Tuesday nights are pretty important on Twitter if you're involved in agriculture. Tuesday nights are #AgChat nights — a few hours of moderated conversation on a particular topic of interest for farmers, industry and anyone else interested in agriculture. Last night's topic was farm business management. Farmers and aspiring farmers alike weighed in on questions... Read More
Category: Finance
Knowing where you're at as a business is a critically important component in making good business decisions. Building a financial dashboard gives you one of the most singularly important tools to be able to do that. A financial dashboard gives you a quick overview of the financial history of your business. It gives you a... Read More
Choosing financial software for your business is a custom fit kind of operation. There are a number of things to consider when you make that choice that are uniquely tied to your business, allowing you to expand and grow without having to switch programs. Ideally, your software should be as customizable as your business. With... Read More
Have you ever been to a farm meeting and there is a speaker talking about the cost of production? Do you ever feel like they are speaking no different than the teacher in Charlie Brown? Farming is business and businesses need to know their cost of production. Guessing your cost per acre is just not... Read More
Over the past couple of days, I have been reading and seeing a bunch of different articles in relation to keeping young farmers on the farm and attracting first generation farmers. My question? Why is it any different than any other entrepreneurial business. I’m sure that there are tens of thousands of people across Canada... Read More
Have you ever heard the saying, "hope is not a plan." This is a great saying that is very applicable in agriculture. It is very critical to ensure that you are creating the proper roadmap. This should include projections on production, prices and yields. This also includes plans for capital expenditures in the coming year.... Read More
Farming is a unique business. It involves every aspect of business you can imagine from shovelling to marketing. It's that diversity that can make successful farming a challenge. Many farmers may be good at one or two aspects of the buiness but not so good at the others. This can have devastating consequences if you're... Read More
We have all heard the saying, "what goes up must come down," but does that maybe not apply to land values? This week FCC released its newest version of the Farm Credit Canada Farmland Values Report and the results continue to verify the upward trend of land values. It is becoming ever more difficult to... Read More
For a lot of farmers marketing wheat can be a lot like playing "Let's Make a Deal". You pick what's behind door number one and hope it's better than what's behind doors two and three. It's guesswork and a lot of luck. For other farmers, it feels like you're preparing to write a thesis, with... Read More
When agricultural commodity prices rise there are expected effects. Costs like fertilizer prices and machinery costs are always natural to rise in a rising commodity market. One of the costs that has not been discussed much is rising farmland rent costs. Ontario has some of the highest land rent rates in Canada for the major... Read More