Summer Series: Skills training that can make you a better farmer

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Summer Series: Skills training that can make you a better farmer

First, you could get process-minded about it. If you recognize it would pay to get serious about adding an education focus to your farm, there’s a logical way to get started. Make a list of the current skills that everyone involved in the operation has, then assess where there are knowledge gaps and training needs. There are loads of tools to help you do just that, and many of them free and online, as you can see on the Country Guide website.

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So much of farming is so physically demanding. Even the easy jobs take enough running around to require physical stamina….

Or, you can take a somewhat simpler approach. Ask yourself what skills training you’d like to enrol in. Ask your family members what courses they’d like to take too, plus any employees.

In fact, summer is a great time to raise the issue. Flag it with everyone right after the spring rush, letting the whole team know you’ll want to hear their thoughts in a few weeks. You may even flip them a list of web links to help. Then stick to your deadline, since this will give you the lead time to apply for courses early enough to ensure your team members get in.

You might object that letting your team members choose their education program means they’ll pick up the skills that they want rather than the skills that the farm would prioritize the most. But is that really a downside? The skills that your team members would volunteer for are probably skills that they would enjoy and that they feel they would be successful at, so they’d actually put them to work.

It’s also helps the entire team keep the value of education top of mind. This in turns creates value that Heather Watson, executive director of Farm Management Canada, has no doubt about.

“We know from our research that a commitment to lifelong learning and skills development is the number one practice differentiating Canada’s top and bottom performing farms,” Watson says.

And there’s more, Watson adds, especially if you look at developing the farm’s business skills. “What we need to do is get into the mindset of building our capacity to proactively plan ahead and seize opportunity through business skills development. We know that farmers who focus on their farm business management practices enjoy increased profitability, confidence, peace of mind, and family and farm-team harmony.”

Farmers can also weave education into some of the other management strategies they’ve already embraced, as we hear from Heather Broughton, principal of Agri-Food Management Excellence, who teaches in the CTEAM (Canadian Total Excellence in Agricultural Management) executive management program.

“As part of the strategic planning process, we sit down with farmers and do an internal analysis that is a review of people, processes, finance and assets, and we look at what’s working and not working, which includes the education piece,” Broughton says.

Everyone on the farm is expected to add new skills.

photo:
Kaycee Ann Photography

Plus, Broughton says, “For farms that have implemented performance reviews (i.e. for farm owners, family and employees), these can also be useful to help identify education needs… the reviews can identify some things that they can set out as goals, and what they want to do in the year ahead to build their skills.”

But there is also the overall sense that many farmers have that their days are full of dealing with topics that they would like to have greater command over.

“Farming is big business,” says Broughton.

“When you look at the values, the capital investments, all the risks that we face, people have to have the skills under their belt to manage all these things,” she explains. “Your team, whether it’s you, your spouse, your kids or your employees; your human resources are one of your most valuable assets, so it’s important to build, develop and leverage their skills.”

What are the common areas where farms often seek specific development or training with? Or should?

Broughton says setting goals is vital to prioritize and target the exact kind of learning that busy farmers will get the most benefit from.

“When you have $25 canola it’s pretty awesome, but as (commodity prices) drop, you’ve got to have some good marketing knowledge and skills for the risk management piece,” Broughton says. “Similarly, going back to the financial, with high interest rates you need to have knowledge of how to understand the impact to the business’s financial position and structure when making decisions. These are key pieces of learning that we find people are really interested in.”

Figuring out the knowledge gaps that need filling means evaluating the roles and responsibilities of everyone on the farm team (yourself included). Typically, these should be outlined in job descriptions. And again, if you don’t currently have them, there are online resources — such as the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council’s (CAHRC) AgriHR Toolkit that has over 60 job description templates that can be downloaded and customized to fit your operation.

If you do have current job descriptions, are they clearly documented and up-to-date? Do they reflect the actual tasks that everyone does today, or the changing needs of the farm? For example, has the farm recently adopted new production or agronomy practices, technology or management systems that require new or different skill sets?

Thinking about the future of the farm, do you have a strategic plan in place? Even if you don’t, though, how do you see the farm changing over the next five to 10 years, and what training or skills are needed to implement those changes? Do you have the capacity to train existing people to take on those tasks and roles, or are these things you will need to either contract out or hire new employees to do?

“Because I like it”

But an education and learning plan doesn’t always have to be about developing business or job-related skills, Broughton says.

“Sometimes people just have a personal interest in terms of this is what I want to do better,” she says. “Or if it’s something that builds your confidence, that’s an important piece too, so it’s worth thinking about both personal and professional development.”

When doing an education analysis and planning for learning, it’s worth thinking beyond today to what future skills might be needed, and whether those skills need to be provided in-house or could be outsourced.

“We have a saying in farm management — do your best, and hire the rest,” adds Watson. “We tend to perform our best when we’re focusing on the things we love to do. That doesn’t mean we can ignore the other stuff that needs to get done, but find others who are passionate and experts in those things to leverage your collective strengths.”

“It’s about being disciplined and being consistent,” Christie says.

photo:
Kaycee Ann Photography

Using the summer to anticipate the farm’s future human resource and knowledge requirements allows you to start sourcing the resources to meet those needs ahead of time, and to schedule training or off-farm education during less busy times instead of always trying to play catch-up and learn things on the fly when things get hectic.

Then, says Watson, “Winter is an excellent time to focus on farm business management — reflecting post-harvest on what went well and areas for improvement.”

What type of training?

How do you seek out the type of training your farm needs?

Doing a thorough assessment of your farm’s business skills and practices will help determine the areas you may wish to prioritize for training and for whom, but remember that not everyone learns the same way or has the time and capacity to participate in certain types of training.

“While a classroom setting might work for some, it might not work for others,” Watson says. “Likewise with virtual training options. The good news is there are plenty of skills development and training opportunities available from self-directed online learning, articles, webinars and the like, as well as one-day workshops, one-week courses, mentorship opportunities, and multi-year programs that may use a combination of in-person and virtual training.”

Watson advises farm owners or managers to look at the opportunities available and what works best for everyone who needs to take training.

“Taking time away from the farm can help create a more focused learning environment where you’re not distracted by who’s coming into the farmyard, but this may not always be feasible,” Watson says. “Of course, it’s worth looking into how you can create capacity on the farm, for those who would benefit from skills development opportunities to be able to do so.”

How do you prioritize learning and skills development on a busy farm?

Watson says that prioritizing education on a busy farm comes down to three things: The values, beliefs and attitudes towards education (otherwise known as the culture) of the farm, proactive planning, and building the capacity to take advantage of learning opportunities.

“In terms of the farm’s culture, is education held in high regard on the farm?” Watson asks. “What about lifelong learning and continuous skills development?”

Assess if, when someone leaves the farm to participate in a workshop or conference, this is valued by everyone on the farm or seen as a holiday off the farm? Ensure there is some mechanism (or create one) so when they come back, they can share their insights and skills gained with others.

To plan for learning, does the farm have defined goals in a business plan?

“Once the skills needed to fulfil the current and future needs of the farm and its team are identified, you can put a skills development plan in place as part of the overall business plan for the farm to achieve its goals,” Watson says. “There is also training available to help you identify your business goals and create a business plan.”

The cost of off-farm time

The last component is capacity, which means not just the financial means to pay for training, but whether members of the farm team, and in particular the manager or management team, can afford, or think they can afford, to take time away from the farm.

“One of the signs of successful farm management is the capacity for members of the farm team to leave for extended periods of time, while the farm continues to tick along just fine,” Watson says.

If you are not confident that can happen, then part of the skills development plan needs to include training others in the skills they need to step into your shoes and do the day-to-day management tasks proficiently, if only for a short period.

As times get tougher, it can be hard to allocate money for training and skills development, but arguably, that’s when those skills are needed the most.


What can a commitment to learning do for your farm?

Every winter, Jamie Christie has a goal that he will participate in some kind of learning program.

“Within my own personal development, it’s about being disciplined and being consistent that I take on some kind of learning opportunity for myself,” he says.

In 2016 Christie completed the CTEAM program (Canadian Total Excellence in Agricultural Management) offered by Agri-Food Management Excellence. The last two winters he took leadership training with Kelly Dobson of LeaderShift and this past winter he participated in Syngenta Canada’s Grower University through Ivey Spencer Leadership Centre in London, Ontario.

Now Christie, who is the fourth-generation owner of the 5,000-acre Arn Brae Farms near Trochu, Alberta, extends that mentality to the whole farm team as well, including employees.

“I try to make them stretch and grow a bit every year, and sometimes we stretch and grow in different directions. I wouldn’t say our employees get the opportunities to do the same things that I do, but the 20-year-old that comes on as a labourer, if he’s going to stay here, I expect him to get his Class 1 this winter or get a spray operator licence. They are expected to grow.”

Although on his farm there isn’t a formal education plan written down, Christie expects that anyone working on the farm will be committed to ongoing learning, and anyone joining the farm also knows they will be supported to help them learn new skills.

“When we are screening for new employees, we look for the drive that they have for it,” he says. “We try to find the personalities that fit our goals more than just their skillset.”

Education and training, whether it’s at the management or owner level or at the employee level, is an important asset to the farm, but it’s hard to measure or quantify. Still, Christie believes its value shows up daily in so many different aspects that contribute to the operation of a successful farm.

“When you start creating momentum, that shows up every day in your business,” he says. “Your experience, your network shows up in everyday communications, so when we sit down with the banker, it’s more like a partnership because you have proven that you’re consistent in what your goals are and that you achieve them. You have to have experience to have that trust, but to have that trust you also have to go out and be in that experience.”

As the farm has matured, the business needs have changed and that has also altered the focus of Christie’s learning goals.

“When I started out at CTEAM, it’s pretty broad-based, and we looked at finance, HR, governance and succession planning,” Christie says. “Now that our succession plan is pretty well complete within our farm, we’re looking at personal development, which is why I did the leadership courses the last couple of years. That was just personal growth.”

It’s also important to approach learning without too many preconceptions about what it’s going to teach you, Christie adds, because the unexpected “surprises” within can often be the most valuable.

“With the leadership program, we went on a totally different journey than I expected,” he says. “But once I got halfway through it, it caused me to stretch and grow a lot but it wasn’t quite what I thought I was signing up for. That program really has had a lot of value, and more impact in a lot of different ways. In business today, sometimes just being present in those opportunities presents other opportunities that you weren’t aware of. Without being present you wouldn’t have known.”

And the financial investment, in relation to the return on that investment, is small.

“Overall, the time and financial commitment of personal development is rather small in scale for what modern agriculture is today,” Christie says. “To get a return on a $6,000 or $7,000 program, you just need to show up differently, or react more positively with one employee in one afternoon… it’s a big payback.”

The networks you build through the programs also add value, he adds. “The people that you’re interacting with are curious and driven.”

Christie has seen huge benefits to his own farm and has also been fascinated by the progress of his peers.

“The sustainability of their lifestyles has really changed since I met them five or six years ago,” Christie says. “What they said they were going to do three years ago, that you thought was a grand, large scheme, they actually exceeded. It has always fascinated me that people with the drive, who focus on their goals, they achieve them sooner than they expect and usually in larger and grander scale.”

– This article was originally published in the April 2024 issue of Country Guide.

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