Emily Lees: A great farm might not be a great business
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Although I pay my AHDB levy like many of us, I also used to grumble at the farm profits it eats into. No longer.
I recently attended the AHDB’s Roots to Resilience course, run by two Americans representing the consultancy company Farming4Profit. It was fantastic.
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First, it taught us a basic but fundamental new thought: running a farm and running a farm business are two very different things.
Your crops may sway in the wind like something out of Gladiator, your cattle are possibly competing with Kim Kardashian for world’s best rear-end, and your sheep may not actually be suicidal… but what are the numbers saying?
Our enthusiastic American instructors showed us various new perspectives to pick apart our finances and delve into what is working for our businesses, and what might be hindering them.
One such method was to split the farm into smaller enterprises – we run a cow/calf and fattening business, for example, so splitting them up as such allows me to analyse which is more profitable.
The course also delved into succession, communication and conflict.
Many farms are multi-generational, and even conversations about which field to graze next – let alone chats about the future – can lead to disagreements.
Offending our loved ones is not what we signed up for when we decided to work with family, yet there is no clear rulebook on how to survive conflict and communicate effectively as colleagues and relations.
Handily, our friendly course leaders had some interesting and helpful techniques to use when in the minefield of family farming conflicts such as the “Six Thinking Hats”.
This sounds a bizarre concept but, by mentally switching between “hats”, it allows you to shift your focus or redirect a discussion.
The course was also very sociable. Meeting farmers from all over the UK and hearing their different struggles and solutions was both inspiring and heart-warming.
It left me with a huge to-do list and, importantly, some “not-to-dos”.
Do pay yourself and don’t make yourself free labour seem particularly fundamental.