2001 Managing Excellence in Agriculture Conference

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7. A new survey of farmers in Canada, the U.S and Australia gives the mates down under higher points for planning, training and budgeting but North Americans are more web savvy.

The new ground-breaking Ipsos-Reid survey conducted for a group of organizations including Farm Credit Canada, interviewed 750 farmers in the fall of 2001. Louise Neveu, Executive Vice President and Chief Knowledge Officer for FCC, says the results show Australia ahead in farm management practices.

"That may be because ownership in North America is primarily sole proprietorship while in Australia, more farms (53% of respondents in the survey) are owned by partnerships. Individual ownership can be very stressful and demanding," remarked Neveu who also said North American farms tend to be focussed more on the short term.

The survey found that Australian farms use more paid full-time staff and conduct employee evaluations more often. They are also twice as likely to diversify or expand.

But North Americans use the Internet more often than Australians. In the U.S., 46 per cent of respondents said they made purchases online. For Canada, that figure was 38 per cent but only 26 per cent for Australia. Australian farms were also third on the list of online banking.

In the area of having a written business plan, all three countries did poorly, but Canada was at the bottom. In Australia, 29 per cent of the farmers had a written business plan, 26 per cent in the United States and 16 per cent in Canada.


	Louise Neveu Executive Vice-President and Chief Knowledge Officer Farm Credit Canada (FCC) Louise Neveu has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in agriculture, starting with AAFC in 1971 and most recently serving as Chief Operating Officer at FCC before moving to her current position last spring. In 2000, Ms. Neveu was appointed to the Board of Directors of the George Morris Centre.