Editorial
Farm Succession, Not an Issue to Take Lightly
by: Keith Esplin, PGI Executive Director
Potato farming has undergone radical changes over the past 50 years. Some of my earliest memories involved furrow irrigating potatoes, hand cutting potato seed, hand pulling weeds (before the approval of Sencor), driving small tractors without cabs, and backing trucks into cellars so narrow that you had to fold the mirrors in to get through the doors. Those days are long gone. I am still amazed at GPS technology that allows a grower to operate the controls of his harvester without needing to hold on to the tractor’s steering wheel!
Growers who went through this technological revolution and continue to operate successful farms today are indeed rare. They possess the drive, work ethic, vision, and sometimes luck, that helped them build farming operations that are many times larger than when they first started their farming careers. They learned to adapt and expand their operations to keep up with efficiencies of size that allow them to compete in a technologically modern environment.
These growers who built the Idaho potato industry have another thing in common, their age. Unfortunately life does not go on forever, and these same hard working growers face one of the greatest challenges of their careers: How to transfer their land, knowledge, experiences, even their entire life’s work to the next generation. Of course most forward-thinking growers started this transfer long ago, but for many, much remains to be done. Instead of taming the desert, these growers now wrestle with different issues: keeping the IRS from being the largest beneficiary of their estates, transferring the decision making process to the next generation, and planning for retirement.
It was for these reasons that PGI partnered with USDA’s Risk Management Agency to provide grower education on Farm Succession. Mike Salisbury, of Salisbury Management Services, provided many interesting insights on this subject to growers at the All Grower meeting on November 14 in Pocatello. He will also help present two workshops at the Potato Conference this January in Pocatello. The first will be similar to the workshop given in November and the second will get deeper into this important subject.
Of course there are many sources of information that growers can refer to when making their succession plans. The most important thing is that they plan. If adequate plans are not made to transfer assets, management, and other resources to the next generation the survival of the farm is seriously at risk. This is a process that involves not only the original farming parents, but their children, and even grandchildren, as well as all spouses. Farm succession may not be a fun issue to discuss, but it is not an issue to be taken lightly.
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