Reading Time: 5 minutes There’s no doubt that social media platforms are making it easier than ever to stay in touch with existing customers and to expand your market beyond your current reach. But social media is always evolving, and businesses need to be nimble to use these new tools successfully. The electronic landscape is shifting so fast that […] Read more
Step three to value adding: Social media
Social media is a powerful tool to attract customers, but mastering it isn’t as easy as it looks
Between spouses
Formalizing the informal partnership
Reading Time: 3 minutes Joint ownership between spouses has been a long-standing fixture in the farming community, with each holding equal influence when it comes to making key business decisions. It is widely acknowledged and recognized that spouses are key influencers in business decisions. They have always stood front and centre in financial negotiations, are equal participants in professional […] Read more
What’s next for Massey Ferguson?
AGCO injects new life into the MF brand in Europe, promising to add “an avalanche” of new products in bright red paint
Reading Time: 8 minutes The attitude of marketing staff and the overall experience of just being at AGCO’s giant display at Agritechnica this year was different than I’d seen in past years. The stand was clearly divided between the company’s two primary brands sold in Europe: Massey Ferguson and Fendt. Then, an incident really drove home the reality of […] Read more
Leadership on the go
What does it take for farmers like Saskatchewan’s Bernie McClean to make themselves into better business leaders?
Reading Time: 7 minutes Growing as a leader takes stretch goals, and it takes finding out about your weaknesses and strengths. It might also take consciously building a network of smart, capable people, and finding mentors and role models to look up to. Plus it takes learning how to really listen, and how to be really heard. And none […] Read more
The necessity of conflict
Leadership requires that you do not enter a conflict until invited
Reading Time: 3 minutes It is unavoidable. At many points in life there will be conflict. It is at these times we question the value of conflict and the emotional claim that it can make on us. Is conflict really necessary? Can it be a tool to drive us forward? Let’s start at the beginning. The degree to which […] Read more
Young and farming
The ag census says young people are flocking back to the farm. Are they really?
Reading Time: 8 minutes There’s been a lot of chatter about the new farmers coming back to the sector. Across the country, enrolment numbers have ballooned at ag colleges. Even the 2016 Census of Agriculture showed a real, albeit small, increase. Saskatchewan is no exception. In 2016, the number of farm operators under the age of 35 hit 9.7 […] Read more
After milk quotas
French dairy farmers look for a way ahead after Brussels gives up the European supply management system
Reading Time: < 1 minute French dairy farms are in turmoil. France is the second-largest dairy producer in the European Union, and for the past 30 years, governments there had used quota to tie milk production to assigned farm regions. But then Brussels pulled the plug on the EU quota system in 2015, and now decisions about where and how […] Read more
The most hated dairy farm in France
Milk After Quotas: Some dairy farms in southern France are facing an existential crisis
Reading Time: 4 minutes The least we can say is that Michel Welter, director general of France’s biggest dairy farm, is a tough cookie. At 51, this former dairy producer works not only under daily pressure from the citizens of his village, Abbeville, located in northern France, but from the whole country for having built an “industrial farm” of […] Read more
Organic milk: 1,000 farms for one cow
Milk After Quotas: In the past decade, Biolait has seen its production double in size
Reading Time: 2 minutes When I meet him at their brand new headquarters in Saffré, a village in western France, it’s clear Théofile Jouve, director general of Biolait is a proud man. “In 2013, when the price of conventional milk was almost the same as organic milk, we had 60 farmers ask to be part of our business,” he […] Read more
Setting their own quota
Milk After Quotas: Milk producers find more success with cheese
Reading Time: 3 minutes Jean-Marie Guinchard looks across his ancestral farm located at la Sommette, a hamlet near the Swiss border. “We are cheese producers before being milk producers,” he tells me. “That’s saved us because we get a much higher return than conventional milk.” With his herd of 160 milking cows of the Montbéliarde breed, the 58 year […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
