Hanson challenges farm families to fear-not, find courage, communicate about future

NEW HOLLAND, Pa. — Keynote speaker Dr. Ron Hanson did not come to Homestead Nutrition’s annual dairy seminar at Yoder’s Banquet Facility on Dec. 3rd to make anyone comfortable.

“I came with a purpose and a mission,” he told the crowd of over 150 dairy farmers and industry partners. “How do you keep a Pennsylvania dairy farm in the family, and most importantly, those young beginning producers on that farm with the opportunity to gain ownership, to build a secure future?”

An Illinois farm boy who spent 46 years teaching agri-business at the University of Nebraska, Hanson’s passion for succession planning comes from decades of counseling farm families and his own personal experience.

“I’m going to talk about things most families don’t want to admit,” he said.

At age 16, his family lost their farm a week before Christmas, a loss that fractured family relationships.

“I have a very, very difficult time at Christmas,” he admitted. “We destroyed a family. I wasn’t even allowed to speak to my grandparents, and they lived right across the road. You never, never have to tell me what can happen. You never have to tell me about regrets and sorrows because I’ve already lived it.”

Families avoid planning because they do not want to discuss loss, but Hanson said this reality must be faced head-on.

He told the audience that less than 30% of family farms survive past the second generation. An AgriLegacy survey found 80% of owners want their operation to stay in the family, but fewer than 25% have a documented plan.

“Why would you work your entire life to build something and never put a plan in place to protect it?” he asked.

A key question guided his message: “If something suddenly, unexpectedly happened today… does everyone in the entire family know what happens tomorrow? Who takes over? How? When? And if siblings must be bought out, who determines the price and terms?”

Hanson shared more sobering statistics: 70% of land ownership will change hands within 15 years; 60% of farmland is owned by individuals 65 and older; 68% of farms have no adult children involved; and 51% have not identified a successor.

“No one wants to sit around the table and talk about the day one of those chairs will be empty, but empty chairs happen, and avoiding the conversation won’t prevent it. If you have a farm, a dairy, a family legacy to preserve and protect, you’ve got to have the courage to talk about the empty chair,” he stressed, walking the group through the mistakes he sees most often.

Don’t procrastinate

Mistake number one is procrastination, failing to make succession a priority, and waiting for “someday” to start.

“Families are notorious for a lack of planning as well as being guilty of procrastinating until a crisis happens,” he said. “Waiting for ‘someday’ is never a wise or productive strategy. Graves are silent. If parents do not share their intentions now, who will later?”

He stressed the importance of discussing details: who takes over, how, when, and under what terms, and do so while everyone is still present to shape the outcome.

He told the story of an Ohio family where a father intended to set up a trust funded by life insurance, giving his three non-farming children cash and leaving the land to the farming son and daughter. The father died suddenly before the trust was created. With no beneficiary, the insurance company refused to pay the policy, and with the land held in joint tenancy, the farm passed to the mother, who was in full-time care with Alzheimer’s. A court-appointed attorney now manages her estate, and the farm is likely to be divided equally among all five heirs when she dies.

“All because nobody followed through. It never got done,” Hanson said. “Can your family risk the consequences of procrastination? Can you survive without a plan?”

Beyond silence, he said that fear often blocks progress — fear of death, fear of losing control of the farm, fear that the next generation might “screw it up” or sell it. He told of a South Dakota farmer who stood up in one meeting and said, “I have no plans to die, Ron,” before walking out.

This fear ties directly to another barrier: parents who hold on too long, denying adult children the chance to learn how to manage.

Mentor, don’t micromanage

“Instead of trying to control, boss, supervise, why not try to mentor?” he asked. “Give those adult children the chance to make mistakes. They’ll learn more from that mistake than they’ll ever learn from that success.”

To illustrate what mentorship and planning can look like, Hanson shared one of his favorite stories. A Montana couple struggling with debt needed to keep their daughter Julie engaged in the cattle operation. They had purchased a neighboring ranch, but the cash flow wasn’t there to pay the daughter what she could earn pursuing another career.

Each fall, when the cattle came off summer grass, Julie received 12 heifer calves of her choice. Over time, as those heifers calved, she built the herd into 600 cow/calf pairs of her own, leased grass on neighboring ranches, secured her own line of credit, and continued helping her parents.

They had created a structured pathway for ownership.

“That’s my point,” Hanson said. “Parents and grandparents have got to help the younger generation build a financial future so someday they can step in and take over.”

Don’t keep secrets

Hanson warned against the quiet rule that “you don’t say anything that upsets grandma,” noting how “conflict avoidance” prevents problems from being addressed. He urged families to hold structured discussions with ground rules, agendas, respectful tones, and a focus on tackling issues, not people.

“Most family disputes never evolve from what was discussed, but from what was not discussed,” he observed.

Secrets, he said, only breed suspicion: “If you did that without telling me, what else have you done without telling me?”

Do communicate

Acknowledging all of the difficulties around these conversations, Hanson closed with a simple directive: “Communicate, communicate, communicate, and then communicate.”

“Excuses are a perfect recipe for failure,” Hanson said. “You’ve got to make it a priority, and most importantly, you’ve got to follow through and get to the finish line.”

Hanson’s practical playbook for getting to the finish line includes:

• Structured family business meetings (set agenda, ground rules, annual or quarterly).
• Use outside facilitators to keep emotional conversations productive.
• Create written succession timelines with named roles, milestones, and decision rights.
• Do gradual transfer of management responsibilities before transferring assets.
• Use life insurance or buy-sell agreements to equalize inheritances.
• Identify the successor early, even if multiple children are involved.
• Document everything in writing and review annually.
• Build the next generation’s equity slowly (e.g., gifting livestock, equipment, renting acres, ownership shares).
• Define compensation clearly for on-farm and off-farm heirs.
• Establish conflict-resolution processes so disagreements don’t derail the operation.

There are resources to help farm families get started and provide structure for communication. Talk to trusted advisors, and check on programs available, such as through the Center for Dairy Excellence, which recently concluded the fall round of Passing the Torch workshops that were filled to capacity.

The Center also opened grant applications on Dec. 3, on a first-come, first-served basis for transition teams, transformation teams, and dairy decision consultants.