The end of the year can be a good opportunity to do some goal-setting for your operation. After taking stock of 2023 – the ups and downs, challenges and opportunities – you can start to focus on your upcoming year.

One of the best ways to start doing this is to begin by zooming your focus out to the big picture of what you want most for your operation. Try to consider what you want your farm operation to look like in the next 5 to 10 years.

Future questions

Here are a few questions to ask yourself as you piece together what you really want for the future of your farm operation:

Related:What’s your farm’s off-season plan this winter?

Goal-setting time

Once you’ve had an opportunity to consider your answers to these questions, you can start to get more tactical in terms of thinking about more specific goal-setting for your farm. Start by setting some major, broad goals for the 5-10 year future timeframe.

These don’t need to be detailed at this point, and it’s very possible that they may seem rather daunting or challenging from where you stand right now. That’s ok – it’s better that the goals are more of a ‘stretch’ when it comes to thinking about your farm’s future and what you want it to be like.

Next, you can start to break each of those major goals down further and further into more ‘bite-sized’ pieces. This is your chance to make the goals more manageable and place specific time frames on those bite-sized chunks.

Related:What key partners does your farm need?

Going through that step is key. Otherwise, without specific steps or timeframes, the major goals can end up seeming too overwhelming to take a step toward. Without a plan that breaks the goals down into action steps and timeframes, the goals run the risk of going by the wayside before any progress begins, so don’t skip that step.

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.