The shrewdest words in this issue of Country Guide belong to Saskatchewan farmer Russ Leguee. His family, like so many farm families across this country, is wrestling with the prospect of the parents transtioning into a well-earned retirement, with the children potentially taking over.
Leguee was talking about his three children and the kind of commitment they need to show to the farm. “They have to be willing to go the distance, willing to make mistakes,” Leguee told writer Anne Lazurko. “And it will be the timing of those mistakes that will cause success or failure.”
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“Sometimes the best planning can fail,” Leguee expanded. “But you have to be prepared for that as well.”
In this year’s Money Management issue, we’ve given extra space to preparing for what your plans may not be prepared for. We’ve tried to bring you multiple perspectives on interest rates. We’ve brought you cutting-edge thinking, from front-line business advisors, from bankers, and from academics in the West and in the East — and sometimes their perspectives are in direct conflict with each other.
To the best of our knowledge, none of them are wrong. But then, none of them are right either. All we can do is assure you that we tried to show you exactly why they think the way they do, so you can judge for yourself.
Uncertainty is everywhere. No one knew that grain and oilseed prices would tail off so rapidly after their 2007 peak, nor does anyone know when and how violently interest rates will break out of their historic lull. Another wise farmer, this time a silver-haired gentleman who lived down the road from me, pulled me aside many years ago. “The worst thing about farming is that it goes in cycles,” he said. “And the worst thing about cycles is that wherever you are in the cycle, you think it’s going to be that way forever.”
Time and again, history has proven him right. When markets are up, all you can see are reasons why prices should keep going up. And when markets are down, all you can see are reasons why they should keep sinking. Our world, it turns out, is more psychological than scientific, and because of that, it’s more random than any plan can adequately predict.
In this issue, we show you how to build your own strategies with tools like laddering, scenario planning and getting your ratios right. It’s what we think our role is. Country Guide is invested in the idea that the real energy that is driving agriculture isn’t the new technology out of the genetics companies or the electronics labs. The energy that is driving agriculture is the vision of the individual farmer.
It’s impossible to praise this too much. If it weren’t for farmers’ indefinable sense of sanity amidst the insane, civilization could never have been possible. Nor would it be in future. Volatile conditions lay ahead, and they’re conditions that everyone will be wrong about.
We believe that overall, farmers will find their way. Let us know what you think. I’m at 519-674-1449 or [email protected].
