If you’ve farmed for any length of time – or even just a couple years – you’ve probably wished that at some point you knew something or had reached a certain level of understanding about it earlier in your farming career. That knowledge or understanding would have made a big difference.

This can come up when we encounter a situation we know how to deal with today – but only because we learned it ‘the hard way’ in the past. Maybe we dealt with a negative outcome or fallout at that time because of what we didn’t yet know. You might have thoughts like ‘Wow, I sure wish I had known this back then!’

Of course, there are certain things we must learn through experience. We earn that wisdom along the way, in the regular course of farming and running our business. But it can also be helpful to take advantage of the wisdom and experiences of others, too. Not everything has to be learned through the lengthy process of trial and error.

Tell your story

In a way, learning from others is like a shortcut. Certain things can be learned from the mentors we seek out for our farm business. We also learn just by watching what others do – and taking away both what we wantto do and don’twant to do.

If you’re well into your farming career and have developed many ‘pearls’ of wisdom, consider sharing and passing them on to farmers of the next generation, whether they’re the ones that will be leading your operation in the future or not. Students in college or high school agriculture programs would be interested to hear your story and what you’ve learned through years of farming and running a farm business.

Even if you’ve farmed for less than a decade, you probably have more to share than you think you do. Helping tomorrow’s farmers learn how to lead wisely is a smart investment in the future of ag.

Keep it going

On the flip side, no matter how long you’ve been farming or leading a farm operation, there’s always something more to learn. As I pointed out in my blog last week, the best farmers are relentless in working to get better – to improve their skills and their farm operations.

Maybe it’s a new piece of technology, or diving more deeply to improve your financial skills, or working to become better at leading employees by developing a new hiring process. There’s a lot that can be learned from a mentor or coach. You might ask a trusted person in your life to help you identify a couple areas to take your skills to a higher level, and then start a plan for that.

Our advisors for the farm work with farm leaders to act as that coach, to help the leader keep improving their business skills so they can bring that to their role on the farm – which can mean more success for the operation. You can get in touch with our coaches and advisors to get your plan for success rolling this summer.

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