Reading Time: 4 minutes WITH THE PROMISE OFbiotechnology comes the reality that Canada’s farmers have to wait and hope that the huge multinationals consider the market here large enough to be worth their while, and they’ll put their genes in crops that we can grow. For Peter Hannam, that wasn’t good enough. In fact, Hannam sold the first Roundup […] Read more
PETER HANNAM GUELPH, ONT.
Ben Loewith Ancaster, Ont.
Reading Time: 4 minutes IN THE LUNCHROOM IS A MAPof the world with pins that show where visitors to the farm are from. The map is covered because researchers and dairymen from around the world flock to the barn to talk with a family of farmers known for their practical intelligence and supreme management. Ben Loewith, his father Carl […] Read more
Simon Parent Saint-Paul-D’abbotsford, Que.
Reading Time: 2 minutes IF YOU THINK INFLUENCE COMES WITH AGE,getting to know Simon Parent might help change your mind. At 33, he had already become a key figure in Quebec’s strawberry industry. Then, just a year ago, he became the president of the North American Strawberry Growers Association (NASGA). Parent’s business is strawberry transplants. In 2002, he started […] Read more
Sway
Reading Time: 3 minutes Kim McConnell has spent a lifetime exploring why you buy what you buy, and why you think what you think. As a farmer himself and as strategic adviser with AdFarm, McConnell can claim at least as much insight into what actually influences farmers — in contrast to what merely interests you — as anyone else […] Read more
Jacques Laforge Grand Falls, N.B.
Reading Time: 4 minutes WHETHER HE’S MANAGINGthe diversification and self-sufficiency goals of the family farm or advocating for supply management on behalf of Canada’s dairy farmers, third-generation farmer Jacques Laforge knows that balance is key. Since Laforge took over the family farm with his wife Patricia in 1980, he has been balancing a career of farming with his involvement […] Read more
Cross-Border Croppers
Reading Time: 7 minutes Sometimes you just don’t know where a thing is going to end up. When Richard and Robert Reesor started their sweet-corn business over 20 years ago, it wasn’t really a business at all. It was just a few acres along the road out front, plus a roadside stand and two brothers putting themselves through school. […] Read more
“Strategically Assertive”
Reading Time: < 1 minute To my mind, the thing that differentiates farmers such as the Reesors is attitude and aspiration. Attitudes determine how we see the world around us and what this represents in terms of opportunities and challenges. It also determines how people use their present skills, and what skills they seek to acquire. Attitude also determines who, […] Read more
Business Planning With The Hut Principle
Reading Time: 3 minutes Is this finally going to be the year you put your business goals and strategies down on paper? This is an important question to ponder in light of volatile commodity prices and input costs, along with ever-increasing land values and cash rents. Others may have reservations about business planning due to current business, family, and […] Read more
Splurge &Purge
Reading Time: < 1 minute After more than a decade, ethanol hasn’t rescued Canada’s agriculture. For good and bad, it’s just made it more volatile. Country Guide writers Maggie Van Camp and Gerald Pilger explore what it all means to Canadian agriculture, and to you.
Is The Party Already Over?
Reading Time: 6 minutes The Canadian ethanol industry was full of heady promise when it splashed out of the labs in the ’90s, touted as the saviour of the environment, a breakthrough in green energy, and an enormous new market for grain farmers. After decades of low crop prices, farmers were desperate for a shot of good news, and […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
