In Irish dairy farming we talk a huge amount about grass and cows. Managing finances too is becoming an increasingly important topic with expansion and milk price volatility. To set up a joint venture (leasing, partnership, share-farming) with a farm owner, you need to be excellent in these three areas but also have very strong people skills. This was the key message delivered by Pat Ryan and Noel McCall at the Irish Farm Managers Association (IFMA) Dairy Forum last week. Both are award-winning farmers who have used joint ventures to grow their own dairy farming business. Making a joint venture work requires good people skills and being able to work effectively with others – something both Pat and Noel have done excellently throughout their farming careers.
In Irish dairy farming we talk a huge amount about grass and cows. Managing finances too is becoming an increasingly important topic with expansion and milk price volatility. To set up a joint venture (leasing, partnership, share-farming) with a farm owner, you need to be excellent in these three areas but also have very strong people skills. This was the key message delivered by Pat Ryan and Noel McCall at the Irish Farm Managers Association (IFMA) Dairy Forum last week.
Both are award-winning farmers who have used joint ventures to grow their own dairy farming business. Making a joint venture work requires good people skills and being able to work effectively with others – something both Pat and Noel have done excellently throughout their farming careers.
Pat Ryan is milking 450 cows on his home farm in Lauragh, Co Waterford, and is involved in Captal Farms Partnership, which has a number of milking units. Noel McCall is from a non-farming background but saved enough money to lease a Wicklow farm in 2005 and is milking 90 cows now, having recently extended the lease to 2027.
During the forum each farmer outlined their story and the key lessons for people who want to unlock land by making joint ventures work.
Lesson 1
Working well with others starts with understanding yourself really well. If you are aware of your own personality traits then you can better figure out how to work effectively with others. Are you patient, a good communicator and positive? Do you tend to get frustrated easily? If you are aware of these traits you can make the most of your positive traits and manage carefully traits which can cause conflict. Pat Ryan explained how all business partners in Captal Farms completed personality profiles with a consultant. “The better we understand ourselves the better we can work with each other,” he told attendants at the forum.
Lesson 2
Be clear on what you want. You can’t develop a strong relationship with someone else unless you’re clear on what you want out of it. If you come across as unsure or not fully prepared then you won’t impress. For a significant joint venture opportunity, you should have budgets completed for yourself so you know how the numbers work. This budget should be broken down into a monthly cashflow which Noel McCall highlighted is a crucial practice for him, especially in low milk price years.
Lesson 3
Finding the win/win. Noel McCall said: “The reason negotiating the lease was so easy was what I wanted and what the farm owner wanted were the same. He wanted to retire but still have cows milked on the farm. I wanted to run my own dairy business.” The key to any joint venture is knowing, and clearly explaining, why there is a win/win for both people. If there isn’t a win/win, eg a farm owner looking for excessive rent, then the arrangement won’t work.
Lesson 4
Carefully manage potential conflict. Both Pat and Noel cautioned that there would be times when patience would be tested and potential conflict possible. This is most likely in the spring when people are working long hours, often with little sleep. Their advice was to always keep your relationship with a farm owner or business partner professional. Never have a blow-up.
When challenged by conflict keep a big-picture perspective – the issue causing the problem might be very small in the grand scheme of creating a profitable dairy business.
It’s often best to park the issue and come back to it in the near future when both parties are rested and have had time to think.
Lesson 5
Be patient. It takes time to develop a working relationship with another person. It also takes time to get a new dairy farming venture really performing, so don’t expect big rewards at the start. Noel McCall worked either full-time or part-time for five years on the farm he eventually leased. He used this time to save as much money as he could and built up his own drystock enterprise, which he later sold to buy into dairy cows.
Pat Ryan outlined how Captal Farms is looking for skilled and ambitious young people to join the partnership but would expect them to spend a year managing one of the farms ‘proving themselves’ first.
Questions from the crowd
Q: What are your plans for retirement?
A: Noel McCall: I don’t own any land so my cows are my retirement fund. I will earn as much money from them as I can till I retire and then I will have an asset to cash in on.
Q: What is personality profiling?
A: Pat Ryan: There are several templates available online and through consultants. You basically fill out a series of questions about yourself and this gives an insight into your personality. This might not sound useful in farming but if you want to be in a really successful joint venture then you must be fully aware of your personality type and how you can work best with others.
Q: How does communication work within your partnership?
A: Pat Ryan – We have formalised the communication process with regular scheduled meetings and templates for reporting. Both relationships within the partnership and the performance of the different farms have improved since.
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