TEPAP – Day 4 Morning Session

David Kohl, noted speaker and professor from Virginia Tech University provided a morning session on Mega Trends for agriculture. Highlights are as follows: 

•  70% of North American farms will change hands by 2025. This is not just ownership, but who farms the land. This provides plenty of opportunities for American farmers.
• Volatility will require an offense, defense and special teams. Offense will be your management of revenues, defense will be your management of farm input costs and special teams will be your interest rate management. These will need to be balanced. You can not spend too much time on one at the detriment of the other two. 

• We must be careful of the “New Normal” of agriculture. We have had several years of bullish trends for cropland farming, however, we must protect from expecting the “New Normal” to be normal. 

 

• If oil prices continue their trend above $90 and exceeds $100 per barrel, the shock to the system could easily send us back into a second recession.  
• Our employees coming into our system no longer are motivated by compensation, but are primarily motivated by lifestyle issues. We need to understand AND embrace it. 
• We will continue to automate out the marginal workforce in both business and farming.