What’s keeping farmers from retiring?

Age is a problem for agriculture. The average Canadian farmer is about 56 years old, an age when you’d expect farmers to start considering retirement.

But that’s not happening. Farmers are just not given to retire.

Why’s that? Well, like many others, if they enjoy what they’re doing, know what they’re doing and feel healthy enough to do it, then why quit?

It’s also true that if most of the above conditions are in place, it’s easier to just carry on than wade into the web of red tape – not to mention the history, expectations and emotions – required to transition a farm from parents to children. It’s a huge topic for farm families to cover, and it mostly gets avoided, even though family ownership is a huge feature of Canadian farms.

However, agriculture is in an untenable situation. In a report last year, RBC estimated that farmers’ reluctance to retire means 60 per cent of those farming today will be over the age of 65 in 10 years.

Farmers are amazingly resilient. But if more than half of any occupation comprises senior citizens, there’s a problem… because inevitably, time will march on.

And when it does, RBC says Canada will be facing one of its biggest labour and leadership transitions in history. More than 40 per cent of all Canadian farms will change hands before 2033, but two-thirds of them lack succession plans.

That’s where a new Guelph-based service comes in, called Farmers’ Bridge. It wants farmers to change their thinking from business to family. And it’s doing its bit by what it calls “efficiently and professionally helping farmers with transition between generations, with a people-centric approach.”

Maggie Van Camp is at the centre of this initiative. Van Camp, a seventh generation farmer, is director of strategic change for Loft32, a network of experts specializing in agriculture, food, business and strategic communications.

“Planning for succession may be complicated but with good communication and help, you can do it. You are not alone,” she tells farmers. “If done well, this massive generational shift is an opportunity for the future of Canadian agriculture.”

Van Camp says at its core, transition planning requires communication and decision-making skills, farm-smart resources and people, and motivation to get the planning done.

She’s launching a webinar next month to introduce succession planning, called Farmers’ Bridge: Shift from Family to Business Conversations. Among its features, it will share habits of highly effective family business communications that farmers can start using immediately. It will be followed by a series of online videos.

To me, another bridge that needs to be made is between succession planning and farmers’ mental health. The tension that accompanies a cumbersome retirement regime involving your whole family can’t be understated.

Within the last few years, farmers’ mental health has finally started getting the recognition it deserves as a crisis, followed by a modicum of support. So why not succession planning? Fortunately, not every farmer will develop mental health problems. But at some point, every farm will turn over. Canada is not ready.