Here’s a question many of you have probably asked yourself at some point: if it looks like there aren’t many options for growth on your farm, what’s a growing family to do? This is the question GFM contributor Jeanine Moyer digs into for this article.

Speaking of the farm biz, one key component that often gets overlooked is offering support to the farm’s leader. As Helen Lammers-Helps explores in this article, despite leaders being hardworking, strong and stoic, team members need to remember that sometimes their leader needs support, too.

And since winter is still hanging on (le sigh), we’ve got an article in the Cultivating Wellness column by Kathlyn Hossack on how to make a tasty, nutritious and warming bowl of broth and in the Fit to Farm column, you’ll learn why it’s important to stay active even if it’s too cold to get outside.

What would you like to see in the Farm & Family section (powered by Country Guide) of Western Producer Media? Drop us a line at astewart@farmmedia.com

Farm families work together to break new ground and nurture growth. As each member grows, our Farm & Family team wants to know how we can help you grow further. Share your thoughts with Farm & Family editor astewart@farmmedia.com

The post Farm & Family – Feb 27 edition appeared first on Country Guide.

No one does really, but farmers seem to have a particular disdain for sending money to Ottawa.

I think there are a few reasons for this.

One is cash basis income tax treatment which means farmers can often defer paying income tax. Farmers can benefit from deferring income tax, although I would argue it’s more of a necessity than a benefit.

The only alternative would be taxing the farmer on his or her production inventory before it’s sold, estimating production and a selling price.

Other business owners and professionals are taxed on their receivables, but for farmers, the inventory is often not yet contracted or sold.

There are two main strategies to defer income taxes. One is to pre-buy next year’s input expenses; the other is to defer grain ticket settlements to the next fiscal year. In the 2017 budget the Liberal government considered changes to the Canadian grain ticket income tax deferral rules. I responded to the government consultation that grain ticket deferral doesn’t cost government anything directly and I argued taking it away would only further increase farm support payments.

Fortunately, the rules remained unchanged.

There are two ways to record income taxes on accrual financial statements. One is the taxes payable method which is just as it sounds: simply report income taxes owing as a payable.

The other method is the future income taxes method. This method recognizes the future taxes owing on your unsold inventory and, in some cases, the difference between accounting net book value and tax net book value of assets such as farm machinery.

I prefer the income taxes payable method for its simplicity. I find the future income taxes method only relevant if operations were to wind down next year — which almost never happens.

Another reason farmers don’t like paying taxes is perceived government waste. Farmers work hard for their profits and like everyone, want to see good return for their tax dollars.

Most of my working career I’ve been a T4 income earning employee. Taxes withheld since my first pay cheque never hit my bank account. If you never see the money, it’s harder to envision it as your own.

Then I started my fractional CFO firm where I source and execute the work, pay the bills and have to send a chunk of profit away in taxes. It’s a different mindset when the money physically hits your bank account and then you have to send a large portion away each quarter.

The same is true for farm business owners who must acquire land and livestock, purchase supplies and inputs and then execute on a farm business plan. Hopefully, weather cooperates and they’re able to squeak out a profit. And then, hopefully, politicians put their taxes paid to good use.

One advantage Canada has over the U.S. is the absence of personal property taxes on farm machinery. (Although significant exemptions exist.) Some states, such as Montana, levy a tax for the value of farm machinery on hand at the end of every year.

Canadian farmers also benefit from a tax-free rollover of farms to the next generation and may it always remain this way. Any introduction of a wealth or estate transfer tax would be as popular as last year’s attempted capital gains tax increase.

So, between start-up years, money-losing years and deferring tax, farmers aren’t used to paying taxes. Many farm accountants tell their clients they should want to pay income taxes, because it means that the farm has been profitable long enough to exhaust the usual tax deferral strategies.

Just remember that farmers will never like it.

Craig Macfie, CPA, PAg, provides fractional CFO services to growing farms and agribusinesses. Find out more at springcfo.com

The post Why do farmers hate paying taxes? appeared first on Country Guide.

Officer grew up on a small apple farm in southwestern Quebec. After studying history and agriculture at the University of Guelph, she joined Farm Credit Canada (FCC) and moved to Saskatchewan where she worked in marketing and lending roles. She later moved back to Quebec to project manage FCC’s AgriSuccess and Knowledge publications. That led to her current role in sales enablement which combines the knowledge of lending and sales with marketing. She is also contractual newsroom director for Canadian Western Agribition and writes a historical agriculture column for a farm magazine.

Country Guide: Why did you decide on a career in the agriculture industry?

Eugénie Officer: Agriculture was always a big part of my life. I showed horses and cattle, was heavily involved in 4-H, eventually sitting on the youth advisory committee and the 4-H Canada board, and I spent some of my teen years working on dairy farms and competing in livestock judging. I knew I wanted to be someone who helped bridge that gap, to show others the opportunity and passion that exists in this industry and help make agriculture feel like home for more people.

I wanted to find a role where I could combine communications, strategy and strong relationships to directly support producers. My current role at FCC brings everything together. I get to draw on my lending and marketing background to support our lenders by improving the tools and processes that directly impact the way they add value to customers. 

CG: What is your perception of the Canadian ag industry today? What excites you about it?

Officer: What excites me most is how far the industry has come in the last 10 years, and the fact that producers are up to the challenges ahead of us. We’re at a point where technology, sustainability and innovation are intersecting, and producers are leading a lot of that change by being committed to doing the best they possibly can as stewards of the land, animals, their businesses and their communities.

There is space for people with so many different skill sets, from ag science and tech to sales, finance, communications and policy. What excites me, too, is the chance to be part of something that matters and to help others see how they can play a role in shaping the future of food, farming and rural communities — whether they have deep roots in agriculture or are just discovering the potential of this industry. 

CG: What expectations did you have coming into the industry and how do they compare with your actual experience? As a young person coming into the ag industry, have you found it difficult to earn people’s trust and confidence, to show that you know what you are doing?

Officer: When I first began my career at FCC, I had the chance to work with some incredible managers and directors who created space for me to bring forward ideas I was excited about and lead projects that were outside of the norm. That trust early on really helped shape the work I wanted to do and gave me more confidence to lean into innovative thinking.

That said, in the broader industry, I do think young people, especially those in primary agriculture, sometimes must work harder to earn trust. But that challenge pushes you to be thoughtful, to listen well and to show up consistently, and those are qualities that build lasting credibility, no matter what your age.

In roles like lending, I saw firsthand how young producers often have to walk a fine line, bringing new ideas to the table while also proving they understand the realities and the heritage of the business. The great thing is, when you show up with a genuine desire to support and learn, I do see that most people make space for you. 

CG: What are your personal career goals and what new ideas and fresh approaches do you have to help benefit agriculture?

Officer: I feel really grateful for the path I am on. I have been able to explore different areas of the business, in both Western and Eastern Canada and learn from some incredible leaders along the way.

Long term, I hope to step into leadership roles. That’s something I’m working toward by continuing to build my skill sets and actively learning from the people around me. I would say I am passionate about mentorship and building strong relationships. Those are the spaces where I feel I can grow and give back at the same time. 

In terms of how I feel I could best personally support the sector, encouraging young people to develop their careers in this space is one way. In my current role, I’m trying to lean into making others feel heard, supported and help them succeed. If I can continue to develop those skills and use them to support my colleagues and the producers they serve, I will feel like I am making a meaningful contribution.

CG: How do you feel about the future of the ag industry?

Officer: I see a ton of potential in agriculture right now. It is foundational to any modern society, yet still largely overlooked as an exciting career path.

One of the biggest challenges we face is visibility and attracting a diversity of thinkers into the industry. A lot of young people simply don’t realize how many different, meaningful career paths exist in agriculture as a whole, and the fact that you don’t have to study ag science or enter primary production to make a meaningful difference in the sector.

CG: If one day your children came to you and said they were considering a career in ag, what area of the industry would you encourage them to look at? Where do you see the best opportunities?

Officer: I think the future of agriculture is full of possibility. There are so many roles that don’t exist yet and that makes it exciting.

If someone from future generations told me they were considering a career in ag, I would encourage them to stay curious and open-minded. There is no one path, and the best opportunities often show up where your interests, values and the industry’s needs intersect. 

If young people care about contributing to food security, the strength of rural communities, and care deeply for animals and eco systems, they will find a place in this industry where they can grow and contribute.

The post Making space for a new generation of ideas in Canadian agriculture appeared first on Country Guide.

It can be intentional, but it can also be subconscious or structural, such as when it’s embedded in organizational policies or societal norms. 

And it often goes unseen by those who don’t experience it themselves.

Although the number of women working in leadership positions in agriculture is increasing, women are still in the minority and continue to experience gender bias, according to a recent survey by the Canadian Agricultural and Human Resources Council (CAHRC).

In their 2025 survey of agricultural leaders, 40 per cent of the 431 female respondents said that they believed there were barriers to women advancing in agriculture but only 6 per cent of men believed barriers exist. (Women in their twenties and thirties were more likely to report barriers than the average; the proportion of women reporting barriers tended to decrease with age.)

The challenges women reported: breaking into the old boys’ club (81 per cent of female respondents), preconceived perception of capability by co-workers and senior management (74 per cent), and balancing careers and family responsibilities (73 per cent). 

“The difference in responses to this question between women and men is stark and consistent with the 2015 research,” write the authors of the report.

Survey participants also expressed concerns that “rampant sexual harassment” from men in the agriculture industry is driving young women away.

Viktoria Schuler, a senior manager at CAHRC, provided some examples of the double standards women face. 

On the one hand, women are told they can’t lead because they are “too soft” but if they are firm, they are accused of being too aggressive. 

And if a woman asks for time off to handle a family matter she can be judged as not being 100 per cent dedicated to her position; however, when a man asks for time off for a family situation, he is often praised as being a good father. 

Delineating family and farm roles can be especially hard for women working in a multi-generation family operation.

Despite the inherent challenges of working in a historically male-dominated field, Schuler says women are finding ways to lead with authenticity. For example, they are recognized for frequently possessing positive leadership traits such as higher emotional intelligence, more empathy and a more collaborative communication style. “Their teams benefit when they use these traits,” she says.

CAHRC’s survey also shows that women leaders tend to be highly educated and seek out opportunities to learn and build on their knowledge and leadership skills.

One such learning opportunity is a 10-week leadership development program for women offered by CAHRC. Country Guide reached out to three women who participated in the program earlier this year. 

Emily Seed is the executive director at the Northern Ontario Innovation Alliance and a partner at a small, local direct-to-consumer beef farm. Terrilynn Holloway of Wolfville, N.S., worked in a management role at a large poultry operation. Courtney Heuston works in HR and safety at Barrhill Feeders Inc. in Picture Butte, Alta., and is also a partner with her father in a cow-calf ranch where she grew up in southern Saskatchewan.

Here’s what they had to say about the program and their advice for other women in agriculture on how to lead with confidence. 

Seek out support

The opportunity during the course to learn from real life examples and to hear how other women navigated roadblocks was extremely useful, says Heuston. “It was the thing I didn’t know I needed.

All three valued the course format, which included opportunities for networking and time to discuss real life situations with other participants in similar circumstances. They were also able to connect with participants on an ongoing basis following program completion. “It helps to know that others are in the same boat, so you don’t feel so alone,” says Holloway.

Seed participated in the course just after her maternity leave. She found it was especially helpful to sharpen her leadership skills as she returned to work. She is passionate about what she does but as an introvert, she doesn’t love public speaking and “had to work to put herself out there again,” she says. 

The value of mentoring

Both Heuston and Seed emphasize the value of mentorships in leadership development. Seed says she has benefited from mentoring by strong women in leadership roles in the past through both 4-H and the Canadian Cattle Young Leaders program.

Heuston says, “Mentorship goes a long way. We all have something we can learn or teach. I try to be supportive to other women in my circles. Every little bit helps.”

Be your own cheerleader

Seed says she must work to overcome impostor syndrome, those feelings of self-doubt about skills, talents or accomplishments despite evidence of success to the contrary. “I remind myself that I do have the abilities, and I have people I can reach out to for support.

Holloway’s advice is to trust yourself. “If you feel confident in what you know, don’t second-guess yourself. Don’t let others sway you. Set boundaries.”

Heuston says being in alignment with her goals helps her cope when impostor syndrome rears its head. She recommends being your own cheerleader and using positive self-talk to give yourself a boost of confidence when you second-guess yourself. 

She adds that listening to podcasts that bolster her confidence (such as Authentically Ashlyn) or challenge her to think outside the box (Discover Ag) also helps her overcome the critical voice in her head.

But she admits “you have to be thick-skinned and roll with the punches. There will be hurdles. Don’t give up on yourself and don’t stay down too long.”

Ask for feedback

In Holloway’s experience, asking for feedback, good and bad, from someone you trust, either above you in the chain of command or your team members, helps you grow. “If I did something and it didn’t work quite the way I’d hoped, I’d ask others how they thought it went and if there’s something I could have done differently.”

Sometimes we can be our own worst critic, but Holloway says that gathering feedback builds your confidence. “It’s also a way to build trust with your team members who are going through the hardships with you.”

How to develop leadership presence

Lauren Sergy, an Edmonton, Alta., communications and executive coach, says it’s human nature to be biased when someone in a leadership position doesn’t look or sound like what we’re expecting — which, in agriculture, has typically been a white male. 

“It’s the way our brains are wired. Even before people hear us speak, they are deciding whether they should listen to us, whether the information we are going to share is reliable and if they should trust us,” she says. 

“Even if we don’t want to be biased, we’re making judgements and evaluations. We have to mentally think our way around it. It takes stepping outside ourselves for a moment.”

Sergy acknowledges that it’s frustrating to still be talking about gender and race. “We have to recognize those elements of human bias and we have to work with them strategically. The longer we work with it, the more we work strategically, the easier it gets. But we’re not there yet. Good people can still be unconsciously biased.”

She works with both men and women to help them learn to project an air of confidence and trust, what she refers to as leadership presence. While leadership presence may come more naturally to some people than others, it’s a trait anyone can develop. 

Leadership presence is valuable no matter what stage of your career although Sergy says the vibe you give off will change as you progress through professional phases. When you are young, for example, she says your leadership presence may be more energetic and ambitious but when you are older it may be more reflective and philosophical. 

Sergy offers the following advice for developing leadership presence:

• Develop self-awareness and self-control. Remain in control of yourself. You do not need to be a robot but show the right emotion at the right time.
• Look confident. Are you presenting the external appearance you intend? Stand tall with an upright posture and make eye contact. (This is generally true for North American cultures but may not apply to other cultures.) If you are a fast talker, consciously slow down.
• Listen more than you talk. Listening instills trust. When leaders listen to us, we tend to assume they are smarter although Sergy acknowledges this does take self-control.
• Accept and embrace impostor syndrome as part of being human. “I don’t know any high-achieving leader, male or female, who doesn’t express this. Learn to dance with it.” Her advice is to write an objective list of skills and career path highlights. “Ask others and take what they are telling you. You have the evidence in the list.”

Resources
The Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC) runs the Women in Agriculture Essential Leadership Skills Development Program and has plans to launch a platform so women leaders in agriculture can network with one another.

Advancing Women in Agriculture Conferences (AWC) aim to build confidence in women working in agriculture and food. AWC EAST 2025 will take place November 23-25, 2025, at the Sheraton Fallsview, Niagara Falls, Ont., AWC WEST 2026 will take place March 8-10, 2026, at the Hyatt Regency, Calgary, Alta. Visit advancingwomenconference.ca for more information.

The post How women lead with confidence in agriculture appeared first on Country Guide.

I look at it like this: if you’ve taken your child to the field, or they work alongside you, then you have already started — and you’re further along in the process than you think.

The most successful farm transitions take place over time. A solid succession is a process, not a one-time transaction. The most common obstacle to getting started is procrastination because we put things off when we are uncertain of what’s involved, or we think it will be difficult. 

Procrastination keeps us stuck. 

I understand that you have a million things to do, but if something happened to you today, what would happen to your farm? 

“But I don’t know how to start the conversation about the future,” you say. 

You know what? It’s normal to feel overwhelmed with the process of transitioning your farm. From the starting line, the process ahead looks foggy, and we think we only have one shot to get it right. Then, so many of us aren’t certain about what we want in the first place. And is that what everyone else wants? Is there even a common goal regarding the farm’s future? 

This type of planning also involves discussing the most difficult topics (e.g., death, finances, divorce, trust), bringing up emotions that make many of us uncomfortable. 

So, how can you gain some succession planning traction? 

1) Ask yourself: What’s the end game?
Why do you do what you do? You and everyone involved in the business should really sit with that question for awhile. Mull it over, write it down — even send it to me. I’m here to make you successful and that includes asking hard questions that make you think. (Hint: there are no right or wrong answers.)

2) Ask yourself: What’s at stake?
The biggest risk on farms today is having one person in charge of everything. If you go to work every day without processes or plans written down, or without having up to date wills or agreements, you are putting millions of dollars in flux. This means that potentially more of what you built or saved could end up with someone you don’t want instead of protecting the ones you love most. Loving your family and making sure they are taken care of may be your most important reason to start the succession process.

3) Hire a coach or facilitator
Effective succession planning requires 80 per cent non-technical work (e.g., reflection and communication). It’s not your job to facilitate hard discussions while also trying to be present in the conversation, stay curious and take notes. An objective third party should be brought in to lead important conversations outside the scope of day-to-day meetings.

4) Learn to balance logic with emotion
Emotions can be dangerous. But we can also find ways to manage those big emotions and related decisions. We don’t want to (and can’t) completely remove emotions from the equation and the truth is, you can’t make a decision without them. Emotion is okay. It means you are passionate about your business and your values. But there must be a balance between emotional and logical decisions, and we can only find that balance after we’ve looked at all the facts.

5) Play the what-if game
Start thinking about what you want — both in your head and in your heart. Because what you think in your head may not be the same as what you know in your heart. That disconnect could get you in trouble. Ask yourself, “If something happened to me, what would happen to this farm? Is that what my family would want?” Once you have an idea of what that answer might look like, it needs to be discussed and documented.

6) Communicate the right things
We don’t necessarily need more communication; we need the right kind of communication. Farmers might be experts at discussing the day-to-day, the markets and logistics, but sometimes it’s harder to discuss the uncomfortable things such as a living arrangement or finances. We need the right things at the right time. This requires asking permission of everyone involved in the succession process with the help of a coach who can facilitate conversations to make the process easier.

The post Farm succession: Where to begin? appeared first on Country Guide.

If you’re having a bad day, you’ll find our January 2023 issue of Country Guide a pretty easy target. 

That’s okay. 

For example, Richard Kamchen writes a story about how the local food market isn’t growing nearly as fast as most Canadians (although perhaps not most farmers) appear to think. 

You’ll also find writer Trevor Bacque launching into the details of how Saskatchewan farmer Matt Enns is breaking through with his value-add malt business, largely thanks to beer drinkers who love local. 

So, which is it? Is local a lot smaller than its fans hoped? Or is it a rich seam to be mined? 

Well, it’s both. 

Everybody who reads Country Guide knows that I’m blown away by the increasing professionalization of Canadian agriculture. In fact, I don’t see how anyone could thumb through a year’s worth of the Guide and not be similarly wowed. 

We don’t exaggerate. We talk to farmers, we engage with them about what they’re thinking, what they’re doing and what they’re planning to do, and we also probe what their major learnings have been. Then we write it down. 

You might also like to know this. When I send writers out, I do it with a simple instruction. When they file their stories, I want to see their farmers portrayed as competent, not boastful. Those are exactly the words I use, “competent, not boastful” because that’s what I believe farmers are, and because I also believe that the farmers we profile in our pages are typical of the great mass of farmers across this great land. 

They are representative of every one of you. 

In a similar way, when I send a photographer out to a farm and the photographer asks me what I’m looking for, I tell them, “I want to see someone I can relate to. I want to see someone who, if they were talking, I’d slow down a bit so I could hear what they have to say.” 

Professionalization doesn’t mean our farms are getting more and more the same. If anything,
they’re getting more different, not necessarily in what they produce but more often in how they are structured, how they are organized and how they see themselves moving into the future. 

Much as they love their home farms and take pride in what they produce, their professionalization arises from how they value the skills and the attitudes they bring to the table, not just with what they grow. 

Besides, as we know, every farm has its challenges. Jeanine Moyer’s story on cutting-edge business management strategies and Ralph Pearce’s on a succession plan gone awry show this. Everyone is continuously improving, just not all at the same speed in all directions. 

I wish all Canadians could see this, but for those of us who can, it creates both a sense of joy and mission to be involved in ag today. Am I getting it right? Let me know at tom.button@fbcpublishing.com.

The post Editor’s Note: Competent, not boastful appeared first on Country Guide.

Yet only 21 per cent of Canada’s farmers regularly follow a written business plan.

The numbers are from a new survey put out by Farm Management Canada, showing 48 per cent rarely or never do any written business planning, and another 30 per cent are at best in the “sometimes” categories.

Not surprisingly, the 79 per cent who aren’t plan jockeys have lots of reasons why they aren’t. In fact, on the face of it, they seem such good reasons, like the notion that agriculture changes so fast, any plan you write has got to be out of date even before you put it on the shelf.

In a black swan year like 2020 with COVID-19, or a similarly black swan year like 2019, with the China-U.S. trade war, that just seems incontestably true.

But it turns out that it isn’t. Increasingly, such excuses are out of date. Most of the old reasons for not doing a business plan are simply out of sync with the times. At the very least, plan fans and plan foes seem to be talking different languages.

So maybe it’s time for a re-evaluation.

Would every farm do better with a written business plan? Maybe not. Would yours? Almost certainly yes.

And would that benefit be big enough to make it worth the work? Well, the 88 per cent in the first paragraph of this story are convinced it is for them.

To explore the topic in more depth, Glacier FarmMedia hosted a video panel on the arguments pro and con farm business planning, which ran as part of the summer’s Ag In Motion Discovery Plus and will also run mid-September at Canada’s Digital Farm Show.

The panelists were Heather Watson, executive director of Farm Management Canada and frequent Country Guide interviewee; Reg Dyck, farmer and business instructor at the University of Manitoba’s ag diploma program; and Rob Hannam, founder and client director at Guelph-based Synthesis Ag.

Before we turn to the experts, however, here are some more survey results, especially on the non-plan farmers. Why don’t they? The number one answer (41 per cent of all respondents) is simply that they feel they are succeeding without it. So why would they go to the bother? Besides, 33 per cent said planning takes time that they simply don’t have to give to it, and 26 per cent said that even if they did, farming is so volatile that any plan would have to be continuously updated to be relevant.

Another 21 per cent said they didn’t use a business plan because, in the complicated world of farming, it’s too hard to decide what to include and what to leave out.

And a final 21 per cent didn’t even get that far. They simply said the very idea of business planning in agriculture is overwhelming.

Maybe they’re onto something. FMC did another survey of business practices in early 2020 and found the adoption rate had actually slipped, falling to close to 18 per cent, or fewer than one farmer in five.

Against those odds, can business planning make a breakthrough? The experts think so, with reasons that might surprise you.

Why business planning works

The science of business planning has changed dramatically in recent years. In at least some cases, farm thinking may not have caught up.

The common idea used to be that the business plan would have to predict the ups and downs of farm markets and production.

At the very least, the assumption was that the plan would only be useful if it could lay out exactly what steps you’d take under a precise set of circumstances.

Today, the focus is much more on resiliency and risk management. Rob Hannam compares it to doing some advance planning for disease control on a livestock farm. There isn’t much chance that you’d be able to predict exactly how and when the disease might hit your barn. But by going through a planning exercise, you could work out a protocol so you screen the animals to detect the disease, you talked to the veterinarian to define best steps, you have segregation pens ready, you’re aware of market implications, etc.

Business planning is similar, Hannam says. It makes sure you’re watching key factors and that you have a process for responding to them. A business plan may never predict COVID-19 or Chinese trade barriers, but it makes you much more efficient at dealing with them.

A business plan prepares the farm for opportunities too, not just for threats. So while it can’t predict when the neighbour’s farm might come up for sale, or when you might get invited to join a new partnership, it helps you decide whether such steps are consistent with the farm’s overall objectives and whether they’ll help you get there.

Crucially, says Watson, new research shows that a business plan will help you cope with the stress that comes with making big decisions or dealing with COVID-like challenges. This year’s Healthy Minds, Healthy Farms study, available on the FMC website, shows that having a business plan helps farmers keep their emotions in check, it helps them keep their performance up by ensuring they sleep better at tight and take better care of their health, and it helps ensure they keep up connections with their families and others.

The business plan provides a roadmap, Watson says. It helps you monitor your progress and put the challenges to the farm in perspective, so no wonder it has health implications. You’re dealing with certainties, not doubts. And, critically, it helps keep the team united.

Other benefits?

It turns out that when farms do business planning, all sorts of other good things tend to happen too.

Watson points out that surveys consistently show that farmers who use business plans also tend to use other business tools, such as better financial tracking, benchmarking for production and overall performance, and skills-upgrade opportunities.

Detailed studies consistently link such tools to farm profitability. University of Manitoba instructor Reg Dyck points that, on the farm, small changes in management efficiency can make huge differences in farm performance. Historically, he points out, the farmer’s margin is a small fraction of what a crop sells for. If farm management tools mean a higher percentage of retained gross income, it may double overall profitability.

Tied in with this is that a business plan can improve the payback from working with off-farm experts, points out Hannam.

He advocates sharing the plan not just with bankers and lenders, but also with accountants, lawyers and even suppliers.

Does it have to be written down?

Every farm has a strategy, and every farm has a plan, Hannam says. They have a sense of how they want to evolve over the short-, medium- and long-term, and have a pretty clear idea of what it’s going to cost to get there.

So why go to all the trouble of creating a written plan? The first answer may be discipline, says Watson. Putting together a business plan means that you put the numbers together and then you run them through a number of scenarios. By doing so, it confirms your hunches or makes you ask questions about them.

And that’s only one reason for going through the process. In fact, says Hannam, the process itself accounts for much of the value.

“The activity of planning is gold,” he says.

Don’t forget, too, says Dyck, that planning is a great way to bring the next generation into the farm. That doesn’t mean they have an equal voice with the parents, but it exposes them to the family’s values and to the parents’ overall approach.

Most important, says Dyck, it also means that when it’s time for the next generation to start taking on some responsibility and making some decisions, they aren’t going into it cold. They will benefit more from the parents’ experience, and while they may still make some mistakes, they’ll be faster to spot and to correct them.

Will planning get more popular?

Hannam is convinced that planning is on the way up, and not only because lenders are insisting on it.

“We will see more planning in the future because younger farmers are good at it,” Hannam says. They’re good at the business tools, in part because of the increased emphasis on business management in farm colleges, and they are so comfortable with the technology.

“You don’t need paper and a binder to do a business plan,” Hannam points out. “You can do it with an app and notes on your phone.”

Watson also brings a longer perspective to the discussion. More farmers are more open to some pretty basic questions, she says. She refers back to the 41 per cent who said they don’t create a business plan because they are succeeding without it, but in today’s agriculture, where business planning is proven to improve the farmer’s health, boost financial performance, and result in healthier family relationships, she says, “You have to ask what they mean by succeeding. It’s an important question.”

The post Pandemic planning: Write it down, add it up appeared first on Country Guide.

But there’s something else too. It isn’t just that a resilient farm keeps breathing. It’s that a resilient farm is quick to get back into action. It finds new opportunities, it employs new strategies, it finds new partners.

In a way, every farm across Canada was in the same place back in January. No one anticipated COVID-19.

Now, nine months later, each farm has to make its own decisions. The search is on for ways to reshape the supply chains that connect the farm to the market, and also for better ways to simultaneously play defence and offence.

Below and in this issue’s series of articles we look at answers that are emerging. 2021 is almost here.

Peggy Brekveld was one of tens of thousands of farmers across Canada who watched and waited and worked on her farm while the global pandemic raced across the globe. It wasn’t business as usual for the Brekvelds, who are dairy farmers near Thunder Bay. Yet, in a way, it was, too.

“Cows still had to be milked. We still had to get seed in the ground and do the regular field work,” says Brekveld.

In late spring, with the warped reality of crisis in full bore across Canada and the rest of the world, Brekveld, who is also vice-president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA), sat down to write a column for her organization.

“If there is one thing that has remained constant throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” she wrote, “it’s that farmers are experts at adapting to evolving situations and persevering through uncertainty.” The rest of her piece presented findings from a survey that had gone out to OFA members periodically through the spring, asking how the economic shutdown and other aspects of the health crisis were playing out on their farms.

Farmers described an “ability to move forward and conduct business in a crisis environment,” wrote Brekveld, but the vast majority also indicated they’d suffered negative financial impacts, plus a significant piling on of stress due to the uncertain business and social environment.

Across a diverse agriculture, the pandemic’s impacts have varied tremendously based on what commodity the farm grows, where it gets its labour, whether there’s a marketing board to equalize the pain, and so many other factors.

But as for returning to business as usual, the OFA’s membership overall estimated that it would take about three months to get back to their pre-COVID-19 numbers.

That’s if the pandemic ended today. And if Canada can go back to business as usual. Which is quite a question.

The new normal

After these roiling months of change and uncertainty, a “new, if, as yet undefined normal” is what most see ahead.

Answers are emerging, such as from a series of formal dialogues begun earlier this spring by the Canadian Agri- Food Policy Institute (CAPI).

In early April it released the contents of what it calls the digital dialogue it held with supply chain participants to hear more about how the sector was faring as the COVID-19 crisis advanced, asking about immediate issues affecting the system’s resilience, as well as longer-term threats to supply chains.

Then, in May CAPI and the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute (ARI) also jointly launched Growing Stronger, a national project seeking a diverse range of views on the question of how to build more resilient food systems in Canada. The sessions will continue into the fall through an online portal and series of virtual consultations, with the goal of developing draft conclusions and recommendations for CAPI’s 2020 Big Solutions Forum.

What was evident early in the crisis is the same thing Brekveld described happening on the farm — a swift adaptation to an evolving situation. A whole lot of utterly heroic effort went into fast pivots across supply chains, which in turn kept grocery store shelves stocked and food on the tables for the majority of Canadians.

But there were also significant strains as, literally overnight, the food service industry shuttered, consumers dramatically shifted their food consumption patterns, and the effect of the shutting down of processing plants due to the spread of the virus among workers were felt right back to the farm.

What’s needed now is a fulsome debate on what’s been learned from these jolts, and what can be done to strengthen Canada’s capacity for future emergencies.

COVID-19 has brought focus to problems evident before this shock to the system and which need addressing in readiness for the next one, says Don Buckingham, who has just stepped down from his role as CAPI CEO and president.

Agriculture’s labour shortage and reliance on offshore workers, and a lack of redundant capacity in the processing sector, are clearly two of those key vulnerabilities, Buckingham says.

“The most critical bottleneck point has been in industries dependent very much on a labour situation which they have relatively little control over,” he says.

The labour kick

The horticultural sector took a severe blow as the seasonal workers it has relied so heavily on for planting and harvest could not come into Canada. It has become a sort of a case study of a sector able to produce abundant, safe, affordable food domestically, but highly dependent on a workforce of temporary foreign workers to do it.

Last year Canada had record numbers of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) enter the country so travel restrictions preventing their arrival in spring of 2020 hit not only Canada’s vegetable and fruit producers, but producers of all kinds, as well as the secondary agricultural sector, such as meat-processing facilities.

Meat processors’ problems were also compounded by disease outbreaks at key processing plants, and faced massive logistical challenges to pivot their production away from restaurants and institutions to service high-demand retail channels.

This isn’t the first shock the Canadian food supply has had. Nor will it be the last, of course. The spectre of other future globally disruptive events, including other pandemics, natural disasters or geopolitical threats, is always with us, and more groups like Buckingham’s say we need to learn lessons from COVID-19’s effects on the Canadian food system to be better off the next time.

The new balance

A key theme already emerging from the CAPI and the Arrell Food Institute dialogues is to find ways to address agriculture’s lack of redundancy in areas such as processing plant capacity.

Our systems have been built to operate with great speed and efficiency, and to operate on economies of scale, but as the plant closures illustrated, those strengths can seem pretty empty when something goes wrong.

What the Growing Stronger dialogues are hearing is that the task ahead will be to find how to strike a balance between efficiency and redundancy, says Buckingham.

“Redundancy means if something goes wrong you have Plan B. I think COVID has really accentuated that we need to understand that Plan Bs are not inefficiency, they are actually building resilience into the system.”

The Growing Stronger dialogues are looking at ways we’ll adapt our food system and find new approaches for producing and processing food, says Evan Fraser, director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph.

“For me one of the strengths but also one of the weaknesses of the current way of producing food is just-in-time supply chains,” he says.

“We don’t manage much inventory. We focus on low cost. We focus on extraordinary levels of efficiency. And it has given us very affordable, very safe food which is to be celebrated.

“What has also been revealed in the last four months is that what we haven’t got is what some people are now calling the just-in-case food system, or a food system that can function just in case bad things happen… a supply chain is broken, or a pandemic affects our ability to bring in foreign workers.”

The much-intensified labour shortage, as border closures kept out thousands of off- shore seasonal agricultural workers became a reality check for agriculture.

Agriculture’s chronic labour shortage was well known before the crisis, but it has really ramped up the public conversation about dependency on foreign labour, and all the issues and complications that emerged this spring as fewer workers arrived, and critical time-sensitive seedling, planting and harvesting, and processing could not occur.

There are absolutely no easy answers to the labour issue, says Fraser, but what COVID-19 has made very evident is how much of Canada’s food system relies on not only these seasonal workers, but on grocery store clerks and those who work in meat packing plants, and who drive the trucks. Further, it’s shown how a lot of this labour is poorly compensated, or lacks job security or immigration status.

Will automation solve everything?

Catalyst for change

Events like pandemics are catalysts for change, and more jobs performed by robotics and fewer human hands may ultimately be an outcome, Fraser says.

“We know for instance that European meat packing plants are generally smaller and highly automated. My understanding is that they don’t use as much labour. We could see that kind of transition happening in Canada.”

So, yes, automation is likely part of the answer, especially where it converges with data science to increase system efficiency.

But we can’t forget that this in turn will increase the need for new skills, requiring schools to retool their programs to train agriculture’s future employees.

Of course, there is an opportunity too. “If we play our cards right as a country,” says Fraser, “we could become major technology exporters, and I think that’s an area of significant economic opportunity.”

Even in the best case, though, that switch won’t get flipped overnight, and, as Fraser also points out, it will be a huge transition for rural Canada and for our schools.

Long-term, it also raises questions about the thousands of workers who depend on the incomes earned from their seasonal, manual-labour jobs here.

“Maybe we can consider it’s not really our problem, but that’s not appropriate,” Fraser says.

There is no question that the effects of a global crisis like COVID-19 strike everywhere.

Every household

Every household, and every business, and every person with a job linked to Canadian agriculture will feel it at some point.

How well the rest of the world recovers in a post-COVID-19 world will be critical because for an exporting nation, a world where millions have lost incomes and livelihoods isn’t a planet growing wealthier and upgrading its subsistence diets.

Another of CAPI’s initiatives this spring has been to partner with the U.S.-based Farm Foundation on managing agricultural trade in an increasingly chaotic world.

Its virtual series with experts from around the world speaking on Canada’s role in the international trade system and issues related to global food security was posted this summer on CAPI’s website.

The impact on the most vulnerable has already been felt by Canadian households experiencing food insecurity.

It isn’t because Canada’s food system isn’t working.

When you don’t have money, food can be expensive, despite all the tireless efforts to keep the cost of producing it low. That’s as true globally as it is here at home.

Back in Thunder Bay, Brekveld knows how COVID- 19 is having an impact on farm households across the OFA membership, and Canadian farmers in general.

Canada’s food system is interconnected, but the base of that system is primary producers, and how they fare, and how well agriculture is poised to weather this storm and beyond depends on the stability of their incomes, she says.

Farmers will remain buffeted by trade disruptions and trade war winds, increasing tariff protection and other serious business risks they have no control over.

“We’ve come through a lot. I will not lie, some farmers will not make it through. They will perhaps exit the industry,” she says. “But as a whole, ag in Canada is here to stay.”

What may emerge from this is a new public consciousness about agriculture and food security, and she’s been heartened by the new connections she’s witnessed made between farmers and consumers these past months.

“I think people were looking for shorter value chains,” says Brekveld. “They wanted fewer hands to touch their food. They want to know the producer. I think this is a strengthening of the local food system in the long run.”

The post Pandemic planning: Groundwork appeared first on Country Guide.

Deere’s share rose 3.1 per cent to US$126.29 in premarket trading, and were set to open at their highest ever.

Wirtgen makes construction equipment used in laying roads and its products would be complementary to Deere’s portfolio, Deere said in a statement.

Deere makes equipment for part of the road-building process — loaders and dump trucks to load rocks into crushers from quarries, earthmoving tools at construction sites, and dozers and motorgraders that help grade roads.

Wirtgen makes crushers that break down large rocks, milling machines, plants to supply hot asphalt for road projects, and pavers and rollers. It has a network of company-owned and independent dealers in about 100 countries.

“The acquisition will help Deere diversify its business which has been heavily reliant on agriculture while improving the distribution of its North American–centric construction business,” William Blair analyst Lawrence De Maria told Reuters.

“While there are growth opportunities, this allows for greater scale in construction markets and extends the equipment portfolio.”

Deere’s sales had taken a hit over the past three years as bumper corn and soybeans harvests drove down prices, leaving farmers with less cash to spend on equipment. In Europe, the agriculture market was also under pressure due to lower farm income.

To cope, the company cut jobs and lowered production of its trademark green tractors and harvesting combines.

Last month, however, Deere said demand was improving in South America, and raised its full-year sales and profit forecast for the second time.

The company’s agriculture and turf business contributed about 70 per cent to its total revenue last year, while construction and forestry accounted for just over a fifth.

Deere said on Thursday it expected the Wirtgen acquisition to close in the first quarter of 2018.

— Reporting for Reuters by Rachit Vats in Bangalore.

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I was in a meeting and the people I was meeting weren’t neophytes. They know something about agriculture, or at least they say they do. In fact, they’re already making decisions for companies doing significant ag business.

And it’s clear they think farmers don’t put any more thought into farming than it takes to put a seed in the ground and hope that somehow it comes to harvest.

I won’t share their names. It wouldn’t be fair because, after all, it isn’t as if they’re at all unusual. I’d essentially be picking on them for a fault that is shared by so many others.

But it does make me think about the tremendous inefficiency there is in the system, when so few decision makers understand that farmers have the smarts and knowledge to be effective partners, not just commodity suppliers.

They have the same challenge I do, but we have exactly opposite ideas about it. We both are talking to farmers. But they spend all their time trying to simplify their messages while I — as I’ve said before, and I’m sure will say again — find that the hardest part of my job is sourcing writers who can meet the minimum standards of knowledge and insight required to deliver something worth reading to today’s farm audience.

This is at least as true for business management on the farm as it is for field or animal management.

What’s interesting to me is that with this issue of Country Guide, as with so many previous issues, we didn’t set out to put together a special on education or on skills management on the farm, but this is effectively what we have done.

What happened, instead, is that we went to farms across the country, and we listened.

Ask any lawyer, banker or accountant. They will tell you that farmers have not only gained incredible business literacy in the last 10 years, they have adopted an attitude of continuous learning toward it.

Now it’s the “experts” who have the challenge of keeping up with the farmers — which is as it should be.

Unfortunately, few outside of agriculture will read the features in this issue and see how each one portrays an agriculture that is firing on all cylinders, including on business management.

It used to be that farmers would laugh at how non-farmers get left behind by farm talk, and how, for instance, they’re flummoxed when farmers talk about forages or inoculants or any of a hundred other technologies.

But now, if two farmers are chatting in a city elevator, the non-farmers are as likely to be left behind by the business talk. What percentage of Canadians, I wonder, could understand more than the first sentence of Maggie Van Camp’s excellent story of farm corporations in our May/June issue?

Are we getting it right? Let me know at tom.button@fbcpublishing.com.

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