How To Reduce The Risk Of Farming Or Ranching In Canada

Now, what would it feel like, what would it be like is if you could take out a loan and then you could make the determination on when you paid it back, whether it was in November, whether it was in March.

Wouldn'T matter. Because you make that call, you decide when it's best for you and your business to pay that back.

Hi. Today I wanted to talk about how to reduce the risk of farming or ranching. I'm here to tell you that you're already doing that and that you'll need to continue to do that. The reality of farming or ranching today is that you have to get better and better at what you do. You have to look for opportunities to reduce the likelihood that some outcome will be less than ideal for you and your, your family or your farm or your ranch. So you're already doing that. And today I just wanted to, you know, really help expand on that and talk about one way you could really add to what you're doing now as far as reducing a risk for your business. So farming and ranching comes with all kinds of risks. Right now you think about what weather and different parts of the industry, weather has different impacts to it. So it may be too much rain is a real factor for your farm or your ranch, or maybe not enough rain that's impacted you. But I suspect if you've been farming or ranching, you felt the impact of weather in some way or another. And then when you think about markets, that's another one. You think about how foreign governments can change the reality for you and your farm doesn't seem fair, but that's the reality of dealing with a global market. I was thinking back of that BSE event that really changed the prices that farmers here in Canada were getting for their cattle. And that's just a huge blow that can come at you out of nowhere. And that's a reality that you've all had to deal with. And then when you talk about input costs, like the costs of goods and services, which way are they going? I think they're going up. Just everybody's feeling that, not just on the farm, but I know you and the farm are also seeing how costs have gone up. And you have to keep on working on increasing your product level of productivity to make up for some of the cost. The way it, you know, it's just a huge challenge to run a business. I was growing up on the family farm and it was a mixed farm, so we produced cereal crops, we had a cow calf operation, we had a feedlot, a multitude of things like that, and one of the things that I remembered that we did is when we were putting up feed for the winter season, if we had the ability to do so, we put up more than we were going to require for that winter. So that just in case next year we were dealing with a drought or some other event that cut into the production of our feed, we'd have enough to carry us over and we wouldn't have to reduce the number of animals on our farm. So those are kind of things that have been going on forever. And recently I was, you know, on the farm and looking at the GPS technology that's out there for agriculture. As you go down and up and down that field, it can just minimize how much overlap is happening between each round that you make in that field. Or. And I got thinking back, oh, man, is that ever different than when I was sitting there doing that manually, you know? And one that really jumped to mind is, hey, when you're out there seeding and you're trying to minimize that overlap, but at the same time, hey, you didn't want that gap. Because when you get a gap when you're seeding, everybody knows it. Not only, you know, do the neighbors happen to see that when they drive by after everything starts to grow, you know, it's pretty hard to hide that from everybody else in your. In your farm. So now with the GPS technology, man, things are a lot easier and much more efficient for you on the farm. So you just think about all the things you've done, and I'm going to show you a little video clip here of just another technology that farmers have now have access to to help change their costs and their productivity. This is a video that was done by Magro, and I'd encourage you to go watch it all. The farmer that is speaking here, he's a acquaintance, a friend of mine, and what he talks about is real and what he's doing on his farm. So let's just go ahead and listen to the next 45 minutes or 45 seconds of this video and just see what he has to say.

Then we started trial, and we did four runs with each trial. When we sent the Wettable paper in for analysis, we found that the Magro kit with modulating had 40% more coverage than the other two sprayers. It means that I can apply recommended label rates, get better coverage and better kill of weeds and insects. I have more flexibility in reducing rates of water that I use. I can also reduce the amount of chemical that I use, which ultimately saves me money. I'm able to spray 25% more ground with a tank full of spray than I would if I had a conventional unit.

25% more ground with one tank and improving the efficiency by 4, 40%. Now, that's what this technology has helped Howard with on his farm. And again, I'm just going to encourage you to go and look that up on YouTube and watch it all. But it's a great little video just to help.

Understand some of the things that are being done by people in agriculture to reduce the uncertainty. There is something else you can do to help remove one other piece of uncertainty. And you know, that is something you can do. And it's really about removing your dependency on someone else for financing. You go, what? Yeah. What's wrong? What's wrong with the way that we're doing it now, Dan? Well, there's nothing wrong with it. This is just something you can do to improve your business. So if you think about it, right now, you're dependent on someone else for capital when you need it. Access to money, that pool of money. And you know, I've sat there even when I was farming, because I did farm across the desk from the banker, just wondering, is he going to give me access to him or her going to give me access to that pool of money that they can control. And when they did, rightfully so, there was a cost to that. Now, what would it feel like? What would it be like is if, you know, you could take out a loan and then you could make the determination on when you paid it back, whether it was in November, whether it was in March.

Wouldn'T matter because you make that call. You, you decide when it's best for you and your business to pay that back. And you also decide how much do you pay back at a time. All those things could be within your control and, you know, other things that you could gain from it. It's like just knowing what it means to know that, hey, when you need that capital, it's available without having to wonder, can I get access to the money I need? What would that mean to you? Well, the bigger thing I really wanted to talk to you about too, related to the upside of this, because I can, you know, I suspect you may be thinking, oh, this is so great, why isn't everybody doing it? Well, I have to, you know, that's a great question, actually, and I'm going to speak to it briefly. Well, if you think about banking, and I'm not going to bash banking, because just like agriculture, banking is a really critical industry. Farming, ranching, Agriculture feeds us all across the world. Well, without banking, everything that we know as we know it would stop and change. So we need the flow of money. So I'm not talking about stopping banking. I'm talking about how you could learn and over time control your need for finance. Is it doable? Yeah, I know people that are doing it on the farm, they're working that way to get to a point where they can control their need for finance. So yeah, I know it's doable. And so big advantage you get out of this process is that if you had that control and you think about, you know, compared to what. So the way you do it now, when you access someone else's pool of money, you pay for that. So the profits that are generated go back to someone else. Now if it was your pool of money and you were doing the same thing with it, all those costs, those profits would be coming back towards you. And over time, that just creates wealth for you and for your business. Yeah, it's simple, but it's not easy. It's like anything you want to do in life, you know, if you want to get to be in better physical condition, what do you have to do? Well, you have to take the time, you have to make the commitment, you have to have the desire. And hey, it may cost you to get to there, but anything you do in life that's worthwhile doing takes effort, takes time. I always tell people when they ask me about, you know, becoming your own banker and how you do that. What's it, what's it compared to? Well, if you're at you as a farmer or rancher, you quite often you're used to buying land. And what is that? Well, that's an asset that you decide to buy to help improve your business. Well, that's what we use to do. Exactly what I'm talking about to gain control, to become your own banker. You buy an asset and you put a capital into that asset that you can access and you access that money, you never take it out, but you get to leverage it in a way that your money continues to grow even while you leverage it. And when you do that, over time, it improves your bottom line. And when you have more money flowing back towards you versus away, you will change the outcome for your business no matter what it is. And with farming, it can be a real advantage. I did a video a while ago and it was called how to finance the input costs for your farm. You know, just your operating loans and I'd encourage you to go and look that one up and it just gives you a little more details. You can see some numbers on how that was a case where someone actually used this process that I'm talking about to do exactly what I'm encouraging you to do. So with that, that's what I'm going to ask you to do. If you have any interest in learning more about how you can reduce your dependency on someone else for financing, just watch other videos on our channel. We've got a lot of great ones.