Reading Time: 5 minutes Does it necessarily mean you’re poor at marketing if you aren’t actively engaged in daily trading? What if you have never done a paper trade, or if you haven’t ever locked in a private contract with a processer? Does that mean you’re a bad farmer? Obviously, the answer is no. It doesn’t have to mean […] Read more
Benchmark your marketing
How good are you at marketing? Or maybe more to the point, how bad are you?
Editor’s Note: The way we think about markets
As new crops of young farmers help fill their families’ bins this year, will it be agronomic skill that decides if they succeed, or the farm’s asset strength? Or will it be marketing?
Reading Time: 2 minutes All of us complain about our memories, I’m told. None of us complain about our common sense. At least, I think that’s how it goes. We aren’t always as humble as experience tells us we should be about our mental judgments or our mental aptitudes, and for good reason. We can sound awfully good when […] Read more
Taking on the market
Options, futures or forward contracts? Two farmers search for sustainable income
Reading Time: 9 minutes Options, futures or forward contracts? Two farmers search for sustainable income Dennis Pashovitz calls it his ’67 Cougar moment. It was the late 1990s and the grain farmer at Arelee, an hour west of Saskatoon, needed cash to open a trading account. The only way to learn about marketing, he was convinced, was to play […] Read more
Why you should be on social media
... it isn’t the reason you think
Reading Time: 4 minutes Technology is ubiquitous on today’s farms, and your social life is no exception. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram allow farmers to share their stories, engage and educate consumers, and connect with and learn from others in their industry around the world. While some current research does point to the pitfalls of social […] Read more
Got what it takes?
Cutting out the ‘middleman’ sounds like an obvious way to increase farm profitability. And sometimes, that’s exactly how it works out
Reading Time: 5 minutes Maybe there really isn’t anything new under the sun. For generations, farmers have looked at the yawning gap between what they get paid for their crops and livestock versus what consumers pay in the grocery store, and thought there’s got to be a way to capture more of the consumer dollar for the farm. No […] Read more
Corteva, huh?
Bryce Eger’s job is to get Canada’s farmers to react as positively to the new Corteva name as they do to the biggest brands in agriculture. Is that even possible?
Reading Time: 7 minutes The question is, should you care? The global merger of Dow and DuPont means that some of the most famous names in farm history are getting roped together under an entirely unknown name — “Corteva.” And somehow, all of us in agriculture are supposed to be persuaded to not only learn the new name, but […] Read more
Step two
After you survive the startup, it takes a whole different set of skills to keep a value-add business growing
Reading Time: 8 minutes When Country Guide first spoke to sisters Natasha and Elysia Vandenhurk six years ago, their lives were hectic. But in that way, it was a story familiar to anyone running a startup. The Vandenhurk sisters were in the midst of creating a direction for Three Farmers, a food company producing camelina oil products from crops […] Read more
Making sure you get paid
Recent changes to the marketing system have prompted the entrance of new players, so it’s worth a refresher on who guarantees payment for grain, and for how long
Reading Time: 4 minutes Grain producers protect the investment they’ve planted, fertilized, watched grow, harvested and taken the pains to safely store, but it’s the Canada Grain Act that’s supposed to ensure financial protection from buyers that go bust or act unscrupulously. Farmers have never had to worry about payment from the large elevator companies which have historically dominated […] Read more
Unrisky business
GARS goes private with a government program, and looks to win with farmers on both sides of the border
Reading Time: 6 minutes Whole-farm margin insurance has been available through Agristability since the Growing Forward programs were first launched. However, the program was plagued with complexity, its reputation fell, and five years ago it was trimmed significantly. Yet farm risk is on the way up with rising input costs, higher debt levels, and volaltile weather and prices. Now, […] Read more
Determining your true break even point
What market price do you need to break even? The answer depends not just on your costs, but your goals
Reading Time: 6 minutes Every winter, talk turns to production costs, with a focus on how to get your break-even price even lower. But what is your break-even? Most of us believe it’s a reasonably simple figure to calculate: just divide your yield by your expenses, including the cost of seed, fuel, fertilizer, herbicide and fungicide applications, a possible […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
