The grains complex continues to deal with decent growing conditions, better than expected yields, and a tougher global markets environment. This week we saw the market volatility index spike to levels not seen since last year when Russia was invading Ukraine (translation: market participants are pulling dollars out and parking it in cash positions as... Read More
Category: Farm Management
The Canadian Total Excellence in Agricultural Management (CTEAM) course offered by Agri-Food Management Excellence (AME) is open for fall registration until October 30, 2015. CTEAM is a national farm management training program for farmers and ranchers, that uses participants' own farm data to create a strategy and develop a plan specifically for their farm or... Read More
A guest column by Frayne Olson, Crops Economist at North Dakota State University A farmer recently asked a very simple but extremely relevant question at a market outlook meeting: "Will I ever see high grain prices again in my lifetime?" The farmer asking this question started his farming career in the early 1980s and remembers... Read More
According to Statistics Canada, over half a million acres of productive (class 1-3) farmland was "settled" between 2000 and 2011. This "settled area" on dependable agricultural land grew by 19 percent in Canada, with the largest increase happening in southern Ontario and Quebec. The loss of farmland isn't a new phenomenon (the last time people... Read More
Coffee shop talk is often revered and repeated, but is it completely honest? What if, instead of comparing your farm and farm practices across the fence row, you instead sat down with farmers from one hundred kilometers away and compared notes? What could you learn? That's the concept behind formal peer advisory groups, explains Dr... Read More
Farm Management Canada is set to host the newly relaunched Agriculture Excellence Conference in Regina, Sask., this November 25-27, 2015. The theme of this year's event is 'Cultivating the Entrepreneurial Farmer,' and that theme will be carried through a moderated debate on social license, a panel on the future of farming, roundtable sessions, engaging keynote... Read More
The Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC) announced this week the list of individuals who now form the advisory group for the Supporting the Advancement of Women in Agriculture project. The project, funded through the Status of Women Canada, will “examine and address critical barriers to advancement facing women in the industry.” From there, the... Read More
The second annual Robert (Bob) L. Ross scholarship program is now accepting applications. The scholarship is offered by Agri-Food Management Excellence (AME) in collaboration with Farm Management Canada, Family Farms Group and the Ross Family. Applications must be received by September 15, 2015 The successful recipient will receive free tuition to the CTEAM (Canadian Total... Read More
“Lean” principles originally developed to increase efficiency and reduce waste in the automobile manufacturing sector are being applied in many other business and process-related sectors, including primary agriculture. Toyota is often credited as the first company to develop and intentionally implement Lean principles in their assembly lines decades ago. Last year, the Agri-Food Management Institute,... Read More
How does that old saying go? Crop prices take the stairs up but the elevator down. It could be said that crop input prices do the exact opposite. Price trends of both variable and fixed inputs seem to march to their own drum. Variable input prices are slow to back off highs; fixed costs can... Read More