Tess Baker, our Farm and Ranch Succession Advisor, recently attended a seminar on succession planning by Dick Wittman. She describes what she learned and why OAT is hosting him for two seminars this fall.
This May I had the opportunity to attend a Train-the-Trainer workshop in Kansas City. This two-day training was designed by Dick Wittman to train agricultural consultants to assist farmers and ranchers in their business and succession planning needs, and was widely attended by service providers across the United States, Canada and even Australia! For decades Dick has been heralded as one of the leading farm and ranch consultants throughout the country. This training was a testament to why that is. Topics covered ranged from the five step process that Wittman Consulting uses to walk clients through the advising process, case study discussions involving real life client issues, tools including Wittman's own guidebook "Building Effective Farm Management Systems" and a variety of other resources to assist clients in this process.
The training was taught from the perspective of someone that clearly understands what it is like to be in production agriculture. Dick and his family own and operate a small grains and cattle operation in northern Idaho. With over 40 years of experience in the ag consulting industry, I could have listened and learned from Dick for several more days. I was clearly not alone in that, as there were several members of the workshop that had attended in the past and found the information valuable enough to attend for a second time.
I am thrilled that OAT will have the opportunity to welcome Dick to Salem in November for our Agricultural Business Succession Workshops! During this time we will spend one day focusing on training service providers to better assist their farm and ranch clients with succession and business planning needs, and one day focusing directly on producers, giving them tools to navigate a multitude of issues that can come up when working through this process in their operations. I hope to get the chance to meet many of you at these workshops, as I can confidently say that we will all walk away with more tools in our toolbox and more confidence in our ability to navigate the often tricky world of business and succession planning.