Frye: What will you choose to learn about marketing this year?

When you hear the words “adapt” and “change,” how do you typically react? Does that immediately bring feelings of uncertainty? Or, does it create excitement?

For different farm leaders, those two words might bring very different feelings. Depending on your personality, you might lean in to the idea of changing or improving something in your operation.

The idea of learning something new to meet the challenges of the future could even be exciting.

Future Focused

Most people probably have some initial feelings of uncertainty or even anxiety when thinking about learning something new for their farm operation.

But it’s the truth that the operators of every farm will need to learn new things to move successfully into the future. The only real sustainable competitive advantage in business is to learn faster and adapt more quickly than others.

Even if you graduated from school quite some time ago, the best farm leaders today are focused on their own learning.

These farmers recognize that learning doesn’t end when you get a diploma or degree. They know it’s actually just starting.

Always Learning

Farm leaders who choose to intentionally learn more every single year of their farming career are the ones who will ensure their operations don’t ever become stagnant. They don’t believe they’ve ever “arrived,” whether it’s their fifth year of farming or their 40th.

There’s always something more they can learn and then use to help their farm operations reach the next level of success. This could feel like a big task — I’m literally saying that learning never ends!

Or, it could be an exciting challenge instead. There’s always another step to the journey. There’s always another way to “level up” your skills as a farm leader and your operation itself.

Market Hesitation

There are many different valuable areas that farm leaders could choose to increase their learning — for example, financial and business skills, leadership and management skills, or communication skills.

However, I want to focus here on an area of skills that farmers might not necessarily be excited about: marketing skills.

Dealing with the markets might not always be a farmer’s favorite thing to do. There’s usually a decent amount of emotion involved and rightfully so, because it can have a big impact on the farm’s success.

Sometimes farm leaders might unintentionally keep themselves from learning more about the markets or about different marketing tools. Their belief might be, “I (or Dad or Grandpa) have always done it this way, so why would I need to learn anything different?”

Control Issues

Here’s something I want to share with you about marketing: One of the most powerful things you can do when it comes to your farm’s marketing plans is to focus on what you can control and to let go of what you can’t control.

When it comes to the markets, there’s obviously a lot that isn’t within any farmer’s direct control. But what is in your control?

You have the choice to learn about the markets — what makes them move and why — and about the different tools that are available to manage your farm’s risk in the market.

Choosing to focus on what you can control about how the markets, such as your response to them and management of your marketing plan, can help remove some of the emotional roller-coaster feelings around marketing grain.

How Will You Grow?

I encourage you to decide now to learn more about marketing and marketing tools. That one decision can really be a game changer for leaders and their operations.

If you work with a market adviser, he should have the heart of a teacher when it comes to building your understanding of market fundamentals and marketing tools.

Farmers have found that working with our market advisers has helped ease their minds. The advisers help farmer clients with planning and execution around marketing decisions and help keep them up to speed on the current rapidly-changing grain market situation and how it impacts their operation.

Get a free two-week trial of our marketing information service, MarketView Basic, at www.waterstreetconsulting.com. Your free trial includes regular audio and video updates, technical analysis, recommendations and more.

Or, learn more about our market adviser programs and offerings at www.waterstreetconsulting.com.