Tensions of Farm Succession
Powering through the technical process of succession without acknowledging and addressing the tensions in your situation will give you a plan, but how long will it last when the tensions build to a breaking point?
Farm Succession & Estate Planning
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.
Cultivating Your Farm’s Future Workbook
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.
Is farm succession in your future? Start planning now!
Watch this Farm Management Friday video and learn how to start planning for farm succession.
Articles
Setting Business Strategy Using a SWOT Analysis
Table of Contents Introduction 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, predicting what your competition is going to do, and then taking risks to succeed. You’re thinking big, you’re thinking deep, and you’re thinking across time. You […]
What’s next for the family farm: Resources help when making decisions
Farm succession planning has a lot of technical components that require accountants, consultants, tax specialists, and attorneys to figure out how and when the transition will happen. Read how Extension helped this family farm successfully transition to the next generation of owners.
Make Your Strategic Goals A Reality
The season of New Year’s resolutions is upon us. This time of year, we start reflecting on what we have accomplished and what we would like to achieve in the year ahead. Before jumping right into those new resolutions, take some time to remind yourself of your big-picture or long-term vision for yourself and your farm business, set strategic goals to align with your vision, develop an attainable plan of action, and identify who is responsible for each part of the plan.
Family Tree and Family Spotlight
This article is one of a series of articles about worksheets in Cultivating Your Farm’s Future: a workbook for farm succession planning in Wisconsin. Cultivating Your Farm’s Future: a workbook for farm succession planning in Wisconsin was developed as a companion piece for Extension farm succession programs. It is designed to help family members and […]
Farm Profile
This article is one of a series of articles about worksheets in Cultivating Your Farm’s Future: a workbook for farm succession planning in Wisconsin. Cultivating Your Farm’s Future: a workbook for farm succession planning in Wisconsin was developed as a companion piece for Extension farm succession programs. It is designed to help family members and […]
The messy middle of farm succession planning
How would you describe your attitude or emotions to the words “farm succession planning”? Excited, hopeful, motivated? Or maybe the words that come to mind are apprehensive, stressed, or conflicted. Perhaps at different times all these words can be used to describe your attitude about farm succession.
Balancing family and business goals is the key to farm succession planning
The possibility of a next-generation joining the farm can be an exciting time; yet change, even positive change, can be stressful. Farm succession and its many components is sometimes overwhelming for farm families.
Demystifying the future farmer and planning ahead for a successful farmland transition
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.
Agricultural conservation easements 101: Permanently protect your farmland and legacy
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: Bridging gaps to incoming farmers
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.
Identifying strategies to maximize potential and minimize risk
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.
AgriVision Episode 26 – Time to sell the cows?
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.
What Motivates You to Succeed – Defining Your Values
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.
What is strategic thinking and how can you use the strategic planning process to craft your farm’s future?
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.
Working together to help farm families develop succession plans
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.
AgriVision Episode 23 – At a Crossroads
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.
Control of Farm Management Decisions
When working through developing a plan to transfer management decisions it is important to realize that management decisions should be transferred incrementally. Having a framework of when management decisions will be transferred will give both the owner and the successor generations peace of mind.
