Reading Time: 3 minutes From the time we are born stories help us learn important lessons. Every day I look around for stories that can help me understand what is or isn’t working on our farm. It might be small anecdotes or maybe a line from an employee or a supplier that sticks with me. If I can understand […] Read more
How to develop a leader’s mindset at every stage of your career
Summer Series: Leadership looks different at every stage of your farm career. And the stories you hear, the ones you seek out or the ones you tell yourself all effect how you lead
Can slowing down farm succession really work?
Summer Series: Designating more time to the farm transition process can mean less stress and more choices
Reading Time: 4 minutes When I ask farmers to guess how long it will take to complete a transition plan, they usually say one to two years. The reality is that it takes much longer. In a 2017 survey by Business Development Canada (BDC), five out of six entrepreneurs believed that the transition process can be completed in two […] Read more
New Farm Credit Canada loan option aims to ease farm ownership transfers
FCC hopes their new enhanced transition loan will make farm succession easier for both farm buyer and seller
Reading Time: 2 minutes Farm Credit Canada's enhanced transition loan meant to offer better financial terms, flexibility for farm and agribusiness assets changing hands.
When farm plans fail
If you’ve been talking for years about planning something for the farm, maybe it’s time to look at why you’re stuck
Reading Time: 3 minutes “It’s been 10 years, and we still don’t have a plan.” If this sounds like something you’ve said to yourself, have you also asked, “Why don’t we?” Ten years talking about making a plan but still not having it written down, or not making any real changes in the way your farm operates, can be […] Read more
Saskatchewan farmers adapt to professional and personal transitions
From retirement to adapting operations, today’s farmers are making transitions like never before. Here’s how two farmers used them to grow
Reading Time: 4 minutes The agriculture industry is grappling with change, perhaps more than ever before. Which is why it’s also more important than ever for farmers to understand how to navigate transitions, both professional and personal, successfully. Lesley Kelly has seen a lot of change throughout her career and she’s grateful for that — despite the fact that […] Read more
An evolving vision
First-gen farmers share their blueprint for business transition
Reading Time: 5 minutes When it comes to starting and growing a business, you’re only limited by your imagination. For Belmont, Manitoba first-generation farmers Lydia Carpenter and her husband Wian Prinsloo, it’s that type of unlimited, outside-the-box thinking that has become their regular way of thinking. Over the years, they’ve leveraged multiple income streams, a direct-to-consumer marketing beef business, […] Read more
Building a farm succession plan for the whole family
Today there’s more opportunity than ever to write or tweak a succession plan to drive the success of your entire family. But there’s still a lot of opportunity for it to go off the rails too
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s been like a strain of Covid that attacks the farm business. It even started about the same time as the bug, ramping up in late 2020 when farmland values really began heating up. In fact, when you looked at the FCC graphs showing the spikes in land prices across Canada over the following months, […] Read more
How the farm succession landscape is changing
Eighty per cent of Annessa Good-Hassard’s clients come to her today wanting to gift or leave their farmland to non-farming children. And that may not be the biggest change in the new succession planning
Reading Time: 6 minutes It’s no secret. Succession planning involves bringing in the experts. But that’s nothing new. Farm families have been calling in lawyers, accountants and business advisors to help with their transition planning for decades. But don’t try saying there’s nothing new about those advisors today. Or about what they’re bringing to more and more farms. It […] Read more
Summer Series: Coming home to farm
[Make It Count] Don’t expect the keys to be waiting, warns Andy Caygeon Junkin. Instead, carve out a path to self-improvement
Reading Time: 6 minutes Let’s imagine you have just come back to the family farm. You have completed your diploma or degree, your head is full of ideas, your energy is overflowing, and you are absolutely itching to sit down and have a conversation with Mom and Dad about when and how you are going to take over the […] Read more
Summer Series: You forgot who?
[Change Management] When Mom and Dad feel they’re being pushed out of the way, all sorts of bad things happen
Reading Time: 5 minutes The Irish government thought it was such a great idea. The year was 2007, and in Ireland, as in the Canada of that time, few farms were setting up formal transition or succession plans. The Irish government had also begun asking itself what would happen when age or ill health finally pushes all those farmers […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
