The places where the farm leader spends his or her time and the types of activities they need to do each day has changed quite a bit over the past few generations. As time goes on and farm operations become larger and more complex, the farm’s leader or CEO will continue to spend a larger percentage of their time on business, management and financial activities.

I’ve heard it said that the key is when you’re preparing someone for the future, you want to focus on preparing the person rather than preparing the path. Since we can’t completely know what the farm or the operating environment will be like in the future, we need to focus on building the right skills, attitudes, and knowledge into the future leader themselves rather than trying to make the farm a certain way or attempting to control the future operating environment at large (which would be impossible anyway).

Where are they?

Now think about the next generation on your farm – and especially the person you think will likely be the farm’s next leader. Where do they currently spend their time in the operation? What are they doing in the day-to-day? What are they actively learning?

Is the next generation spending most of their time on leadership activities or more on production-related activities? It’s ok if the percentage is aligned more toward production activities, especially if it likely will be many years until they’re leading the operation. But the key is to gradually shift that percentage toward leadership activities so they can be prepared when it comes time to lead.

The current leader and future leader can work together to create a plan that includes all the different areas where the future leader will need to be well-versed. Then they can plan to include a mix of different opportunities to learn those skills and areas.

Train the next farm leader

Here are a couple areas to make sure to include in the future leader’s training plan.

Get perspective on the market

Farmers have also found that working with 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.waterstreetconsulting.com.

The opinions of the author are not necessarily those of Farm Futures or Farm Progress.