Running Two Engines

Escalating production and marketing regulations will hit smaller farmers the hardest, warns Roelof Bezuidenhout. Are you ready to meet these challenges?

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John F Kennedy is supposed to have said the farmer is the only one in the economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale and pays the freight both ways.

Other than that, and the fact that farms are more exposed to the elements, farming is no more susceptible to financial problems than any other small business.

Given that even Fortune 500 firms nowadays have a life of only 10 to 15 years, it’s remarkable so many family farms are still operating, some even into the fifth or sixth generation.

Equally amazing is that they have survived for so long doing basically the same thing, selling the same product to the same market.

There are, apparently, several reasons why big companies don’t last very long anymore. Mainly, the world is changing faster than they can adapt to consumer demand and come up with new products and markets.

Of course, the successful companies have the resources to buy the best brainpower and to invest in research and development, and to take risks with innovation.