Getting more time & enjoyment back in farming

By Nathan Craig, WMG Chief Executive Officer

We all know the feeling of being stretched thin in life, having to do increasingly more for everyone and in managing our farm businesses, with time always being at a premium. This article explores how the West Midlands Group (WMG) have been deconstructing the ‘lack of time’ issue, my experience in farming, and offers a pathway forward to reduce stress and risk associated with managing a farm business.

WMG’s interest in this topic comes from our own internal quest to improve the way we guide our farming members in exploring new farming practices and technologies. Through the RiskWi$e project, a GRDC investment, the WMG Team are taking a close look at how our everyday decisions to manage risk in the farm business contribute to the stress of being time poor.

Our observations of farm business managers over the past 12 months have been that many farmers across our region are now operating, if not in title – then certainly in role, as a CEO of a farm family ‘corporate’ farm. Farmers are now managers of very large businesses, with current Planfarm benchmarking data highlighting that the average farm size is worth $16M in WA; farming is not a small business!

We also see many of the characteristics of a ‘corporate-type’ business: a WMG survey last year highlighted that 98% of farmers see themselves as making the final decision in all aspects of management, just like a CEO. They also have a group of people around them that help to curate information they receive and help to make the final decision, just like a CEO, including agronomic consultants, financial advisers, grain marketers, family business members, partners, and employees.

In considering this ‘family corporate’ model that we have arrived at, many farm business owners and managers have been thrust into this situation without knowing it, and it is no wonder that many farmers feel the pressure of decision making, having less time, and feeling forced into the less palatable office work instead of being out on the farm doing practical work. This is reinforced by comments we often hear from farmers lamenting “we don’t care about all this crap; we just want to farm.”

Farmers are farmers for one reason, they like the practical side of farming and not sitting inside the office so much. In reflecting, that is definitely what attracted myself to farming over 20 years ago, even though I didn’t really think I would be, or appreciate being, locked in the office a lot of the time.

I remember my first year on the farm in 2002 being an absolute chaotic disaster. At the end of the year, my mother passed the comment “this isn’t what you thought it would be, is it?”  I lied through my teeth and said, “no, it’s all fine,” but in reality it did knock the wind out of my sails and left me wondering if I should really be a farmer after all.

The stress of the first year led me to develop a ‘Critical Control Point Planner’ for our business. This outlined all the key steps we needed to complete each year in order to achieve our goals. It optimised and prioritised our operations, reduced overlap of key tasks, and made sure we focused on the important tasks each week of the month. This enabled us to run up to 12,000 sheep and 1000ha of crop with only 2.4 labour units, and to maximise the productive potential of our business.

This planner was supported by the use of scenario planning, so that we always had a plan to achieve our plan, no matter the season. We also had a business plan, so we knew where our North Star was; what success looked like at the end. This approach, in identifying the 1%ers and being 1%ers themselves, is something that other farm businesses can adopt to take the stress and ‘randomness’ out of farming.

The RiskWi$e Project is all about helping farmers to address the 1%ers in their business, the small things that can add up to a big shift in the mentality of making decisions. By putting in place a continual improvement process and finding the small gains in your farm business, it can give more control over your time and enjoyment and allow farm managers to get on with the practical, fun part of farming.

Keep your eye out for the upcoming WMG RiskWi$e farmer discussion group meetings happening across our region, where you can learn more about how identifying the 1%ers in your business can lead to big increases in your available time and profitability.