Ag leader pitches “new metric” of success

Dick Wittman has been an influential voice in the Iowa ag community for some time now. A past president of the Farm Financial Standards Council, Director of numerous groups including the PNW Direct Seed Association, and farm management consultant since 1980, Wittman is also a partner in a family farm business himself.

But over the years, he said he’d seen a recurring problem in the way family farmers tend to define success.

“We’ve made a horrible mistake in agriculture by creating this idea, this metric,” Wittman said during his presentation at the Hill Bank Ag Outlook conference on March 2. “Your metric of your success is you’re only successful if you build a farm and you pass it on to somebody that wants to carry it on. That’s wrong.”

Wittman said that model of family inheritance could, in a modern age, strain families themselves.

“I know good farmers who’ve been very successful, they’ve grown and innovated, and their kids are doctors, lawyers, movie actors, and they don’t want to farm and they really don’t want to own the farm,” he said. “They come up and they say, ‘you know, I feel like a terrible failure because nobody wants to farm.’”

Instead, Wittman said farmers should look to other mindsets.

“I ask them, have you been in the career of your dreams?” he said. “Yes. Are you financially successful? Yes. Are your kids doing what their passions dictate? They are. Have they been raised in a rural community where they can be in 4-H and FFA and learn your system and your values and your ethics? Absolutely. Then celebrate! You have been a success, so we need to have our own definition of success.”

While the lesson is hard to learn, Wittman said he had seen it turn people’s lives around.

“A big tall man came up to me and he had been in tears,” he said. “He said, ‘You know, I farmed every day of my life and I hated it, but my mom and dad wanted me to farm and I didn’t want to disappoint them, and so I did that. I have two boys and all they talk about is how they want to farm and I tell them it’s the dumbest idea you could ever think of, and I realized after hearing you today that I’ve made a terrible mistake. I was living my parents’ dream instead of my own and now I’m doing the same thing for my children.’”

Wittman said the change was as simple as having a conversation with the family.

“Take the blessings of your success, and sit down with your kids,” he said. “Say, ‘How can we take those blessings and help you achieve your dreams?’ Those of you that do have successors that want to farm, you can define your success differently, but there is no one right answer.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com