Family businesses are different. A non-family business’s goal is to make money. A family business’s goal is both to build legacy and create opportunity. And it’s more than that too
Most likely, we’ve all heard it. Almost as many of us have said it, and at least as many actually do believe it.
It can be summed up in a single sentence: Every family business has something that it can learn from every other family business.
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It’s a core belief at Country Guide. Other journals — especially journals outside of agriculture — will sometimes ask why we focus so much on talking to farmers at Country Guide, with faces on our covers that can seem so similar from issue to issue.
They’ll say, doesn’t this encourage agriculture to become even more xenophobic and exclusive, and, frankly, even more elitist?
Well, let’s admit it. Agriculture does have a diversity problem. But let’s keep it in perspective too. In today’s world, we all have an exclusivity problem. We are all beginning to see that we have not done enough to embrace change, to think from different starting points, to broaden our outlook.
From my perspective, immersed in this job as I am, I see an agriculture that is as ready to take on the challenge as almost any of the country’s leading economic sectors.
Frankly, though, we are all feeling let down by our farm organizations in this regard. The farm grassroots is more ready to discuss the path ahead than our boards are to recognize how necessary it is that they show public leadership here — by which I mean showing it not only to our farmers but to all Canadians.
So, no, it isn’t our strategy here at Country Guide to curry favour with our farm readers by pandering to their old-fashioned mindsets.
Instead, as just two examples, across Glacier FarmMedia, the group that publishes Country Guide, Western Producer and Farmtario among other leading farm publications across the country, we have set real goals for exploring and writing about Indigenous agriculture. At Country Guide, we also write frequently and deeply on gender issues on the farm.
We also promise that we will do better.
It is also, as I say, essential to recognize that in today’s agriculture, there are two key beliefs about diversity. First is the primacy of the issues involved. Second, is that it is in agriculture’s own interests that it become more diverse. How else will we prosper in a dynamic Canada and attract the best talent?
Because this is an industry where the news is understandably dominated by yields and economics, not to mention the need to feed the world, changes in the fabric of our agriculture often don’t get talked about as much as they should.
Even so, let’s make it clear that’s not good enough.
Shouldn’t every president use the microphone at this winter’s annual meetings to articulate their board’s diversity strategy? Shouldn’t they report on the progress they’ve made and the industry goals they advocate?
Progress is possible, and so are all its benefits, but we must talk. Are we getting it right? Let me know at [email protected].
