Sask. farm legacy: Transitioning to younger generation not always easy

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“When I hand it over to the next generation, I would hope that they’re ready to take over the reins and continue that legacy of our farm.”

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Bill Prybylski’s Yorkton-area farm has been in the family since 1897.

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He’s proud of that legacy and is looking to gradually hand down operations to the next generation in the coming years.

“It’s both rewarding and scary at the same time,” Prybylski said of slowly stepping away from his 15,000-acre farm.

Prybylski runs the operation with his brother and nephew. He’s still two years away from wanting to retire, but the family has already decided that his son and another of his nephews will take over.

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“When I hand it over to the next generation, I would hope that they’re ready to take over the reins and continue that legacy of our farm,” he said.

According to the 2021 Census of Agriculture, the average age of Saskatchewan farmers is 55.8 years old, with 61 per cent aged 55 or older. Although a majority are nearing retirement age, 62 per cent of farmers in the province reported they had no succession plan.

The Prybylskis run an incorporated mixed farm with beef cattle, cereals and oilseeds. While it did take effort to incorporate, the move leads to an easier transition down the line. When he wants to completely hand it all over, it’s a matter of signing shares over to his son and nephews, similar to how a company would function.

“It’s a family legacy but also a business,” he said.

The Prybykski family poses for a photo on their family farm.
Bill Prybylski (right) and all four generations of his family stand on their farm in the Yorkton area. Photo by Supplied

With that in mind, Farm Management Canada (FMC) has expanded its Bridging the Gap workshop to a national audience this year, including Canada’s Farm Show (March 18-20 in Regina). The workshop, to be held March 17 at the Queensbury Convention Centre, includes farm transition experts who will speak about financial considerations, planning, communication, etc.

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Nick Oakley, a business development lead at FMC, has met with farmers across Alberta the past three years to help them plan how to transition the business after they retire.

Oakley says it’s never too early to start a succession plan for the family farm and to make sure everyone impacted by the transition is on board with the timeline. But it can be a difficult issue to approach as farming is a job uniquely tied to someone’s identity, making retirement a mental block for some.

Laura Hoimyr and her husband Mark own Box H Farms, a 5,500-acre beef operation in the dry, rolling hills of the Gladmar area in southern Saskatchewan. The farm has been in her husband’s family since the mid-1970s.

The Hoimyrs took over the business from his parents around 2009 after previously securing a parcel of land nearby. Laura says they’re lucky because her in-laws were open to the conversation about starting to take over the farm — first through a partnership of the assets, then fully incorporating — so they had a planned exit strategy for his father.

Laura and Mark Hoimyr pose for a photo on their farm.
Mark and Laura Hoimyr pose for a photo on their family farm in December 2023 Photo by Supplied

“To have his son (Mark) take over the farm made him really happy, but they need their financial security too,” Laura said, adding that they spoke to accountants and consultants with expertise in transferring farm assets. It was also good to have those experts act as a neutral party to make sure everyone’s best interests were addressed through the process.

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Maintaining a strong relationship with his parents was always important to Ben Martens Bartel when he moved back to the family farm with his wife Lisa to raise their kids. He had seen others return to a family operation but soon end up quarrelling with parents.

“As much as farming is a way of life, it’s also just a job,” Martens Bartel said. “You can get another job. You can’t get a whole other family.”

John and Denise Bartel pose for a photo with Ben and Lisa Martens Bartel and their three children.
John and Denise Bartel (right) stand next to Lisa and Ben Martens Bartel and their three children. Photo by Supplied

Martens Bartel has a shared partnership with his parents at Grovenland Farm, a 460-acre plot in the Lanigan area. It’s a smaller operation of cattle, pigs, chickens and a wide variety of garden vegetables, with a focus on producing food to feed people in the province.

They were creative with their succession plan to find a way that worked financially for his young family back in 2011. Instead of leveraging the land through a loan, they decided to slowly make payments against the farm’s assets over time, giving him and his parents stability.

Ben and Lisa recently bought all the livestock and are now focused on buying out the land while his parents move into semi-retirement. He says they tend to have daily discussions about farm management, adding that their long-term plan is written out on a scrap of paper.

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Discussion about transitioning ownership impacts farm kids and non-farm kids, but it can be a sensitive subject, says Oakley.

“People want to make sure they are preserving the harmony of the farm too. We know that 98 per cent of farms are owned by families and that families are so engrained in these businesses, more than any other industry in the country,” said Oakley. “Not only are you thinking about a business, you also have to think about how this is going to impact the family.”

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