Cultivating Your Farm’s Future

Introduction

Wisconsin Extension has developed an interactive program, Cultivating Your Farm’s Future and a corresponding workbook that provides tools and resources for producers to begin the succession planning process.

How will your farm operate in the future when the owner retires or is gone?

Are you currently working with another generation who may be questioning their role in the future of the farm business or are you yourself questioning your current role?

This program will help you with those questions.

The Workshops

This program will provide tools and resources for farmers who want to start their succession plans. It will explore the three-step process of planning your business succession:

1. Where are you now?
2. Where do you want to be?
3. How do you get there?

This workshop series will prepare you to shape and communicate your ideas about the future of the farm and business as well as save time by having these crucial conversations before visiting with professionals. 

Who should attend?

This program is for farm businesses and farm families interested in shaping the future ownership of their farm. If you are the owner generation, you may be wondering how to transfer to the next generation or develop a fair inheritance distribution plan. If you are the next generation, you may have questions or ideas about your future role in the farm business or how to make it financially feasible and realistic for your goals. Multiple farm/family members are encouraged to attend together.

What topics are covered?

• Communication preferences and how to talk about the farm’s future
• Common tensions around farm succession 
• Inheritance distributions – Is equal fair?
• Financials for farm succession
• Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats – SWOT analysis
• Estate planning including probate & estate tax
• Wills, trusts, & business entities
• Setting goals and action steps

When are these workshops?

February 2026 – 6:30 – 8:00 PM Thursday evenings, February 5, 12, 19, 26, 2026. This series also offers an optional action planning session on Thursday, March 19, 2026.

How is the program delivered?

The four (plus one optional) sessions will be live via Zoom, so participants can join from anywhere! Each week participants will receive an email with homework assignments. The homework is designed to help participants gather information and be prepared for the discussions and activities during the live Zoom sessions. The live sessions will not be recorded so everyone can feel comfortable participating. The homework will be a mix of short videos, worksheets or reading assignments. The hard copies of the materials for the program will be mailed out before the first week of class. If the farm has participants living at different locations, we will need all the addresses at registration so we can mail materials to the appropriate addresses.

Registration Details

Registration Fee: $150/per farm. We encourage farms to sign up multiple farm/family members (all for $150/farm). This fee provides one Cultivating Your Farm’s Future workbook and one Cultivating Continuity book per farm, a participant manual for each person registered, access to course videos that are assigned as homework, and four (with an optional fifth) live zoom classes. If farms want additional Cultivating Your Farm’s Future workbooks those are $15/additional workbook. Additional Cultivating Continuity books are $25 each.

The registration deadline for the February 2026 series is January 16, 2026 at 11:59 p.m., to ensure participants receive the mailed materials in time for the first class. Registration is limited to 20 farms for each series.

For more information, contact Joy Kirkpatrick, Farm Succession Outreach Specialist, joy.kirkpatrick@wisc.edu, 608.263.3485

If the above dates do not work for you, fill out the interest form below to be notified about future sessions.

The Workbook

Cultivating Your Farm’s Future is a workbook developed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension as a companion piece for Extension farm succession programs, including the Cultivating Your Farm’s Future Workshops.

This workbook may also be useful for service professionals as they facilitate conversations around farm succession planning with their clients.

This workbook is designed to help family members and farming partners start conversations about important aspects of the farm succession. It is not designed for farms to complete all 66 pages and have a succession plan ready to take to their service professionals to put into place. Some worksheets might not fit the situation.

Using the workbook outside of Extension programs

The workbook was designed as a companion piece for Extension farm succession programs, but it can also be used in additional situations.

If you feel it’s helpful to have someone outside of your farm or family facilitate or coordinate these discussions, we have two Extension educators trained and certified as farm succession coordinators. Their contact information can be found below.

If you feel you want to start this workbook without any outside help, you can identify maybe two or three worksheets in each section that you think will be helpful to your situation.  Watch the corresponding videos so you get a better idea of how to use them. You don’t have to start at page one and complete every page to the end. Some worksheets won’t be relevant to your situation.  Several of the worksheets are intended for each family or farm member to complete on their own and then shared and discussed as a group.  The videos will give you directions as to making copies for everyone, should that be needed.

While the workbook can be helpful to organize your information, your vision, and some options, it does not replace working with your accountant, tax specialists, or attorney. The goal of the workbook is to clarify your thoughts and make your meetings with the professionals more efficient.

The worksheets will help you organize your information to understand where you are now, analyze where you want to be, and help you make decisions on how to get there.

Contact for the program

Joy Kirkpatrick
Farm Succession Outreach Specialist
608-263-3485
joy.kirkpatrick@wisc.edu