Unfortunately, there is no magic recipe that will guarantee the preservation of your family relationships and the perpetuation of the dairy. There are, however, five key ingredients that if not planned for will almost assuredly lead to blackened heartache, tasteless family dynamics and burned chances of the dairy succeeding generationally.

There’s a significant difference between a succession plan and an estate plan.

For a lot of farm families, the in-laws quickly become the outlaws due to factors you’d never consider.

After a decade of sorting out the direst farm succession and farm debt cases, I have found that dysfunctional in-law relationships are often a key underlying ingredient to these problems. Really good families are hit by landmines of the in-law kind, and everything explodes. If these families knew what those landmines were before they stepped into them, they would have been able to avoid them.

Nearly 750 dairy producers and industry representatives gathered in Denver, Colorado, on Oct. 24-26 to learn the latest updates about dairy policy, exports, dairy checkoff, economics and more at the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), United Dairy Industry Association (UDIA) and National Dairy Board (NDB) annual meeting.

Having a clear understanding of debt, whether long-term or short-term, fixed or variable, can help develop a strategy. 

There are a lot of farmers in their 30s and 40s who don’t know what their future looks like.  The truth be told: 77% of farms don't have a succession plan. And this obviously has a lot to do with why only 12% of farms pass onto the third generation!

For fourth-generation dairy producer Jared Kurtz, managing the income-generating capabilities of a dairy herd and farm are important for the future, but investing energy in family is foundational to building a dairy legacy.

Transition/succession/estate planning can be intimidating, but here are four points that I hope ease some fears, answer questions and light a fire under you to stop procrastinating.