FOR FARMING FAMILIES
Farm succession options: which pathway fits your family?
By Sam Marwood
Sell up, or hand it to the kids. Most families never look past those two.
The Cultivate Farms Succession Guide sets out seven pathways for farm succession, and six of them are well proven. Read through them with your own family in mind, and pick out the ones that could work.
Six proven pathways
A flexible lease keeps the land in your name while another farmer works it. It's simple to set up and quick to start, and it gives the kids time to work out what they want. It doesn't settle who ends up with the farm.
Share farming keeps you involved. You and the incoming farmer share the costs, the profits and the seasons. If one of the kids wants to farm, it's a way to start them on the place before anything changes hands.
Lease to buy lets the incoming farmer lease the farm with an option to buy it at a price agreed up front. For a child or another farmer who wants to own it, it's a pathway to ownership with an end point everyone can see.
Vendor finance suits a buyer the family trusts who can't get a bank loan. They pay a deposit now, then pay off the rest over time, with interest. It's one of the alternatives to bank debt.
Collaborative farming means pooling resources with a neighbour who's also approaching retirement, so together you have the scale neither of you has alone.
An equity partnership is a formal business with several shareholders, sometimes including a backer. It suits a family that wants outside capital and a more structured way of running the farm.
The first six are set out in full in Ageing on Farm, written for retiring farmers.
Whichever you choose, it will need its own legal agreement, drafted by a solicitor who knows farm succession.
The seventh: the Cultivate Trust
The seventh option works differently to the other six.
There is a way to step back from the farm without selling it. Your farm moves into the Cultivate Trust, which runs it on your behalf, with the right farmer on it.
The farm stays whole, stays farmed and stays in local hands. Nobody has to carve up the land: the farm isn't being divided, the value is.
Like every option, it has things to weigh up. Your Farm, Your Legacy lays them out, free at cultivatefarms.com/cultivate-trust.
Which could work for you?
- Which options appeal? Why?
- Which don't work? Why?
- Could you combine two?
- What do you still need to find out?
Then talk your picks through as a family.
The full guide, The Cultivate Farms Succession Guide, is free at cultivatefarms.com/resources.
You can build your own plan at cultivatefarms.com/plan.