Reading Time: 8 minutes It isn’t an easy question. How can you make sure all employees are fit for work and that they can do the job without endangering their health (or the health of others) without violating their rights or ending up in court? With recreational cannabis legalization in the parliamentary pipeline, employers in all sectors will be […] Read more
High on farmwork
With marijuana decriminalization, what if you suspect one of your farm employees might be high at work? Or… what if they’re driving your equipment high, and you don’t even realize it?
On the agenda
If you wanted to bring together the most important food thinkers in the world, and you had the budget to do it, who would you invite?
Reading Time: 6 minutes A brand new University of Guelph thinktank had its three-day coming-out in May with an agenda that included speakers who question the direction of today’s conventional farm production, and the event culminated in the inaugural awarding of two $100,000 prizes — one going to a Harvard University professor who might seem no friend to Canada’s […] Read more
It’s YOUR farm data
… but it’s the companies you deal with that are creating an income stream from it
Reading Time: 4 minutes Long before the social media scandal that rocked Facebook and bankrupted Cambridge Analytica, Kelly Bronson was looking into how data is collected, who uses it and how they are benefitting from it in Canada’s agri-food sector. “For a couple of years, I’ve been doing qualitative research into the social scientific aspect of data collection in […] Read more
My mistakes
I’ll bet I’m not the only farmer to make these costly insurance mistakes. I’m finally learning my lessons. Are you?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Most magazine articles describe how things should be done. Experts talk about best practices and strategies. We read about the winners and their successes. Yet the most important lessons I have learned came not as a result of emulating what others have done right but rather recognizing and avoiding mistakes I have previously made. Winston […] Read more
Seamless transfers
This family farm corporation in Ontario has transferred four times since the ’60s and recently diversified with the purchase of a local grain elevator. Here’s how the VanSickles have done it, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way
Reading Time: 6 minutes Near the Grand River south of Brantford, Shawn VanSickle pulls under the shade of a big oak tree at the end of the field. He stops for a moment to reflect about how in 1966 his grandfather did something groundbreaking for the time — incorporated the family farm. Five decades later, G.H. VanSickle & Sons […] Read more
Australian banks face rural lending reckoning
Agriculture borrowers say banks need a shorter leash and call for a compulsory farm debt mediation system
Reading Time: 3 minutes Reuters – Australian potato farmer Tom Fox says he had never missed a bank payment in two decades before a delay sending a shipment to Indonesia during a trade dispute between the countries prompted his lender to force him into receivership in 2013. “I got a letter from the bank lawyers saying I had 12 […] Read more
Low loonie not good for farmers right now
Reading Time: 2 minutes CNS Canada — Usually when the Canadian dollar starts to drop lower than its U.S. counterpart it’s good for producers — but this time not so much. Along with the drop, commodity prices have also dropped. “Unfortunately I’m not so sure that what we’ve seen in terms of a decline in the Canadian dollar versus […] Read more
Where are investments in Canadian agricultural research headed?
2018 has been a great year with agriculture attracting acclaim as an economic powerhouse in Canada. But is there enough money in research to score on the opportunity?
Reading Time: 6 minutes “Sunny today but with clouds on the horizon” is how Serge Buy describes Canadian government investment in agricultural research. “There was more willingness for the federal government to invest in budgets 2016 and 2017, and some of the provinces are following suit,” says Buy, who’s the CEO of the Agricultural Institute of Canada (AIC). “That’s […] Read more
Crowd research
Is this crowdfunded program a sign of the way farmers will have to go to get the research that governments are slow to pay for?
Reading Time: 5 minutes It was a cold, mid-April morning near Redvers in the south-east corner of a decidedly un-spring-like Saskatchewan, and the flat fields all around us were still blanketed in white. Between the snow and the clouds, you could hardly tell where the sky ended and the earth began. I had arranged to meet research manager Lana […] Read more
Is there a tipping point on intercropping?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Farmers’ current interest in intercropping has caught some off guard. On November 29, 2017, the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture ran an intercropping workshop in Regina. Workshop organizers expected about 40 people. But 140 people showed up, including several from Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Michigan. Sask Ag ran a second intercropping workshop in January, and another 200 […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
