Reading Time: 9 minutes Bob Baloch has taken what he has learned about logistics and marketing from working in the IT world, married it up with his experiences of growing up on a family farm in Pakistan, and applied it to create a highly diverse and successful fruit and vegetable farm on 23.5 acres of land at Rodney, Ont. […] Read more
A new farm story
Most of Canada’s farms got their start when previous generations of immigrants made sacrifices and worked hard to gain a toehold, often via truck farming. Is it still happening?
Can COVID-19 save community supported agriculture?
Despite all the headlines, consumers have been slow to sign on to community supported agriculture. Now, COVID-19 is giving it fresh life, but farmers will still need a dose of business smarts
Reading Time: 6 minutes Every spring, Graham Sparrow asks the same question: Should I continue offering CSA shares? Sparrow has been selling shares of organic produce through the community supported agriculture (CSA) model since he started Sparrow’s Nest Organics more than 20 years ago. He admits, though, “I’ve always struggled to keep people interested and keep the CSA going.” […] Read more
The open source farmer
For Dorn and Sarah Cox, building an ag internet will bring the power back in farmer’s hands
Reading Time: 7 minutes About 10 years ago, New Hampshire farmer Dorn Cox was thinking how agriculture will need new ways of tackling such huge challenges as climate change, biodiversity loss and depleted agricultural soils. In the past, the collaborative approach had always saved agriculture. Farmers have pooled their ideas, shared their results and found big solutions much faster […] 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
Organic by choice, sort of
If you think you’ve got what it takes to thrive at direct-to-consumer farming, maybe you better talk to Harry Stoddart first
Reading Time: 6 minutes We’re really selling the relationship, and the story of us,” says Harry Stoddart as he describes the markings on his White Park-cross cattle. The rare White crossbreed, he explains, is part of his story. It’s because he can tell a story that I’m at Stoddart’s farm. His book, Real Dirt: An Ex-Industrial Farmer’s Guide to […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
