Financial Stress Resources

Speaker 2  0:00  
My name is George Haynes. I'm a professor here in the Department of Ag Econ economics and also the extension specialist here, in terms of the things that I'm working on, I spend most of my time at this juncture in my career in working on agricultural policy issues primarily around stimulus payments,

Unknown Speaker  0:21  
Tell me some of the work you've done maybe around that policy, or just Montana agriculture in general.

Speaker 2  0:26  
Okay, well, the most important work that we do and agricultural policies around the farm bill, and the farm bill is, of course, a hot topic right now, because it's being negotiated in Washington. So we do a lot of work with presenting that to farmers and ranchers here in the state of Montana, talk to them about how they might utilize the Farm Bill. The other things that I work on, I do some work in farm finance and accounting, bookkeeping is probably more accurate. We do some LED presentations here for the state of Montana, for people that are not familiar with agriculture. And we do that in conjunction with the Bureau of Economic Research in Israel. And we usually talk to about 3000 people or so a year and knowing some of that. And then more recently, we've been working on your cultural innovation project here in the College of Agriculture, and sponsoring and agricultural innovation summit, to bring together people that have innovative ideas that they'd like to talk to people about.

Unknown Speaker  1:25  
Cool. Sounds like a lot of impactful work. So yeah, one of the big things at the farm and ranch stress clearing house that we think about is these different factors that people have that create stress in their lives. One of those big factors is financial stress. Do you have any connection with that?

Speaker 1  1:45  
Well, we have worked with farmers and ranchers on issues around retirement, and retirement, you know, it takes up a couple different avenues, one of them being what are you going to do with your estate, your land resources and other things that you have to give away? And then secondly, what are you going to do with decision making who's, who is you think about retiring from the farmer Ranch is going to follow in your footsteps. So those are the kind of the two topics that we end up dealing with, at least in this agricultural economics department. And, and there is a substantial amount of stress around the fringes of both of those decisions. Right?

Unknown Speaker  2:26  
Can you say more about that? How do you help people manage that?

Speaker 2  2:29  
Well, the most important contribution that agricultural economists have is to talk to people about risk management. And risk management really forces you to have a discussion that we'll talk about how you can avoid risks. And if you can avoid some kinds of risks, or at least pass the purchase insurance and other things to pass some of that risk on to other people, you know that those become really important considerations as you think about stress and being in business. Because if you have the ability to share your stress with somebody else in some way or another, it provides them, you know, a little bit better working environment for you. So that's that's what we talk about a lot about as risk management from a number of different angles, one production, one that might have to do with marketing, another one with this human resources you might deal with, with labor that you might have hired, or they didn't have to deal with your own well being like health and your health status, and so on. So that's that's how we begin to think about how we contribute to that discussion. 

Unknown Speaker  3:38  
Cool. Like,there's a lot, a lot of work to be done there. Yeah, I guess kind of on to that next question. How can something you've touched on a little bit? How can producers financially plan for the future? Like you said, with risk management? 

Speaker 2  3:52  
Well, I think one of the stories that we tell every time we go out is planning and requires you to know your costs. And sometimes I think that gets in the way of businesses that don't do very well as they don't necessarily know their cost structure very well. If you get into a business environment where you begin to think about the business not being successful, all of a sudden, you've introduced a lot of stress into, into your life in general. And so we start off, really thinking about it from that angle, and then usual place to meet me begin to conduct a conversation about something like stress. But that becomes really important when you think about agricultural economic issues that you might face.

Unknown Speaker  4:34  
Have you found that it's hard to have those conversations? 

Speaker 2  4:37  
Well, that's really challenging to have conversation with people because you're asking them to oftentimes talk to you about things that they would prefer to talk to their accountant about, or maybe a lawyer that they're doing business with. But the thing about putting it out in an educational setting to sit down with somebody and and talk about these issues you're facing requires the developing trust with these people, you know, a lot fraud. And that takes some time, you have to know these people pretty well before you really get down to things that are really important.

Unknown Speaker  5:11  
Have you have you seen the benefits from that?

Speaker 1  5:15  
Well, there's substantial benefits, I think as you in primarily to us, it just comes back with people, sending us a thank you note once in a while, or giving us a call and thanking us for at least pointing them in the right direction to think about us. Or me in particular, advising somebody about their payment plan or to be or what they're on the other side of it is with the estate or the decision making side of that, really, it there's other professional resources that are really important for that one, you need to have a pretty good accountant that's willing to help you and also a good lawyer as well, as you be in you know, tailor these things for your own operation or for you individually, so that we can help them, get them pointed in the right direction.

Unknown Speaker  6:02  
On to a different issue, as producers deal with those rising commodity prices and inflation especially as we've seen in the last couple of years, do you have any tips on how they can manage stress related to those factors?

Speaker 1  6:16  
Well, there's lots of ways of being approached this, again, I'll go back to what I talked to you about before, this whole idea on the production side, at least know one year costs of production. And you know, What's it cost you to be in business become really important components of that. But as you think about the farm and ranch operation that you're on, you know, you're rising commodity prices, and have been, you know, a kind of a feature of agricultural more recently, but a company that had been a rising input costs in, in there's the farm and ranch, community is, is a big as a lot of stake in the Farm Bill, in particular, the farm bill is important to them, because that's where the safety net is provided for agriculture. And so we believe it's really important that people understand the Farm Bill, and what the advantages of the Farm Bill happened to be. And then secondly, what are the benefits of buying crop insurance and participating in those programs, because we've we're in a time period now, as opposed to, you know, 100 years ago, when farmers were doing very well, we just let them go out of business. That's not the story anymore. There's lots of programs that are there. And they're there to help reduce the level of stress of running those businesses, being aware of the programs that are available to you now you might utilize them becomes an important part of that. And in helping people you know, survive in the market that we're in that has some substantial challenges.

Unknown Speaker  7:48  
Are there ways that people can easily find these programs, and I get involved.

Speaker 2  7:53  
Like I said, I think that one place for people to go for certain is extension. Yeah, that's a good starting block for any of these programs. And then it will introduce you in one way or another to these or these the federal and state agencies that help you with these things. In Montana, it's important to know what goes on with Farm Service Agency, it's important to know what goes on with risk management agency, all those become really important components of the safety net. But you have to know what's going on in those in those programs and to make you make use of them. The other important element of that is just, you know, moving from extension and what we can do for you, but becoming not only familiar with programs, but also with the people that are administering those programs as well. So we try to help facilitate some of that.

Unknown Speaker  8:54  
Do you have any tips on how people can cope with financial crisis, people get to a certain point, things have run their course and now they're at a point of very high levels of stress. You have any tips on this? 

Speaker 2  9:06  
We've been working on a project here in the in the department on negotiation? I think it's a lot of what applies to negotiation applies here. I think that there are a number of ways of viewing this one of the most important elements I think, as you begin to think about stress being challenging to your business in your family is that you first have to develop trust, and it might be for some people developing trust even within their family or the people that they're doing business with. So he that's a starting point, I think is we think about those, those just trying to mitigate some of those those issues. The other part of it is what I've already talked about a little bit before but there are programs insurance as part of that. It's we think of programs that are helped protect you from disasters. Several of those programs were the most useful ones, probably in Montana, more recently has been the livestock forage programs, but they, it's as a Farm Service Agency Program. So there's these developing, you know, a trusting environment, and then following that up with making sure you're aware of these resources that are available to you.

Unknown Speaker  10:26  
 On that final question, do you have any like books or media you'd recommend to people who want to learn more about ways to financially plan or like learn about those programs?

Speaker 2  10:38  
Well, I think the best place to handle some of the work around production costs are just that side of the annoy your cost sort of story is to where the University of Minnesota has a program called FinPlan in there is a component of that that is also a helps you do some financial planning. And the advantage of that program is that it allows you to contribute some data to their databases, they're gonna ask you some questions about that. But it also then allows you to receive advice from the analyse allows you to compare yourself with other businesses that might look similar to yours. So that's a place I think I would probably encourage people to start, if they want to bring in at least get their fiscal house in a little bit better order is to begin working with organizations like that they're really set up to help farmers grow and prosper.

Unknown Speaker  11:35  
Can you think of any specific Montana ones like that?

Speaker 2  11:38  
Well, extension, we have a substantial publications and extension as well to address all of these issues. And so no, I would encourage them to look at our our Hmong guides that we do here. We have an A econ empty that's website that we run here in our department, as well, on both of those sources, would be really useful to many Montanan producers.

Speaker 2  12:07  
I guess kind of my final question, is there anything I haven't asked you about that you think is really important when it comes to people wanting to learn more about ways to manage financial stress?

Speaker 2  12:21  
One thing I think that we may be in econ genomics in general probably haven't spent as much time as obviously people that are more training in psychology or mental health counseling has certainly done but I think, no, I think you've, you've tapped into at least the ways that we think about contributing to those, those issues. And the way that we can do it, I think is in the way that we think about it as economists, in my view, the way that we will help you make your financial position better, or at least take one of those stress items maybe away from you. And these things that we've talked about today will certainly help with that. So cool. Well, thank you so much for your time. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai