Reading Time: 6 minutes Greg Brenneman, who farms near Salina, Kansas quickly put the question is sharp context. His home state has moved away from wheat production, as Gerald Pilger reported in last month’s issue of COUNTRY GUIDE. Instead, farmers there are growing more profitable corn. It’s a change that is putting huge pressure on the state’s grain handling […] Read more
Down At The Elevator
Grower University 2011 Series – for Feb. 15, 2011
Reading Time: 4 minutes Having a solid business strategy for your operation is like air to the lungs — essential to stay alive. Yet while contemplating a calculated strategy is critical, of equal importance is finding a way to give that strategy legs. So how can you incite your strategy, taking it from paper to reality? What is strategy, […] Read more
Your Own Paradise
Reading Time: 4 minutes There are lots of great things about life on the farm, but being able to shift gears may not be one of them. The farm is always there. Every view out every window makes you think of another job that needs to be added to a list that is already too long, and the views […] Read more
Feed The Farmers
Reading Time: 5 minutes With volatile commodity prices, the finger is getting pointed at farmers for profiteering while the rest of the world starves. The facts from two internationally renowned ag scientists are completely different. In most countries, especially in the developing world, today’s higher prices may finally let farmers lift themselves out of the deepest poverty, says Clive […] Read more
Lobby Hard
Reading Time: 7 minutes “Farmers are professional complainers,” Pierre Elliott Trudeau told Quebec agriculture students in 1979. “When there is too much sun, they complain. When there is too much rain, they complain. A farmer is a complainer.” Historians say Trudeau’s complaint helped the Liberal party lose the election that year. Either way, the relationship between politicians and farm […] Read more
Promanager
Reading Time: 7 minutes In some people’s eyes, Trish Fournier isn’t a farmer. That’s OK by her. She doesn’t think she’s a farmer either. Instead, she’s a farm manager, part of a new generation of managers poised to revolutionize North American agriculture. In the U.S., 15 per cent of farmers have already turned their operations over to professional management […] Read more
Payday
Reading Time: 6 minutes No matter what your age, or the ages of your family members, it seems there’s good reason to start paying yourself (and them) a wage, especially if you back it up with a well-structured system of bonuses. Farm financial advisers across the country report that more farmers are making the switch away from simply dividing […] Read more
John Bennett Biggar, Sask.
Reading Time: 4 minutes IT WAS ON HIS FARMin the early 1980s that John Bennett first came to stare the reality of soil erosion in the face. It had been a wet season and rain throughout July had already saturated his soils. Then came one of those fierce summer storms that the Prairies are famous for, unleashing a torrent […] Read more
COUNTRY GUIDE’S 12 Most Influential Farmers In Canada
Reading Time: < 1 minute In Canadian agriculture, farmers do the pulling. Farmers are the ones taking the risks, dealing directly with the repercussions, sharing their first-hand experiences and applying new technologies and business models. Leadership grows on every farm, as it does in other business sectors too. What sets farming apart is how farmers excel at finding the extraordinary […] Read more
Ian Cushon Oxbow, Sask.
Reading Time: 3 minutes THERE IS A LONG LISTof reasons why organic farming has grown so fast on the Canadian Prairies, yet not many of those reasons are actually pro-organic, at least at first blush. For instance, there was the decades-long crunch in commodity prices that forced many farmers to consider something new, plus the undeniable reality that the […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
