Traditionally, young farmers have looked to more seasoned relatives, neighbors and family friends for pointers on improving the bottom line.
The Manitoba government has taken a page from this time-honored tradition and added a dash of management philosophy to come up with a new program to help young farmers improve their financial skills.
The program is believed to be the first formal mentoring program in Canadian agriculture, although similar American programs have been around for a decade.
The mentoring program is part of the long-awaited Project 2000, a program promised by the NDP government during the 1999 election campaign.
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It was intended to make it easier for young farmers to buy farms from retiring producers, since almost 70 percent of Manitoba farms may change hands in the next 15 years.
Gary Zilkey, acting manager of Manitoba Agriculture’s farm management section, said the mentoring program is the first step in Project 2000. Other components are still being developed.
According to a department survey, about 850 new farmers have begun operations in the past five years in Manitoba.
The mentoring program will match five or six young or beginning farmers with one experienced farmer as mentor.
With help from department staff, the young farmers will learn to use farm planning computer software. Each will develop a farm financial plan, then spend 20 to 24 hours of individual time with their mentor analyzing and improving the plan, said Zilkey.
Farmer-to-farmer mentoring is a time-honored tradition, said Joy Johnson of Nebraska’s Center for Rural Affairs. Johnson co-ordinates an intensive mentoring program called Land Link, the first one in North America. Since it started in 1991, about 20 other states have run programs.
Nebraska’s program is designed to help young farmers buy operations from people looking to retire.
She thinks the mentorship approach is successful because farmer-mentors bring a “Joe Common” credibility to solving problems.
“It works in the real world, in other words, rather than something that has worked in a research (lab),” she said.
Land Link has worked with about 125 families in 10 years. About one-third of the partnerships have resulted in successful transfers, which Johnson figures is about as good as the ratio of successful marriages to divorces.
“We can’t be doing all that bad if Cupid doesn’t have any better percentages,” she said.
Mentors and young farmers have to click for the relationship to be productive, said Johnson.
“They need to come together and feel comfortable in trusting one another.”
Manitoba’s program will also rely on the goodwill of mentors.
The senior farmers will not be paid a salary or fee, but will receive an honorarium of likely $100 per day, said Zilkey.
“We didn’t want to duplicate other programs that are around,” he said, referring to federal programs that subsidize the cost of farm management consultants.
The mentoring program will be offered at no charge to young farmers, he said.
The department is looking for farmers willing to share their experiences with new farmers and wanting to improve their communities. As of last week, it hadn’t yet lined up any senior farmers to take on the job.
In the next month, the department hopes to have 60 young farmers working with 12 mentors.
The department will spend about $1,000 per participant, said Zilkey.
The president of Manitoba’s farm lobby group said the program sounds like a positive step albeit a small one.
Don Dewar of Keystone Agricultural Producers said financial management skills are critical to the success of young farmers, and are often the most difficult to learn. In family farms, the older generation often keep a tight hold over financial decisions, said Dewar.
The program may also help teach the new generation of farmers a better way for managing finances. He said many older farmers still keep receipts in shoeboxes, sell grain to get cash, pay bills when they can, and lack any sort of a financial plan.
“Hopefully (the mentoring program) will help the sons and daughters of those people because I think that’s where the need is,” said Dewar.
However, he said the province still needs to find ways for the next generation of farmers to access capital to buy operations.
