Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s a tough question for any family business to ask and answer. How do you know when the next generation is equipped to take over management decisions and lead the business into its next chapter? This article offers some tips.– April Stewart, CG Associate Editor A tough question for any family business is how to […] Read more
Summer Series: How do you know when the younger generation is ‘ready’?
[Leadership] AME Management: How succession can be successfully planned
Five moves to make in 2022
With so much opportunity, so much risk, so much change and so much uncertainty, can this be a historic year for your farm?
Reading Time: 7 minutes Despite drought, floods and a continuing global pandemic, Canadian farm businesses came out of 2021 with a notable increase in cash receipts. While economists expect farm revenues to continue to grow, it’s a figure that will only tell half of the story for financial success. Revenue growth does not equate to profitability. The other half […] Read more
The next big step: mid-career mentorship
You’re already smart and dedicated, but is that really enough for today’s challenges?
Reading Time: 6 minutes When Adam Gregory signed up for LeaderShift’s year-long national farm leadership program, he didn’t anticipate waking up at the crack of dawn to do group yoga. “Some people were way out of their comfort zone,” Gregory laughs. “I’m open to trying anything, so it wasn’t a hurdle for me.” There’s more to LeaderShift’s program than […] Read more
Value in your farming peers
Could a peer group be right for you? Country Guide talks to one Ontario group to find out
Reading Time: 6 minutes When Ontario’s Janet O’Rourke and her husband Kevin took CTEAM — the executive management program designed specifically for Canadian farmers and ranchers — they got their first taste of peer feedback and the benefits it can bring. As part of the program, their class of farmers met four times over two years and got to […] Read more
Managing more, working less
For Lauren and Ryan Maurer, it’s the challenge of 2021. How do they keep from getting personally overwhelmed as the farm gets bigger and more complex?
Reading Time: 7 minutes It was 27 years ago that Lauren and Ryan Maurer moved to Lauren’s family grain farm near Grenfell, Sask., and started with 800 cultivated acres. In 2010 the couple was named Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmers, and now Land and Sky Grains seeds 24,000 owned and rented acres. Another 3,000 acres are committed to pasture and […] Read more
Farm planning for what lies ahead
How can a business plan be worth writing when farming is so unpredictable? For Mike and Amy Cronin, that’s the wrong question
Reading Time: 5 minutes If there’s one thing certain about farming, it’s the uncertainty. Prices, weather and other variables are constantly changing and farmers in most sectors are tasked with doing business without being able to predict future outcomes. Research released by Farm Management Canada last year indicated three in every four Canadian farmers are working at mid-level or […] Read more
Editor’s Note: In control, and ready to take on 2021
Reading Time: 2 minutes We’ve all heard it. There’s that proverb that says farmers make their worst decisions in good times. Well, after the last decade, it’s pretty clear that it just isn’t true. When we think about innovation in farming, it’s no surprise that we all rush to point at farm machinery, smart phones, new genetics, and new […] Read more
From flax in the field to shirt sleeves
Meet a Nuffield Canada farmer scholar with a vision for a value chain for Canadian-grown linen
Reading Time: 10 minutes [UPDATED: Jan. 11, 2021] Josh Oulton and his partner Patricia Bishop have grown flax on their Nova Scotia farm for nearly a decade, but not with an eye to the market that most Canadian flax growers are after. Instead, Oulton and Bishop grow varieties of flax that produce the plant-based fibre used to make linen, […] Read more
Next level farm management
Business planning practices are driving success on these three farms
Reading Time: 8 minutes There are two halves to farming — production and business. They are correlated, of course. You can’t really succeed in one if you aren’t also up to scratch at the other. That said, we’ve always known that every farmer brings their own mix of management skills and energies to the table, which means every operation […] Read more
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?
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
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
