Don’t Waste a Crisis!

Some of the most successful businesses and business owners have failed before they have succeeded.  I am not saying that in farming you need to go bust but every day in business we get problems.  Some small enough that they are quickly solved, others as large as maybe running out of cash this spring partly because of the extra costs of housing livestock or replanting failed crops due to the weather or physically coping with longer working hours due to lack of labour at a time when more is required due to the weather.

Reviewing NOW, the last three months in your business when you have had to house your livestock for an extra month when margins and cashflow have been tight, should be standard practice with your team or people involved in your business.  How can you prevent the issues you had happening again?   Is it making more silage, putting in more tracks to access land, reducing livestock numbers due to overstocking or putting up another shed to cope with TB.

But doing the same thing when the same crisis hits again in the future and expecting a different outcome is what Einstein called Madness!!

By learning as a team from past mistakes or weaknesses in your system will make the business stronger and more resilient to cope with extremes and issues thrown at it in the future.  The better the business can cope the less knock backs it will take and the more consistent the performance and profitability will be within that business.

An example from recent times is the high price of Nitrogen in 2022 that has caused many farmers to rethink their nutrient management. As a result, farmers are making better use of slurry, importing digestate, establishing and managing clover, soil testing and acting on the results, to reduce their dependence of the volatility of the fertiliser market in the future.  What was a huge price shock has forced farmers to change their usage by using more longer term, more sustainable strategies to get the same results with a lot less money!

How are you turning a negative into a positive for your business?  What lessons have you learned from the last six months weather?  What changes are you going to make in the future as a result?

To help review your farming practices and identify where and how you can improve your business resilience, contact Gerard at gerardfinnan@fcgagric.com.