Have a designated sucessor

lease it is considered by our best and brightest.

What are the options for the farmers whose children choose a different career path? For me to advise these farmers, their farm business must first be categorised into a) viable or b) non-viable farm businesses.

Viable farm businesses

If your family have spent generations building a viable farm business and you are now faced with no successor to continue this progress there many options to consider.

The first consideration is to continue the business, and the first step is to replace oneself. A farm manager could be employed to run the farm or one could enter a partnership with a young farmer or another farmer.

This type of arrangement would suit a well-developed, profitable farm business. The farmer can build in whatever involvement he or she chooses — in fact the ‘no successor’ children with zero interest in physical farm-work may also become involved in the management of the business, physically or remotely.

Imagine a 200-cow dairy farm now run by an ambitious young trained farmer who is in partnership with the retired dairy farmer and his son or daughter who works as a surgeon in New York.

This was not common in the past because the size and viability of Irish farms would not support all parties.

I foresee more of this type of arrangement in the future and who is to say that the surgeon’s children mightn’t one day return to be full-time farmers on the family farm again.

Non-viable farm businesses

If the family business is not generating enough profit to attract a partner or simply there is no desire to continue the farm business, then the options are simple.

Sell, long-term lease, plant with trees or transfer the farm to the non-farming children.

Many farmers shy away from being proactive and making the big decisions about their land. Instead they hide behind a will, or worse again, do absolutely nothing.

It is vital for farm owners to face up to their responsibilities in respect of succession, given that they were designated to manage the family silver for a generation.

Get the relevant advice, and remember that the non-farming children can also be successful successors of the family farm business.