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soil and groundwater.
Farm management is a relatively young, growing industry. It has evolved from a company founded in 1919 in Missouri by D. Howard Doane.
Doane Farm Manager, headquartered in St. Louis, continues as a major participant in an industry which today ' includes some 200 companies doing business in 47 states. It is an industry managing farms with a combined total of more than 56 million acres.
According to a survey of America’s top management firms conducted in 1984 by Agrifinance, professional farm managers manage about 18 percent of all U.S. farmland.
There is no question that the farm management industry is growing and that growth is expected to continue. What remains to be seen is the direction that growth will take.
The two most likely avenues of expansion for the farm management industry are through serving new clients as well as providing additional services to existing clients.
Traditionally, a farm manager’s clients have been landowners (typically property heirs) and outside investors. Today, however, the potential exists to broaden the market for farm management services beyond those two groups to include banks, insurance companies and law firms — those who loan money or who are involved with bankruptcies and reorganizations, but who lack working knowledge of the field.
In addition to serving new clients, there is a growing potential for farm managers to provide consulting services.
Among the areas in which farm managers might assist farm owners are:
• Obtaining and administering debt and equity financing,
• Implementing farm management information systems and
• Participating as a member of a team with a lawyer and/or an accountant to advise clients.
The bottom line on farm management seems to be that the field is fast becoming more professional, with managers who are better trained in a variety of disciplines than they were even five years ago. Greater professionalism means better qualified people in agriculture and therefore, more efficient production.
And that benefits farmers in terms of higher incomes, as well as consumers in terms of more affordable prices at the checkout counter.
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