Guarding Wealth: Buying risk, paying for liquidity

Guarding Wealth: Buying risk, paying for liquidity

Price-earnings ratios are a useful way to analyze your investment decisions

What do you get when you invest in capital markets? You might say stocks or bonds, mutual funds or units in real estate investment trusts. That answer is both true and false. You do get ownership of those things, but in a more analytical sense, what you are really getting is risk — any stock […] Read more

Coverage is key when using desiccants

Coverage is key when using desiccants

A crop desiccant is an herbicide intended for the rapid drydown of the crop, not for long-term weed management. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that applying a diquat-based desiccant entails a few distinctive “best practices.” Firstly, you need to use a higher water volume. Contact desiccants should be applied with at least 20 […] Read more


The zero- to four-inch level is the new topsoil hauled in from the lower land. The four- to seven-inch level is what passed for topsoil for many years. It’s really upper subsoil.

Precision ag on Blackstrap farm

Extracting a soil sample to help identify a problem

My Dundurn farm is rolling Weyburn/Elstow loam with some very eroded knolls. For many years the combine raced over the knolls with little pouring in the hopper. The erosion over the decades was by water, but much of it from annual tillage — especially in the days of summerfallow. A few years ago I acquired a […] Read more

Good communication is key to a successful farm transition

Good communication is key to a successful farm transition

Finding common ground is a good way to move things along as long as both parties buy in

This is the final part of our series on succession. We’ve looked back over the last 10 years identifying successes and messes that we’ve witnessed in business transitions. From here we developed an extensive list of reasons why those transitions were successful or what caused them to go off the rails. We grouped this list […] Read more


The challenges of precision ag

The challenges of precision ag

The technology for variable rate fertilizer is well established. But the agronomy is still catching up

Precision agriculture, including variable rate fertilizer, is commonplace in farm literature and has been for many years now. But despite the hype, the actual adoption of the practice has been slow. Ask for a show of hands at any farm meetings and the result surprises many. GPS and autosteer is commonplace and has made a […] Read more

From good planning comes review

From good planning comes review

The crop is in the ground. Now it’s time to put your marketing plan under review

These were my final comments in my last column: “As a primary producer you are fully exposed to these market swings and fluctuations so you need to be prepared to react when they happen to protect your bottom line. Have a marketing and pricing plan in place that incorporates ways of protecting yourself when futures […] Read more


Sometimes, the biggest hurdle to getting winter crops seeded is having the right mindset.

Rye, oh rye?

Got the unseeded acre blues? Consider this fall cereal

I’ve heard it called a poor man’s crop, a niche market, prehistoric and a weed. Fall rye brings out strong feelings in some farmers and is completely off the radar of others. With unseeded and now flooded acres across the Prairies, there might be a fit for fall rye in some crop rotations. Penny-pinching crop […] Read more

Store ag chemicals safely

Pesticides are often a necessary part of farm production. Agricultural chemicals present risks to farmers, agricultural workers, children, livestock and the environment if not used and stored properly. Farmers generally only purchase enough agricultural chemicals for one growing season, reducing the need for long-term storage. However, it is sometimes necessary to store agricultural chemicals. The first step for […] Read more


Mineral bioavailability is key

Mineral bioavailability is key

Absorption, retention of minerals and a good metabolism make for successful dairy cattle

Although trace minerals make up a very small portion of the diets of high-producing dairy cows, they have a tremendous impact upon each animal’s health, reproduction and milk production status. Minerals play vital roles in the activation of enzyme systems that drive almost every biochemical reaction in the cow’s body. Of particular importance are trace […] Read more

Precision matters with fusarium

Even the best wheat fungicides only offer suppression of fusarium head blight (FHB), so it’s crucial to follow label instructions closely to protect as much of your hard-won yield and quality as possible. The application window for most FHB fungicides is as short as two to three days, so timing is tight. This coincides with […] Read more