Reading Time: 5 minutes When it comes to farm accounting, it’s increasingly about the details and it’s the farmers who notice them who come out on top. Here are the top four tips to get more competitive.– April Stewart, CG Associate Editor Blair Sanderson sees it time and again. “The difference between a good producer and a great one,” […] Read more
Summer Series: Do sweat the details
[Best Advice] Accounting advice to get more competitive
Summer Series: How to prepare for business meetings
[Best Advice] Getting serious about family meetings is helping this farm score current and future gains
Reading Time: 6 minutes During family farm meetings it’s important for everyone to take off their family hat and address each other in a professional manner. Follow these tried-and-true tips and tricks for successful family business meetings. – April Stewart, CG Associate Editor At one of their first business meetings on their farm, Betty Green served coffee and cake […] Read more
Is it time to get a farm management coach?
[The Rent Shake-Up: Leadership] If you've considered this question, Kelly Dobson says, “Congratulations, you’ve self-identified as a leader.”
Reading Time: 4 minutes Let’s say that you have a good sense of what success would look like for you and you’re pretty sure you’re made of the stuff it will take to achieve it, but it’s just not happening. Could a coach help? Kelly Dobson describes himself as a “professional capital ‘C’ Coach with a graduate degree.” Coaching, […] Read more
Farmer Coach: Reflections on year one
Reading Time: 2 minutes When Ryley Richards learned out about Farmer Coach, he signed up. So far, he says, it looks like a good choice. The 41-year-old manages his family farm an hour south of Regina along with father Rod and three full-time crew members, plus a few additional hands at busy times. Over the years, the farm has […] Read more
Planning the pullback
[Better Advice] Learning from David Hansen’s graceful exit from Canterra Seeds
Reading Time: 7 minutes Note: On October 2, 2023, Canterra Seeds appointed Brent Derkatch as its new president and CEO. Derkatch has been working with Canterra since 2001, most recently as the director of the pedigreed seed business unit. When a key employee leaves your farm operation, how much notice is best? If they leave too abruptly, you might […] Read more
Training fills the gaps between agriculture and technology
Program aims to match tech specialists with farmers and industry employers
Reading Time: 3 minutes Glacier FarmMedia – Say there’s trouble with the automated GIS and mapping features on the tractor, but you can’t find a tech with enough knowledge to offer help. It’s a simple example of the kind of employment gaps that keep farmers up at night, and that prevent their adoption of new technology, said the manager of an […] Read more
A plan for successful farm meetings
The Spurrs are driving even more growth and efficiency by continuing the family meetings that helped them get to a transition plan
Reading Time: 9 minutes The story gets repeated time and again. A farm family invests time and money in a professional farm advisor to help them sort out a transition plan and how to implement it. Finally, almost incredibly, after a series of family meetings that started out nervous but eventually get surprisingly productive, everybody gets on board with […] Read more
Prepping the next generation for success
Are they ready to take over the farm? Here’s how one firm says you can get them there
Reading Time: 6 minutes Any farm family going through the transition process will tell you it’s far from simple. There are so many moving parts. It takes time and energy to work out all the changing roles and the new responsibilities, and also to scrutinize the legal agreements and to figure how these are going to affect family dynamics […] Read more
Women get the job
The new hire may need smaller boots but she can certainly fill them, as the real-world experience on more and more Canadian farms is proving
Reading Time: 6 minutes If it has been a challenge to convince more women to be open to a job on the farm, it isn’t only because of the attitudes and biases that can seem — especially to non-farmers — to be inherent in agriculture itself; there are also a host of practical issues that any woman who is […] Read more
All in it together
Canada’s next-gen farmers are evolving a management model that adapts to every scenario. Not sure? Well, check out this Vancouver farm
Reading Time: 11 minutes Travis Hopcott and his siblings Brad and Jennifer might tell you they have been flying pretty much by the seat of their pants since each of them came back to their family farm at various times over the past 20 years. That is sometimes how they have felt. But, in reality, what they have been […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
