A quick Google search revealed a wealth of info on farm succession planning—there’s plenty of guides, templates, and advice out there. We’re not going to get into providing you with a ‘how to guide’, we simply want to highlight the benefits of digital recording when it comes to farm succession. The key roles an app like Cloud Farmer can play is around minimising the disruption and enable involvement in the farm from a distance. Let us explain how.
Minimising disruption
People are often described as the most important asset in a business, and when it comes to farming, we couldn’t agree more. Your farm reflects you and the many hours you’ve spent working that land and often the generations before you. The knowledge you hold is irreplaceable and will take the next generation decades to acquire, but what if there was a simple way to speed up the acquisition of this knowledge? You’ll have all your notebooks and diaries stacked neatly on a shelf or tucked away in a cupboard somewhere, the information on the pages is invaluable and would really help the next generation gain an insight into where your farm has come from and where it’s going. But let’s be honest, nobody has the time or inclination to leaf through pages and pages of notes. Imagine if all the information recorded in your notebooks and diaries was in a digital format that could be easily accessed, searched, and digested. Well, you don’t need to imagine—Cloud Farmer lets you do just that and it’s faster to update Cloud Farmer than write in your diary.
Involvement from a distance
Involvement in the farm comes from two aspects. Our 13-year-old son has never appeared very interested in the running of the farm, sure he loves going out with his dad and helping where he can. He’s learning the trade of farming, but not the business side of farming. Now that he’s away from the farm at boarding school he’s started to become a lot more interested. The easiest way for him to get involved and understand what’s happening on farm was for us to add him as a user to our Cloud Farmer account. He has the app on his phone and can see what’s happening whenever he wants. One day he might take over the farm and he’ll have a wealth of his dad’s knowledge at his fingertips. The other side of the coin is that dad will be able to keep tabs on him via the app when the time comes—he’ll be able to see what’s happening on farm without being too hands on.
We’re not invincible
Sometimes the process of succession planning is accelerated. It’s not something any of us like to think about, but what would happen to the farm if the main person running the farm were to pass away? We all think we’re invincible and that we have plenty of time, but that’s not always the case. There have been instances when the farm owner and manager has passed away unexpectedly, and their partner is left to run the farm. No easy feat when you’re dealing with grief and trying to raise a family by yourself. Having a system in place like Cloud Farmer would help relieve a bit of the pressure and allow someone to come in and pick things up. They’d be able to see the plan in Cloud Famer and could easily look back at what happened the previous year(s).
We need to be thinking about the future, digital farm recording is the future. The sooner it’s embraced the sooner you’ll benefit from it.