Reading Time: 4 minutes After decades of low wool prices, Canada’s 10,000 sheep producers are warming up to the perfect storm of high prices and low world supplies. “We expect much-improved wool prices for the upcoming year for both finer and coarse micron wools,” says Eric Bjergson, manager of the Canadian Co-operative of Wool Growers in Ottawa. For years, […] Read more
Have You Any Wool?
Vital Statistics
Reading Time: 9 minutes There are almost as many financial ratios as seed varieties, and choosing which are most meaningful for your farm — and most helpful for how you manage for success — can be more than difficult. It can be positively head spinning. Should you track current ratio or working capital? Is ROA a good guide, or […] Read more
Cooking Up A Profit
Reading Time: 10 minutes At some point or other, everyone who has gone to farm meetings has had the valueadded sermon preached at them. The basic speech comes with a few variations, but regardless whether it’s delivered by a slick consultant, an earnest public servant or even just a smart-aleck journalist, it always comes with the same main points. […] Read more
The Third Way
Reading Time: 7 minutes Let’s say that you are thinking about retiring but you have no family members who want to farm. If you’re like most Canadian farmers facing this prospect, you will consider just two options, either to sell the farm or to rent it out. Or let’s say you are thinking of leaving land to a family […] Read more
The Road To Volatility
Reading Time: 4 minutes Normally, a two-hour wait in a lineup of trucks at the elevator would have had me fidgeting. This winter it was was different. It was back in January, and I was going to be driving away with over $13 per bushel for the canola I was dumping. The grower right behind me wasn’t as happy. […] Read more
Aftershocks In Farm Machinery
Reading Time: 5 minutes The 8.9 magnitude earthquake that shook Japan at 2:46 p.m. on March 11 has shaken up the rest of the world as well, including the world of farm machinery. And just as the size and power of the earthquake itself was unexpected, so too has been the collateral fallout. As authorities in B.C. continue monitoring […] Read more
You Earned It!
Reading Time: 4 minutes When prices are good, do you pour every last dollar back into the farm or do you take some of that hard-earned cash to enjoy life a little? We asked three experts to weigh in with advice on management strategies when prices are good. Gary Mawhiney, human resources expert at the Ontario agriculture ministry, says […] Read more
BIG IDEA Taking Ownership
Reading Time: 6 minutes We all love technology. From the shiniest new tablet computer to the genes that power your crops, we’re all benefiting every day. Of course, the companies that develop these technologies say they deserve to benefit too. They say that intellectual property rights — from patents and trademarks to plant breeders rights — are crucial to […] Read more
Succession: How Do We Start?
Reading Time: 6 minutes I was 22 and I had somehow scraped up enough courage to ask my parents about the possibility of succession. It’s a moment carved in my memory. There I was sitting in the kitchen of the farmhouse with my soon-to-be husband, my Dad and our provincial ag rep. The ag rep asked what we wanted […] Read more
Fair Treatment
Reading Time: 6 minutes ith land values climbing across the country, farming children can no longer expect to inherit all their parents’ farmland. Nonfarming siblings will almost certainly be in line for at least part of the farm. The dollars are just too big to give them all to only one of the children. The question is: Does that […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
