Reading Time: 7 minutes Increasingly, Canada’s farmers are looking to leadership programs to help them achieve more and to give their operations and people their best chances for success. Programs create confidence — which, we’re learning, is an incredibly productive outcome all by itself — they build new networks and ways of thinking, and they inspire better team performance. […] Read more
Making a smart choice
An incredible array of leadership training programs are available in Canada. Which one is right for you?
New school: The business concept that reshaped the Meunier farm
Growing numbers of mid-career farmers are enrolling in high-level business programs aimed at the farm. The experience can be transformational
Reading Time: 9 minutes [UPDATED: Jan. 9, 2023] We were feeling stuck,” Stacey Meunier recalls. For her and for husband Chad, the future was on hold. They knew what they wanted — to take over Paul Meunier and Sons Farms Limited, their family’s mixed farming operation in Barrhead, Alta., an hour and a half north of Edmonton — but […] Read more
The problem with solving problems
Bright Ideas: We all think we're great at solving problems on the farm. The truth is, it isn't so hard to get a lot better
Reading Time: 5 minutes There are right ways and wrong ways to solve problems. This is a fact. It’s real. Fortunately, though, problem-solving is a learnable skill. We can all get better at it. The Oxford dictionary defines a problem as “a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.” Meanwhile, […] Read more
It’s about winning
The 2020s are best the argument yet for farm business planning. CG sits down with economist Michael von Massow to explore why
Reading Time: 9 minutes It’s hard to make a plan that will stick. We all know it. The pressure of things you need to do today can overshadow the importance of getting ready for the things you might want to be doing five years from now. Besides, you have a good four years left. Surely there will be a […] Read more
On board with insight
With its new advisory board, the Leguee family is tapping into the smarts of a group of incredibly talented, experienced business people. Their farm needs it, Jake says. “The decisions we’re making these days are big.”
Reading Time: 11 minutes When a farm or a farmer’s name comes up, you’ll sometimes hear other farmers say, “That one’s progressive.” But what does that really mean? Of course it means they are interested in new ideas, new research and new opportunities. But that is true of all farms, so it has to be more than just that. […] Read more
Editor’s Note: More than a crystal ball
Reading Time: 2 minutes In all of Canada’s history, will this be the most important winter ever for scoping out what you’ll need your farm to look like in five and in 20 years? I’m always saying that the thing consumers don’t know about farming is that it’s a life of decision- making. When you factor in the value […] Read more
Editor’s Note: A test to restore faith in the farm
Reading Time: 2 minutes Two questions keep many farm families awake at night. Can your next generation be reasonably expected to preserve and grow the farm’s net value? Could you do it, facing what they face? As I wrote some four years ago in this space, “Fortunately, science can help.” Every issue of Country Guide deals with this issue. […] Read more
Everywhere he looks: How does this Alberta farmer find so much opportunity?
“There are opportunities everywhere,” says Alberta farmer Glenn Logan. “You just have to pick and choose what might work for you.”
Reading Time: 13 minutes Glenn Logan has two projects on the go that are taking a pile of his energy at a time in his life when many farmers are happy with what they have already accomplished. And once again, his projects are raising eyebrows. Partly, that’s because the Alberta farmer has decided to take 920 acres out of […] Read more
Editor’s Note: Making up your mind in 2022
It’s what people who aren’t business leaders rarely understand. Leadership means knowing how to make big decisions when you don’t have full information, like this year
Reading Time: 2 minutes I have been asking myself this question all spring. I’m sure you have been too. Five years from now, when we look back at 2022, who are we going to say made the best decisions? Who pulled the right levers? What choices turned out to be the right decisions? Which turned out to be not […] Read more
Does your farm plan position you for a summer payoff?
In today’s agriculture, summer is becoming the essential business season of the year. Now, with these five strategies, you can get even more out of it
Reading Time: 9 minutes At Hebert Grain Ventures in Saskatchewan, they actually have a word for it. They call it the “harvest hangover.” It’s those three weeks after the last of the crop has come out of the field when, somehow, nothing much seems ever to get accomplished. “Once the fall season hits, things go out the window,” says […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
