More Control, Less Rush: Using Cash Advances to Strengthen Marketing Decisions

Mar 17, 2026

Farming is one of the most capital-intensive businesses in Canada. Seed, fuel, fertilizer and land costs go out months before crop revenue comes in. And while yields and markets can fluctuate, input costs are constant and high.

That’s why cash flow strategy matters as much as production strategy. In the final presentation of our Roots to Results Webinar Series, Manitoba Crop Alliance (MCA) COO Darcelle Graham shared how an Advance Payments Program (APP) cash advance from MCA can serve as a practical, flexible tool to strengthen marketing power and reduce borrowing costs.

Turn Cash Flow Pressure into Marketing Power

The APP provides access to capital based on up to 50 per cent of your anticipated or stored production value. That means you don’t have to sell grain just to cover spring bills.

Implementation

Map out your 12- to 18-month cash flow needs. If input or rent payments are driving early sales, consider whether an advance could bridge the gap and let you market when prices improve.

Capture Interest Savings That Stay on Your Farm

The federal government covers the interest on the first $100,000 advanced (or up to $500,000 for canola only in 2026). That can translate into thousands of dollars in savings compared to traditional borrowing.

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Video: From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids