Is your farm family ag safe? It's Canadian Ag Safety Week, and the Canadian Agriculture Safety Association has once again teamed up with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture for the third year of its three-year campaign helping families farm safe. Each of the three years focused on a different generation of the family farm. This... Read More
Category: Farm Management
Three transition experts share their advice on the best way for the next generation to start the farm transition conversation. Show them you mean business Since any successful inter-generational transition must become a business transaction, I’ve found that young people who begin with a business approach tend to be taken more seriously. What’s this look... Read More
While running their last venture, Farm At Hand, Kim Keller and business partner Himanshu Singh started a mental health initiative called "Here for Farmers," a t-shirt fundraising campaign focused on supporting mental wellness in the agriculture community. Outside of the campaign, however, the calls kept coming in, asking for help finding mental health resources in... Read More
Despite armies of well-meaning accountants, bankers and consultants urging them to do so, many Canadian farm families don’t have a plan in place to transfer ownership between generations. It could be the word succession that’s getting in the way. This can imply an abrupt change, when the older generation is booted out to pasture and... Read More
If drought concerns, disease pressure, or low commodity prices have you scratching your head on crop rotation tweaks, Alberta farmers have access to two, free crop planning and profitability programs offered by the provincial agriculture department. The first program, Crop Choice$, allows farmers to input their own costs and yield expectations, and is also fully... Read More
Just like highly successful people share several traits, highly profitable farms share consistent attributes. Regardless of farm type or geography, there are farmer traits and business management practices common to profitable farms. "The number one practice driving farm profitability is lifelong learning and your commitment to building your skills," says Heather Watson, executive director of... Read More
We live in an age of disruption. Middle man getting in the way? Just work around them. Whether it's ride-sharing such as Uber, house rentals via Air BnB, or crowdfunding to make something happen, several established industries are in the midst of a I-can-do-it-myself revolution. For highly competitive, highly regulated industries, such as taxis and... Read More
Ontario farmers have a new cost-share program to help them reduce their carbon footprint and become more energy efficient. The GreenON Agriculture program, recently announced by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, is specifically aimed at producers of agricultural commodities in permanent, climate-controlled buildings. The Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association will... Read More
Ontario's soils are losing organic matter. What builds organic matter? Perennial and forage species! But if you're going to plant perennial hay or pasture, you have to have something to feed it to or you won't be farming long enough to see the value of the added organic matter. And that's a slight problem, as... Read More
With the five-year Growing Forward 2 agriculture framework wrapping up next month, federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay launched six federal programs under the new Canadian Agricultural Partnership (CAP) at the Canada's Agriculture Day celebration in Ottawa on Tuesday. CAP is the acronym for the new $3 billion, five-year federal-provincial-territorial agriculture funding agreement that begins on... Read More