Reading Time: 6 minutes Labels are a tricky business, especially in an agriculture where there is a dictionary full of words you can use to describe other farmers, or that you can use to call yourself. Are you a farmer, or a producer? Or are you a grower, or a rancher? More to the point, what do you call […] Read more
Is it time to drop the term ‘commercial farmer?’
When you call yourself a commercial farmer, consumers may hear ‘factory farm’
Last of the first-born tradition
There’s less and less room for entitlement on today’s family farm
Reading Time: 7 minutes If you’re the first-born male, it used to mean you had won the lottery. You got to inherit the biggest share, you got to take over as boss, and you got to sit at the head of the family table. But today that kind of European hierarchy is quickly fading on the family farm. Except… […] Read more
Preparing women to be career farmers
Fifteen expert ideas for a better start to a woman’s career on the farm
Reading Time: 5 minutes As more women join the ranks of primary producers, they still find out there are some challenges working in an industry where they are in the minority. How can young women best prepare for a career as a farmer? How can their families help them. Country Guide asked a variety of experts from backgrounds as […] Read more
Editor’s Desk: Is this the last generation?
Reading Time: 2 minutes The above title caught my eye as I was thumbing through some 2011 back issues of Country Guide. Hmm, I wondered, have the last five years changed what I think about whether young people can successfully take over enough of our family farms to actually comprise a “generation?” Or will they even want to? In […] Read more
4 ways to structure farm diversification
Before rolling a new enterprise into the main farm, stop, think and talk about how this is going to fit into your operation long term
Reading Time: 8 minutes Maybe it’s something you just want to do. It might be manufacturing a new farm widget or selling birdseed, or producing heritage pork, or grazing sheep. Or maybe your son or daughter has graduated from agricultural college and they want to come home after a few years working off farm. You know there’s risk with […] 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
A retirement goal of Freedom 52
What’s the right age for Mom and Dad to step back? It might be a lot younger than we have traditionally thought
Reading Time: 9 minutes It is an early fall afternoon, and while their four young children bounce across this picturesque New Brunswick dairy farm, 35-year-old Joas van Oord and his wife Lisa talk about their dreams. In the barn, that same afternoon, the farm’s 58-year-old patriarch, Maarten van Oord shows off the farm’s new robotic milker, and as he […] Read more
I do, and I don’t
Let’s agree. Prenuptial agreements will never be easy to talk about, but knowing the facts can help you get started
Reading Time: 9 minutes At a meeting this winter I sat down with a friendly group of farmers. The conversation turned from the weather to crop prices and slowly shifted into the personal, mostly about children. We shared our farms’ stories, our wins and our defeats. Then the man with tuffs of white hair beside me bent quietly toward […] Read more
The Hansons: A family that farms together…
“It’s good working with you people,” Ed said, “but it will be even better not to see you for the next six months.”
Reading Time: 5 minutes The Hansons’ never-ending harvest finally finished on Friday afternoon. They could barely believe they were really done. They’d spent the last three days racing against the rain in the forecast to get to the north end of the soybean field before it got too wet. “I never thought we’d finish this year,” Jeff told his […] Read more
Taking the first steps in succession planning
Reading Time: 2 minutes Are you getting more and more convinced that it’s time for succession planning for your own farm? If so, here are some thoughts from the experts on how to get started, beginning with the most important question of all: What does our retirement look like? “The retiring couple has to have a focused discussion on […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
