Reading Time: 6 minutes Like many other high-level corporate leaders, when COVID-19 was starting to become a serious issue in Canada in the spring of 2020, Syngenta Canada president Trevor Heck was under pressure to put together a team to deal with the new and unprecedented realities unfurling every day. “At the time, I was just thinking about the […] Read more
Corporate diversity, equity and inclusion
A look at the decision-making inside a major international multinational as it gets serious about DEI. Can their ideas work on your farm, too?
Meet the team
In today’s agriculture, succession means most family farms must grow. For the Siemens family, it also means adopting new ways of doing business. Success is all about building on the existing foundation, and creating a new one
Reading Time: 14 minutes When Kurt Siemens and his son Harley were planning an expansion of the family’s egg farm, they would scratch out designs on paper, then climb the feed tank in the yard so they could visualize the layout on the ground from a bird’s-eye view. “We would take marker paint and draw the building out on […] Read more
Program helps women take the next step in agriculture
You’re overworked already, so how can it possibly make sense to sign up for education approaches like the new ELLE program?
Reading Time: 7 minutes It was 2017, and Kristen Ritson-Bennett was understandably overwhelmed. Ritson-Bennett is an Alberta cattle nutritionist and co-owner of a successful ruminant vitamin and mineral supplement manufacturing business. Plus she was supporting her husband Andrew in starting a second business, a veterinary clinic. And, she was pregnant with her second child. That’s when Ritson-Bennett decided to […] Read more
From the inside: Breaking through with the Kolks in Alberta
These days, when it’s so pricey to expand, diversification can look right for even the most dedicated commodity farms. As Alberta’s Leighton Kolk found, though, it takes some serious smarts. And courage
Reading Time: 11 minutes What do you get when you cross one of Canada’s most competitive farm regions and a producer who just can’t say no to a good risk. You get Kolk Farms. It’s no joke, either. Leighton Kolk, a southern Alberta farm and feedlot owner, seems to have a knack for not only finding risk, but embracing […] Read more
Building intangibles on your farm
Reading Time: 2 minutes There can be many reasons why an additional farm business may succeed or fail. Often, it actually has nothing to do with farming. For the Kolks, a series of decisions over the years paved the way for the K3 Seeds acquisition. Professional development: Both Leighton Kolk and son Jordan believe in professional development. Kolk is […] Read more
Agriculture leaders lean in to gender equity
Across the country, women and men are not only identifying remaining barriers to equity, but also finding ways to make agriculture a more welcoming industry for everyone
Reading Time: 8 minutes Glacier FarmMedia – Despite the incredible strides made by Canadian women in agriculture over the past decades, challenges persist for many. You don’t have to dig far to find stories of women being disrespected by salespeople, having trouble securing loans, or fending off sexual harassment at agricultural events. One challenge that often comes up in the Ag […] Read more
Are you a good boss?
Take our quiz to find out. The payoffs can be much bigger than you ever thought
Reading Time: 6 minutes You have a good rapport with your team. They mostly return season after season, and you have even started hosting an annual luncheon to reward them for their hard work. Even so, the farm doesn’t exactly do an employee satisfaction survey to tell you what your team members and employees really think of your leadership […] Read more
Your approach to a farm business plan? Implement, review, and repeat
Adding these business planning tasks to your management routine can keep your farm on track
Reading Time: 4 minutes Writing a farm business plan is no easy feat. Whether you take the do-it-yourself route or hire an advisor to guide you through the process, the analysis, the tough conversations and the forward thinking add up to a significant investment in time and resources. Then, when your newly written business plan is nearing completion, the […] Read more
The next big step: mid-career mentorship
You’re already smart and dedicated, but is that really enough for today’s challenges?
Reading Time: 6 minutes When Adam Gregory signed up for LeaderShift’s year-long national farm leadership program, he didn’t anticipate waking up at the crack of dawn to do group yoga. “Some people were way out of their comfort zone,” Gregory laughs. “I’m open to trying anything, so it wasn’t a hurdle for me.” There’s more to LeaderShift’s program than […] Read more
Networking in a new era
We thought the online age hit agriculture two decades ago. Then came the pandemic. Are you ready?
Reading Time: 9 minutes Everyone knows that farmers spend a lot of time on the farm, but farmers know how vital it is that they maintain excellent off-farm contacts too, whether it’s for the health of their businesses, the health of their soils, or their own personal and social health. In fact, farmers value networking as much or maybe […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
