For many businesses, the default framework for a leadership change moves generation by generation. Assets are transferred, ownership shifts, and one generation steps away while the next takes over.
However, with agriculture facing intense pressures from climate and market changes, intergenerational planning is becoming more important to ensure agribusinesses can weather the storm for longer.
“Succession is passing the farm to my son or my daughter or somebody else, and then I’m gone. What doesn’t happen in that scenario is the continuation of the long-term learning that sits with the person who is moving on,” said Dr Mandy Bell, head of New Zealand-based venture builder Criffel Futures.
She added that agriculture’s biggest challenges, biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions, food scarcity and water quality, cannot be solved within a single generation.
“We’re not solving our challenges within one generation. The outcomes take 20 or 30 years. If you take a short-term view, you lose the progress you’ve been making.”
While some may argue intergenerational planning is too complex due to silos and competing interests, Bell believes it is essential.
“People will say intergenerational planning doesn’t work because there are too many moving parts. But we have no choice. We have to be intergenerational.”
Not just asset transfer
Intergenerational planning reframes farming as long-term system stewardship rather than a one-off asset handover.
The distinction, Bell emphasises, is critical.
With conventional succession, the focus is on ownership and often overlooks the ecological systems that underpin farm productivity and resilience, she elaborated.
Biodiversity restoration, carbon reduction and soil health improvements take decades to deliver measurable outcomes, leaving them vulnerable to reversal when priorities change.
“You might do all the work measuring ecosystem services and planting trees. But then the next generation comes in and says, ‘I don’t like those trees here, I’m going to take them out.’ That’s succession thinking, not intergenerational thinking.”
Limitations of succession
Intergenerational planning can apply to any business, however, is arguably more urgent in agriculture with farm often the first to feel the impact of climate volatility.
Often, the consequences of extreme weather events ripple through food systems long after the initial shock.
“We’re on the front lines. When cyclones come through, it has on impact on people’s businesses and an impact on food supply… There’s less food, so there’s less transactions happening all the way through the supply chain. Then food gets more expensive and it impacts everyone. I don’t think that’s well understood enough,” said Bell.
This lag between cause and effect makes short-term decision-making particularly risky in agriculture, where consequences may only emerge decades later.
5 Pillars of intergenerational planning
Bell has identified five essential pillars for successful intergenerational planning – financial strength, entrepreneurship, unity and harmony, education, and community contribution.
Being financially resilient is the starting point, as a business must be strong enough to support multiple generations over time.
It must also support entrepreneurship, giving it the ability to continue creating new ventures and revenue streams as conditions change.
Unity and harmony are equally critical, requiring families and businesses to communicate well enough to work through inevitable conflict rather than allowing it to derail long-term plans.
Education ensures each generation is equipped to contribute meaningfully, while philanthropy or community engagement anchors the business in place.
“You have to give back to your community. That’s part of making intergenerational planning work.”
While intergenerational planning may seem something that only larger business can do, Bell believes it is possible for smallholders to undertake it as well.
She acknowledged the time and resource pressures facing smallholder farmers but encouraged them to have basic discussions about long-term goals.
She emphasised that planning does not need to be complex to be effective.
She noted that many smallholder families already contain at least one person with a longer-term, strategic outlook, often women, who are thinking beyond the next season.
Drawing from her own experience, she said facilitated group discussions that include farmers, connectors, facilitators, and experts have been particularly effective.
Such discussions were designed to encourage peer learning rather than top-down instruction, she said.
“As soon as you have the discussion, people get thinking. If you write it down and come back to it, it’s amazing what happens.”
