Frye: How to use 2022 as a springboard to 2023

As 2022 wraps up, there’s a lot that farm leaders can use to move forward into 2023 plans. It can be helpful to start out on the “strengths” side for your operation in 2022.

What were some of the things that went really well? What did your team do well? What were the high points?

How did you grow in your leadership of the operation? What decisions did you make confidently? Be sure to list as many as possible.

After doing that, you can turn your focus toward the challenges your farm faced over the past year.

You can include both external operating environment challenges, as well as any internal challenges within your operation.

Crunch The Numbers

Next, work with your advisers to get the clearest financial picture of how 2022 turned out for your operation. How did the year go overall in terms of revenue?

Did expenses turn out differently or similar to what you had projected? Did any of your operation’s key metrics improve over the past year?

Once you’ve gotten a full picture of your 2022 crop year, it’s time to reflect and draw out any takeaways or lessons from the year.

These could be from anything, whether positive or difficult, your operation encountered in the past year.

Carry The Changes

Take a bit of time to consider opportunities that may be on the horizon for your operation. Put on the farm CEO hat and think about the opportunities that might already be around and what may come up.

How will you evaluate various opportunities for your farm and choose the best ones to select and invest in?

Even though 2023 will be a brand new, different year, you can carry forward what you learned from 2022 combined with the knowledge that this year will likely present different challenges and opportunities than the previous year.

Trials And Tribulations

The process of figuring out, through trial and error, what’s best for your operation isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing in itself. Some of it is necessary because there’s no other farm operation that’s exactly like yours.

Working to observe what’s going on in your farm so you can make improvements is important, but it’s overwhelming to feel like you must be an expert in every single aspect of farming and farm business.

Three Approaches

Try these three ideas to help speed up this process:

• Ask others what they’ve tried and how it went for them. While it’s true that every farm operation is unique, it can still be helpful to talk with other farm leaders about what’s worked for them. Being part of a peer group of like-minded farmers from across the nation who want to improve their operations is one way to ask and find out what others have done or are trying.

• Learn from other non-ag businesses. Another approach is to step entirely outside of agriculture and consider what other businesses are doing to improve their game. This might seem like an unusual approach at first because there may not be a ton of direct parallels or applications from a different industry to your farm operation. But it can be helpful to spark new ways of thinking with regards to problems or challenges you’re experiencing in your operation.

• Get some third-party perspective. You could also consider working with a farm adviser who comes from outside of your operation. It’s ideal if your adviser is well-versed in the ag world yet brings an “outsider’s” perspective to your operation and the particular challenges you’re dealing with. They should bring new approaches and ideas to combine with your expert knowledge of your operation to help spark workable solutions.

Market Opportunities

Farmers have found that working with our market advisers has helped ease their minds. The advisers help farmer clients with planning and execution around marketing decisions and help keep them up to speed on the current, rapidly-changing grain market situation and how it impacts their operation.

Get a free two-week trial of our marketing information service, MarketView Basic, at www.waterstreetconsulting.com. Your free trial includes regular audio and video updates, technical analysis, recommendations and more.

Or, learn more about our market adviser programs and offerings at www.waterstreetconsulting.com.