Why Canadian Farmers and Ranchers Are Done With BANKS!

Young farmer says to his grandfather, he says, well, that's one thing, you know, I don't have to worry about. I'm not a gambler. And his grandfather just looked at him and smiled and he goes, son, you're married and you're a farmer. And those are two of the biggest gambles ever. And when you think about that, that is a reality for farmers. It's a big gamble, what they do. There's so many things that they can't control. You can't control.

Does becoming your own banker work for farmers and ranchers? Well, yes, it does. I have a lot of respect for the farmers and ranchers of our world in this country. You see, without them, we would struggle as a country and as a world.

Because of what they do. We get to do what we do. And yes, farmers and ranchers are an essential service. Can you imagine what this world would be like without them? I can't, and I don't want to. I'm just thankful for what they do and what you do as a farmer or a rancher. Hi, my name is Dan Allen, and I've been helping people implement the process called becoming your own banker. And I work here at Ascended Financial. So what are some of the ways that this concept can help out farmers and ranchers? Well, I'm going to talk about some of the challenges that farmers and ranchers face first, and we'll talk about how becoming your own banker can help farmers with those challenges. So the first one is control. When you think about farming and ranching, there's a lot of things that are outside of their control. It's like the weather, the markets. A lot of them are influenced by other countries and it just goes on things that they can't control. There's things like BSE for cattle farmers. Think about the wrench that that threw into the lives of those producers. So there's all kinds of things that they can't control.

Thought I'd tell you a little story about a friend of mine who was a young farmer at the time, and him and his grandfather were having a chat. And I don't know how they got onto the subject of gambling, but that's what they were talking about. And this young farmer and grandfather just saying about how it can change people's lives and when you get addicted, it can just cripple you financially. And young farmer says to his grandfather, he said, well, that's one thing I don't have to worry about. I'm not a gambler. And his grandfather just looked at him and Smiled and he goes, son, you're married and you're a farmer and those are two of the biggest gambles ever. And when you think about that, that is a reality for farmers. It's a big gamble what they do. There's so many things that they can't control, you can't control. It's like the big white combine. We've all heard about that, that comes through, you know, just when you have a beautiful looking crop and bang, it can be taken out in a short period of time. It's just such a huge challenge for you as a farmer. There's so many things that you can't control.

Now the next thing I want to speak about is how much cost is involved in farming. I don't have to tell you about that, but I've seen where some of those prices have gone for land. It's just amazing how much you pay for a section of land now and for equipment. So much keeps on just going. Like when you look at the price of a combine or just the barns that you have to build and it just goes on and on and it's just hugely intense from a capital perspective. And then there's the input costs that all have to be put in to whatever you're producing before the harvest. And it just adds cost upon cost. And I know farmers are so good at always looking for ways to improve how they do what they do. In fact, recently I was talking to a farmer who was working with a company in Germany to help reduce the amount of water that it took when he sprayed his crops. That was having some great results. But that comes at a cost. That technology that is part of agriculture now comes at a cost. Yes, it can pay dividends because down the road you can get more production out of the same amount of land or whatever it is. Yes, those things help with costs, but they come at a cost. So that's another huge challenge that us farmers face, not just the cost. And, and the third one I wanted to talk about today was keeping the ranch or the farm in the family. I hear that from a lot of ranchers and farmers I talk to. I would really want to be able to keep this in my family. And it's getting more and more difficult as the cost of everything goes up. And just to be able to purchase this farm from the rest of their siblings or whatever it may be becomes a huge challenge as farmers think about the estate planning side of it. So those are just three of the things that I wanted to speak about then. I just thought I'd Talk about. Well, how would this process called becoming your own banker help?

Well, yeah, that's a great question. I'm just going to encourage you too that if you haven't got the book called Becoming youg Own Banker, I'd highly suggest you do that. Just talks about what I'm going to talk about now and helps you understand how you can help with those three challenges. And another great book was written by a colleague from North Dakota, Mary Jo Erman, and it's called Farming without the Bank. And she just gives some very specific examples of how, how farmers can use this and ranchers can use this to better their outcomes. So those are just two resources I thought I'd mention. Let's talk about control. Now with this process called becoming your own banker, you start to build equity. It's called cash value in a dividend paying whole life insurance policy.

Now one of the things I always like to share with people is that asset has some similarities for you as a farmer to buying something like land. So when you go to buy a piece of land, very few farmers can afford to pay for that without borrowing money for it. And so farmers buy the land over time. So they're putting capital in over time and as they're putting that capital in, they're able to use that asset to produce what they produce. Now it's very similar with dividend paying whole life insurance. You put capital in over time and as you do that, you get to use it. So when it comes to control, the thing I wanted to give you an example of is let's just say, let's just talk about input costs. And today I thought I'd talk about a grain farmer. So if you think about that part of the industry, there's a huge input cost at the start of the year when you're putting your crop in and you're looking after your crop for the whole summer growing season, protecting it, keeping it in good condition so that you up the odds that you're going to get a good harvest. That's all expensive. And so a lot of farmers will go to a commercial bank or a lender and borrow for those input costs. Now if you're able to start to build your own bank, that's what we help people with. It's a private banking system building through dividend pay and whole life insurance. As you do that, you can start to own some of that debt with your input cost and eventually you can own it all. So what would that do from a control perspective? Well, just talking to farmers from time to time and asking them about their challenges when it comes to operating loans, they say, well, definitely one of the challenges is when the note becomes due. It may not be the time for me to be selling my crop or produce or whatever it is because I know where the market conditions are right now. I should wait. And yet I can't because I have to service that debt. Well, if you start controlling and owning the debt yourself in your own banking system, you get that control. You decide when you're going to pay it back. If it's not the right time in November, then you can wait till December, or you can wait till January or February, whatever it takes. Now I'm going to coach you to pay it back just like you would if it was a loan from a commercial bank. But you get that kind of flexibility, that's control, that starts to give you some control over things that you didn't have control over before. So that's just one way that you can help with gaining control over something you didn't have before. Now the second one when it comes to, you know, the cost of farming. So for that example, I just thought I'd use, you know, a rancher and he wants to add to his cow calf operation. And so he wants to add some breeding stock. So he goes out and buys, needs to buy 20, 30 head, whatever it is, to add to his herd size. Well, if you've built up.

Cash value in your banking system, this is how that would work. You would take a policy loan, so you would use the cash value in your system as collateral for a policy loan to buy those cattle and you'd increase your herd size. Now just like if you had done that through another bank, you would have a plan to pay that back. But the neat thing is, is that even while you have that loan outstanding, you haven't stopped the growth of your money. Your money kept on growing because you took a policy loan from the life company, which is other people's money. And yes, they're going to charge you interest for that. But when you have a dividend paying whole life insurance policy that's structured properly for this process, your cash value will be growing at a greater rate than what your interest costs are. Therefore, you built momentum. You're building a environment where you continue to get further and further ahead because you've got the momentum behind you. So that's just one way that you can help with cost. You can start to own the cost. And Nelson Nash, the author of the book called Becoming youg Own Banker, he always said you cannot get a better rate of return without first controlling the banking function. So over time you can start to control more of the banking function as it relates to your needs on your farm. And I know they're hugely capital intense operations now, but even if you start to take parts of that and control that, your money keeps on growing even while you're using it. That's a huge win for you. And that's a key piece that you can enjoy with the process called becoming your own banker as a rancher or a farmer. Now, the third one was keeping the family ranch or farm in the family.

And that's another icing on the cake that comes with this process and that fact that the death benefits there. And at some point we all leave this earth and we go on. So this can help support estate planning so that at that moment in time there's a exchange of wealth and it's a tax free.

Influx of wealth into the next generation of your farm. And that's when you start to think longer term about the next generation and how you can help them from having to give up some things because they didn't have enough cash at that moment. So it allows you to do a great job of estate planning. That's another key attribute that comes with becoming your own banker. And it just helps improve the likelihood that your family farm or ranch can go on to the next generation and a generation after that. It's just a great tool to add to your portfolio. It doesn't have to be everything you do, it won't be everything you do because you're going to have other assets, you have to do what you do as a farmer or rancher. But it can be one key attribute that you add to your portfolio to just help you in a way that nothing else can. With that, I'm just going to encourage you to watch some more of our videos and just learn more about this whole process we call becoming your own banker.