My new full-time employee says we should have regular meetings. Besides me and my 34-year-old son, we also have two part-time guys who mostly help us during spring planting and fall harvest. We have 3,400 acres of corn and soybeans, and a trucking business on the side. Are meetings necessary? — J.R., Missouri

The necessity of staff meetings is a direct function of how heathy and abundant your organizational communication is.

It is easy for farmers to get burnt out on meetings in the wintertime. However, this exchange is totally different and trumps all other priorities except family and church.

Get in a mindset that you could die tomorrow and desire the least amount of hassle for your 34-year-old son to run with the show. Is he ready, and what can you do to better prepare for an untimely transition?

In-house meetings are a basic element of organization to ensure everyone is on the same page of the same game plan at the same time. So the question you are really addressing is how often do you need farm meetings between annually and hourly. The answer is directly correlated to your organization and communications practices and skills. In-season weekly or wintertime monthly farm meetings are most common. Always have a written agenda and a time limit set ahead of time.

Two principal underlying objectives of your farm meetings are to require operations feedback from everyone, and to give more responsibilities to your troops — a most rewarding aspect of this business. Constantly ask for opinions on how you can “farm smarter” and where the first dollars should be cut to survive low prices. Set an objective to hand off more responsibility each month. 

Jerry and Jason Moss operate Moss Family Farms Inc. Email your questions to [email protected]. All questions will be printed or published online as anonymous