Reading Time: 9 minutes The story gets repeated time and again. A farm family invests time and money in a professional farm advisor to help them sort out a transition plan and how to implement it. Finally, almost incredibly, after a series of family meetings that started out nervous but eventually get surprisingly productive, everybody gets on board with […] Read more
A plan for successful farm meetings
The Spurrs are driving even more growth and efficiency by continuing the family meetings that helped them get to a transition plan
Carlsberg to buy Ontario’s Waterloo Brewing
Danish brewing giant paying $144 million to scale up Canadian business
Reading Time: 2 minutes One of the world’s biggest beer companies is moving to expand its brewing capacity on Canadian soil with a $144 million deal for Kitchener-based Waterloo Brewing. Carlsberg Group on Wednesday announced an all-cash deal worth $4 per share for all shares of Waterloo Brewing, which bills itself as the largest Canadian-owned brewery in Ontario and […] Read more
Consistency is key when it comes to growing malt barley varieties
New malting barley varieties yield better, but maltsters and brewers are wary of adopting them too quickly
Reading Time: 5 minutes One of the common elements of growing corn, wheat or soybeans anywhere in Canada is the volume-based market for each. Outside of identity-preserved (IP) varieties in soybeans or silage-specific hybrids in corn, there’s little differentiation. Regardless of the care or management a grower may take with commodity crops, their destination is usually the same — […] Read more
Denmark’s Royal Unibrew to buy Toronto’s Amsterdam Brewery
Brewer seeks new capacity in North America
Reading Time: < 1 minute Corrected, July 18 — Copenhagen | Reuters –– Danish brewer and beverage maker Royal Unibrew will acquire Toronto craft brewer Amsterdam Brewery in a deal valued at around 250 million Danish crowns (C$44 million), Royal Unibrew said in a statement on Friday. “The acquisition we are doing today is very important for the future growth […] Read more
Wastewater regulation eased for Nova Scotia on-farm processing
Reading Time: < 1 minute Nova Scotia has introduced regulatory changes that allow on-farm processing operations to better manage wastewater on their smaller scale. The changes, which took effect May 11, come at the request of the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture (NSFA) — which has said that owners of small farm-level processing facilities shouldn’t be treated the same as […] Read more
B.C. farmers go vertical with sales and processing
For Tracey and Ray Bredenhof, getting into processing, distribution and sales is a winner
Reading Time: 7 minutes If Ray and Tracey Bredenhof were solely growing chickens, Ray doubts they would have been named Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmers last December. To him, what the award was really recognizing was the purposeful way they have diversified their operation and how they continue to evaluate growth opportunities. It’s a point worth looking at, so here’s […] Read more
‘Field of Dreams’ diversification
Got a diversification project in mind? Get ready for some serious negotiating — not with the bank but with the planning staff in local government
Reading Time: 7 minutes When they decided to start their own distillery in their hometown of Ayr, Ont., Cameron Formica and the brothers Jordan and Nolan van der Heyden decided to test the truth of the movie line “if you build it, they will come.” “Farming on farmland is good in theory,” Formica recalls thinking. He knows the “in […] Read more
The ‘how’ of success
Most farmers have great ideas but only a fraction turn them into businesses. Even fewer become profitable. John Cote wanted to know why
Reading Time: 9 minutes John Cote already knew a thing or two about adding value to farm-grown ingredients and about how to run a successful company in the value-added sector even before he set out to study how other business owners are doing it. In 2010, the fifth-generation Saskatchewan farmer and his spouse and business partner, Barb Stefanyshyn-Cote, gave […] Read more
Canada’s small, high-protein malt barley crop poses challenges
Reading Time: 2 minutes MarketsFarm — The hot and dry 2021 growing season cut significantly into Canada’s barley production, with the weather also leading to higher protein levels for what was harvested. “It will be an extremely tight and difficult year for the malt processors and ultimately for the brewers as well,” said Peter Watts, managing director of the […] Read more
Cheers! Raise a glass to the farm-to-bottle trend
No one knows grain quality quite like a farmer
Reading Time: 6 minutes When sixth-generation potato grower Devon Strang had potatoes that were too small for retail sales, he used to ship them to a dehydrator to be turned into potato flakes. It didn’t exactly pay. “There are a lot of farms in the area growing potatoes,” Strang explains. “There’s an abundance of smalls and the (dehydrators) won’t […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
