As dated in the last blog comments, spring seeding went extremely well this year and it’s looking like in most areas of the Canadian Prairies farmers are getting timely rains. It could be a great year for crops if the favourable conditions continue. In South East Manitoba, most livestock farmers are busy harvesting the first cut of forage crops. Early reports are that crop quality is extremely good and quantity is average to above average. As we are looking at a fairly early first cut, it appears there should be no difficulties getting three healthy cuts in this year.
In the farm sales side, we are experiencing a high number of sales and not very many new listings coming on the market. Especially grain farms and smaller dairies both in Manitoba and Saskatchewan are in short supply with a large number of qualified buyers in the market right now. Keep in mind that this is one of the best times to consider selling your farm as we’re looking at most sectors in the farming industry to be doing fairly well and people are willing to pay that little bit extra to expand their acres. After being in the farm sales business for almost 15 years, I can tell you that the old saying that it is good to sell when things are going well is still very true. So if you have contemplated selling in the last few years, now would be an opportune time to try to maximize the most dollars for your operation. There’s a large number of farmers with the ability to expand their operations. Feel free to give one of our team members a call to explore your options.
Livestock and beef farming seems to be doing well with more farms selling in the last 3-4 months than we’ve had in the last 7-8 years. The beef industry seems to have turned around after a long stretch of difficult years and there is a greater demand for those types of farms as well.
As mentioned earlier, we are in the process of updating our videos for the spring. Feel free to check them out on this website in the right bottom corner of this opening screen or order a DVD through our office manager Shiela if you’re interested in seeing the new farms we have to offer.
Sheldon