If you ask a non-farmer what skills you need as a farmer, the answer at the top of their list may be driving a tractor. Ask a farmer, and it’s more likely to be driving a hard bargain.
Negotiating skills have been an essential part of farming for generations, so it’s no surprise that farmers in general are very good negotiators. But identifying the best negotiators is a little more complicated than simply pointing in the direction of the person always bragging about getting the better deal from their recent trades.
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Those with experience know there’s more to negotiating than simply racing to the bottom. Just ask Stephen Acres of Legacy Acres in Grand Forks, B.C.
Acres worked as a research veterinarian and business manager for animal health companies for over 30 years, only becoming a grape grower five years ago. Now he has also added diversified business interests, including a partnership in an artisanal distillery in Mazatlan, Mexico.
As Acres approaches the launch of his own wine brands this year, he emphasizes that his continued success will rely as much as ever on mutually beneficial arrangements.
“Going into a negotiation trying to make it a win-win situation for everyone involved is the only way it can work long-term,” says Acres. “I’ve been involved in many negotiations where one party tries to take advantage of the other for short-term gain, and those arrangements never last.”
But on the whole, Acres says he’s seen farmers implement some remarkable negotiating tactics over the years. The one he feels all farmers seem particularly good at is playing the dim-wit. Or as Acres likes to call it, shuffling their feet. “They look at the ground and shuffle their boots and pretend they’re just off the turnip truck,” he says with a bit of a chuckle. But in his experience, the very same farmers are much smarter than they’re letting on. “They understand their cost structure and their margins very well,” he says.
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The technical label for this particular tactic is “Catch-22,” according to Dr. Jim Murray, who has been profiling negotiators around the world for almost 45 years and now offers workshops on the art of negotiating. Though he doesn’t know how they came to be so good at it, even in Maxwell, Ont., where Murray owns 150 acres of farmland, he has seen farmers use the tactic effortlessly.
Murray says the reason playing dumb works is because people generally have a desire to fill silences, and they also like to show off what they know.
“Knowing when to shut up is actually a great skill and in a negotiation, information is the ultimate source of power,” says Murray. “Slowing down and letting the other person go first is very powerful.”
Some would say this is a sign of maturity and Murray would agree that age does tend to improve negotiating skills. Career choice also improves a person’s chances of becoming a great negotiator, and farmers aren’t the only ones who negotiate for a living.
Murray says lawyers are often excellent negotiators as well, with all the practice they get. Ethnicity is also a contributing factor. “I genuinely believe that North Americans in general are probably among the worst negotiators on the face of the planet,” says Murray. He remembers a time when price tags were a foreign concept in most of the world, since most retailers believed value couldn’t be assigned until a customer’s interest was gauged.
Negotiating was expected and in these countries, it was a survival skill. “I think one of the reasons why North Americans are generally poor negotiators,” says Murray, “is because we tend to see negotiating as arena-specific as opposed to a generic life skill.”
David Fuller, a chicken farmer from Canning, N.S., and a past chair of the Chicken Farmers of Canada, believes this explains why farmers are generally so good at negotiating. “Because we have to deal with so many different aspects of business and so many different clients, we do it on a regular basis, and we have that expertise,” Fuller says.
He certainly believes it’s an essential skill that he needs to pass on to his daughters if they are going to succeed as the next generation operating Fuller Family Farms. As part of their family’s succession plan, he is ensuring the next generation gets ample opportunity to observe his business transactions and hone their own skills as active participants.
“To learn from the outgoing generation about how things are done, about negotiations, about all these things is absolutely critical,” Fuller says. Nor does he worry that teaching his daughters to be the best negotiators they can be will threaten his interests when it comes time to finalize succession negotiations. There is no “us-versus-them” mentality there, Fuller says, and both generations absolutely must work together to be successful.
“What I always found very helpful for me was to find the common ground,” Fuller says. “If you can’t get people on the same page at the start, it’s very difficult to bring them all to the same page.”
Murray says negotiations are about power and between the participants of a farm succession, or in any healthy relationship, power is constantly shifting. Power also tends to be more complicated than people tend to think. In this case for example, Fuller and his wife may appear to have all the power and an advantage in succession negotiations because they currently own everything that their daughters may want. But Murray says the parents’ desire for building a legacy and seeing their daughters succeed offers the second generation some measure of power too. Even a toddler has enough power of creativity and persistence to get what they desire from a parent who otherwise appears more powerful in every way.
“It’s a game of power, knowing how to use your power, knowing how to acquire more power and knowing how to negotiate when you seemingly don’t have power,” Murray says. “Never assume who has the power.”
Murray says power is often dimly understood, and in his workshops, he devotes more time to it than even listening, although this too is a critical skill that almost everyone, himself included he says, needs to work on.
Most importantly, Murray says, power is self-belief. Those who believe they’ve got a high-quality product in an international market, or those who believe their daughters can be trusted to reciprocate their good intentions through a succession plan, are most likely to achieve mutually beneficial agreements in the end.
