Reading Time: 6 minutes “Every other business in this country has access to outside investors and outside capital; why shouldn’t farmers have that too?” asks the CEO of Canada’s largest provider of land-lease financing for farmers. “Farmers should have all the same financial tools that a tech company or a mining company does,” Tom Eisenhauer tells us. “That’s what […] Read more
Summer Series: The lease-back business of farmland
[Land] The future according to Bonnefield CEO Tom Eisenhauer
Summer Series: The right farm team
[Land] It’s the Catch-22 of the decade. Either buy that ultra-expensive land or someone else will. How do you make that decision?
Reading Time: 8 minutes Two years ago in June, Terry Aberhart got a call from an account manager at the land investment company that, at the time, was leasing him about 2,000 acres of his roughly 15,000-acre operation. “Hey, we’ve been having some unsolicited offers come in,” the voice on the line said. The account manager went on: “In […] Read more
Summer Series: Business on the ground
[Land] With these land prices, can young farmers hope to ever write a sensible business plan? Maybe, but it’ll take innovative thinking
Reading Time: 6 minutes It’s a daunting mix for young farmers. Land prices are soaring, production costs are climbing, interest rates are uncertain. And that’s not to mention the mix of international politics, market volatility and weather woes that are breeding black swans at historic rates. With 2024 almost here, it’s hard to be any age. But how would […] Read more
Summer Series: In search of bargain farmland
[Land] Are there still any great deals on Canadian farmland? Where are they, and what’s the catch?
Reading Time: 12 minutes On the surface, the news isn’t great for farmers looking to expand. Everywhere you look, it’s a seller’s market. The law of supply-demand is working against you, with multiple bidders on practically every property. Technology seems like it’s against you too. Check out our accompanying story “New ways to buy and sell farmland”. The days […] Read more
Summer Series: Win from the sidelines
[Land] The spike in farmland prices has boosted the equity of farmers all across Canada. We ask McGill economist Pascal Theriault, is this a historic opportunity?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Are farmers leveraging their new-found equity to generate new business opportunities or farm wealth? To explore what farmland values mean for farms and farming across Canada, Country Guide sat down with Pascal Thériault, agricultural economist at Macdonald Campus, McGill University and vice-president of Quebec’s Ordre des agronomes. Country Guide (CG): The specifics vary across the […] Read more
Summer Series: A ‘real’ solution for managing change
[Change Management] Resilient people don’t let their imaginations run away with them. They train themselves to see their problems as challenges, not worries, and they get real about fixing them
Reading Time: 5 minutes Change and challenge affect everyone differently. Even so, research by the American Psychological Association shows we can get better at handling life-changing and stressful situations over time. We can acquire coping skills, a.k.a. resilience. As farmers, we’ve experienced repeated setbacks and we’ve been able to explore our resilience boundaries over the last few years (COVID-19, […] Read more
Summer Series: Make retirement your best years
[Change Management] Live more, spend more. Don’t abandon the habits of lifetime, but be generous to yourselves
Reading Time: 4 minutes With recent increases in land prices, farmers exiting agriculture will realize an influx of cash. But after a lifetime of saving for lean years and re-investing profits back into the farm, some retiring farmers will have difficulty increasing their spending accordingly. Retirement professionals have a name for this phenomenon. When actual spending is less than […] Read more
Summer Series: What is a cohabitation agreement?
[Change Management] Better ideas on prenups that will protect the farm from broken relationships
Reading Time: 4 minutes Although most of us know them as prenuptial, “prenup” or interspousal agreements, the legal term most often used in Canada is a cohabitation agreement. Within the Canadian legal system, a cohabitation agreement is used to describe a written contract between two people entering a common-law relationship or marriage. Other jurisdictions may use other terms, but […] Read more
Summer Series: Assessing your farm’s financial horsepower
[Change Management] It’s going to pay to keep your financials in order in 2024, and beyond
Reading Time: 3 minutes Every year, we go through harvest with our grain. Then there comes a harvest season of a different sort — the bookkeeping and the accounting that needs to get caught up to “close the books.” Unfortunately, some accountants can get backed up like grain terminals in winter. Farm files trickle in until eventually the accountant’s […] Read more
Summer Series: Stress in a volatile world
[Change Management] When the world spins so erratically, can you stop yourself spinning too?
Reading Time: 4 minutes “There is nothing left in the tank,” says Beverly Beuermann-King. She sees it regularly. “People get tapped out … One more thing can throw them over the edge.” The phenomenon is what Beuermann-King works on as a resiliency and stress expert, and even if that sounds like a trendy new specialism it has actually been […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
