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Taking on the risks of ag

Risk management workshop focuses on educating beginning farmers

Photo by Deb Gau Pete Smith, of United FCS, spoke to area farmers about crop and livestock insurance as part of a risk management workshop held in Marshall on Wednesday. Crop insurance was one of many topics covered at the workshop.

MARSHALL — Farming is a risky business. There’s uncertainty involved in just about every aspect of agriculture, from producing crops to selling them, and planning for the future.

“You’ve really got to be prepared to weather some storms,” said Brad Verly, a farm business management instructor at Minnesota West Community and Technical College. That’s not always easy, and it can be even tougher if you don’t have a lot of experience to draw on.

That was where Verly and other speakers hoped they could help farmers who are beginning or early in their careers. On Wednesday, a risk management workshop drew around 30 area farmers to Marshall.

“These workshops are going on all over the state,” Verly said.

Verly said many younger farmers aren’t new to agriculture. However, they may have fewer years of experience making management and business decisions for their own farms. In light of that, workshop covered a range of topics on farming in risky times, from financial planning to coping with stress.

Risk management was a relevant topic, workshop attendees said Wednesday. Tim Jerzak, a farmer from the Ivanhoe area, said farming today was all about dealing with risks.

“A lot of people don’t understand that,” he said.

Tim Neyens said he was interested in the workshop as a chance “to learn something I don’t know,” that could be helpful for his farm.

Risks in agriculture come from several different categories, Verly and fellow instructor Paul Lanoue told attendees at the start of the workshop. Risks for production could include anything from bad weather and pests, to having low-quality seed. Other types of risks included legal, financial and marketing risks, they said.

“The big question for most farmers is when to price and when to sell,” Verly said. “Having a marketing plan takes some of the emotion out of it.”

For farmers, developing a strong marketing plan means taking into account factors like their production costs per bushel, as well as when they will need to make sales in order to have a cash flow. Lanoue stressed the importance of making a plan and sticking to it — holding out too long for a better price on crops can end badly, he said.

But in addition to financial and marketing planning, instructors said it was important not to forget the “human resources” side of farming.

“If one person goes out, how can your business continue?” Lanoue asked the audience. It’s a good idea for family members or employees to be cross-trained on different tasks around the farm, in case of illness or injury, he said.

Another major issue to think about was planning for transitioning ownership of family farms.

“Most of you are going through some sort of transition,” Verly said.

Managing the stress or interpersonal conflicts that can come up in farming was an important part of the workshop, said Judy Barka, program manager at AgCentric. One of the presenters planned to speak Wednesday was Ted Matthews, a counselor focused on crisis intervention and rural mental health.

Wednesday’s workshop was made possible through a collaboration of groups including AgCentric, which is part of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, and the farm business management program at Minnesota West. Funding for the workshop was provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, through its Risk Management Agency, Verly said.

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