We used to say the worst choices get made in the best times. To farmers’ credit, that’s no longer true. But do we know what the best choices this winter will turn out to be?
I sometimes think there isn’t a farmer in the country who wouldn’t like to sit in my seat from time to time. That’s not just so they could finally show me how to do the job as it should be done — although it would be naive of me to think there isn’t a healthy measure of this in it too.
Instead, it’s because of the other farmers we get to talk to. It has got to be a rare issue of Country Guide that doesn’t leave readers saying, “I bet they enjoyed that.”
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They’d be right, too. We do enjoy it. Hardly anything is better than getting a ringside seat like we get.
Before I go any further, though, let me repeat. The really amazing thing is how much farmers will share, not just with us but with agriculture more broadly. This is despite the fact that in agriculture, the costs are higher. After all, when farmers talk, they can’t help but talk about family, and they can’t help but be heard by their neighbours and everyone they deal with.
Some readers — I’m convinced it’s a small number — sometimes think the farmers we talk to are the type who really love the spotlight. Well, I can tell you they aren’t. We find them; they don’t come to us. And they share with us because they know they’re better off for the fact that other farmers have always shared with them. It’s that straight forward.
But here’s my point. Even though I think so highly of farmers as a group, I still can’t point to any individual and say, “Now, there’s somebody who really knows what the future is going to bring.” No one worth listening to can be that sure.
That said, many of the individual bits that will comprise the future are becoming very clear indeed.
We know, for instance, that the future will be skills based to a degree we’ve never imagined. As you’ll read in this issue, there’s a payoff now to managing HR as scientifically as you manage your fields, just as there’s a payoff for being as deeply knowledgeable and strategic with financing options, accounting ratios, the details of farm governance and so much more.
I know there are arguments why the mid-sized farm can’t survive, and why new farms just aren’t possible any more, and for why large farms are too unstable to survive tight times.
I’m just not sure I buy any of them. There have always been reasons why any kind of farming is against the odds. And there have always been farmers who have found ways to tilt the odds back in their favour.
I’m a firm believer in business planning, just from having talked with so many farmers who have gone that route and are so convinced of its value.
When we’re older and wiser in, say, 2030, my sense is we’ll still be looking from a wide mix of farm types and sizes, and the debate about which will own the future will still be raging. But we’ll also know how to contextualize 2022.
Was this the year of the big change in the farm office or its management that made the future possible? What will your change be?
Are we getting it right? Let me know at [email protected].
