Dr Sparling: Cultivate Strategic Agricultural Leadership

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Comment by OntAG Admin on March 9, 2012 at 3:32pm

Ivey offers leadership training for farmers

JENNIFER LEWINGTON | Columnist profile

Globe and Mail Update

Published Friday, Feb. 17, 2012 

Today’s farmers run sophisticated business enterprises, often as the sole employee – and boss.

But as directors of agricultural marketing boards, co-ops and other agencies, farmers need additional skills, such as how to collaborate with others, grasp the big picture and lobby politicians and bureaucrats on domestic and global trade policy.

A new executive leadership program, partly underwritten by the Farm Credit Canada and run by University of Western Ontario’s Ivey School of Business, will offer leadership training to farm directors and senior staff of boards and co-ops across the country.

“When you are farming, you are used to being the boss and boss yourself around,” says David Sparling, Ivey professor and chair of agri-food innovation and regulation. “There are quite a few programs out there on managing your farm business but there aren’t programs on helping to manage or lead your industry better.”

The five-day course, believed to be the first of its kind in Canada, is expected to attract directors and senior staff of farm organizations, with training on how they can work with each other and across sectors on industry leadership, strategies and policy direction.

“These people [farmers] are not afraid of change or taking on risk,” observes Prof. Sparling. “They are not afraid of getting in to brand new areas and doing new things all the time.”

The price-tag for the intensive session is $4,250, about half the cost of similar executive training programs, because Farm Credit Canada has put up $400,000 over five years to defray tuition costs.

“This is a needed advancement,” says Lyndon Carlson, senior vice-president of marketing for FCC, the leading agricultural lender in Canada. “We will attract directors and senior managers from across the country.”

With agriculture and food production increasingly global in nature, Mr. Carlson says those who lead producer associations in Canada need to be influential at all levels of government.

“Farmers need to take control in a business-like negotiation,” he says. “That means when they talk to government, they are not just asking for a safety-net program, they are developing policies that need to be sustainable and that the taxpayer will be supportive of.”