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Tag Archives CTEAM

Increasing costs related to farming are making your decisions more important and sometimes more difficult as well.
Guide Business, Management

Farm fit

Maybe the phrase “Standardized Financial Benchmarks for Canadian Farm Financial Statements” doesn’t instantly get your blood pumping. But read on. Could this be the tool that lets you control your future?

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Reading Time: 8 minutes Like many others, Larry Martin is convinced that Canada’s agriculture is evolving far faster than anyone driving a few miles of country sideroad could guess. The scenery hasn’t changed. At least, it hasn’t been transformed. It’s still a patchwork of crisp farmsteads and open fields, and of barns and bins. But those who live here […] Read more
Deciding the culture you want for your business and then creating is a difficult process.
Guide Business, Management

Creating the outward-looking business

AME management: Do you know the type of culture you want for your business?

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Reading Time: 4 minutes Last month’s column addressed outward-looking versus inward-looking businesses. The idea sensitized me to watch other organizations (and to check myself!) to find evidence of one or the other. Often, the evidence is mixed. Three examples A hotel where we have hosted CTEAM for several years had the same three young guys providing support for the […] Read more
Businesses can avoid becoming hamstrung by finding out what customers want instead of focusing on selling what they have.
Guide Business, Management

Outward-looking business

AME Management: It takes discipline, but an outward focus pays off in more business

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Reading Time: 4 minutes Have you ever been disappointed that people who work for you don’t take initiative to do what you want done? You don’t feel comfortable getting away for a week because things won’t get done the way they are supposed to? You and the generation ahead of or behind you have ongoing tension that stands in […] Read more
Younger generations often don’t know where they stand regarding a farm transition and may feel reluctant to address the issue.
Guide Business, Management

How do you know when the younger generation is ‘ready’?

AME Management: How succession can be successfully planned

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Reading Time: 5 minutes A tough question for any family business is how to know when the next generation is equipped to take over management decisions. Like many other things, the answer is often lost in a range of factors, not least the attitudes of the individuals in the family. My experience is that many families have unresolved “stuff” […] Read more
Shiny, new equipment is great, but depending on your budget and where you are in the timeline of your operation, running what you own or leasing equipment may be a better option.
Guide Business, Machinery

Is there a ‘best’ farm machinery strategy?

AME management: There is never a guarantee that, without the analysis, the right strategy can be forecast

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Reading Time: 4 minutes Country Guide’s editor asked whether we see a trend in the machinery strategy of the farmers who take CTEAM, our management course. Behind this is the idea that their experiences may be of value to others. The reality is that many strategies exist, ranging from turning over the complement of equipment every year, to squeezing […] Read more
A key success factor is that members must report on their progress. The discussion is “challenging, not critical.”
Crops, Guide Business, Livestock

The right next step

Peer Think: Brooks and Jen White have always focused on improving their management decision-making. For them, that makes a peer group a key growth strategy

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Reading Time: 7 minutes These new peer groups are drawing rave reviews from their members. Are they the most inspirational and perhaps the most essential business idea of the new millennium? It’s a big claim, but it’s tough to argue against this newest iteration of farmers helping farmers. Located in the extreme southwest of Manitoba, Brooks and Jen White’s […] Read more
It took discipline to get there, but Mongeon and Dignard’s spreadsheet approach now allows them to tie their field management and financial management into each decision.
Guide Business, Management

Numbers drive dynamic decision-making

Jeannette Mongeon and Michel Dignard use spreadsheets to guide everyday decisions and to analyze and embrace change. It’s good for the farm, and it also keeps peace in the family

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Reading Time: 6 minutes This past spring, Michel Dignard carefully walked his saturated soybean fields, counting the thin, yellowing plants while some were still fully submerged in water. It was emotionally exhausting work, but at least Dignard and his wife Jeannette Mongeon knew what they would do next. They crunched the numbers. They added up the costs and yield […] Read more
Progress is best made not by trying to break bad habits, but rather by developing good habits.” — Larry Martin
Guide Business, Management

From planning to implementation

AME Management: Get into these management habits. They will help you develop the strategic objectives that will drive your farm where you want it to go, and then help you achieve real progress toward them

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Reading Time: 4 minutes In our past column, we reviewed the habits of successful agricultural managers. One habit is that successful managers don’t just do strategic and operational planning, they translate their plans into action — i.e. they have a process to implement the plan. Like most farmers, many CTEAM participants have had little experience or training in planning […] Read more
Kent Sereda and Holly White.
Crops, Guide Business

Growing professional

Across the country, young farmers like Holly White and Kent Sereda are building respect for a new generation of business skills

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Reading Time: 9 minutes Newlyweds Holly White and Kent Sereda were already quite good at tackling what you might call their legal due diligence, updating their wills and preparing marital agreements. Then they realized they should go even further. This was the right time, they decided, to review the whole succession plan for the fourth-generation family farm that they […] Read more
Farming will take more than knowledge, insists Ridgetown director Ken McEwan. It needs vision, people skills, and perhaps most important, energy.
Guide Business

What students need for future success as farmers

Top ag educators tell us the good and the not so good they see in Canada’s next generation of farm hopefuls

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Reading Time: 7 minutes The future stretches and sways like a Prairie grain field, endless and heavy with possibilities. Like storm clouds, though, threats and risks also gather. What strengths and skills will farmers need to succeed in the future we’re rushing toward? With the turnover between generations accelerating, it’s a question that is coming squarely into play on […] Read more

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AGCanadaTV: In Case You Missed It – Your National Ag News Recap for the week ending August 7, 2020.

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