Especially when your farm operation is growing in size or complexity, a leader can find that there’s a seemingly endless number of decisions to make. And when you want to lead your farm operation to the greatest success possible, it can be helpful to have others to bounce ideas off of.

If you lead your operation along with a couple other leaders or a full team, you may already use them as sounding boards for ideas you have or major decisions that need to be made. Their input can really help when it comes to some of the biggest decisions you’re making for your operation.

Looking outside

Another type of input that many farmers say they find helpful is getting perspective from a third-party advisor for their operation. This can be valuable input to have in addition to the ideas of others inside your operation.

The reason is the “outside” perspective of a third-party advisor can often bring different ideas or solutions to the mix. They should be well-versed in agriculture and also have a strong understanding of your operation and your goals. The combination of their knowledge of ag plus understanding what you want to do in your business can help bring up new solutions and ideas for your consideration.

Being able to tap into third-party advisors for your operation often helps bring your farm an advantage. You can also consider the relationships that you currently have with people such as your farm’s lenders, vendors, suppliers, and others – and determine if it may be advantageous to work with them with more of a partnership in mind.

What I mean by that is viewing the relationship in such a way that you focus on gleaning what you can learn from them in their particular area of expertise. Since you’re already working with them and you both (hopefully) have the ultimate goal of your operation’s success, you can tap into their ideas and also ask them to educate you further and put it to good use for your operation.

Think through three

Here are a couple steps to take when thinking about how you can further use key outside partners for your operation.

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.