Looking down the road at the future of the farm is never an easy process. And navigating all the legalities, paperwork, budgeting, and communication with different family members can be challenging. We are here to help you.
Having intentional conversations around farm succession and developing future plans for the farm provides a better chance of transition success. Cultivating Your Farm’s Future helps farm business members and families through farm succession planning. Even if the owner generation is planning to be a part of the management for 10+ years from now, starting early can help the process go more smoothly. It provides the succession generation time to develop their management skills and provides the farm time to build or increase its financial stability to include another generation.
Watch this Farm Management Friday video and learn how to start planning for farm succession.
If farm succession is a long (or maybe even short) term goal for your business, planning is essential. While many farmers view planning as reducing options or boxing them in, a good plan is actually the opposite. A plan based on the farm members’ values, intentions and visions, mixed with a lot of honest conversation can provide a road map that allows for opportunities to continue or grow the business.
Productive farmland is an increasingly rare and valuable resource. Thinking ahead and having a plan in place for the legacy of the land is one of the most important decisions to make as a landowner. This article aims to “demystify” the new generation of farmers so that current landowners have a better understanding of who they are and ways we can make land more accessible to them for the benefit of everyone.
Protecting Farmland for the Future. Farmers invest a lot of time, money, and energy into their land and, when it comes time for retirement, they often worry that the land may someday be covered in asphalt. An agricultural conservation easement (ACE) can provide a retiring farmer with the assurance that the land will forever be available for agricultural use. An ACE is a permanent deed restriction that allows future farmers to continue farming the land, but typically prevents subdivision and non-farm agricultural development. An ACE may not be right for everyone, but it can be a helpful tool to consider when planning for the future of your farmland.
Buy-Protect-Sell (BPS) is a land transition model that can help farmers without heirs transfer property to a new generation of producers. In this model, a farmer sells their land to a land trust, who then protects the property with an agricultural conservation easement. In this article, you will learn what Buy-Protect-Sell is through the story of a retiring landowner and a land-seeking family, how it may benefit your farmland legacy, and if your farm could be the right fit.
Business strategies are practical actions that communicate how a business plans to reach its goals. Thinking strategically about the farm business as a whole helps determine emerging themes, issues, patterns, and opportunities. Learn how to complete a SWOT Analysis for your farm.
Host Katie Wantoch and Kaitlyn Davis, Extension Agriculture Educator in LaCrosse County, discuss and offer tips for a couple’s plans for selling their cows and retiring from farming.
Business values influence the farm’s goals and priorities. It is important to be able to recognize differences in the values of owners, stakeholders, managers, and other key personnel and have a process through which each is willing to compromise if necessary, to arrive at mutually acceptable goals and decisions.
Strategic thinking is the intuitive, visual, and creative process you use to make decisions about your farm business. Strategic thinking is all about thinking ahead, anticipating what your competition is going to do, and then taking risks to succeed.
The Wisconsin Farm Succession Professionals Network bring educators, agencies, and service professionals together to build knowledge and skills and to discuss coordinating efforts in farm succession to better serve the Wisconsin agriculture community.
Host Katie Wantoch and Jim Versweyveld, Agriculture Extension educator in Walworth County, discuss viability of a dairy farm and future retirement options for a farm couple.
When working through developing a plan to transfer management decisions it is important to realize that management decisions should be transferred incrementally.
In farming, sweat equity is a term that is loosely used to define how established farmers use payment of a commodity or capital assets to replace some of the cash wages for employees. Sweat equity is also the term sometimes used to compensate a successor for years of labor and management that helped build the owner generation’s wealth.
In farming, sweat equity is a term that is loosely used to define the practice of using a commodity or capital asset to replace some of the cash wages for employees. Often times farms do not know how to document sweat equity as a payment for wages.
Host Katie Wantoch and Kaitlyn Davis, Extension Agriculture Educator in LaCrosse County, discuss if a farmer and his son should prioritize paying down debt this year instead of replacing some equipment.
Host Katie Wantoch and Jim Versweyveld, Agriculture Extension educator in Walworth County, discuss a female farmer who needs to have a conversation with her dad about her future and their family farm.
Recent farm succession research by UW-Madison Division of Extension educators indicates that the division of assets for inheritance is a common tension around farm succession planning. In some cases, the tension can be so great that the owner generation avoids making a decision until it’s too late. This is the third of a 3-part series about fair vs equal distribution of farm assets.
The best way to divide farm assets is a challenge that farm families face with each generation of owners. The fear of upsetting one’s children often causes parents to divide farm and family assets equally among all heirs. This is the second of a 3-part series about fair vs equal distribution of farm assets.
A common misconception in farm estate and succession planning is that federal estate taxes are among the biggest threats to getting the farm assets to the rightful heirs. However, we propose that the biggest threat to a farm estate getting to the rightful heirs is the owner generation’s lack of succession planning and not federal estate taxes. This is the first of a 3-part series about fair vs equal distribution of farm assets
