Farm strategic planning is easier today than ever before, which is a good thing because strategic planning is an important part of planning for succession. Software tools and easy to use templates, containing detailed framework and sample texts, will help even the novice farmer along with their advisors create professional looking plans with tables and charts. For those people that don't know where to start, the tools are a big help removing one of the farmers traditional excuses for inaction.
Strategic planning for farmers involves creating a framework for making future decisions. This is critical today because if you need a bank loan for farm expansion, you will need to be able to fully explain your plan in a professional manner - something your banker can take to the board or to their masters in a distant city. How will your farm use the money? Will you be using the money to immediately increase revenues or is it for an investment that will take time before income results? What kind of monetary investment will be needed to get the ball rolling? How long will it be until you can expect to see a profit?
You can look at farm strategic planning as a sort of question and answer guide. You may need to take a step back and look at your ideas from the view of an outsider, something important when considering succession and planning. You might understand everything that there is to know about the farm, but others most certainly will not - especially the non-farm family members who are not part of the day to day activities.
One of the elements of farm strategic planning is to be able to explain and inform others. When planning for succession takes place, maybe one of the options under consideration is to interest investors in some part of the operation. A well thought out farm strategic plan may result in them wanting to become involved. If you have good ideas or something unique to offer, people will often jump at the opportunity to invest.
But, even if you don't need or want outside investors, farm strategic planning is essential. It allows you to put your goals on paper (or on your computer) where you can refer to them easily and stay focused on your objectives. Sometimes farmers realize too late that they have forgotten about a special market opportunity or failed to stay competitive where they were a market leader. They may have lost sight of their goals and their farm is suffering as a result.
Farm strategic planning tools are available online as well as in your local extension office. In many cases, the basic guides and other resources are free.
There is software available to help you assess your ideas and evaluate marketing strategies that you intend to use. Unless you are running a non-profit organization, farm strategic planning business should include ideas for growing the business to make passing down the farm financially painless for you.
How do you plan to reach your customers? How much will it cost? How effective has that type of advertising been for other owners?
Lots of questions are involved in farm strategic planning, but you already have all of the answers. You just might not know it yet.
When Don Jonovic PhD and I wrote "Passing Down the Farm the OTHER Farm Crisis", in 1986 - based on my experiences helping farm families plan for the future of their business during and beyond their lifetimes and Don's insights into family business dynamics. We submitted a draft of each chapter to a panel of farmers, ranchers, and agribusiness owners - who checked it for accuracy and clarity.
The result. It was packed with universal truths about relationships and the need to take charge of the activities that surround planning for the future of the farm. It remains a favorite of farmers and their advisors to this day.
When I decided it was time to create a version for the new millennium, we first had to ask and answer three important questions. "In two decades, what's changed, what's stayed the same, and what should we do?"
If you are serious about farm succession, or if you are a professional involved in farm succession planning - or an farm association executive, click the link below to learn solve the riddle of the emotional triangle that causes most farm succession plans to fail. http://www.passingdownthefarm.com/farm-succession-planning.html
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