Christine Bender remembers the moment 10 years ago when she told her parents she wanted to come back and farm long-term.
“My mom started to cry because she was so happy,” Bender said.
In the decade since Bender and her family created a succession plan, they’ve had many discussions about working together. Now she serves as manager and partner in her family’s Dodge County farm, McFarlandale Dairy, making her the sixth generation in her family to farm.
Oftentimes, getting the family around the table to have those discussions is difficult to do.
“I know that, from working in the industry. I saw families ripped apart by working together and they don’t talk to each other anymore. And I hope we never get to that point,” Bender said.
Farm succession planning has a lot of technical components that require accountants, consultants, tax specialists and attorneys to figure out how and when the transition will happen. But several steps need to happen before families are ready to put things in writing. One of the big steps is having conversations about expectations and values.
Extension has aided farm families with their succession planning for many years. Joy Kirkpatrick, farm succession outreach specialist with the Extension, has worked with farmers for two decades.
Kirkpatrick said, “Farm succession is not something that farmers do regularly. They’ve maybe gone through the process once before when they took over their farm from a family member. But, it’s not something they do on a regular basis. And it’s big change, so there’s hesitancy.”
For Bender and her family, Extension resources available led them to ask the important questions and kept everybody working toward solutions.
Bender said, “Joy helped facilitate our family conversations because where do you start? It’s hard because it’s your life and there’s a lot of emotion tied to these longstanding dairy farms.”
Farmers and their families often consider the work, the lifestyle and the land that has been in their family for multiple generations to be part of who they are. When succession planning begins, they want to ensure the next generation will have similar values and work ethic. That’s not always the case.
Bridget Finke, attorney and partner of Valley Crossing Law, in Baldwin, specializes in farm succession planning. She sees challenges unique to farming that add extra dynamics to the process.
Finke said, “For many families, there’s a high level of pride and sentimentality in the heritage of the ownership of the land. Some farms were homesteaded in the 1800s and have been passed down for multiple generations. Then, there is the added dimension of the farms being largely family businesses. When money and control start interfacing with family dynamics, it can exponentially complicate the transition discussions.”
Finke said that having Extension’s resources available to her clients is invaluable.
“Extension’s process of working with farmers keeps them engaged in the process, which increases the likelihood that the transition work will be successfully completed,” she said. “Some people might not dedicate the time to the process until it’s a crisis, and then there are a lot fewer options for proceeding.”
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