Strategies For Diversifying Farm Revenue

Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
In today’s evolving ag economy, constantly striving to be the low cost commodity producer can end up being a race to the bottom. Matt Woolf of Terrain encourages farmers to explore diversified income streams to help protect profitability and create new opportunities for growth.
Woolf... "Yeah. Well, I think broadening our, the way we think about land is a big part of this. Instead of thinking as, you know, land as an asset on which we grow commodities, thinking of farmland as a commodity, where we grow revenue is kind of a different way of thinking about that. So thinking about different income streams. Whether that's solar, whether that's agritourism, there's a lot of other things to consider out there. Also an increase in diversification. I think diversification is gonna become increasingly important instead of focusing on these really high volume agricultural products, thinking about some of the high value products that may be lower in volume, but really high in value. So that's kind of the way we've been thinking about it at the grower level, and again a little bit higher than that at the marketing level or kind of grower group level, thinking about how we can focus on those specific areas or countries, regions that have again, a positive income and demographic story to tell."
Woolf says those demographic stories will differ based on the commodity and consumer base.