Farm Management Canada and the Ag Excellence Conference. A Real Gem!
Colin Penner shares his experience as a MCGA sponsored guest at this year’s Ag Excellence Conference.
Nov 21-23rd, 2017 I had the opportunity to attend the Ag Excellence Conference hosted by Farm Management Canada (FMC) in Kanata, Ontario near Ottawa. Honestly, I went to the conference a little skeptical with fairly low expectations. My expectations were blown out of the water. FMC was celebrating their 25th anniversary. How had I not known about them before?
FMC is a national organization currently being funded by ag business and organizations from across Canada with matching grant funding from Agriculture & Agri Food Canada (AAFC). The main objective of the organization is to further the farm management and farm financial entrepreneurship of Canadian farms along with providing resources, webinars and educational supports.
It was great to share dialog with other producers who are a few years ahead of me in their careers and in their transition plans. It was neat to have benchmarking/ratio analysis really reinforced. One of the action items that I’m taking away is that I should look at setting up a benchmarking peer group. I love the idea of having a group of people with similar interests that can be used to encourage growth and bounce ideas off of each other.
Another major theme of the conference was the succession/transition planning. There were opportunities for all ages to participate and provide perspective. It was great to hear a diverse perspective ranging from 18 year olds that want to just take over the farm, to people in their 30s that are terrified of running the farm without the support of their parents, to people that just want to sit in the tractor from time to time. One challenge that I took away was that “talking doesn’t cook rice”. In other words you have to decide to ACT on the talking and put plans into action when working on transitioning the farm.
The conference was diverse in so many areas, geographically pulling people from across the country, diversity of farm operations- from Turkeys to Cranberries and everything in between! Having the Nuffield Canada conference in conjunction with Ag Excellence allowed the delegates to hear about what that unique program is about and how the global perspective influences how farmers are able to develop their businesses.
All in all I think it was the networking and conversations that were had around the tables during meals, breakouts sessions and out in the halls during breaks that really gave the conference the value that I was hoping for.
Thanks so much for inviting me to the conference, I am looking forward to attending it next year in Winnipeg! For more information follow along at @FMC-GMC or visit the Farm Management Canada website.
Colin Penner, Farmer