TRANSITION: 7 YEARS TO CHANGE?
DON’T GET CAUGHT SHORT Do you and your business have a robust and flexible strategy to get you through to 2027 and beyond? When I think of transition it is often within the context of moving from one place to another. Watching Top Gear on Sunday, while Freddie Flintoff was in his dad’s Ford Cortina, Paddy McGuinness in his dad’s Ford Fiesta and Chris Harris in his dad’s rather swanky BMW 323i, I was taken straight back to my parents Austin Maxi 1750 (a quite dreadful machine), as we set off in the middle of the night to Ivybridge in Devon on the family holiday spent helping on a small dairy farm during hay making season. With no sat nav or mobile phone, and nothing more than the occasional garage and Little Chef to rely on, every nook and cranny of that car was stuffed to the gunwales with considered essentials to ensure we made it down to Devon and back again, whilst (harmoniously...) living all together in a large family
room in the farmhouse, temporarily vacated by the farmer’s son who slept in the airing cupboard during our stay. Planning for the trip was meticulous, made well ahead of the event, and involved the writing and re writing of long lists as the weather forecast changed and mum added places and attractions she had read about or been told of and wanted to visit. Without realising it I had been given an early introduction to the art of creating and delivering a cognitive strategy to enable a smooth and enjoyable transition, with almost every eventuality, gleaned from both good and bad experiences of the past, catered for in one way or another. With inevitable changes on the horizon following Brexit and Covid-19, do you and your business have a similarly robust and flexible strategy to get you
30 ANDREW SAMUEL MSC MRICS
Managing Director T: 01435 810077 E: info@samuelandson.co.uk www.samuelandson.co.uk
APRIL 2021 | WWW.SOUTHEASTFARMER.NET
through to 2027 and beyond and if not then why not? The end of the Basic Payment Scheme, which has propped up rents and profit margins for some time now, will without doubt prove to be a reality check for many. Some will have prepared budgets without this income and will be banking on New Environmental Land Management schemes to plug the hole, but for some it might not be quite that simple and be more of a worry. More efficient precision farming, involving the deployment of cutting edge or emerging technologies, could be the answer. Especially if businesses are suitably liquid and looking to take advantage of both generous tax incentives and attractive research and development grants. For others, enhanced diversification might be the way forward, by either adding value to core
