Strong Business in Tough Times
Livestock producers are built on toughness and grit. Drought, feed costs, cattle prices, labor shortages: every generation of producers has faced hardship and found a way through.
But there’s a more difficult question underneath all of it. What happens to the operation when the person running it steps back? A recent industry poll found only 43% of livestock producers have a succession plan in place.* That number hasn’t moved much in years, even as the pressure on operations has increased.
“The size and complexity of many of today’s farms require leaders with a different skill set than what their traditional mentors can offer,” says Matt Ronken, CEO of UnCommon Farms. “We’re teaching them to be CEOs of multi-generational, high-risk operations in a highly disrupted industry.”
Operations today are bigger than they used to be, which means there’s more at stake every time one changes hands. A cattle operation without a plan doesn’t just risk a rocky transition. It risks the herd, the land base, and the relationships that took decades to build, all changing hands in a way nobody intentionally chose.
That land doesn’t stay empty. It gets absorbed into a neighboring ranch, sold to an investor, or folded into a larger company. None of those outcomes are inherently bad on their own. But they’re outcomes a family ends up with by default, not by choice, when nobody plans far enough ahead to choose something else.
Ben Cather, an UnCommon Farms member from Kansas, sees that shift firsthand. “Farms that are staying in business are not getting smaller,” he says. “They’re getting larger, and that transition to the next generation, as things get larger, can be harder.”
Here’s what tends to happen instead of planning for the future. The daily demands of running the farm take priority, like calving, harvest, markets, weather, and whatever breaks down that morning. All of them are real and urgent. Long-term planning gets pushed to “when things slow down.” For most operations, things never slow down. Years go by. The plan remains a conversation instead of a document.
Rich Bronec, an UnCommon Farms member from Montana, has watched that pattern play out at his own place. “The day-to-day can overtake that long-term planning,” he says. “That’s where so many agriculture operations fall short.” Bronec credits the peer group and coach he works with through UnCommon Farms for keeping succession on the table instead of letting it slide. “You always have in the background this other part of your business that you’re working on,” he says. “It gives the older generation confidence in the younger generation’s management.”
That’s exactly when strong business fundamentals matter most. Not when the margins are good and everything is forgiving. It’s when the margins are thin, and one bad decision costs more than it used to. The operations that hold up in a tough year aren’t always the biggest ones. They’re the ones with a clear plan, a clear read on their numbers, and people who know their roles.
That combination doesn’t happen by accident, and it rarely happens alone. UnCommon Farms, a farmer-owned business coaching and peer network organization, was built around the idea that farms need expert guidance and advice just like any other successful business. Its financial services roots go back to 1967. Its team carries over 1,000 years of combined agriculture experience, real operators and advisors who’ve sat where its members are sitting, and who know what it actually takes to get an operation through a hard stretch.
UnCommon Farms members aren’t handed generic advice built for a different industry. They’re farmers and ranchers working alongside farmers and ranchers, with the kind of coaching and structure most farm businesses never get access to on their own. That’s the peer group Bronec leans on. It’s also the reason Cather doesn’t have to solve every problem alone. “If we see a problem here, there’s somebody in that building (UnCommon Farms) who’s either seen the exact same thing or something similar,” he says. “Or your coach can put you in contact with a farm they’ve run across. All the farms are more than willing to share their experience and what they’ve done.”
“The risk is, if you don’t find somebody or a group you trust, you’re only going to have a limited view, based on what you can see on your own,” Ronken says. “That’s one of the things we bring, and our community brings, in terms of peer learning. It’s such a powerful piece of being part of UnCommon Farms.”
That kind of access changes what a hard year actually costs. A problem that might take months to work through alone gets solved in a phone call, because someone else already figured it out. A decision that might get made on instinct gets made with input from people who’ve seen it play out before. That’s not a small advantage when margins are tight and mistakes are expensive.
That kind of support covers the full operation, not just one part of it. Succession planning that turns a postponed conversation into an actual documented path for ownership. It’s a plan that names who takes over, when, and how, instead of leaving it to whoever’s still standing when the time comes. Financial clarity, strategy, and benchmarking that give members a clear read on where things stand against real peers, not a national average that doesn’t reflect their scale. Decisions get made on real numbers instead of gut feel. Strategic planning and risk management to help plan for what’s ahead rather than reacting to it. HR and people strategy for hiring, training, and retaining good people, a skill that’s separate from running the operation itself. And support for the next generation, because handing over an operation isn’t just a legal transition. It’s about who’s ready to lead.
No operation gets through a hard stretch on toughness alone. It takes peers who’ve faced the same problem and will actually tell you how they solved their challenge. It takes expert advice to provide a picture of the numbers clear enough to guide decisions with confidence instead of guesswork. It takes a real plan for who leads next, built long before anyone’s forced to use it.
The tougher the year, the less an operation can afford to go it alone. Succession, finances, people, risk: whatever’s keeping you up at night, now is the time to get a clear plan in place, not after a bad season forces the issue.
Call Justin Friedrich at (618) 619-2166 or email jfriedrich@uncommonfarms.com to talk about what that looks like for your operation. Learn more at uncommonfarms.com.
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