The week of June 10, Farm Journal is celebrating the next generation of American agriculture. Our goal is to encourage you to plan for the future and cultivate multigenerational success through the transfer of skills and knowledge. Think tomorrow, act today to align your asset, resource and financial legacy.
Identifying goals and assigning priorities builds a bridge from one generation to the next, says Rena Striegel with Transition Point Business Advisors, a farm succession planning consultant with 20 years of experience.
Especially with the current farm economic conditions and outlook, Striegel advises farmers to keep at it when it comes to planning, strategy, banker relationships and evaluating capital expenditures.
“It’s time to double down on what you can to pivot quickly when you have to,” she says. “Now is a great time to make sure the farm can survive. The farm business has to be made sturdy and stable before it can be shared with anyone else.”
Striegel expects the next downturn in agriculture to test the resiliency of farm businesses and the people in them.
“These times don’t care if you are personally worried,” she says. “It does reveal the need for a heavy dose of open and honest communication.”
Striegel encourages the next generation of on-farm leaders to do some self-reflection. How are you showing up on the farm? Do your actions meet up with your goals?
“If your father expects you to be on the farm, on time, demonstrating skills with a certain attitude, that’s how you need to show up,” she says. “How do you show up and does it align with what you want? You must be truthful about your priorities.”
From her consulting, she’s seen how the generation raised with social media is lacking previously engrained people skills.
“Emerging leaders need to be encouraged to evolve and have the right tools. For example, we aren’t teaching negotiation like we used to,” she says.
She highlights that expectations of work-life balance need to be assessed with the needs of the business and the priorities of its stakeholders.
“If you want to run the farm, but in the next breath say you want time off to go to all of the baseball games, it’s not that those two things can’t happen, but it’s about how you meet expectations and talk about what is important to you,” she says.
Patience might be the key component in your succession planning journey.
“It’s not easy for the next generation farmer to slow down and be patient,” she says. “But we are facing a downturn in the ag economy, and the older generations have lived through real trauma. If you dismiss the lessons they are sharing, it makes them even more anxious about turning over the reigns. If you aren’t willing to listen, you are showing you aren’t willing to learn from them.”
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