You’ve just graduated college, and you’re excited to head back home to the farm. With all your newly gained knowledge from the university, you are ready to make changes to the farm and make your mark on the family legacy.

Before you know it, it’s 15 years down the road, and you are stuck in the same place and have the same farm responsibilities as you did when you graduated college. You are currently in the dark on how you will take over the farm when the generation before you retires.

You know in your gut you need to have a serious family conversation. But how — and where — do you start?

Many next-gen farmers run into this problem when returning to the farm after college. One way that these producers can have a clear plan to operate the farm long after dad and grandpa are retired is to have a succession plan.

Billie Lentz, a fifth-generation farmer from Rolla, N.D., is passionate about succession planning and helping others start those conversations early. As the next generation of a barley, soybean, wheat and canola operation, she has been working right alongside her grandpa and dad to learn the ropes of the farm.

“I have an opportunity to step into a business and continue to make a profitable life out of it,” Lentz said. “From early on, it came down to removing a lot of emotion from these conversations.”

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Preparing the table

The first step to making the transition from generation to generation is for the next generation to ask themselves, “What am I good at, or what can I get good at?”

Shelby Bothun, a farm transition expert and attorney in North Dakota, says this is the first step to a successful transition. Understanding what the strengths of the next generation are and what they could improve gives the incoming generation a launch pad.

LEARNING THE ROPES: Right out of college, Lentz was unsure if she was ready to move home and continue farming her family’s land. Her dad never pushed her into this role, but after a couple of years with an off-the-farm job, Lentz decided it was time to come home.

Also a professor at North Dakota State University, Bothun’s first assignment to her students in her succession planning class is deciding whether they want to take over the farm in the first place. This causes them to really think if this is something that they truly want to do.

Lentz did exactly this when she attended NDSU.

“I feel very grateful my dad was never the type to really pressure me into taking over the farm,” Lentz said. “It felt very much like it was my own choice to make, and a big thing for them was for my sisters and I to get an education.”

Throughout college at NDSU, Lentz was still on the fence about whether she should come back and farm. Lentz’s dad urged her to take a job off the farm right out of college to gain industry experience.

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After working for a few years at John Deere, she decided it was time to return to the farm.

One key part of Lentz’s story is that all three generations working on the farm had many conversations of what the farm transition would look like. Although every operation might have a different way of transferring assets, one common theme is open communication with everyone who is a stakeholder in the operation.

Who needs to be at the table

“Stakeholders” in the farm are not just those who play an active role in raising crops and livestock. There are many more people who should be involved in this initial conversation.

“If I have an interest in what happens to that business, that makes me a stakeholder,” said Jessica Groskopf, a Nebraska Extension educator for agricultural economics. “Usually there's a non-farm son or daughter who has interest in what is happening, and they might also have spouses, and they might also have children interested.”

It is especially important to have everyone on the same page throughout this entire process for when conflict might arise. With everyone involved in the conversation, it also can eliminate conflict in the future.

THE TRANSITION: With a firm handshake from her grandfather, Lentz is now the fifth generation farming her family’s land. Her piece of advice to those going through this process is to have open communication with all of those invested in the farm.

“When things get difficult, at least all those stakeholders understand what the agreement was, and that helps with that clarity farther down the road,” Groskopf said.

Related:What should the next generation bring to a succession plan?

Groskopf also recommends getting all the stakeholders together once a year at a time that is not on Christmas or Thanksgiving to give an update on the farm.

“Estate and transition planning is not simply going to the attorney and you have it done,” Groskopf said. “It is not an event; it is a process, and that process continues your entire life.”

Once all the stakeholders have come together to talk about the future of the farm and how it will get passed down, the next step is writing out a plan that can be mended and changed over time.

Editor’s note: This is part one of a two-part series on succession planning from the next-gen perspective. To learn more about what needs to be included in the succession plan, check out part two of this series.