With the end of 2020 drawing near, many are thinking about and making plans for the next year of farming – 2021. It can be refreshing to look forward to a new start in a new year.

Setting goals and making plans for your next crop year is a smart idea during the winter season. However, there’s something else that needs to happen before you start that process. I think it’s always a good idea to spend some time to first review the year that we’re about to wrap up before diving too far into those plans.

Reflection time

Here’s why: It’s important to learn from the past – and that includes the very recent past in our farm businesses. Otherwise, we could miss out on recognizing the things we did that went well and made a difference for our farm business, as well as the things that didn’t go quite as we’d hoped.

We can learn from our successes and failures in our business if we take enough time to reflect on them. In fact, it’s critical that we recognize both the failures and successes. If we look only at the things that went “our way,” we lose the opportunity to make plans to improve some of those areas in the coming year.

On the other hand, if we look only at what went wrong or different than we wanted it to, we miss the chance to celebrate and build on what we’re doing well in our operation. It’s key to build on the strengths of the operation and looking at successes from the past year allows farm leaders to do that.

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Year in review

Here are a few different areas to review and note both the successes and challenges of the past year.

#1: The farm’s numbers and “the bottom line.” This one is natural for most farmers to think about when evaluating the crop year. That’s understandable – financial metrics are one way to see how the farm is doing, year to year. Make sure to look not just at “the bottom line” but also the other metrics that are important to know how your operation is doing. Is your operation improving on those metrics as well? Numbers can be a good indicator, but there’s always more to the story.

#2: Learning and improvements. While this area can be a bit tougher to quantify, it’s so important for farm operations that want to consistently do better year after year. What have you – and others in the operation – learned this year that made a difference? In what areas or aspects did improvements in results happen because of what you learned? Learning and implementing quickly is one of the best competitive advantages a farm can have.

#3: Marketing plans: Successes and challenges. When you think about what happened with your farm’s marketing plans in 2020, what first comes to mind? What were the main successes? Where were the challenges? What did you learn about the markets or marketing tools this past year that you can take with you into planning for upcoming years? Get in touch with our market advisors for a partner in 2021 planning or learn more about getting a free trial of our market information service.

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