Keeping farm-family relationships healthy takes shared values and 'expect that we’re going to be having problems'

Andy Junkin addresses the Pennsylvania Dairy Summit.
(Photo by Philip Gruber, Lancaster Farming)

Everybody's got problems, but not everyone has problems that include the trials of farming with family members. "The first step to overcoming conflict over the direction of the family farm is finding the points where everyone agrees," writes Philip Gruber of Lancaster Farming. Andy Junkin, who become a farm-succession mediator in 2010 after quitting his family's dairy farm, told Gruber, "We’ve got to stop being stubborn with each other, and we’ve got to start being stubborn with the habits that make a farm and a farm family successful."

Gruber reports, "Junkin’s approach to reconciliation is based on finding shared principles. A few of these values should be what made the farm successful and need to be maintained. . . . Junkin realized that many families were not really asking him to fix their problems. They were looking for permission to split up. Junkin told Gruber, “I don’t accept that because I know what it’s like not to get together with your family for Christmas."

In one case, "Junkin was called in to work with a son who expanded and took over his father’s hatchery. But while the father had worked tirelessly alongside his employees, the Ivy League-educated son stayed in the office, wrote out protocols, and berated employees who didn’t follow them," Gruber writes. "Junkin talked with the son and got him to understand why the workers respected his father but not him. The son signaled his change by getting a tattoo saying 'Earn respect daily,' and the farm has succeeded and grown in the years since."

Gruber cites a key principle: "Whatever tenets the family chooses, they need to be specific enough that everyone agrees on what they mean. Instead of a one-word goal like 'communication,' Junkin suggested 'the right hand knows what the left hand’s doing'. . . . When someone’s about to throw a punch, other family members won’t defuse the situation by saying the person needs to work on communication."

"Rooting decisions in shared values will help families work through tough financial times and enjoy working together," Gruber writes. Junkin told Gruber, "What we’ve got to be is realistic and expect that we’re going to be having problems. We’ve got to get really good at problem solving."