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What Alberta’s Best Farmers Are Doing Differently Right Now

Every farm is facing tighter margins, but not every farm is responding the same way. In the latest Alberta Seed Guide Podcast, ATB Financial’s Jon Neutens and Rob Jensen share the common habits they’ve observed among Alberta’s highest-performing farm businesses — and why planning, discipline and better decision-making matter more than ever.
Every challenging farm economy creates winners and losers.

Some farms simply survive. Others emerge stronger.

The difference, according to Jon Neutens and Rob Jensen of ATB Financial, isn’t necessarily acreage or machinery. After working with hundreds of Alberta farm businesses every year, they say the strongest operators share a common approach to decision-making that becomes especially visible during difficult times.

That’s the focus of the latest Alberta Seed Guide Podcast, where host Marc Zienkiewicz asks a simple question: What are the best farm businesses doing right now that others aren’t?

One of the first myths Neutens challenges is that larger farms automatically perform better.

“Managing a good operation… it’s a business,” Neutens says. “I need to understand what’s going on within my business and how the decisions I make are going to impact the operation.”

He argues that operational excellence starts with understanding the numbers behind every decision.

“You probably can’t make those operational decisions really well unless you understand how it’s going to impact your bottom line.”

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Border View Farms is a mid-sized family farm that sits on the Ohio-Michigan border. My name is Nathan. I make and edit all of the videos posted here. I farm with my dad, Mark and uncle, Phil. We also have a part-time employee, Brock. My dad started the farm in 1980. Since then we have grown the operation from just a couple hundred acres to over 3,000. Watch my 500th video for a history of our farm I filmed with my dad.

I started making these videos in the fall of 2019 as a way to help show what I do on a daily basis as a farmer. Agriculture is different from any other industry and I believe the more people that are showing their small piece of agriculture, helps to build our story. We face unique challenges and stressful situations but have some of the most rewarding payoffs in the end. I get to spend everyday doing what I love, raising my kids on the farm, and trying to push our farm to be better every year. I hope that I can address questions or concerns that you might have about farms and agriculture.

I hope you enjoy my content and ask questions as you have them. I do my best to answer anything I can. Thanks for watching!