Reading Time: 6 minutes Australia and New Zealand have had their fair share of agricultural challenges. They’ve known fires, tsunamis and cyclones, to name a natural few, and they have suffered from the politics of export markets, not to mention supply-demand crashes in world prices for wool, beef and milk. And that’s without mentioning droughts which, according to Australia’s […] Read more
Bounce back, don’t break
What makes some farms so resilient in tough economic times? Finally, this New Zealand research finds some answers
Editor’s Note: The competition
The challenges that lie ahead for our farms are real. Indeed, they’re more real than any but of a few us will admit. But so is the opportunity
Reading Time: 2 minutes I was asked some weeks ago to speak to a Purdue University ag business conference, where the focus was on trying to catch up with the rapidly evolving nature of today’s farms. An ag economics professor there named Mike Gunderson was early in the agenda, and clearly felt that all of us needed to be […] Read more
Sizing up the farm
Lane Stockbrugger is betting that the age of the family farm has got a long ways to go yet
Reading Time: 7 minutes It was in the wide-open spaces of Saskatchewan where the trend was perhaps most apparent a few short years ago. A one-two combination had suddenly brought a lot of new attention to farming and farmland. First, crop prices spiked, creating attractive margins for the first time in a generation. Then, predictably, farmland followed suit, as […] Read more
What if the party’s over?
Maybe these strategies will keep more of us from repeating the tragic ’80s
Reading Time: 9 minutes What is a grain farmer to do? Encouraged by both record-high crop prices and production over the past few years, you bought more land and upgraded your combine. With record-low interest rates, these were shrewd business decisions that pencilled out. They made sense, right? Except now crop prices are flat, and those responsible for input […] Read more
The new way into farming
After 10 years on the farm, these top graduates have succeeded by transitioning their family farms from conventional to holistic
Reading Time: 9 minutes A decade ago, a fresh-faced group of graduates jumped into a grain industry beaten down by prices and Prairie drought, and a livestock industry ravaged by the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) debacle. It was hardly the best of times. By the end of 2004, a year and a half after the BSE crisis began, Canadian […] Read more
Editor’s Desk: It wasn’t my best week
Reading Time: 2 minutes I had been invited to speak to some accountants and lawyers who work largely in agricultural practices, and while it was clear we wouldn’t agree on everything, I thought we’d share support for one theme that I’ve been banging away at for as long as I’ve held this position. I showed them a list. I’ll […] Read more
Our toughest marketing challenge
Farmers are losing respect. Now is the time to win it back, before the costs get even worse
Reading Time: 4 minutes Rodney Dangerfield built a comic career on his signature line: “I don’t get no respect.” But for the agricultural industry, loss of respect is no laughing matter. The public perception of agriculture is steadily eroding. Last fall, Harris Interactive asked 2,537 Americans to name the most prestigious occupations. As you might guess, doctors topped the […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
