Reading Time: 8 minutes Admittedly, it’s hard to say exactly what makes any innovation a success, or why farms are such fertile ground for new ideas. Maybe it’s the opportunity to test new ideas under real-world conditions. Or because farmers are so practical, or so resourceful, or because they know how to persevere. Or, today, maybe it’s more likely […] Read more
Farm At Hand farm app turns into an angel of an idea
As Kim Keller is proving, the test today is whether we can get innovative about how we handle our innovations
Talking up the job. Creating common ground between the farmer and consumer
What’s wrong with letting consumers know just how professional you have to be to grow their food in Canada today?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Every farmer has one. For Manitoba’s Rolf Penner, his aha moment came a few years back, when he suddenly realized just how hard it is for a farmer to talk to non-farmers about his business. Penner and a farming friend were on a weekend getaway with their spouses. Neither wife had a farming background. As […] Read more
Editor’s Desk: Are they right this time?
Reading Time: 2 minutes You’ll find no shortage of things to disagree with in our July/August issue of Country Guide. If you don’t, it means we haven’t worked hard enough. My sense is that the future of farming is going to turn out to be just the other side of incredible. Probably, it’s your sense of the future too. If […] Read more
VIDEO: Moving your farm data from field to cloud
Reading Time: < 1 minute Cloud computing is coming to the farm. For more information on what cloud computing is, how it might benefit your farm, and what you need to think about before you send your data to the cloud, check out this interview with Kim Keller. Kim Keller is co-founder of Farm At Hand, an app that allows […] Read more
JCB finds niche in the North American farm equipment market
JCB used to be a construction brand. Now it is a farm brand too, with advanced materials-handling capability
Reading Time: 5 minutes In early March I spent a day in a Georgia field with a line of JCB equipment designed especially for the ag market, including the unique Fastrac tractor that is capable of breaking speed limits in the field. Then that evening, I joined other ag journalists in Savannah for dinner with some of the U.K.-based […] Read more
Five big ideas to help take your farm in the right direction
It's time to be a game changer. Choose the right business priorities and make your move
Reading Time: 11 minutes The year is at half-time, and you’re the coach. Most of the crop is in the ground, the spring rush is coming to an end, the team is winded. It’s a time when you can make a difference. You can be in charge; you can draw up new plays, analyze your strategy and motivate your […] Read more
Editor’s Desk: The question of farm growth
Reading Time: 2 minutes It was a question that went all around the table. I was in Illinois with a group of Canadian and American farmers, and the discussion leader kept track of all their answers on a whiteboard. Here’s the question. In the last 30 to 40 years, how much has your family expanded the number of acres […] Read more
Time management for farmers can make for less stress
How do you manage today’s increased workload without hitting the red zone?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Growing up on a farm in upstate New York, Julie Gray thought she was learning lessons that she could share with executives and entrepreneurs in virtually every other line of business. It turns out she was learning lessons that today’s farmers need to learn too. From her office near Washington, DC, Gray is now an […] Read more
The farm drones are getting closer
Airframe, camera and computer technologies are rapidly evolving in favour of farmer applications
Reading Time: 5 minutes The next revolution in farming isn’t about chemistry or genetics. It’s about scouting, and the good news is that the enabling technology has come several giant steps closer in just the last two years, thanks to unmanned aerial vehicles (popularly called UAVs or drones) which offer a visual platform for scientific crop monitoring. Drones are […] Read more
Tractor simulator bridges the gap between operator and computer
Simulators are helping engineers finally figure out how best to get your brain and the tractor’s brain working together
Reading Time: 6 minutes It’s a good run with the tractor this time. The driver has no trouble piloting a straight line across the field, the machine is humming happily, and the display monitor confirms that all is well. The discs are cutting nicely through the field trash too, and the seed is getting dropped right on target. Then […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
