Farm4Profit Host Tanner Winterhof Shares His Farming Predictions

Do you know where your food comes from? Farming feeds everyone, but while some people may believe that large, enterprise-grade industrial farms produce the bulk of the world’s nourishment, the reality is that a significant portion of the global food supply comes from family farmers. These farmers tend to self-manage and internally handle most of their operational needs. Tanner Winterhof, an Iowa-based expert in farming who boasts over two decades of business, financial services, and agricultural expertise, says the pressure on these smaller farmers will only continue to grow in the near future.

“Over the next decade, you’re going to see larger farms get larger just for the pure business sense,” says Winterhof. “Margins are getting tighter. There’s going to be a division of types of farms because you’re going to have large-scale, business-run farms that are going to work on thinner margins. And then you’ll see more smaller farms start up that are selling direct to consumer beef.”

“The small farms will still pop up, but they’re going to be trying to do more value add, high-value type products. So, no longer will you have the middle range. You’re going to see that get wider. And with that, technology is going to adapt.”

Farms of all sizes can meaningfully benefit if they leverage outside help and expert advice on value-generating improvements — he counsels to “trust and verify.” This is particularly true regarding change management, understanding new challenges, evaluating options and alternatives, and implementing new solutions. The only caveat, however, is that such help and advice should be vetted, relevant, and based on current needs and future goals.

“There’s a popular commercial on the radio during football season that talks about how farmers are experts in everything, which is not true,” Tanner Winterhof shares. “It’s a great ad, catches your attention, but it’s not true. You can’t be an expert in accounting, and in agronomy, and in livestock nutrition, and in mechanics. You can be good at those things, but experts are experts in their field because that’s their focus.”

For his part, Winterhof has a lifelong attachment to farming and the agriculture business. From growing up on a farm to having a successful career in banking and then pivoting back to agriculture, he’s recognized as a leader who helps others effectively adopt smart, impactful, and optimized farming practices. He’s a partner and podcast co-host at Farm4Profit, a media company focused on helping ag professionals worldwide reach higher levels of profitability via better-informed choices. He’s also a firm believer in the benefits of collaborative research, networking, consulting, and knowledge-sharing in the agriculture space.

Tanner Winterhof: ‘You Have to Take the Emotion Out of It’

What this means for farmers is that, at some point, they will have to rely on outside sources and/or subject matter experts in some form for advice and guidance just to remain viable and thrive in an increasingly competitive world. Winterhof says that larger farms are already pushing toward being more autonomous with larger-scale equipment and tapping into artificial intelligence-driven solutions. However, particularly for smaller farmers, making such changes and adopting other profitability-focused improvements will demand some form of reliance on others — something many lifelong farmers may not yet be ready for or adjusted to.

Why? Because, according to Winterhof, change can be hard for many family farmers. “Farms are typically run as a family,” he says, “and they typically run their farm the way Grandpa did it, and the way Great-Grandpa did it, and the way Dad did it. And so, one of the things that we ask people to do is stop thinking that somebody in your family is going to be disappointed.

“You have to think about farming as a business. You have to take the emotion out of it and you need to focus on what good businesses do.” For Tanner Winterhof, this means identifying relevant challenges that a given farm or family faces today and the challenges of tomorrow — all while looking into the available options and understanding farm- or family-specific constraints that impact profitability.

Farm4Profit Breaks Down Important Ag Challenges

What are some of the key challenges that the farmers of today and tomorrow may face, and how can they overcome them while enhancing profitability? Tanner Winterhof and the Farm4Profit team have identified a wide range of challenges, many of which they’ve talked about on their “Farm4Profit Podcast,” which was named one of the top podcasts by AgriAmerica.

Some of the more imminent hurdles facing farms and farmers today include climate change, extreme weather events, the depletion of natural resources, and technological advancements such as precision farming and the use of drones, sensors, and data analytics for increasing farm efficiency. Many farmers struggle with adopting such technologies due to a lack of technical knowledge or limited access to resources. Agricultural markets often experience fluctuations due to supply-demand imbalances, government policies, and international trade agreements, and these factors all bring about uncertainty that can make it difficult for farmers to make long-term plans and investments. Resource constraints in the form of limited access to land, water scarcity, high input costs (such as for seeds and fertilizer), and labor shortages can also impact farm productivity and profitability.

According to Winterhof, subject matter experts can help farmers overcome these difficulties by providing tailored solutions based on a deep understanding of specific circumstances and constraints. Consultants can bring unique expertise from outside perspectives that can offer farmers practical strategies for tackling complex problems within an agricultural system.

Agriculture is highly dependent on relationships built over time between businesses, whether between buyers and sellers or between contractors, service providers, and farm operators and producers. Trust fosters collaboration and can help farmers make the changes they need to make, but as Tanner Winterhof says, “Trust in others to do their job. It’s OK to verify if they’re going to do their job, but you don’t have to do it all. I’m still one that struggles with delegation, but knowing that there are others that have done it successfully definitely makes it one of those things that is a key to being a good leader, or at least the key to being a more effective leader.”

These are small changes that can be made at the individual or departmental level, but across the agri space as a whole, Tanner Winterhof says they can have a cascading effect where today’s improvements have a compounded impact tomorrow. This will help farms and farmers raise the bar of what is possible and reach short- and long-term goals in a disciplined, predictable, managed, and quantifiable manner. Given enough time and scale, even incremental improvements of a few fractions of a percent can translate to a substantial amount in savings and profits. And as the Farm4Profit team likes to say, “If you aren’t farming for profit, you won’t be farming for long.”