Who will own your farm in 10 years?
Whether you’ve started thinking about transition or not, one thing is certain: one day, your farm will change hands. The question is whether that happens because you’ve planned for it, or because circumstances leave your family with no other choice.
A few weeks ago, I ran a workshop at the Ripple Ag Summit called Who Will Own Your Farm in 10 Years?
There were around 20 farming families in the room. The best part was, no one was just sitting back, listening. Everyone had their pens out, working through what the future of their own farm could look like before they’d even finished their coffees.
I opened with one question.
“If you don’t wake up tomorrow, who runs your farm next week?”
The room went quiet. It’s an uncomfortable question. But it’s also one that every farming family should be able to answer.
I followed with three more questions.
Seventy percent of family business transitions don’t make it successfully beyond the second generation.
In my experience, that’s rarely because families don’t want the best outcome. It’s because assumptions replace conversations and everyone believes they’re on the same page, until circumstances force difficult decisions.
During the workshop I shared an anonymous case study.
Let’s call my client Jack.
Jack was 68. His wife had passed away several years earlier, and he’d since re-partnered. His son was running the farm day-to-day, while his other children lived off-farm.
His Will hadn’t been updated. Everyone had their own expectations, and nobody had actually discussed what would happen.
Had Jack died unexpectedly, there were 5 people who could have had a legitimate claim over the farm, creating uncertainty for everyone involved.
Fortunately, that’s not what happened.
Instead, Jack decided to start the conversation before circumstances made the decisions for him.
Together, we worked through the difficult discussions, clarified expectations, and built a practical transition plan.
One of the biggest misconceptions I see is that succession is something you deal with later.
After retirement, after harvest, after things settle down.
The reality is that successful farm transitions happen because families start early. They create time to explore options, work through different viewpoints and make thoughtful decisions without unnecessary pressure.
Starting early gives families more choices, while waiting usually reduces them.
One of the biggest barriers to succession is delaying because you believe you need to have all the answers before you begin.
You don’t. You simply need to start the conversation.
Every successful transition I’ve been involved in began with a decision to stop putting it off. Everything else followed from there.
The question isn’t whether your farm will transition one day, because it will.
The real question is whether your family will make those decisions together, or whether circumstances will make them for you.
Starting the conversation gives your family more time, more options and greater confidence about the future.
If succession has been sitting in the “we’ll get to it one day” basket, perhaps the best question to ask isn’t when will we finish the plan?
It’s, when will we start the conversation?
Already have an accountant and solicitor? Discover why farming families may still benefit from working with a succession planner – and why getting the family decisions right first can make everything that follows clearer.
Who Will Own Your Farm in 10 Years? Who will own your farm in 10 years? Whether you’ve started thinking about transition or not, one
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