Reading Time: 2 minutes Workforce challenges are having a worsening effect on farmers’ ability to meet their production and marketing goals and contribute to the economy according to new data published this week. Farms across the industry are poised for lost sales worth $2.9 billion in potential sales due to unfilled job vacancies, up from a previous forecast of […] Read more
More lost sales forecast in new labour market forecast study released June 25
Nearly half of Canada's farmers with jobs unfilled have delayed or cancelled farm business expansion plans
The booming bioeconomy
In Part One of this Country Guide look at opportunities in the new bioeconomy, Treena Hein investigates the global picture — and how Canadians can get a piece of the action
Reading Time: 8 minutes Farmers have been hearing about the bioeconomy, and when we learn about new uses for hemp stalks or wheat straw or corn starch, our ears perk up. After all, diversification and new opportunities mean increased sector stability and growth. What many Canadian farmers may not realize, however, is the sheer scale of the bioeconomy in […] Read more
Why I farm
The message is essentially your mission statement
Reading Time: 5 minutes The primary role of a farm manager is to find the best solution to the myriad questions and problems encountered each and every day. Farmers regularly fret over questions like: What will the markets do? Should I buy, contract, or sell today? Has a pest reached threshold levels, and is a pesticide application justifiable economically? […] Read more
Different in Quebec
History makes Quebec unique. But it takes more than history to account for its approach to ag policy and why that approach is being studied by farmers across the country and around the world
Reading Time: 9 minutes For centuries, agriculture has been a major contributor to the economic engine of Quebec and to the vitality of its rural regions. In 2016, the GDP of Quebec’s bio-food industry was 7.4 per cent, totalled $23.4 billion, and created 12 per cent of jobs in the province. From 2013 to 2016, the GDP of the […] Read more
Investing in agri-food technology
“A very dismal state of affairs” is how one investor looks at Canada’s ag tech future
Reading Time: 4 minutes San Eng thinks the agri-food technology investment climate in Canada might improve, but a “venture capital ecosystem” must develop quickly or the nation will lose out. “The people I’ve talked to are overlooking the sector — they don’t think it’s sexy enough, which is disappointing because the potential is there,” says the serial entrepreneur who […] Read more
Early days
How young is too young to make major farm decisions? Meet Owen Fijala, and get ready to rethink your assumptions
Reading Time: 11 minutes Just like any farm kid, Owen Fijala grew up helping out on the family grain farm near Manitou in south-central Manitoba. Things got a bit different, though, when he got a part-time job helping out a neighbouring beef farmer and he began to get interested in livestock production as well. He’d kept his eyes open, […] Read more
Affecting attitudes
GM takes to TV and the movies to get you to buy the new Silverado pickup
Reading Time: 6 minutes One of the most interesting press releases to drop into my inbox this year has come from General Motors. “Chevrolet debuts all-new Silverado marketing campaign,” was the headline. It revealed how The General (as car guys have called the brand for years) plans to convince consumers to take a second look at the updated pickups […] Read more
The way it happens
How do new farmers get a start in Canada? Every story is unique, but so often it starts, as here, with the right people somehow getting together
Reading Time: 10 minutes If, as the Roman philosopher Seneca said, “Luck is what happens when preparation and opportunity meet,” Lydia Carpenter and Wian Prinsloo are the living embodiment of it. They have always had an interest in food production, yet neither had grown up on a farm, and when they set out to follow their passion in their […] Read more
Farm fit
Maybe the phrase “Standardized Financial Benchmarks for Canadian Farm Financial Statements” doesn’t instantly get your blood pumping. But read on. Could this be the tool that lets you control your future?
Reading Time: 8 minutes Like many others, Larry Martin is convinced that Canada’s agriculture is evolving far faster than anyone driving a few miles of country sideroad could guess. The scenery hasn’t changed. At least, it hasn’t been transformed. It’s still a patchwork of crisp farmsteads and open fields, and of barns and bins. But those who live here […] Read more
New hires
On Canada’s farms, the cost of all the work that can’t be done because there are no workers to do it is spinning out of control
Reading Time: 10 minutes Farmers around Carman, Man., know the small convenience store in the town called the Lite Stop Foods. They know they’ll find what they want there — a few groceries, the local newspaper, a snack to tide them over. It also happens to be where Murray Froebe found two very good employees for his farm. Froebe […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
