Reading Time: 5 minutes Are you even a real farmer if you haven’t had any tough conversations on the farm? All kidding aside, running a business with family and often non-family employees can involve some difficult and emotionally charged conversations. Country Guide searched out three books written by professors, corporate trainers and members of the Harvard Negotiation Project for […] Read more
Turning tough farm conversations into soft landings
How can you discuss the things that matter most without everyone blowing their lids, and you blowing yours too?
More owners at your farm table
Bringing more siblings and cousins on board can strengthen your farm, but be sure to do it right
Reading Time: 3 minutes Through history, most farms ended up sold or split between siblings. Today, however, we’re seeing a big change. Rather than splitting the farm, family farm groups made up of siblings and cousins are increasingly sticking together. Sometimes these groups become active farming operations. In other families, they hold the land. While good for the continuity […] Read more
The infrastructure gap in Canada’s agriculture and food sector
What is the ‘Missing Middle,’ and how can your investment in venture capital fix it?
Reading Time: 9 minutes There is a “Missing Middle” in Canada’s ag and food sector — a kind of bottleneck caused by how the country’s mid-sized ventures are getting swallowed up by the few large corporations that supply most of the food that Canadians buy. As problems go, this one might seem unimportant or maybe even irrelevant, but for […] Read more
Milling grains into value-added food ideas
With consolidation and falling commodity prices as the new norm, more grain growers are making creative decisions
Reading Time: 3 minutes The number of Canadian grain farms is shrinking. Commodity prices are under pressure. Remaining growers are farming larger parcels of land. Increasingly, the answer to consolidation and falling commodity prices is vertical integration. It isn’t for every farm, but value-added products are starting to play an important role in how grain growers remain competitive. “We […] Read more
A ‘next’ solution?
[The "Next" Issue] More farmers are looking for a new strategy so they can set the next generation up with a viable farm while also supporting their non-farming children. Could this be it? Maybe, it seems, but it takes some effort to figure out whether setting up this kind of tax-free zone will benefit your farm
Reading Time: 13 minutes Rob Saik is excited. He can hardly hold back as he explains the succession plan he used when he sold his own company, Agri-Trend, a few years ago. Saik had two big goals. As an ag consultant and entrepreneur, he needed financing for his newest venture, the agricultural advisory network called AGvisorPRO, but he also […] Read more
How a second farm corporation may help you at tax time
[The "Next" Issue] If you’re farming with just one corporation, you may be missing a tax trick
Reading Time: 9 minutes Not that many decades ago, Canadian farmers were wondering if they should incorporate their farms or keep on running their businesses as sole proprietorships. Now farmers are asking, ‘how many corporations should we have?” As incorporated farmers make more sophisticated strategic plans, many are adding more than one corporation to their family portfolio. Alongside farm […] Read more
Podcast with Lindsay Lake Farms
Reading Time: < 1 minute We sat down with Christiane Teerling, co-owner of Lindsay Lake Farms, to catch up on what they’ve been up to since we featured them in 2022. In March 2020 they were set to move their farm from Germany to Nova Scotia, but it turned out to be quite the modern pioneer adventure. You can listen […] Read more
The Country Guide Podcast
Reading Time: 2 minutes Subscribe to the Country Guide Podcast on YouTube Music or Apple so you can catch new episodes as they’re released.
Having the right (business) stuff for your farm
For farmers like Jennifer Peart, upping their business game takes real discipline. The good news is the pay-off makes it very worthwhile
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s less true than it used to be but it’s still safe to say that few of today’s farmers got into farming because they love business management. Instead, it’s the production side of agriculture that drew them in. It was their passion for growing and raising food and working with soil, livestock and equipment. Still, […] Read more
Seven steps to great farm management
Reading Time: < 1 minute – From the article ‘The right business stuff’ in the October 2024 issue of Country Guide. Leadership / Embody the essence of leadership in everything you do, from strategic thinking and proactive planning to embracing self-care and empathy for yourself and others. Some farm management tasks can be contracted out, but you can’t outsource leadership. […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
