Reading Time: 8 minutes For years, if you saw the word agriculture in the GLOBE AND MAIL s Report on Business, you could be sure the next word would be crisis, disaster or bailout. But now the story is different. In fact, it could hardly be more different, with ag today being paired with boom, profit and growth. Overnight, […] Read more
TOO INVESTED
Retire Easier
Reading Time: 6 minutes The very nature of farming can squash all of a farmer s best intentions for off-farm investing. Busy schedules, fluctuating incomes and the constant demand for new technology can each put the reins on even a modest plan. Yet for more farmers, off-farm investing is becoming an essential business strategy, both so they can inject […] Read more
All Together Now
Reading Time: 9 minutes We aren t alone. All around the world, farmers are searching for ways to succeed in a business environment that s more intense than anything we ve ever seen. Yes, margins have been tight before, but now markets are just more volatile, input costs are soaring and the price of land is rising beyond belief. […] Read more
Succession Primer
Reading Time: 5 minutes ” ACKNOWLEDGE THE SIZE OF THE JOB Leaving a leadership and ownership role in any business requires preplanning. Leaving a farm business can be even more difficult. It s no longer a simple transaction, says Larry Morin, an independent farm business adviser based in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta. who specializes in agricultural succession planning. Mom and […] Read more
Five Paths To A Fair Rent
Reading Time: 4 minutes A generation ago, crop-share agreements made up 40 per cent of land rentals. A lot of landlords were retired farmers and they wanted to retain their active farming status, says Merle Good, provincial tax specialist with Alberta Agriculture based in Olds. On the tax side, they wanted to look like an active farmer by having […] Read more
“The Innovations Offensive”
Reading Time: 4 minutes A German-language press release issued a few weeks ago by DLG, the German Agricultural Society, captures in a single word one of this year s most astute observations about the global farm machinery market. It s the German word innovationsoffensive, which means just the same on our side of the Atlantic, and is just as […] Read more
Growing More, Earning Less
Reading Time: 7 minutes The primary reason for the success and growth of North American agriculture has been the ability of Canadian and U.S. farmers to do two seemingly contradictory things simultaneously: increase productivity and at the same time, reduce production costs. By doing both, farmers remained competitive in the global marketplace despite decades of declining commodity prices. Unfortunately, […] Read more
CLICK AND PRINT
Reading Time: 9 minutes When there aren t enough hours in the day to even get all the essential jobs done, it s no surprise that writing job descriptions, drafting interview questions and carrying out performance reviews often plummets to the very bottom of the farm priority list. That doesn t make it wise, though. In fact, in a […] Read more
Four Steps For Managing Your Interest Rate Risks
Reading Time: 3 minutes As a banker, farmers often ask me, Where are interest rates headed? Increasingly, they are also asking an important second question: What can I do to manage the risks to my operation from interest rate movements? The simple response to where interest rates are going is: They will change. While that is not as concrete […] Read more
Better Than Gold
Reading Time: 7 minutes Farmland values are up again across the country, and with strong commodity prices, land prices seem sure to post sizeble gains well into the future. For farmers coming off two decades of tight margins, the strength in the land market is not only helping them sleep at night, it s actually giving them fun options […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
