Reading Time: 2 minutes Again I’ve been told our farm business focus means Country Guide has stopped writing for real farmers, which is to say that if you read us, you’re no longer playing for the home team. To be honest, the charge doesn’t come up all that often. I had expected it to come up more. Still, it’s […] Read more
Editor’s Note: How we talk among ourselves
Editor’s Note: In 2018, we know what really works
Who thinks of financial management when we have those road-trip discussions about which innovations should get how much credit for making today’s agriculture so great?
Reading Time: 2 minutes If it was a scientific technology that was adding as much capability to today’s farms as effective financial management, we’d all be quick to sing it’s praises. We’d also have a pretty clear sense of how much value it was adding to the farm. It’s an interesting exercise to think about it in terms of […] Read more
Editor’s Note: The way we think about markets
As new crops of young farmers help fill their families’ bins this year, will it be agronomic skill that decides if they succeed, or the farm’s asset strength? Or will it be marketing?
Reading Time: 2 minutes All of us complain about our memories, I’m told. None of us complain about our common sense. At least, I think that’s how it goes. We aren’t always as humble as experience tells us we should be about our mental judgments or our mental aptitudes, and for good reason. We can sound awfully good when […] Read more
Editor’s Note: It’s incredible – the future of farming
Reading Time: 2 minutes Most of what you’ll see below is from a column I wrote three years ago. I stumbled across it recently and asked myself, do I still believe it. More to the point, do you? My sense is that the future of farming is going to be incredible, literally. Probably, it’s your sense of the future […] Read more
Editor’s Note: Six ingredients of an ideal farm successor
Reading Time: 2 minutes Several articles in our May/June issue of Country Guide examine what may be the toughest question of all. Does your farm’s next generation have what it’s going to take to succeed in 2050? Fortunately, science can help. I’ve suggested before in this space that as farms continue their likely evolution in asset value and in […] Read more
Editor’s Note: The right way to end the winter
Reading Time: 2 minutes It wasn’t a phone call that I had expected to get. The caller wasn’t from what you’d call our target audience. But then, he had been good enough to call, and after all, he did have a point. The call actually came from a Home Hardware franchisee who had taken over a small-town store not […] Read more
Editor’s Note: A better way to start the day
Reading Time: 2 minutes Of all the bright and memorable things you’ll find in our March 27, 2018 issue, the one I keep coming back to is the advice from Harvard prof Linda Hill in Maggie Van Camp’s, “Are you a good boss?” Her advice is simple. Let me lift it straight from the story: “She (Hill) suggests starting […] Read more
Editor’s Note: One more question for mid-size farms
For almost a decade, mid-size farms have been the winners in Canadian agriculture, growing their equity without taking extravagant gambles. Can that continue?
Reading Time: 2 minutes I’ve just been rereading an editorial I wrote 10 years ago. Such things happen to all of us from time to time when we stumble across a note in a drawer or a friend we knew at the time. If nothing else, it teaches humility. The editorial had to do with the contradictory signals farmers […] Read more
Editor’s Note: Looking toward a tough decision
It’s natural to want the farm to stay in the family, just as it’s natural to want your children to have the same chances you have had. But is it realistic?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Of all the tough issues facing agriculture at this moment, perhaps the toughest is evaluating whether the next generation has the aptitudes and attitudes they’re going to need if they’re to make a success of their career in farming, and if they’re to be a reasonably safe bet as the guardians of critical family assets. […] Read more
Editor’s Note: If Harvey Weinstein was a farmer
It’s amazing how much we can be blind to, especially when we like to think that nothing ever gets past us
Reading Time: 2 minutes Really, the question isn’t whether there might be a Harvey Weinstein in Canadian agriculture, but how many of them there are likely to be. I’m not one to doubt the fundamental decency of farm society. In fact, I believe in it implicitly. Yes, farm society has had to evolve like other sectors have had to […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
