Ron Hanson To Discuss Farming and Ranching Succession At MonDak Ag Days

Starting at 11 a.m. on Friday, March 13 at the Richland County Event Center, Ron Hanson, agribusiness professor emeritus, University of Nebraska, will be speaking about "Farming and Ranching Succession - in the Shark Tank of What If."

Hanson has been a college professor for 46 years; throughout his teaching career he has earned 31 university and national award recognitions. These honors include: being the first Nebraska professor to receive the USDA Excellence in University Teaching Award, being named the Nebraska Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation, and selected as the University Educator of the Year. He is a recent recipient of the Nebraska Farm Bureau Silver Eagle Award for his dedication and service to ag youth as well as farm families in rural America.

His discussion will focus on helping farm and ranch families realize the importance/need of contingency planning to begin a process of working out a succession plan to keep their farm/ranch in the family for future generations.

Hanson has counseled with Nebraska farm families for more than 40 years to help them resolve family conflicts and to improve family relationships through better communications. His current efforts have been directed at farm business ownership succession and the transfer of management control between generations. Through his publications and professional travels, Hanson is recognized as a keynote program speaker on the importance of contingency planning to keep family members on their farms to continue farming legacies for future generations.

During Hanson's presentation, he will be informing attendants on how to develop and implement a business management contingency plan in order to overcome unexpected changes to the organizational structure and/or management leadership to a family farm, which is crucial for the continued success of a farming operation. Hanson explained, "An effective management strategy is to put yourself in the 'shark tank' and begin addressing the difficult questions and situations that might arise from these uncertainties in farming. That is a necessary step in protecting/managing the farm's wealth and preserving farm business assets for future generations. Few farming operations ever survive an unexpected change to the organizational management structure of their farming business, let alone a crisis situation within the family. Most farm families realize the importance of implementing a contingency business plan for if and when something ever happens, but few families ever accomplish this management goal."

To hear more from Ron Hanson about farming and ranching succession, make sure to attend MonDak Ag Days!