Company says few programs are available to help producers manage their farm businesses in a systematic and logical way
In the game of blackjack, better players rely on a cheat card that tells them what to do.
If, for example, the player has 13 and the dealer is showing two, three, four, five or six, the cheat card advises the player to stand.
Something similar exists in the world of farming, but few producers know about it or use it, says a farm management consultant in Saskatchewan.
“With the amount of technology and the amount of financial acumen (in agriculture)… we almost have what we call the blackjack cheat card,” said Evan Shout, chief financial officer of the Hebert Group, who also operates a 30,000-acre grain farm near Moosomin, Sask., and runs a financial consulting company, Maverick Ag.
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This summer, Hebert Group unveiled a new service called Farmer Coach to help producers make better decisions and improve financial outcomes on their farms.
“What we’re trying to do is get farmers to look at that cheat card before making these (management) decisions. The cheat card is essentially (using) data and financial (information)… (instead) of the stress of having to trust your gut.”
Shout and Kristjan Hebert, president of the Hebert Group, launched Farmer Coach this summer because they noticed a gap in the marketplace.
Rising input costs, global instability and extreme weather have made farming more complicated and riskier in the last two decades, but few programs exist to help producers manage their farm businesses in a systematic and logical way.
“Set goals, have accountability, that kind of thought process, rather than just getting through the day to day, which is what the majority of (producers) do today,” Shout said.
“They’re really good at being farmers, but they’ve never been taught how to be entrepreneurs…. A program like this, with coaching, peer group and education, was our answer.”
The first installment of the Farmer Coach program will begin this fall with in-person sessions in Saskatoon.
The course will consist of three sessions in November, March and July. Each session will last a day and a half, with participants working with and sharing their experience with others.
Hebert and Shout may run a large grain farm, but the Farmer Coach program isn’t tailored to a certain type of farm business or western Canadian agriculture.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a 30,000-acre grain farm in Saskatchewan or a 2,000-acre vegetable farm in Ontario … the theory and the concepts are still the same,” Shout said.
“It’s based on the mindset of farming — debt service, working capital, human resources. It’s the high-level concepts that every farm has to deal with.”
Farmer Coach emphasizes removing emotions from farm decisions.
Too often, producers rely on instincts or past tendencies to make choices about cropping, equipment and land purchases.
In most cases, choices that involve family politics lead to worse outcomes, said Shout, who worked for MNP before joining the Hebert Group.
“When you started out farming, it was a way of life. It wasn’t seen as a business,” he said.
“If you treat it as a way of life, it ends up being a really crappy business…. If you treat it like a business, it ends up being a really good way of life.”
That may be true, but farmers aren’t the easiest demographic to teach.
The culture of “I’ll do it my way, on my land” still prevails in agriculture.
“The reason we’ve made it a coaching program, rather than an education program, is exactly for that reason,” Shout said.
“In agriculture we have this thing called rugged individualism. Everybody likes to succeed on their own and fail on their own.”
That approach can work, but it has limitations.
“I think it’s important to be inspired and hear ideas from other people. We don’t know what we don’t know,” Hebert said.
“As producers, we’re poised to have one of the most profitable years ever, and we know we can help farmers capture these opportunities with some guidance and the right mindset.”
