Build team of farm business partners for decision-making

Whom do you consider your farming business partners? Farms can have several different scenarios when it comes to who is part of the leadership team and how many people are involved.

It doesn’t have to be limited to a partner in terms of farm ownership. It could be anything from just you and your spouse, to you and your dad and uncle, you and your child, and so on.

Some farmers might consider themselves the only leader in the operation or have surrounded themselves with a team of professional advisers to draw insights from.

When it comes to your farming partners, how are you best leveraging their expertise? It’s likely that they bring different strengths to the table than you do.

The best farm leaders will work to figure out exactly what those strengths are and utilize them.

Getting It Together

Do you feel like you have a team of farm partners that you can trust for advice and insight? If you’re currently the main leader on the farm, consider working to bring your farm’s next generation more closely into decision-making. Ask what they would do about different situations and decisions that the farm is facing.

You can also consider creating a team of advisers around you with various areas of expertise that you can draw on for your own business decisions.

Having both the internal input of others on the farm, whether current or future leaders, as well as the external input of third-party advisers, can be a great combination. It can also help leaders not feel so alone in decision-making.

On the farm, it all starts with figuring out the strengths that each member of the leadership team — or future leaders — can or will bring to the table.

Do they bring unique experience from outside of farming? From experiences on other farms? Experiences from education or other programs?

Diving In

Additionally, you can encourage them to seek greater experience and education in their areas of specialty that contribute to the farm overall. If they don’t have an area of focus yet, work with them to help select one to dive deeper into.

In terms of your farm’s circle of outside expertise, what areas do you currently have filled? Do you work with your lender as a farm partner, with them educating you further and having a common goal of your farm’s success? This is perhaps the best type of lender relationship for a farm business.

Are there any areas of the farm that are critical to business success where the farm would benefit from some further third-party outside expertise and advice?

What are the areas of the farm where success is most important to the overall health of the farm business? Consider finding and working with a trusted adviser for your farm in those couple of areas.

Farm Improvement

Most farm leaders are interested in improving their farm businesses. There are several questions that you’ll want to ask yourself as the leader and the other leaders in your operation.

The first thing to consider when you start improving your farm and making it the best it can be is: Why? Why do you want to work on goals for your farm?

Each farm’s leadership team will likely have its own unique reasons and motivations to improve the operation. Next, you can work on figuring out what your vision is for the future of your farm.

Having a clear idea of your vision will help greatly when it comes to determining what you will need to do to get to the right end goal. A vision for your operation will help you hone in on the right areas of focus.