Reading Time: 6 minutes Let’s imagine you have just come back to the family farm. You have completed your diploma or degree, your head is full of ideas, your energy is overflowing, and you are absolutely itching to sit down and have a conversation with Mom and Dad about when and how you are going to take over the […] Read more
Summer Series: Coming home to farm
[Make It Count] Don’t expect the keys to be waiting, warns Andy Caygeon Junkin. Instead, carve out a path to self-improvement
Summer Series: Get more from your farm advisors
[Make it Count] Boost the returns from your investment in advisors’ fees with these tactics
Reading Time: 6 minutes Hiring business advisors and consultants is becoming a top habit on Canada’s most profitable farms, as identified in Farm Management Canada’s Dollars and Sense study. Whether it’s in accounting, law, human resources, succession planning, agronomy, livestock nutrition, communications or marketing, advisors are filling in the gaps in the farm team’s expertise. It turns out, though, […] Read more
Summer Series: Watch your grain inventory adjustment
[Make It Count] With the winter’s drop in grain prices, it’s important to track your inventory adjustment to avoid cash-flow and financing surprises
Reading Time: 3 minutes Canola prices, as just one example, are down approximately 25 per cent from late 2023. Wheat is down 15 per cent, meaning producer paycheques have decreased with the markets this winter. That’s not all there is to watch for, however. Given that many farms have post-harvest year-end dates, a significant amount of inventory on 2023 […] Read more
Summer Series: Are you getting the right advice for your farm?
[Make It Count] This summer, the top job for more farmers will be to get busy evaluating the people who advise them
Reading Time: 7 minutes Is it time to find a new advisor? Or would walking away from your current advisors be such a serious mistake that you’d regret it for years to come? Accountants, agronomists, grain marketers and other advisors are key parts of many farm management teams. But how good are we farmers at managing those relationships and […] Read more
Summer Series: ‘Scale up your food ideas!’
[Make it Count] Is the time right to take your big idea to a food development centre? Today’s commodity prices may make this the best year ever to future-proof your farm
Reading Time: 12 minutes Could that idea that you’ve got buzzing around in the back of your head grow into a major commercial success if you took it to a food development centre? Who knows? And how much it would cost? There’s a lot to learn about Canada’s food development centres, but the fact is, few of our farmers […] Read more
Summer Series: Farm opportunities
[Make it Count] Steve Larocque builds a case for value-add at every farm size
Reading Time: 7 minutes We’ve all seen them, even in this magazine. They’re all the headlines about the wonderful world of value-add. How many headlines have you read? A dozen? More? They seem to be everywhere, offering glowing accounts of outside-the-box thinking and entrepreneurial success. Often, though, the concept leaves a big question in the air. Is value-add only […] Read more
Summer Series: Your next great business idea
[Make It Count] These five tips promise to make you even better at spotting great business ideas for your farm
Reading Time: 5 minutes Farmers who can identify new business opportunities have a valuable leg up in this competitive and rapidly changing world, so Country Guide reached out to innovative farmers and to innovation experts for their insights into finding that next winning idea. 1. Be Tenacious What does it take? For one, it takes attitude. Over and over […] Read more
Summer Series: Your personal re-set
[Make it Count] On the farm, successful mid-career change takes more than new business practices and adapting to external influences. It demands self-management too
Reading Time: 6 minutes Change can sometimes lead to a radical re-evaluation of your past and present. In mid-life, change can prompt you to imagine what your future might look like, including your career. Research shows that many people in their mid-40s grow dissatisfied with their careers. The reasons behind this mid-career “crisis” can be attributed to several factors, […] Read more
Summer Series: How these Ontario farmers are getting great at change
[Make it Count] Every new idea, challenge and decision is an opportunity to learn. Sharing the takeaways from those lessons will help strengthen and sustain Canada’s agriculture industry
Reading Time: 11 minutes What makes a farm business good at change? Country Guide spoke with three Ontario farms to find out how they meet the challenges of change and what lessons they’ve learned on the journeys to diversification and growth. Thatcher Farms Thatcher Farms was born out of necessity. Almost two decades ago, at a time when commodity […] Read more
Summer Series: Working through change
[Make it count] Learning to change — and to change better — is a constant process
Reading Time: 5 minutes Canadian farmers are no strangers to change. Over the centuries, and especially over the last few decades, they have constantly adapted to changing global markets and government policies with new processes, technology and on-farm practices. Despite change being such a big part of farming, however, few farmers receive formal lessons in best practices for change […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
