Close to Home Organics, they purchased a share in the Glen Valley Organic Farm Co-operative, which provided them affordable […] Read more
Ian Murray and Sally Bowen of Topsy Farms on Amherst Island, Ont.
Features, Guide Business

Turning Topsy right side up

What happens when a hippie commune learns that some strategic business skills could help it thrive?

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Reading Time: 8 minutes When Topsy Farms started in 1971, the goal was simple. How could it need a complex business plan? Starting with five hippies, they were creating a commune on Amherst Island, just offshore in Lake Ontario west of Kingston. The goal was clear too — become a self-sustaining community, secluded from the outside world, a place […] Read more
Hospital food gets a local boost
Features, Guide Business

Hospital food gets a local boost

Can local food create meaningful sales for farmers? Check out these institutional success stories

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Reading Time: 7 minutes Putting the words “hospital” and “food” together in the same sentence doesn’t always spark much of an appetite. Mostly they conjure thoughts of a mediocre meal, something bland, tasteless and unimaginative. You might say the same thing about the way hospitals have procured their food too, with purchase systems that have been as bland, tasteless […] Read more
Marc Bieler used his insatiable thirst for farm opportunities to build a dominant role in the fruit drink market.
Features, Fruit/Vegetables

Growing that bright red berry

Guide Canada: Along the south shore of the St. Lawrence, an incredible fusion of the Old World and the New came together in 1981, and it’s still making waves today

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Reading Time: 8 minutes When he was eight years old, Marc Bieler knew that when he grew up, he would be a farmer. What he didn’t know was that his road to fame and fortune would be paved with little red berries. Today, Bieler Cranberries Inc. is the largest single-site cranberry farm in Canada producing up to 40 million […] Read more
Acquiring more land has the potential to boost your farm business, but like anything in life, there are no guarantees.
Features, Guide Business

Making a smarter deal for farmland

If farmers are so sharp at land buying, who do so many pay too much?

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Reading Time: 9 minutes On most farms, it’s among the big decisions of an entire lifetime. Do you buy that farm down the road and take on all that risk? Or do you watch someone else farm it and mutter, every time you drive, “That could have been mine”? Either way, it’s harder than anyone outside of agriculture might […] Read more
“Culinary tourism starts with a base ingredient… agriculture.” – Rebecca Mackenzie.
Features, Guide Business

The open road of culinary tourism

Rebecca Mackenzie sits exactly at the midpoint between farmers and consumers. Can she help bring everyone together?

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Reading Time: 6 minutes Rebecca Mackenzie. photo: Supplied [UPDATED: Mar. 23, 2021] The past year has shone a sometimes not very flattering light on Canada’s ailing food system, but it has also revealed new challenges and exciting opportunities to bring about long overdue changes for the farming and foodservice industry. For Rebecca Mackenzie, president and CEO of the Culinary […] Read more
What happens when a country’s mid-sized farms disappear. For good or ill, Canada is well on the way to finding out, and the future for young farmers like Scott Beaton will never be the same.
Features, Guide Business

Goodbye to Canada’s ‘average’ farm

It used to be that one farm on a road was pretty much like every other. Not anymore

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Reading Time: 9 minutes What does an average farm look like in today’s Canada. If there is such a thing these days, there’s a good chance it looks a lot more like Scott Beaton’s farm than you would ever have thought possible. Beaton didn’t grow up on a farm, or think he’d ever have one of his own, but […] Read more
The High Level Bridge in Lethbridge, Alta., is the longest and highest bridge of its type on Earth.
Features, Guide Business

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…

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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
“You can’t be a farmer without the drive and passion for what you do every day,” says Katie Keddy. And as the Keddy farm shows, if the passion is there, all sorts of impossible things become possible.
Features, Guide Business

Roots and branches

The popular idea is that farming is a closed shop: If you aren’t born on a farm, you will never farm. But it isn’t quite true

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Reading Time: 12 minutes Unconventional stories are becoming conventional in today’s agriculture. In fact, they’re becoming surprisingly conventional. Yes, agriculture across the decades has always found unexpected ways to replenish itself. Still, the barriers to entry have never been as astronomic as they are today for anyone who isn’t among the fortunate few to have been born into long-established, […] Read more

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