Next farmers – business skills
Nov 17, 2009 10:51 AM, By Hembree Brandon, Farm Press Editorial Staff
Today’s producers, and those of the future, must utilize the same management and business principles as major corporations.
The next generation of farmers will foremost have to be good businessmen — “just being a good producer won’t be enough,” says Jeremy Jack.
PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS at the annual meeting of the Mississippi Agricultural Economics Association were, from left, Bert Greenwalt, professor, College of Agricultural and Technology, Arkansas State University, and a producer at Hazen, Ark.; George Baird, owner/operator, Land Management Group LLC, Collierville, Tenn.; Allen Eubanks, owner/operator, Eubanks Produce, Inc., Lucedale, Miss.; Jeremy Jack, producer, Belzoni, Miss.; and Steve Turner, professor and head of the Mississippi State University Agricultural Economics Department.
“When my father was my age, he was able to shell 300 bushels of corn in a good day,” the Belzoni, Miss., producer said at the annual meeting of the Mississippi Agricultural Economics Association. “Today, we can harvest 40,000 bushels in a day. Who knows how things will have changed when my son is my age?”
Jack, who earned a master’s degree in agricultural economics at Mississippi State University, says the next generation of producers “will no longer be farmers just growing grain and taking it to the elevator — they’ll be biological manufacturers of products for specific end users.
“The knowledge tools they will need will include human resources, financial management, ability to delegate, public relations, strategic planning and positioning, macroeconomics, and good channels of information, including legislation pertinent to their business.”
Farms of the future will be of four types, Jack says:
1. Large commodity farms, producing as much as possible on as many acres as possible with as little equipment and labor as possible — “very aggressive producers, running farms with a manufacturing mentality, built around science and technological systems.
“There are already a lot of 20,000-acre farms in the Mid-South; there are going to be more.”
2. Niche markets, focusing more on quality than quantity, producing high value specialty crops (such as vegetables) on relatively small acreages.
3. Weekend farmers/gardeners, who sell what they produce locally at farmer markets or perhaps through you-pick operations
4. Those on their way out — “people stuck in the status quo, who do things ‘because we’ve always done it this way’ and can’t adapt to the changes required to grow and be more efficient.
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