By Dick Haney Succession, or as some call it- Sucksession, the silent killer of small business, is potentially the Ebola disease of family business longevity. I am going to approach this topic from a different number of directions over the course of a number of weeks. This topic will be analyzed and dissected from the… Read More
By Shaun Haney There was a time when your banker was your friend, your confident and your advisor. This was especially true in agriculture where farmers had a very close relationship with the man that was lending them the money. Your banker lived in the community, he knew your business, he analyzed it, and gave… Read More
If you are interested in politics and economics like I am there is no more interesting fodder every night on the television than in the United States. I love debates and conflict on topics and the US has no shortage of them right now. Whether you are right, left or moderate you cannot deny the… Read More
The last seven years have not been kind to the income statement and balance sheet of the cattle feeder in Canada. With that has come a harsh reality for many small to mid €“sized feeders that were dealing at schedule one banks. Many on the schedule ones have decided to focus on the larger feeders… Read More
By Dick Haney At the risk of sounding like the Saturday Night Live character Debbie Downer, there is a potential evil that lurks among us; it is how we leverage equity in our operations to buy more agricultural farm land. I think it would be useful to examine the similarities between Las Vegas and financial… Read More
It’s no secret or will it shock you if I told you that I think farmers are terrible at succession planning. If most of you reflected on your own personal situations I would assume you would say that you agree. The question that arises is, if we know this to be true, why do we… Read More
We have lots of cows in Canadian Agriculture, but we also have some sacred cows a well. One of these is the ability to shelter income through the cash method of reporting farming income. For those who don€™t know how this works, it is a simplistic formula whereby as long as you have more expenses than… Read More
By Shaun Haney It has always been the practice in agriculture if more than one sibling decides to take over the family farm that the farm will be split into separate entities. I know that in my own family’s case in the late seventies, my grandfather and his brother split the farm into two separate… Read More
By Shaun Haney Agriculture has some untouchable topics that we are just not supposed to talk about. One of them is dealing with aging farm workers. On the farm we are taught to respect our elders but in some cases in agriculture we take this to high levels of absurdity. Recently, in northern Alberta… Read More
There and many different reasons for a company to want to make the “big deal.” Some are looking for efficiency, some strive for an increase in scope, and others just see the value at certain levels. Lately the agri-business sector is under intense media coverage with the running and gunning in the marketplace by company’s… Read More
Many people look at services like Google from just the front end which is search. Google is really more about the back end application of data. The search engine allows them to collect infinite bytes of data so that they can make advertising revenue from the searcher. The better the data set that Google has… Read More
When we think about the threat to family farms we might talk about industry consolidation, farm commodity depreciation, access to qualified workers, rising input costs or market volatility. All of these things are threats to the survival of Canadian family farms but maybe the biggest threat was not included in this above list. In my… Read More
The Canadian Dollar is known as a commodity currency but as of late the European Union financial situation is playing havoc with the Canadian currency. Many feedyard and cattle ranchers are really getting stressed out by how violently the dollar has moved in the recent months. As we have mentioned before on this website, it… Read More
When we read about innovation in business magazines we commonly see companies like Apple that produce cool gadgets and personal devices. We frequently see car companies or advertising agencies with flashy designs or cool strategies getting recognized for innovation but why not agriculture? What do you think? As a farmer do you consider yourself innovative?… Read More
By Shaun Haney With the advancing average age of the North American farmer we have a critical situation at hand. We need to get more young people in the business of farming. Now I am not talking about getting more young people into the ag-industry. I am talking about getting them on the… Read More
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