I must admit that when I was younger numbers mystified and frustrated me.
In fact, my typically jovial grade six teacher finally lost his patience with me one day after hearing me say (likely with that distinctive snooty-dismissiveness only a twelve-year-old can conjure up), “Why do I need to learn this? I’m never going to use it.” (Insert pre-teen eyeroll.)
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The farm transition trial
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Even though twelve-year-old me was right for the most part (I feel so vindicated!), I have come to appreciate the extraordinary value numbers bring to the table, especially in a farm business context — which happens to be the focus of this month’s issue.
Humans in general have been finely attuned to numbers for millennia. In fact, the ability to conceptualize numbers came long before the alphabet and seems to be an intrinsic part of the human brain. And so, love ’em or hate ’em, numbers are an integral part of farming.
Leeann Minogue’s “Guide to financial ratios” article is a great starting point for new farmers and an excellent refresher for the rest of us. She walks us through three financial indicators that matter most to bankers and helps us see how understanding them can strengthen a farm’s financial future.
And Evan Shout’s piece, “Shifting tides bring change to agriculture,” reviews the financial non-negotiables when it comes to running your farm business. He also stresses something we often so easily (and understandably) forget: making decisions “with no emotions, just data.”
But it’s dang hard to make decisions without emotions as you’ll find out when you read our cover story “The transition trial.” The Vreeling family is not new to making big decisions with long-term and far-reaching consequences. But their most recent round of decisions required an extra level of urgency and “their ability to analyze, communicate, decide and move forward is unwavering,” writes Danielle Ranger.
Similarly, Maggie Van Camp’s article “How to talk about your farm succession estate plans” helps the now gen have important, emotion-free conversations with the next gen about farm finances and planning. “People often anticipate that sharing their estate plans will lead to conflicts, so they avoid them all together,” she writes. She says the idea is to aim for conversations with low to no drama — and to certainly avoid these big discussions at family holiday meals.
Early humans scratched tally marks on bones and clay tablets to help them keep track of an empire’s food stores. We might now use computer software programs and apps to help us keep our numbers straight, but the idea remains the same: we need to know the numbers to run a successful farm business.
Interested in finding out what numbers you should be keeping track of? Looking for tools to help you improve your farm numbers? Download the Numbers Toolkit today!
