Reading Time: 10 minutes Associate editor Maggie Van Camp travelled to Zambia through an International Federation of Agricultural Journalists investigation into the country’s challenges and opportunities. One farm was ultra-modern and 74,000 acres, she reports. Others struggle with basic subsistence. The future may need both. Driving to Nsongwe, Zambia from tourist-rich Livingstone is a tooth-rattling, 30-minute adventure through a […] Read more
The roads of Zambia
We’ve always known the country’s agriculture potential is massive. Now there are signs it is being opened up
The business of owning farmland
Farmers are land investors too, but are we any good at it?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Of course, farmers integrate their real estate into their production business, with land and buildings used for the growing of crops and production of livestock. Importantly, too, the asset value is used as collateral to secure financing. As well, farm real estate is often the main retirement fund. There is no question, too, that farmland […] Read more
The land question
Can you build a sustainable farm on rented land?
Reading Time: 6 minutes It’s hard to acquire new dirt. Even if you can convince yourself that today’s spiking land prices are still affordable, competition from other farmers, developers and investors adds up to a red-hot real estate market. And retiring farmers aren’t necessarily selling their acres either, which leaves many young farmers counting themselves very, very lucky if […] Read more
Are you marketing, or speculating?
University of Minnesota’s online Commodity Challenge can be a great place to improve your marketing skills
Reading Time: 4 minutes This year’s drop in grain prices, together with many producers’ inability in the West to deliver contracted grain, has left farmers scrambling to maximize revenues and even to generate some cash flow from last year’s production. Many seem to be jumping into new marketing strategies. But first, they should ask themselves, their grain buyers, their marketing advisers, and their commodity brokers (if they […] Read more
Ottawa’s gamble
A year after pulling the plug on the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, Ottawa is funding a new generation of Ukrainian co-ops
Reading Time: 6 minutes When Camil Côté landed in Ukraine’s capital Kiev last July, he was on a mission to establish grain co-operatives in a country that used to be the breadbasket of the Soviet Union. But if there was any irony in a Canadian going to the heartland of communism to build new co-ops, it wasn’t on anyone’s […] Read more
Too young to grow?
Canada’s next generation of farmers are smart, ambitious — and trapped on small acreages
Reading Time: 7 minutes As land prices ride high across Canada, it’s a struggle for young and mid-career farmers to compete against established farms and outside investors to buy land, or even to find it. They also need to ask themselves some tough questions. How much can I afford to pay? Can I service the debt? And then there’s […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
