One of the farm leader or farm CEO’s responsibilities is to envision the farm’s future. Depending on your personality or what you like to think about regarding your operation, that can seem like a tall order – or it might be something that’s regularly on your mind.

Zooming out to that “big picture” view can be tough, especially if you feel tied in to the day-to-day decisions that you already have to make for your farm. But being able to zoom out and take a more future-oriented view of your farm and where it’s heading is one of the things that only you, as the farm’s leader can do.

Getting started

You will probably want to involve your farm’s full leadership team, whether that’s made up of you and your spouse, or you and a small group of other people. Having input from others is key as you contemplate the future of the farm and consider the opportunities and challenges it may encounter in that future.

Consider setting up a time where you and the farm’s other leaders periodically meet to take a more future-oriented view of the operation and where it’s all going. In other words, this meeting isn’t the time to discuss what’s going on that week at the farm. The focus will be more strategic rather than operational.

You might set this up as a regular meeting that happens quarterly, or monthly, or twice a year – whatever is best suited to the size and complexity of your operation. If you haven’t ever done future-oriented discussions and planning before, you may want to meet more frequently at first as there may be quite a bit to discuss. You can also enlist the help of an advisor for your farm to facilitate these conversations, especially if this type of planning is new to your operation.

Plan it out

Putting longer-term plans in place for your farm starts with discussing what’s most important – the farm’s core values, vision and mission – and then moving outward from there with tactical, actionable plans. The farm’s core values explain why and how you do what you do on your farm, your mission explain what you do, and your vision inspires everyone to get to that desired future.

Try to keep these discussions focused on the big picture of the operation. You can use questions like these to get the conversation started.

The insights that come from these discussions can be valuable for you as the farm’s leader as you put together your plans for the next year, as well as looking ahead further to the next 5-10 years.

How are you navigating this market?

Farmers have found that getting some third-party perspective from our market advisors has helped ease their minds. The advisors help farmer clients with planning and execution around marketing decisions and help keep them up to speed on the current rapidly-changing grain market situation – and how it impacts their operation.

Get a free two-week trial of our marketing information service (MarketView Basic). Your free trial includes regular audio and video updates, technical analysis, recommendations and more. Learn more about our market advisor programs and offerings at www.waterstreetag.com.