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What’s Next for the Family Farm: Resources Help When Making Decisions
Wisconsin Ag Connection - 02/27/2024

Christine Bender remembers the moment 10 years ago when she told her parents she wanted to come back and farm long-term. “My mom started to cry because she was so happy,” Bender said. In the decade since Bender and her family created a succession plan, they’ve had many discussions about working together. Now she serves as manager and partner in her family’s Dodge County farm, McFarlandale Dairy, making her the sixth generation in her family to farm.

Oftentimes, getting the family around the table to have those discussions is hard to do. “I know that, from working in the industry. I saw families ripped apart by working together and they don’t talk to each other anymore. And I hope we never get to that point,” Bender said.

Farm succession planning has a lot of technical components that require accountants, consultants, tax specialists, and attorneys to figure out how and when the transition will happen. But, several steps need to happen before families are ready to put things in writing. One of the big steps is having conversations about expectations and values.

Extension has aided farm families with their succession planning for many years. Joy Kirkpatrick, Extension’s Farm Succession Outreach Specialist, has worked with farmers for two decades. “Farm succession is not something that farmers do regularly. They’ve maybe gone through the process once before when they took over their farm from a family member. But, it’s not something they do on a regular basis. And it’s big change, so there’s hesitancy.”

For Bender and her family, Extension resources available led them to ask the important questions and kept everybody working toward solutions. “Joy helped facilitate our family conversations because where do you start? It’s hard because it’s your life and there’s a lot of emotion tied to these longstanding dairy farms.”

Farmers and their families often consider the work, the lifestyle, and the land that has been in their family for multiple generations to be part of who they are. When succession planning begins, they want to ensure the next generation will have similar values and work ethic. That’s not always the case.

Bridget Finke, Attorney and Partner of Valley Crossing Law, in Baldwin, specializes in farm succession planning. She sees challenges unique to farming that add extra dynamics to the process. “For many families, there’s a high level of pride and sentimentality in the heritage of the ownership of the land. Some farms were homesteaded in the 1800s and have been passed down for multiple generations. Then, there is the added dimension of the farms being largely family businesses. When money and control start interfacing with family dynamics, it can exponentially complicate the transition discussions.”

Finke said that having Extension’s resources available to her clients is invaluable. “Extension’s process of working with farmers keeps them engaged in the process, which increases the likelihood that the transition work will be successfully completed,” she said. “Some people might not dedicate the time to the process until it’s a crisis, and then there are a lot fewer options for proceeding.”

Succession is not always the best decision

Passing farms from one generation to the next is not new, but Finke said that the situation has changed a lot, even since her first year as a lawyer. “Farms are larger and more complicated. They have more acres, more animals and there are a lot more pieces to the puzzle. A lot of farms diversify, such as a dairy farm adding commodity crops or raising steers or other lines of business. That makes it more complicated.”

And, the day-to-day work of farming has changed. Those changes mean succession is not always the best option. Yogi and Brian Brown of Belleville worked with Extension to transfer their farm to their son and his wife. “It’s always tough to get the conversation going. We knew some of the questions but not all of them,” Yogi said. They created a five-year succession plan, and their son started to work with them in 2019.

Brian had major back surgery in 2020, leaving him unable to work for nine months. Yogi was grateful that her son was there to help run their operation during that time. And, that experience gave her son a better picture of what the Brown’s farm operation required and what changes would need to be made for the farm to support another generation of Browns.

“Through the whole process, Joy kept reminding us of our goals. We said at the beginning that if the farm ever gets in the way of our relationship, we choose our relationship.”

The Browns paused their succession plan in 2022 one year before their son was planning to take over. Their son had talked with them about what he and his wife wanted for their future and growing family. “We knew it was time. We were at a point where we would have had to put a lot of money into upgrading our facilities. That would have moved our son even farther from his goals. We just weren’t willing to do that.”

After agreeing on how to proceed, they contacted Extension to discuss their options for an exit plan. While their dream of working with their son is not going to happen right now, they know they made the right decision.



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