Today Is Already History

Reading Time: 6 minutes In the heart of the U.S. farm belt, Michael Boehlje looks around him and knows that what he sees is fast disappearing. The future is almost here. What will the future look like? More important, how can you build for success in that brave new world… or decide if you should just get out of […] Read more

Can We Get There From Here?

Reading Time: 9 minutes If all the Canadian Wheat board did was sell wheat, it would be so much easier to figure out where you go from here. Not that it would be easy even then, of course. the board’s marketing clout has been felt across Canada and around the world, making it arguably the single most powerful institution […] Read more


Fix ’Er Up

Reading Time: 6 minutes There’s a whole lot of impatience going around. With strong commodity markets, no one wants to wait for yield. We want it now. So it’s little wonder all the good-quality, high-efficiency farms seem to get snapped up before they even hit the market. So, which is your smarter strategy — to sit on the sidelines, […] Read more

Something About The Weather

Reading Time: 7 minutes “Upon closer inspection, recent temperature trends strongly suggest that Saskatchewan is not getting much hotter, but rather ‘less cold’: there has been a larger increase in daily minimum temperatures (as opposed to maximum) and the largest warming has occurred during winter and early spring, resulting in a longer frost-free period and more growing degree days.” […] Read more


Going For The Dream

Reading Time: 5 minutes Yvonnick Jambon knows the danger point. You start with an iconoclastic new kid on the block like Nufarm. It’s highly entrepreneurial, it grows fast, and it generates an enormous amount of its energy out of its biggest asset — the fact that it isn’t the other guys. At first, growth looks sweet. But then comes […] Read more

The Competitiveness Fallacy

Reading Time: 6 minutes If only it was true. According to today’s competition mantra, as long as we’re more efficient, productive and low cost than anyone else, the future is ours, both as individual farmers and as Canadian agriculture as a whole. Instead, it’s becoming clearer that getting competitive isn’t enough. For most of us, in fact, it won’t […] Read more


More Horses

Reading Time: 5 minutes It was the shot that re-ignited the horespower war. Back in 2005, Winnipeg-based Versatile launched its HHT line with a flagship tractor boasting an unheard of 535 horsepower. That gave it 35 more horses than either John Deere’s 9620 or Case IH’s STX500, which were among the leaders until then. But it was hardly the […] Read more

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivat Es Us

Reading Time: 3 minutes By Daniel H. Pink Riverhead Books 260 pages To think of it as the candle problem is to risk missing its point entirely. Worse, it’s to miss why the newest book from bestselling U.S. business writer Dan Pink might offer some of the insights that many farmers are looking for as they wrestle with career […] Read more


First Came Tokyo

Reading Time: 5 minutes Tokyo is in full execution mode, urging Japanese ag and food companies to buy up even larger positions in countries such as Canada, building on a trend by cash-rich but farm-poor economies that want to assure their food security. Increasingly, Japan is being joined by China and now South Korea. But the strategy is evolving. […] Read more

Standing Up To Change

Reading Time: 6 minutes Wayne Black’s day has been life defining. His father John recently sold the family’s dairy herd, so on this particular morning, the father and son milked only a few cows. Although the decision to sell the cows had been made months ago, this was when the reality was sinking in. Wayne Black’s days would no […] Read more