What are your thoughts about the existence of a commodities supercycle? Whether we’re in one is open for debate. From some of the reading I’ve done, even economists aren’t all of the same opinion about the presence of a supercycle. What we do know is that the grain and oilseed sector has seen tremendous price […] Read more
Stories by Terry Betker, PAg
Predetermined transition could ease farm succession
Discussion centred around transition tends to focus quite a bit on the generation that is exiting. Thinking about that causes me to wonder how we could determine when someone actually started farming in the first place. We could say it was when someone started working on the farm, but that would be before they became […] Read more
Comparing today to the ’70s produces scary possibilities
Yogi Berra, the famous New York Yankees catcher, is credited with saying, “it’s like déjà vu all over again.” He had dozens and dozens of sayings that were funny but provided some meaningful life lessons at the same time. So, I’d like to pose a question: are farmers currently in a déjà vu-all-over-again scenario? Let’s […] Read more
Organizational chart can help develop management plan
There is an abundance of information and resources pertaining to a farm’s business vision, but there’s not so much written about a vision for management. In other words, resources to help a farm family determine what they are managing toward. I’m talking about management structure — who manages what, who does what. An organizational chart […] Read more
Retiring producers can find meaningful roles on the farm
Here is a rhetorical but really important question. How do we take the wisdom and experience from the retiring generation and pass it on successfully to the younger, or incoming, generation? This wisdom and experience comes from life’s lessons. There’s a saying that you can’t teach experience but that you can teach from experience. Makes […] Read more
Many families unsure how to go about making changes
By the time you read this article, 2020 will be in the rear-view mirror. There will be lots written about 2020, most notably the pandemic and including how things have changed and how things will continue to change as a result. This will be a global discussion. Let’s drill the discussion down to the farm […] Read more
If you were buying a farm, would you buy your own?
So, here’s an interesting question. Would you buy your farm? I don’t mean “would you buy the land?” but rather, a scenario where you didn’t have a farm and were looking to make an investment and one of the investments you were looking at was purchasing a farm. Would you buy your farm, if you […] Read more
What would you do if you had an extra million dollars?
You may remember the Barenaked Ladies song, If I had a $1,000,000, which was released in 1992. You would need about $1.85 million today to have the same buying power as then, depending on the inflation rate used in the calculation over the past almost 30 years. However, a million dollars today is still a […] Read more
‘What do you want’ can be difficult question to answer
It’ a simple enough question and one that gets asked many times a day. “What do you want” is usually addressed to another person or group of people in an attempt to try to find out what it is they desire or need. Young children have it mastered. They have no difficulty asking for what […] Read more
Farmers must decide their own comfort level with debt
Is your goal to be debt free? Do you think of debt as being a necessary evil? Any answer will be very much a function of personal opinion, with no wrong answers. I regularly talk to people who would very much like to be out of debt. In some situations, that is probably a good […] Read more
