Reading Time: 8 minutes It’s a question farm business advisors are hearing more and more from farmers across the country. “What can I do today to improve my financial position in five years?” While there are a number of reasons why seeking out this type of advice is a good idea, management consultants Gavin Betker and Jacqueline Gerrard find […] Read more
Thriving vs. surviving
Opportunities and challenges are on the horizon. Is your farm ready? This case study may help
Before you come back to the farm
More next-gen farmers are taking off-farm jobs before they return to the farm. It’s proving a very good thing
Reading Time: 6 minutes While growing up, Jackie Dudgeon figured she would go to school and then be on her way. She had no plans to join her dad growing canola, wheat and soybeans on their Darlingford farm, a couple hours southwest of Winnipeg. But after she spent a summer working off-farm blending fertilizer, treating seed and delivering chemicals […] Read more
Coping with uncertainty
A look at how senior executives are dealing with COVID-19’s effects on their firms
Reading Time: 7 minutes The disruptions to business and industry caused or worsened by COVID-19 have been well documented in the media. How, exactly, are equipment makers being affected, and how are they fighting back? Are they all experiencing similar problems, and how significant are they? To find out, Country Guide spoke with senior executives at three Canadian manufacturers. […] Read more
Above board
Pay yourself, and put the numbers right from the start in your budgets. It’s better for you, and for the business too
Reading Time: 5 minutes The thing is, you’re going to eat anyway, and probably wear clothes too. When a farmer doesn’t build a salary into their business model, they’ll still spend money on their personal needs and desires. It’s just that the money gets sucked out some other way. Of course it’s an idea that can take some getting […] Read more
These farmers call it teamwork
As these Nuffield farmers are learning, time invested in your HR makes all the difference
Reading Time: 10 minutes It is well known that Canadian farms are limited by labour shortages. Pre-COVID-19 studies say Canadian farms already faced a labour gap of 63,000 positions in 2018, set to increase to 123,000 within this decade, and research by the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC) estimates that labour shortages during COVID-19 pandemic resulted in $2.9 […] Read more
Missing the market
Farmers like the Thatchers are succeeding, but what happened to the promise that industry would make us a world leader value-adding?
Reading Time: 11 minutes Five years ago, the spotlight was shining bright on a report from the federal government’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth. Few federal reports get much attention, but this report, named after council chair Dominic Barton, generated headlines as it predicted that a new era of value-adding would not only transform the country’s ag and food […] 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?
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
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
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
