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a postive spin on the whole ILFF/Stamp farms controversy
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mennoboy
Posted 11/23/2012 14:45 (#2712620)
Subject: a postive spin on the whole ILFF/Stamp farms controversy


Rivers, MB
This post has been swirling in my mind over the last week as everyone waged war on the good, bad, true, partly true, completely false parts of the Stamp farms story. Unfortuantely, it does affect us all in bank risk, insurance premiums and general land rent values as a really big farm goes under or makes an expansion move with methods that are hurtful to some or all of their neighbors.

I kept thinking as I read many of the posts, what positive things can we take from these stories (there was alot of talk about ILFF a few years back as well). When I followed some of the links in a few of the posts, I came across a list of videos that Top Producer had about their finalists and winners from the last few years. I watched probably close to a dozen of them. Besides seeing the rows of brand new equipment, there were some very good ideas that any farmer could take and have benefit their farm.

So, as the story unfolds, and I'm sure there will be more farms like this, I'd challenge people to learn from them and take out the good ideas. here's a few that have I've gleaned over the last few years.

1. People - almost every large, succesful farmer I've met or seen in the top Producer videos talks about their people that make their business successful. Any of us that farm deal with people every day. I've been challenged when thinking about all this to step up a notch in how I treat the businesses I deal with, our landlords, our employee and my farm partners.

2. Reputation - it takes a life time to build a good reputation, and a very short time to tear it down. Probably one of the most valuable, non-tangible, things that any farm has, whether we like it or not.

3. Thinking outside the box - Many of these top producers that we see and read about think about things differently than most of us. How can we do that on our own farm. I remember the comments about the ILFF picture with a Hummer pulling an NH3 cart. Was it a photo op? Maybe. If it wasn't, its not really any sillier than buying a 1 ton dually diesel for driving to the farm every day and only a pulling something with it 3x a year. Sometimes, unconventional thinking/practices make a lot of sense.

4. communication - Farmers have had an image problem at times. Complainers/really poor/too wealthy/polluters/lazy/hard working and the list could go on forever. Many of these larger farms/top producers were effective in their communications (many types of communication) with the "non-farming" world.

5. Management/planning - Many were very intentional about their short term and long term planning. This included management meetings and relating the plan to those that worked for them. And this doesn't have to only be for the BTO farms. Anyone that has more than 1 person involved in the farm needs to have communication and a plan.


I'm sure there are more. There's been too much negativity on here recently. yes, many of these flame-out type operations cause alot of real hurt to lots of people. Nothing we can do about those situations. Learning from them and applying them to our own farms will stop it from perpetuating itself. Not eveyone wants to farm 40 000 acres (including myself). but many of the principles of those that do can be translated into improving our own farms, whether that be 200 acres, or 50000 ac. And everything inbetween.

Anyone else glean some positive ideas out of the recent negativity? I doubt I'm the only one.
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