Talking about succession: How one young farmer took the plunge

These sensitivities exist in succession discussions for any family-run business, but Doug is convinced things are harder for those working in farming enterprises.

“There is too much emotion involved,” he says. “Growing up as a farmer, you are told it is a lifestyle and it is fantastic.

“You are brought up around it. Compare this to somebody who owns a factory; their kids do not get involved as much.

“You are always there – you have got so much emotional attachment to this bit of land. It is difficult to get the emotion removed and look at it in a business-like way.

“I think it is super-difficult, especially for somebody who has worked really hard all their life.

“To see somebody coming in to take it away from them, I know it is not quite like this, but it can feel this way if they have put their blood and sweat into the thing.

“It can be difficult to accept when your time is done.”

With so much emotion surrounding the farm, it is easy to see why Doug brought the topic up slowly.

“It was getting on top of me. I do not know if it was getting on top of anyone else. I think in his heart of hearts it was probably getting on top of dad a bit, but he will never admit it.”

Conversation

In the end, it was a Young Farmers leadership course which gave Doug the opportunity he was looking for to talk to his parents.

“The woman who ran the course was very hot on succession and what you need to be working out and what you need to be looking at. So coming home after doing it opened the dialogue up, just from ‘what have you learned?’

“I brought up a few points, only for mum and dad to say ‘we have sorted this’. Because it had never been discussed, we did not know what the situation was and it was surprising how much they had actually done for us.”

Doug happily admits he found himself in a fortunate place thanks to the forward-planning of his parents.

“Everything had been covered without me realising it, so there was nothing we actually had to do, it was just finding out all the information which helped," he says.

“You hear a lot of stories of things going wrong and people not having a clue what is happening.

“We have been through it as a family and I would never go through it again, I would sooner walk away.

“What were they fighting over? Something which loses money? I just do not see the point in it. It is just greed.”

One way to avoid a bitter family feud is to make sure any succession plan takes account of what everyone wants – not just one person or one generation.

But Doug acknowledges he had not considered how this would work in practice.

“Mum and dad going forward would still need a wage from the farm in retirement whether they were here or not. “This was one thing I had not really thought about, I just thought about how to set everything up.”