Reading Time: 5 minutes Transitioning the farm to the next generation is an emotionally loaded process. Sometimes, not surprisingly, it can get bogged down and no one really knows what to do to get things moving again. This is a pattern Humboldt, Sask. farm succession coach Patti Durand has ofen seen when working with 350 farm families from across […] Read more
Sharing your farm’s story with the next generation
Share your farm’s history and stories about your own early years to give succession a boost
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 a second farm corporation may help you at tax time
[The "Next" Issue] If you’re farming with just one corporation, you may be missing a tax trick
Reading Time: 9 minutes Not that many decades ago, Canadian farmers were wondering if they should incorporate their farms or keep on running their businesses as sole proprietorships. Now farmers are asking, ‘how many corporations should we have?” As incorporated farmers make more sophisticated strategic plans, many are adding more than one corporation to their family portfolio. Alongside farm […] 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: How do you know when the younger generation is ‘ready’?
[Leadership] AME Management: How succession can be successfully planned
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s a tough question for any family business to ask and answer. How do you know when the next generation is equipped to take over management decisions and lead the business into its next chapter? This article offers some tips.– April Stewart, CG Associate Editor A tough question for any family business is how to […] Read more
Summer Series: Making a leader
[Leadership] As farms get bigger and more complex, more farmers like Steve Koeckhoven are drawing leadership insights from other business sectors
Reading Time: 10 minutes On-farm leadership is more than the skills we usually think of when defining a leader. This article looks at what farm leadership is really about.– April Stewart, CG Associate Editor When we think of strong leaders we often leap to examples like politicians, sport coaches and the CEOs of large corporations, so it’s little surprise […] Read more
Editor’s Note: Who deserves today’s farm?
Reading Time: 2 minutes The word “entitlement” gets tossed around a lot in agriculture. “Oh,” somebody has always said, “the kids act like they’re entitled to the best truck money can buy.” Or, “Oh, he acts like he’s so entitled to a voice in how this farm is run.” In 2023, we’re sensing the entitlement charge is getting bigger […] Read more
Major strawberry plant producer changes hands
New owners get funding to buy Lareault business
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Quebec company billed as Canada’s largest producer of strawberry plants has picked up new ownership after nearly 70 years. Production Lareault, based on just over 450 acres at Lavaltrie, Que. — about 40 km northeast of Montreal, in the province’s Lanaudiere region — has been acquired by investors Antoine Casimir and Andrea Borodenko for […] Read more
International farmers may ease Canadian human capital crunch
A global retirement crunch is coming and Canada is ill prepared, report says
Reading Time: 3 minutes As other nations reduce their agricultural footprints in an effort to boost sustainability, their loss could be Canada’s human capital gain, a new report suggests. “The immigration of scientists, data engineers, and entrepreneurs has been recognized as critical to Canada’s growth. A similar approach needs to be adopted to attract farmers,” the authors wrote. The […] Read more
A farm that lasts
Founders’ fees and amortized sales restrictions are just two of the growing list of strategies that farm families are adapting to ensure their farm survives for future generations
Reading Time: 5 minutes Maybe nothing has ever been certain on the farm, but today it feels more true than ever before. There’s so much more to worry about than just weather and weeds. Who could ever imagine the global supply chain would be turned upside down by a virus? Or that you wouldn’t be able to source parts […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
