Reading Time: 8 minutes In 2008, Nicole Rogers was living in Dubai and working as a trade attaché for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada when she connected with several investors in the Gulf region who wanted to purchase Canadian farmland. The investors wanted large tracts of arable land in the Prairies to grow wheat and pulses that can’t be grown […] Read more
A focus on value, not price
Agriprocity’s Nicole Rogers is in the U.S. selling an export market plan most farmers north of the border balked at
Scaling growth at Sharpe Farm
Three Ontario brothers grow their ability to achieve their goals
Reading Time: 7 minutes In today’s business world, few concepts are more important than growth. Most entrepreneurs are constantly looking for ways to expand their business to increase profitability and improve their shot at long-term survival. Of course, farmers and other agribusiness owners are no exception, and for Michael, Paul and John Sharpe — the three brothers behind Sharpe […] Read more
Resilient farmers vs. COVID-19: Burnham Family Farms
Here’s how family and community relationships powered these farmers through the pandemic, getting seed in the ground and creating a resolve for the future
Reading Time: 5 minutes In the battle against the pandemic that is gripping our industry and reaching across the globe, the resiliency of farmers continues to be showcased. In our last article, we explored the innovations employed by our ag community that demonstrated their ability to adapt and get the job done. “Another year, another challenge,” was the basic […] Read more
Resilient farmers vs. COVID-19: Shadyway Farms Limited
Resiliency is helping farmers take on the pandemic and more, writes Darrell Wade. For this article, he looks at the power of innovation
Reading Time: 6 minutes What a year for everyone, in every sector, in every single part of the globe. For the first time in most of our lives, we faced a global pandemic. As a pandemic, it saw no boundaries in any industry, in any part of the world. Every single one of us faced challenges. Same storm, different […] Read more
From bad to worse, to better again
How one farm couple and their financial advisor restructured significant debt to dig them out of dire financial circumstances
Reading Time: 6 minutes Art Lange, left, walks the field edge and says that in an ideal world, every farm would make money every year and every farm manager would always make the best financial decisions. But it’s not a perfect world. Well-kept financial records help. So do staying on top of production costs and following a budget, but […] Read more
Toronto’s golden Greenbelt
Now that the world’s largest greenbelt has outlasted the political controversies, could you farm there?
Reading Time: 8 minutes When Ontario’s Greenbelt turned 15 this past February, all four of Ontario’s political parties gathered at Queen’s Park to celebrate. According to Michael Young, communications advisor for the Greenbelt Foundation, the event was “a positive and convivial occasion, with a sense that we were all coming together with the shared belief that the Greenbelt must […] Read more
‘I’m a Canadian farmer’
In a summer of so much change, with regional differences as big as ever and the differences between farm sectors seeming to multiply, who really knows what “I’m a farmer” means?
Reading Time: 12 minutes There’s absolutely no such thing as a “typical” Canadian farm, let alone a typical farmer. Big statistics describe Canada’s farmers as a whole, though they tell only a small part of the story. For starters, there aren’t many of you around anymore, and fewer with every passing decade: 271,935 at last count. But you take […] Read more
Rural crime: There’s an app for that
Rural crime rates are going up because criminals think they won’t get caught. We’ve got to change that, and this app may help
Reading Time: 9 minutes As I was writing this article, I learned through a Twitter post that a neighbouring farm five km away had experienced a break and enter of their farm shop. The Twitter post encouraged people in the community to check their shops to see if anyone else had been victimized. Unfortunately, I did not see the […] Read more
Social (un)distancing
Canada’s young farm grads have learned how to capture the benefits of social networking despite living in a kind of isolation the rest of Canada is experiencing for the first time
Reading Time: 7 minutes When Blair Cummins left the farm where he grew up to go to the University of Saskatchewan and get his bachelor of science in agriculture in the 1970s, he could count on one hand the number of people he knew who were pursuing higher education. “Out of my generation, I only know two others that […] Read more
Summer Series: Advice for Young Farmers
Best Advice: If there was one piece of advice you wish somebody had given you (and that you had listened to) when you were just starting out on the farm, what would that be?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Once they’ve been in the biz for a few years, some farmers wish they hadn’t followed certain advice. Others wish they had. And others are happy with what they’ve accomplished based on advice they’d still follow if they had to do it all again. Here, a few farmers share what they’ve learned and offer their […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
