Reading Time: 6 minutes An entire industry has built up to support farm succession planning. And for good reason. With a typical farm in Canada worth millions of dollars and requiring numerous staff, and with so many farms having related businesses and supporting two or more families, transition of the business to the next generation involves a lot more […] Read more
Succession planning: Deciding who gets to farm
The buzz these days says that succession is a journey, not an event. But who has the map?
Taking the first steps in succession planning
Reading Time: 2 minutes Are you getting more and more convinced that it’s time for succession planning for your own farm? If so, here are some thoughts from the experts on how to get started, beginning with the most important question of all: What does our retirement look like? “The retiring couple has to have a focused discussion on […] Read more
Are Canadian farmers ready for the succession challenge?
HR toolkit designed to assist farmers with transition and to help ensure the farm's continued success
Reading Time: 6 minutes Succession planning has become a pretty sexy topic in agriculture. Every hip and trendy professional office for farmers is mailing out their own shiny leaflet to everyone they know about it, and no self-respecting event planner would even think of hosting an agricultural conference without at least one workshop on transferring the farm to the […] Read more
Five steps to your retirement plan
Follow this path to a retirement plan that has the security and lifestyle options you will be happy to have
Reading Time: 6 minutes 1. What do you have? For 2013, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada pegged the average net worth of farmers at nearly $1.9 million. That might seem like enough for a satisfying retirement, but most farmers don’t want to liquidate everything as soon as they turn 65 years old. It’s important to have a list of all […] Read more
Emotions to the rescue
Inevitably, when farms expand to include multiple family members, family dynamics change. Before we talk about the stresses and strains that this can produce, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fundamental positives that this change brings to the farm.
Reading Time: 8 minutes “If there is stress and conflict in your family, it will almost inevitably trace its roots back to a lack of effective communication at some point in the family system,” says Richard Cressman. Cressman, a six-foot tall former dairy farmer from New Hamburg, Ont. isn’t the sort of person you’d expect to be talking about […] Read moreRetire on redeemed capital
Reading Time: 3 minutes Historically, succession was solved by lifespan. The next generation took over when the older generation gave out. Today, with the average Canadian living about 80 years, that just isn’t a solution anymore. Now we need to figure out ways for multiple generations to balance power, ownership and workload on the farm. As well, farm asset […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
