Perpetuation Planning Made Simple: Taking a Step Back to the Basics By Todd Macfarlane

KANOSH, Utah

The thing we need to clearly understand is that proper perpetuation planning begins at square one. It begins even before our children are born, and is exemplified by a capable young, nine-year-old family ranch hand on a New Mexico family ranch whose grandfather asked him if he wanted to be a cowboy when he grew up. The young man got a quizzical look on his face and said, “What  do you mean, grandpa? I’m already a cowboy!” But if your attitude and/or approach are to degrade agriculture in the minds of your children and grandchildren, that is not perpetuation planning. It simply doesn’t work to continually bad-mouth agriculture, and then whine when none of your children or grandchildren want to take over the farm and/or be married to farmers or ranchers.

By contrast, I have spoken previously about the Amish. One of the fundamental ways in which they differ from what I have described above, and in my opinion in a very admirable way, is perpetuation planning. In my view, they take an exemplary approach to this issue, and there are some important lessons that can be learned from the Amish. I’m not trying to say that they have silver bullet solutions to everything, but as a general rule (with few exceptions) perpetuation is not a problem among the Amish like it is among “the English,” as they like to refer to the rest of us.

A lot of that has to do with three things: (1) tight, close-knit families, whose children love, respect, and admire their parents and grandparents; (2) reverence for agriculture and an agrarian way of life, and; (3) Amish education, including both form and level of formal schooling.

Unlike “English” culture, basic Amish culture does a great job of instilling a desire to be a farmer. Almost all Amish want a farm. They often want to farm. And, at the very least, they want to live and raise their children on farms. In many cases, they want that more than anything besides getting married, having children, and raising close-knit, productive and hard-working families.

In the book, Money Secrets of the Amish, by Lorilee Craker, she tells the story of Amos Miller, who saved up $400,000 over the course of 20 years, as he lived and operated on a leased farm, scrimping and saving so that he would have enough money to make a down payment to buy a farm that he and his wife could then pass on to their children.

The natural result is that the Amish face exactly the opposite problem in terms of agricultural perpetuation. As a general rule, their farms simply aren’t big enough, and they keep getting split into smaller and smaller pieces because everyone either wants the farm, or at least to be able to raise their families on the farm. Because they all want to live on the farm, it is not uncommon to see four living generations and multiple families living in separate houses, all on the same farm. And they figure out ways to make it work, based on their amazingly large dose of entrepreneurial spirit.

Consequently, as a practical matter, the Amish often practice enterprise stacking like Joel Salatin preaches. Let’s say the family farm has historically been a dairy (as is often the case). So the first step might be for one of the siblings to start making cheese. Then another one might add poultry, including egg and/or broiler production. And another might add sheep, and start shearing sheep on the side to supplement his income. Another might add a sawmill. And a grandchild might start a wood shop, building furniture. Then someone adds produce. And someone else starts a bakery. And before you know it there is an amazing cluster of related enterprises capitalizing on a lot of shared resources, and a seemingly ever present labor force.

In my recent work with the Amish, I have become fairly well acquainted with a large Amish family in the Appalachian hill country of southeast Ohio. Because they were starting to get crowded out where they came from originally, the Adam Yoder family (the name changed to protect privacy) relocated, looking for new opportunities and more elbow room.

As is the Amish custom, they moved with a handful of other families, and started a new Amish settlement. That was 40 years ago. Adam and Martha have a good sized family of 11 children, most of whom have stuck around. The farms in that area are mostly hill country subsistence farms with logging, sawmills and rough-sawn lumber as the primary cash crop. But as their numbers have grown, they have added sheep production, harness and equipment shops, and now produce.

Adam and Martha’s children likewise have large families, virtually all of whom want to be farmers, and live on the farm, and at this point they’re starting to out-grow the area again. Their son Daniel laments that he wishes he could figure out a way to make a living and support his own family with the 100 head of ewes that his place is capable of carrying. But it’s starting to become over-crowded, and not everyone can fit on the farm. So they’re essentially being forced to start exploring other options. In my view, that’s a much better problem to have than many American farmers and ranchers currently face.

But these two opposite sides of the spectrum might actually provide a prime opportunity for a win/win path forward (especially in areas like the Western sheep industry), with one side of the spectrum providing new opportunities for access to land and production resources and opportunities, and the other side of the spectrum providing fresh new blood with a deep and abiding interest in family agricultural production.

For mainstream agricultural producers, however, here’s the bottom line: If you want your kids to stick around and take over the farm or ranch, you need to instill a deep and abiding love for agriculture. If all you do is bad-mouth agriculture, and send the message that your kids should do something else, something “more” with their lives, they probably will. But when it comes to what to do in life, always remember that, regardless of income and everything it might buy, “for he who loves his work, life is a vacation.” ■

Todd Macfarlane is a rancher, writer and attorney. He and his family operate the Turkey Track Ranch, just outside Kanosh, Utah.