In the writing business, that’s what’s we call “irony,” since a lot of ink in this issue turns out to be devoted to contingency planning.

On page 6, you’ll see Lee Hart’s chat with our mutual friend and previous colleague Maggie Van Camp, who has made a mission of helping farmers navigate the practicalities and potential pitfalls of planning for succession. In Maggie’s case, such foresight was invaluable following her husband’s unexpected death, and she’s now making similar plans as her own children approach full-time farming age.

On page 19, Ross McKenzie fires up the spreadsheets to help irrigators calculate their best use of water, against the very real possibility of allocation cuts if snowpack remains low and slows the flow from the Rockies this spring.

In the Cattleman’s Corner section on page 27, our columnist Heather Eppich tells of the arrival of her new baby girl (congratulations!). The family took extra care to plan their trip home during January’s cold snap — a weather event which might have taken other less cautious people by surprise considering how warm late 2023 and early 2024 have otherwise been.

Even your tractor may soon be a better advance planner than I was this week. On page 10, Doug Ferguson tells us about the work of SB Quantum, a Quebec company using quantum magnetometers to measure fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field, so as to better set a self-driving tractor’s directional heading, where other GPS-based systems’ maneuverability may be limited by the need to correct for heading errors.

Now, back to the irony: I didn’t plan in advance for this issue to wind up with such a focus on planning. It just worked out that way. Our columnists and friends this week will advise you against expecting things to work out in your favour — and believe me or not, so will I.

Is that “planning for failure” — a practice one of my favourite cartoon characters quite unfairly mocks as “even dumber than regular planning”? Of course it’s planning for failure, because there’s a big difference between expecting to fail and knowing what your options will be when or if circumstances don’t pan out as expected.

Case in point: the ag finance arm of Rabobank — which last year announced its entry to the Canadian farm-level lending market — just published its latest North American agribusiness review, which offers caution against bullish economic indicators. For Canada specifically, the lender emphasizes our battle against inflation is “not yet over.” The energy complex has been seen as the main driver pushing headline inflation lower, but Rabobank cautions that “relying on lower energy prices to slow price pressures is more prayer than policy” and it does see some upside for oil prices as 2024 progresses.

As for weather, the lender notes the expectations for our current El Niño winter to make the transition to neutral, and then move to La Niña conditions this summer. In other words, “North America is poised for a wet spring, accompanied by warmer temperatures across Canada and the northeast United States.” If that climate pattern pans out as expected, that “should significantly benefit wheat and other spring crops, setting a promising stage for the 2024 season.”

However — because of course there’s a “however” — it notes the possibility of unexpected cold fronts going through wheat-growing areas of the U.S. Plains and cautions that for U.S. agriculture in particular, the transition from El Niño to La Niña, and the pacing of same, “will prove critical this summer… and underpins the uncertainty we are facing in 2024.”

As for fertilizer markets, “costs have to come down, and hopefully they will,” RaboBank writes, as an “increasingly weak outlook for grower margins should pull input prices lower.” However, it says, given the seasonality of prices and the factors we see at play in geopolitics and trade in 2024, some of that downtrend “may be timed out of the 2024 planting season.”

Hopefully we’ll have more on this report and other analysis as we get closer to seeding, but as I said, the deadline is looming — and wouldn’t you know it, this report just landed unexpectedly on my desk today.

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But how a farmer plans his or her business — and associated risks — can help lower that statistic.

The report, titled “Healthy Minds, Healthy Farms: Exploring a Connection between Mental Health and Farm Business Management” sought to improve understanding of how business and lifestyles influence a farmer’s mental health.

“The Canadian farming population is more stressed than the rest of the population within Canada, for sure,” said FMC executive director Heather Watson.

Ontario-based Wilton Consulting Group worked with FMC to conduct the study, which found 62 per cent of Canadian farmers are categorized with mid-stress scores and 14 per cent with high stress.

Watson said the report follows other recent studies calling for improved mental health supports for farmers, including one conducted by a parliamentary committee in 2019.

“We’ve kind of always felt that business management practices must be impacted by mental health, in terms of your ability to make decisions, think rationally, handle stress and have coping mechanisms,” she said, noting that was all more anecdotal. “We hadn’t really looked at it from an analytical point of view.

“Throughout the research, we kind of had two sides of the same coin: how does mental health impact farm business’ management, and how does farm business management practices affect mental health?”

Overall, the report indicated 21 per cent of farmers regularly follow a risk management plan, while close to half – 48 per cent – do not.

There is evidence suggesting that should change, as 88 per cent of farmers who reported using a written business plans say it contributed to their peace of mind.

“When they did do a business plan, it seemed to result in doing other business practices as well,” Watson said, noting those same farmers were the ones more likely to use advisors or do budgeting.

Watson said 88 per cent of those who had written business plans could look to those plans as a “guiding light” during difficult times.

“Having business management practices isn’t going to reduce the stresses out there. Stressors are out there, whether it’s the weather or markets or whatever, but it does impact how you react to those stressors,” she said. “We found farmers who had business plans had more positive coping mechanisms.”

‘Stuck in an office’

Those who do not have a written business plan often cite their success without one as the reason why – and the thought of making a plan can be stressful.

“I’m interested to see if the context we find ourselves in today (with COVID-19) might shift that thinking a little bit, because business isn’t very good for the majority of farmers right now and it’s a completely blindsiding situation,” she said, questioning if business plans that included a worse-case scenario contingency plan may have helped farmers now.

The report found some demographic differences, with women and younger farmers
showing signs of higher stress levels. For young people, the study suggests they are generally less effective at coping with stress and less likely to practice business risk management plans.

Business planning “is not something that farmers like to do, or want to do,” Watson said. “It doesn’t resonate with them, they didn’t get into farming to manage people or be crunching numbers stuck in an office, so how do we bridge that gap?”

To better support farmer mental health, FMC says continued awareness on the importance of it is needed alongside support in improving mental health literacy within agricultural circles.

FMC also says it and the broader agriculture community need to deliver business management advice, focusing on risk management literacy as a means to face uncertainty. It also calls for more advocacy to expand farmer-specific mental health support services.

“We’re hoping that a lot of groups will look at these recommendations and actions and say, ‘we’ll do a project on that,” said Watson.

In all, the report had 24 calls to action that resulted from an extensive survey involving 1,735 farmers, 14 focus groups and 72 one-on-one interviews with farmers and industry representatives.

Watson and FMC are hoping the study can be used as a reference during the next round of policy development for agriculture.

— D.C. Fraser reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Ottawa.

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The COVID-19 pandemic is a very different type of emergency, said Rebecca Husted, a teacher of technical large animal emergency rescue.

“Most disasters like fires and floods have people moving around, but in COVID-19, people are not supposed to move around,” Husted said Thursday at Alberta Farm Animal Care’s Livestock Care Conference.

(The conference was to be held in Olds, Alta. on Wednesday and Thursday but was changed to an online event, with social distancing in mind.)

But planning ahead — even in a fast-changing situation — remains key. This should involve being in touch with government or agencies (such as ag services boards or farm groups) and making them aware of your situation.

“It comes down to us, in our communities, raising the flag and going to those folks ahead of time and saying, ‘Hey, you have to come up with some plans because it makes your job as an emergency manager a lot easier if you already have a plan with your livestock producers or (agriculture) industry in the area,'” she said.

Canada and the U.S. use “all-hazards disaster plans,” which include plans for evacuation as well as plans for sheltering in place, said Husted.

“This is a shelter-in-place disaster as much as possible, but there’s some things we need to be able to move,” she said. “We need to be able to move our animals and products.”

Disaster managers in your community will be overtaxed and likely won’t have any plans for livestock.

“They have no idea what to do when it comes to transportation of ag products, and you may want to give them some expertise in your local community,” she said.

And prepare for the worst.

“Think about what you have to do if you can’t move your animals,” she said. “For some producers, you have to think about what your euthanasia plan is. If you can’t get the veterinarian there to deal with your horse with a broken leg, what are you going to do? If you, for whatever reason, can’t sell your pigs and they get too old and they aren’t marketable, what are you going to do with them?”

Anyone who is taking care of someone else’s animals might want to get a waiver that says that they can make decisions on the owner’s behalf.

Be prepared for some bottlenecks and slowdowns in the supply chain.

“Supply chains are going to be affected,” said Husted. “Veterinary associations are suggesting that some pharmaceutical products could be in short supply. It may be that some of that stuff is produced in China.”

Think about staffing requirements, and steps will need to be taken if staff get sick or need to take time off to deal with sick relatives or take care of children. As well, many people in the agricultural community are older, and therefore more likely to be seriously ill.

Also make a list of contacts — including “all those folks who are essential to your business, from your employees to your suppliers.”

Many people in the agricultural community are older, and therefore more likely to be seriously ill. It’s also important to make sure the business can run if people get sick or injured — including yourself.

“You need to think, ‘If I wasn’t coming back, what would people need to know so they could run the farm?'”

The thought of planning for so many dire possibilities can be disheartening, but Husted urged her audience to persevere.

“There are people who are very successful going through a disaster, but they have a plan, and they are prepared and as soon as the market is ready, they are going to move on that.”

— Alexis Kienlen reports for Alberta Farmer from Edmonton.

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July on the farm used to be a great time for camping trips, visitors, weddings and stealing peas from the garden. Many folks today tell me that their July is now packed full of crop protection fungicides, off-farm work, and trying to find two or three nights off the farm. Folks hope to take time off “someday!”

The word procrastinate is formed from two Latin words — pro, meaning ‘forward,’ and crastinus, meaning ‘belonging to tomorrow.’ So, procrastination is the act of putting something into tomorrow and, of course, it suggests that it is always ‘in tomorrow’ — so never gets done (Hugh Culver, author of Stop Procrastinating Today).

Why do we put things off, special family times that we know only have a certain window of opportunity? Why delay plans to make our farm businesses healthier? My speaker friend Pierrette Desrosiers says that there are five main causes of procrastination:

1. A lack of planning and vision.
2. Perfectionism.
3. A rebellious spirit.
4. A quest for adrenaline, liking to work under pressure.
5. Don’t like doing a particular task, acting like a “spoiled child.”

My speaker friend Hugh Culver, believes, “You are not a procrastinator,” you always get more of what you focus on. He calls us to reframe our decision-making, and start developing better decision-making habits.

In farm families I feel there is a huge sense of overwhelm, so people get stressed and just shut down. When I show up as a coach we work to make an action plan that is realistic, to consider the steps along the way. For example, you know you need to update your will. First step, find the old copy. Second step, call the lawyer for a first appointment. Third step, talk to your spouse, and then book time to converse with your family. Summer is a good time to have some of these important conversations after family celebrations when you are just hanging out on the deck watching cloud formations.

Focus and execute was a mantra that caught my eye and has become a common expression for me. To establish a plan you need to think about what goals you want to reach. Break things down into steps, and work out the timelines for execution. Deadlines work for me. If I post them in my computer calendar, I can keep them top of mind, and move them along. The reward for me as a writer to meet deadlines is that I get paid! What rewards can you build into the projects that you are avoiding?

• From the Country Guide website: Reward yourself

One summer the junk i.e. steel, augers, etc., needed to be removed from our bush. Wes encouraged all the employees to participate in the load-the-flatdeck project. Each employee’s reward for this “not so fun” cleaning job was to have the money from their load, a little added incentive not to keep stashing old equipment in the trees.

Take the first step. Make the phone call for an appointment with the painter, lawyer, carpenter, plumber, doctor, etc. Moving it out of your brain and starting to take action will beget more action.

Perhaps this is the summer you have determined to look better in your bathing suit.

This would be an ongoing project for me. My girlfriend Wendy said, “Elaine you have written books, you are smart. You will start to lose weight when you decide it is important enough!” Don’t you just hate it when your friends tell you the truth?

Decide to let go of perfection and just start the project. Weight loss is a classic procrastination issue, and farmers who are riding equipment, eating saskatoon pie with lots of ice cream, and avoiding their doctors can relate to feeling bad about not dealing with their health.

Culver suggests that each decision is either doing or avoiding, much like a scale. I am stepping on the scale, so I know my weight is not good, but what I am avoiding is tracking my portions. I also should be avoiding pie with ice cream!

“SHOULD.” Counsellors use a term, “don’t should on yourself.” Rather than saying, “I should talk to my son and his wife about their vision for this farm,” say, “I am going to start having conversations about what is working for our family farm team, and what needs to change.”

Think about what time of day you have the best energy to do the hard work. As a writer, I like to have a two-hour block of quiet time in the mornings. Once I get “in the zone,” I don’t answer the pings of my texts or the phone. What would it look like if you took 90 minutes this morning to tackle a tough project that you have been putting off?

Would it help to have a buddy? Our seed plant office had a lot of mud this spring after eight inches of rain and lots of traffic. When I started to try to find the floor, it did my spirit and energy level a lot of good to have a cleaning buddy. My mom always used to say, “many hands make light work.” Sometimes the work we are avoiding may be more fun with a team approach. I haven’t been able to convince my family on this one with weeding the garden, but start that kind of training with young children and you may have better results than I did! You might also just need some better tools for the job, like a tiller, a hedge trimmer, or a dutch hoe.

Stephen Covey wrote about doing the urgent things, not the important things. Take some time this summer to develop a “rallying cry” to getting things done. Let me know what project you completed, and I will send you a copy of my e-book Planting the Seed of Hope. A reward for you!

Have fun with your family this summer. Don’t put that off!

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1. What do I remember and value from my past year? I need to list the accomplishments that I deem most noteworthy:

My disappointments from that same time frame are…

2. I learned from what I did accomplish that:

I also learned from what I did not accomplish that…

3. If I reframe my learnings into counsel for the coming year, I hear myself advising…

4. Boulders: I notice that I experience a definite resistance (pushback) that tends to limit either my accomplishments or my being who I most genuinely am.

This resistance looks and feels like…

5.  The seven to eight most deeply held beliefs or core values that I want to live by in the next year are…

You might like to choose a theme word for 2014. My word for 2013 was “beloved.” In the past I have chosen courage, hope, joy, pacing and generosity. Find a smooth stone and write your theme word on the rock with a Sharpie marker. You’ll be amazed how many times in the upcoming year you can affirm that you have chosen the right theme for 2014. Words are powerful. Pay attention to the one that grabs your heart and soul for 2014.

6.  What are at least two goals for each of the roles I live in for 2014?

•  My personal physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being and growth… self-care.
•  My family… marriage/partners and children.
•  My friends…
•  My work…
•  My neighbourhood or closest community…
•  My world.

7. What are my top seven to eight goals for next year out of all of the goals listed in No. 6?

Who am I willing to share this with in order to be accountable and responsible in achieving them? How will I keep track of my progress? Can I write them on a colourful paper for the office wall?

Congratulate yourself for your thoughtful work.

There is power in your pencil and pen. I know that many of the “next gen” use thumbs instead of pencils, but whatever works, use it. Studies have shown that folks who write their thoughts out in journals live longer. There is also research that shows the success rate of those who commit goals to paper or computer are more likely to hit the marks and targets they set.

Many farm families tell me that they just want “a happy family,” they want harmony and time to hang out together as family. OK, what does that look like in practice? Set some weekends aside now for fun at the lake, either in the snow, or in the summer with the boat, canoe, kayak, or wiener sticks!

Decide who is hosting the next gathering and block out the dates early. We all lead very “busy” full lives, but we all make choices to commit to what is really important.

I am writing this in a hotel overlooking the seawall near Stanley Park in Vancouver in early December where the sun is creating an orange glow on the water as the float planes take off from the harbour. The joggers and dog walkers are out and about getting their morning exercise. Two houseboats, one bright red, one bright yellow stand out amidst the 100 white sailboats in the marina. How are you planning to “stand out” in 2014 and make a difference in your world? The glass-laden skyscrapers are not unlike tall Prairie elevators, except they are jammed together on expensive waterfront real estate. I am thankful for the quiet solitude here, but more grateful for the privacy and space of a thriving Prairie farm. A blanket keeps the winter chill off as I craft encouragement to you. My goal for 2014 is to continue to cherish family and relationships, since intimacy and friendship are two of my top six values. I know this to be true as I have a Value Styles Indicator assessment that I use with myself and my farm family clients.

If you would like more clarity about the different beliefs or common values that are driving your farm team, contact me, and I’ll set up the assessment for your farm team, online. Conflict is fuelled when the values you embrace are not honoured in your farm workplace. Perhaps the tension triggers you are experiencing are a result of messed-up or incongruent value expectations.Make sure that your goals align with what you truly value and cherish, then your chances of success in hitting your targets and achieving your goals will be greatly enhanced.

Elaine Froese, CAFA, CHICoach is a catalyst for courageous conversations in coaching farm families and from the podium. Watch for her next book “Farming’s In-Law Factor” due out this year. Visit www.elainefroese.com for more common-sense practical tools for your farm family’s success. Share your stories at elaine@elainefroese.com, or call 1-866-848-8311.

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