man holding an ice cream cone in an ice cream shop

Sask. creamery turns ice cream dream into reality

Sometimes your childhood dream can come true — and turn a delicious profit

Reading Time: 8 minutes It all started with a scoop of blueberry cheesecake ice cream from a creamery in Sicamous, B.C., more than ten years ago. About 13 years old, John Pruim was on a family road trip back to the province where he had spent his early years when the taste of farm fresh ice cream stirred something […] Read more

Farmers have great new ideas, but, says Penny Fox (inset), many store shelves are still empty.

The infrastructure gap in Canada’s agriculture and food sector

What is the ‘Missing Middle,’ and how can your investment in venture capital fix it?

Reading Time: 9 minutes There is a “Missing Middle” in Canada’s ag and food sector — a kind of bottleneck caused by how the country’s mid-sized ventures are getting swallowed up by the few large corporations that supply most of the food that Canadians buy. As problems go, this one might seem unimportant or maybe even irrelevant, but for […] Read more


Marketing to consumers is a whole new world but so is the opportunity, Who knew farmers would sell whisky in Abu Dhabi?

Milling grains into value-added food ideas

With consolidation and falling commodity prices as the new norm, more grain growers are making creative decisions

Reading Time: 3 minutes The number of Canadian grain farms is shrinking. Commodity prices are under pressure. Remaining growers are farming larger parcels of land. Increasingly, the answer to consolidation and falling commodity prices is vertical integration. It isn’t for every farm, but value-added products are starting to play an important role in how grain growers remain competitive. “We […] Read more



“When they feel that they can make a business out of it, that’s when they generally approach us to help them scale it up.” – Carmen Ly.

Summer Series: ‘Scale up your food ideas!’

[Make it Count] Is the time right to take your big idea to a food development centre? Today’s commodity prices may make this the best year ever to future-proof your farm

Reading Time: 12 minutes Could that idea that you’ve got buzzing around in the back of your head grow into a major commercial success if you took it to a food development centre? Who knows? And how much it would cost?  There’s a lot to learn about Canada’s food development centres, but the fact is, few of our farmers […] Read more

This was no overnight success,” Greg says. “It took us 15 years to get here.” It also took he and Cheryl learning how to combine their skills to set and achieve their goals.

Summer Series: Pivot, and then pivot some more

[Change Management] Why would this family abandon mainline commodities, and then dig in even deeper

Reading Time: 11 minutes Just making one of these moves would be a huge step for any farm, let alone both of them. First, the Haskett family switched their farm from hogs to goats. Then, years later, they pivoted their market strategy too, launching their own new brand. In this article, we dive deep into how the family made […] Read more



Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau and Parliamentary Ag Secretary Jean-Claude Poissant, at right, visited the Carrefour Alimentaire Centre-Sud in Montreal on June 17, 2019 to formally launch the federal Food Policy for Canada. in 2019 (Photo courtesy Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada)

Feds disburse funds on community food security projects

Since 2019 the Local Food Infrastructure Fund has committed $64.8 million to such projects

Reading Time: < 1 minute Wednesday, federal agriculture minister Lawrence MacAulay announced up to $9.98 million in funding for community food projects through the fifth phase of the Local Food Infrastructure Fund, an outworking of the Food Policy for Canada.