Think about these 3 when improving your farm operation

What are top farm operators doing these days to move their businesses ahead of the curve? The leaders’ operations might look different in major ways from the outside, but there tends to be one thing in common.

The farm leaders take a similar mindset that looks like this: Always keep improving.

All-Encompassing

This outlook extends to everything about the operation and the way the farm runs — everything from ideas about production to future planning to employee training and development to how the farm’s leaders pursue learning and improving their own knowledge and skill set as farm business managers.

Taking this mindset helps in multiple ways. It helps ensure that the farm and its people don’t simply run on auto-pilot or fall into the “we’ve always done it this way” mindset.

It helps keep everyone focused on the future and what the farm will need as the operating environment continues to shift and change.

Keep It Going

An emphasis on improvement also keeps everyone aware of the reality that no one — no matter how many years they’ve farmed, how many acres they farm or side businesses they run, or how many years of ag education they’ve gone through — has ever fully “arrived.”

Here are three things to think about as you consider how to integrate this mindset further into your operation.

1. Apply a growth mindset toward everything. This includes any mistakes or missteps that happen along the way, especially when people are learning something new. Looking at things that “go wrong” as opportunities to learn and grow in some way can be helpful for both farm leaders and their teams. It allows people to try new things in the first place. If people are worried about the leader having a negative reaction if something doesn’t go perfectly the first time, they’ll likely be reluctant in the future to initiate improvements or positive changes. They’ll just stick to the same way they’ve always done things. Encouraging people to bring ideas and improvements to the operation will be much easier if they see that if something doesn’t go perfectly right away, everyone can learn from it and simply try again.

2. Recognize that learning requires both planning and action. Learning something new usually requires intentional planning. Sometimes learning happens on the fly, but often it means thinking ahead of time about what the farm needs and then planning for how to grow our skills in those areas. As the farm’s leader, you might take inventory of where your operation could benefit most from improvement. For example, maybe a leader decides that it would be beneficial to learn more about marketing and marketing tools that are available. Then, they can create a plan to intentionally learn more about marketing, such as working one-on-one with a market adviser who can also act as a coach and teacher to help the farmer increase their market knowledge and skills.

3. Encourage progress in learning. Learning something new and then applying it to your farm operation can take time. The bigger the learning or application, the longer it will likely take. But that also likely means major positive change is in the works for your operation. It could be easy to become discouraged when it seems like the learning or progress we’d like to see is taking longer than we’d hoped. As the farm’s leader, look for ways to encourage ongoing learning and new improvements or projects that are underway to advance the farm, even if they’re currently still in the works or haven’t yet come to fruition. That can go a long way in helping everyone stay motivated to keep seeing the changes through.

How Are You Navigating This Market?

Farmers have found that getting some third-party perspective from 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. Your free trial includes regular audio and video updates, technical analysis, recommendations and more.

Learn more about our market adviser programs and offerings at www.waterstreetag.com.