Reading Time: 12 minutes GUIDEPOSTS What I hadn’t expected was how easy it would be for a journalist they’d never met to arrange a visit. When I cold-called James Hofer, the hog manager of Starlite Colony, a Hutterite community near Starbuck just 40 minutes from the bustle of downtown Winnipeg, I wasn’t sure how he’d respond. Would a group […] Read more
Plain, NOT SIMPLE
Ontario’s Dairy Jewel
Reading Time: 11 minutes My father heaved great sighs as we drove along. In the seat beside him, I was a young girl accompanying her Dad to dairy cattle sales in Tavistock, in the heart of Ontario’s Oxford county, and already I knew that these were sighs mixed with admiration and jealousy. “Ohh,” he would say, “see the corn […] Read more
UP UP AND AWAY
Reading Time: 10 minutes You’re hearing it here first. No one outside agriculture seems to know about it (at least, none of the journalists who write front-page stories or who lead off on CBC broadcasts). Canada’s ag exports through the past year and a half have been blistering. New statistics from the red-hot 2007-08 trading year show exports shot […] Read more
Farm Team
Reading Time: 5 minutes About 15 minutes outside Thunder Bay, Henry Staal and his brother Gary operate Sunshine Sod Farms. You might call it their own field of dreams. Or maybe it should be Canada’s field of dreams. The Staals’ father came to Canada from Holland in 1952, worked hard, saved, bought a farm in 1960, and then worked […] Read more
Young Maritime farmers including Nova Scotia’s Justin Beck are looking for a reason to hope
Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s a struggle. Transportation costs, spiralling debt and increased competition from other regions are hitting hard at the birthplace of Canadian agriculture. Farm numbers are dwindling, few young people let themselves even dream about staying on the farm, and everywhere you go, there’s continuous speculation about what lies ahead. A 2008 GPI Atlantic report says […] Read more
Next, Here Comes Saskatchewan
Reading Time: 2 minutes One Saskatchewan farmer who s taken the plunge and planted soybeans is Kevin Elmy, who also writes for our FBC sister publication Grainews. Elmy said in a recent e-mail exchange that growers there are definitely interested in soybeans. He says there s a fairly long list of growers he s worked with in non-traditional areas […] Read more
Who says Canadians don’t like wind turbines? Nova Scotians are paying an extra 19 cents a dozen for Glen Jenning’s eggs because his farm is powered by them
Reading Time: 3 minutes The way Glen Jennings sees it, Canadians want to do the right thing, and they’re willing to reach into their own pockets in order to do it. Few consumers can afford a wind turbine. Still fewer have a place to put one. But they do want to do what they can. And in 15 Co-op […] Read more
Finding more bushels
Reading Time: < 1 minute On-farm corn yields are climbing faster than soybeans. Here s why, and what you can do about it Thanks to stress-free weather and low pest pressures, Ontario s average soybean yield hit roughly 43 bushels per acre in 2008. That s an impressive hike, a full six bushels higher than the 10-year average of 36.8 […] Read more
Clear Goals: Your First Step To Marketing Success
Reading Time: 3 minutes Know what you want from your marketing program. It’s important in fact that you know it well enough to be able to actually write it down. Without clear marketing goals, you may be heading for frustration. Worse, you may be on a non-stop path to failure. It’s also important that your marketing goals be realistic, […] Read more
The Right Genetics
Reading Time: < 1 minute Denys, who says they ve been completely no-till for almost 20 years. The longer-day beans tend to giveus better yields, too. Timing was also critical for this particular field which was planted a week earlier than everything else foran eight bushelyield advantage. Dave and John recently purchaseda Great Plains Turbo-Till for their white beans to […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
