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Cultivating Your Farm’s Future series provides regular planning for multiple generations

A farm succession specialist says setting aside regular time for transfer planning can make decisions about an operation’s future more manageable.

Joy Kirkpatrick is with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension.

“We have a lot of baby boomers who are at a retirement age or as we say in agriculture, shifting gears to their later farming years because nobody wants to talk about retirement,” she says. “And that means that there need to be some decisions about how things are going to transfer.”

She tells Brownfield business decisions should be separated from family dynamics during the process.

“One of the things that I always encourage is to start having regular business meetings that aren’t started in the family dinner, having them separated out a little bit can really help,” she says.

Wisconsin Extension is offering small, virtual workshops this fall and winter to help families answer key questions that can shape a farm’s generational survival.  

Kirpatrick says the Cultivating Your Farm’s Future series opens discussions ahead of working with legal professionals.