Missing The Family Ties In Agriculture

By its nature, the agriculture market is cyclical. Up and down cycles come and go with a regular pattern.

For the most part, we are coming down off a historic up cycle, where commodity prices, farmland valves, and grower income were all at record highs. Now, of course, prices for all of these categories have dropped back significantly and most folks that make their living from agricultural are waiting for better days to re-emerge, perhaps in 2017 or 2018.

Advertisement

However, unlike overall agricultural patterns that tend to repeat over and over, family-owned businesses that exit the marketplace stay gone forever. Over the past 18 to 20 months, several of these have decided to “cash in their chips,” so to speak, and sell their longtime family assets to larger agricultural corporations in a better position to weather the increasingly volatile agricultural cycles.

Top Articles
TFI: Phosphate and Potash Are Critical Minerals, Senate Bill to Solidify

Will more family-owned ag businesses sell out in 2016?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

In truth, this trend has been most pronounced in the ag retail community where family-owned companies such as Hintzsche Fertilizer and Miles Farm Supply are just two examples. But there have also been a few instances in the Big IRON sector as well, including Miller-St. Nazianz selling its operations to New Holland and Hagie Manufacturing offering a majority stake in its business to agricultural equipment giant John Deere.

On one hand, I understand why this is happening. As the cost of doing business in agriculture has steadily risen, larger, deeper-resourced corporations are in a better position to grow. But I will still miss the close-knit “business vibe” family-owned companies tend to have. This aspect of the agricultural world will truly be missed once it is gone.

0
Advertisement