Here at Country Guide, we’re heading into our third year with our focus on the business of farming.
We started down this path by listing three or four things that we thoroughly and completely believe about today’s agriculture, and we asked ourselves if we really do believe them, how should we make this magazine different?
The first was a simple matter of observation. There’s so much media focus on the breakthroughs in agriculture — whether they’re new herbicides or new biotech traits or new GPS technologies — that it can seem that science is what is driving agriculture. But it isn’t true.
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The real energy that is driving agriculture is the energy of the individual farmer. We’d be the last to undervalue the importance of science on the farm, but it’s the decisions that farmers make about how to build better farms for their families and themselves that are making agriculture such a bright light in the world today. It’s farmers’ willingness to work harder and smarter than anyone else without ever once losing sight of their core values that is providing the direction.
It’s an utterly humbling thing when you think of it, the way agriculture gets the best out of so many top-notch people.
Our second belief is that the most important decisions that farmers make are business decisions. We agree that you need to be on top of which herbicide to use in which fields. You can’t farm today if you aren’t highly efficient.
Even so, the farms that are still going to be here in 10 years are the farms that have made shrewd choices about when to expand and to diversify. They’ll be the farms that are as effective at tracking and analyzing their financial performance as they are at following their crops and livestock. And they’ll be the farms that know how to nurture and support great leadership, and then how to transition it across the generations.
Third, and more briefly, we firmly believe that agriculture is a never ending story about the seizing of new opportunities. Agriculture is always growing and changing, with new crops and new markets, and new horizons ready to be explored.
The Country Guide that you read in 2011 is our attempt to respond to these beliefs. As in the past year, you’ll find our pages filled with insights about the business of farm management. We’ll bring you more stories about succession planning, about leadership and about strategies for growth. We’ll talk about how to use specific management tools, and also about new markets and new management systems, and about how to develop innovative new partnerships and joint ventures.
It’s a different Country Guide than it used to be. So as you read through this issue, and the issues to come, let us know when we’re heading in the right direction, and when we aren’t. Send me an email at t [email protected]
or phone me at 519-674-1449.
Are we getting it right?
