MANAGER’S LIBRARY SERIES
John Foltz, Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University; and Dean Emeritus, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, and Professor Emeritus, Agricultural Economics, University of Idaho
Tracy Schohr, Livestock and Natural Resources Advisor, University of California Cooperative Extension
Lance Woodbury, Principal, Pinion (formerly KCoe Isom, LLP)
Originally published at: https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/aede-0030
Peer groups have come into their own in the agricultural industry. They have been somewhat commonplace in business generally, yet less so in agriculture until recently. Peer groups are typically made up of like-minded farm or agribusiness owners who gather two to three times per year to discuss business challenges they face, and also to share solutions to these problems. They tend to work best when a facilitator assists in organizing the meeting, manages the agenda, and aids the flow of conversation in order to ensure that the time spent is efficient and impactful.
Why Should My Farm or Agribusiness Consider a Peer Group?
Davon Cook of Pinion, LLC states that peer group participants benefit in five basic ways:
- Executive education and training.
- Information sharing.
- Resource sharing.
- New idea sharing and “tough love” input regarding business challenges
- Personal support.
These benefits become increasingly important as a family-owned business becomes more complex (Figure 1). This fact sheet reviews a number of the reasons why it may make farm-business sense to consider participating in a peer group, and some of the strategies to consider.
Information Sharing
Farmers or agribusiness owner/managers in peer groups exchange information about farming or business practices in their industry; crop management (in the case of farmers) or issues such as running a big floater sprayer (fertilizer business) or grain dryer (grain elevator); human resource management (finding good employees, keeping them motivated, and evaluating employees); and other best practices for running the business. This information sharing helps owner/managers think outside the box, apply new ideas to their operation, and find better ways of managing their business. The information sharing is reciprocal—what is important is not only that the group fits you, but also your fit with the group and what others in the group expect you to bring.
Objective Advice
Peer groups allow the owner/manager to meet people who are typically removed from their home operation or business. Where to look for a peer group that can provide this independent input is provided later in this fact sheet. People who are outside your organization can serve as an informal, external board of directors if your business does not have one (learn more at ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/aede-0019), because a peer group does not have an emotional or financial stake in your business. As a result, peer group members can offer objective and unbiased opinions that are typically not provided by family who are involved in your business or from co-workers. As relationships within peer groups evolve over time, an informal, external board of directors’ perspective can help professionalize an operation (Figure 2.). In addition, an informal board of directors consisting of a peer group can help owners/managers to stay focused and not lose sight of what they are doing, while also providing candid, unsolicited advice to help farming practices, business systems, and family relationships.
Financial Accountability
As agri-businesses grow and evolve, accounting and business management practices need to adjust. Some peer groups are founded on fiscal management and benchmarking. Other peer groups treat these financial areas as a component of their oversight expertise. With trusting relationships, members can share their farm’s production data such as yield, inputs, labor, and equipment, along with core financial rations such as liquidity, solvency, profitability, and efficiency. These farm financial metrics can be compared to other farms in the group or to individual farms. Peers then act as an informal board of directors by identifying the strengths and areas for improvement for the participating members’ farms. Peer groups can also provide a forum to discuss processes and systems that can improve crop tracking, accounting, depreciation, equipment maintenance, and more. A multitude of farm-specific financial programs are available to purchase or customize, however, the opportunity to learn the trials, tribulations, and successes from your peers on systems in a similar operation can help you confidently choose what will work best for your farm or agribusiness.
Professionalizing Your Operation
Peer groups can help farmers and ranchers improve their skills and strategic thinking around professionalizing their operation. Professionalizing farm or ranching operations requires a more structured approach with formal tools, strategies, and processes (Figure 1). Professionally implementing structured farm financial systems requires key elements:
- implementing structured farm financial systems (separate from personal and hobby financials)
- clarifying roles and responsibilities
- establishing regular communication
- formalizing key employee talent development and feedback
- developing written policies
- engaging outside advisors
- prioritizing succession and estate planning
Professionalizing a farm does not mean removing the family from the farm, it means building a business that works for the family and can last for generations.
Marketing and Purchasing Power
A core pillar of many peer groups is to focus on marketing and purchasing strategies, challenges, and successes. Through the group, members can gain insight into marketing tactics for crops like corn, soybeans, and livestock. Members discuss pricing data, planting strategies, market intelligence, and timing, including hedging, forward contracting, and futures. Peer group forums create a trusted space to share approaches and insights, helping peers make more informed decisions to increase profitability.
Diversifying Income
Some peer groups create opportunities to invest in farm and non-farming business ventures. Members or group facilitators can help identify or even create opportunities to diversify a farm or agribusiness through investments in land, adjacent agribusinesses, farming ventures, or other assets outside of core business area. This diversification and expansion of business enterprises can help diversify income streams, leverage resources, and bring new insights that may offer additional value to a core farming operation. Furthermore, these relationships may help secure additional acres for farming in a region or provide other valuable opportunities.
Understanding Politics, Policies, Programs, and Regulatory Compliance
During semi-annual gatherings or when attending webinars, peer-group members can invite guest speakers to share insight into federal policies, programs, and regulatory compliance. Insights may also be gained through a peer groups’ experience, guidance, and wisdom. For example, a peer group member can share how they utilize Farm Bill programs offered through the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to invest in water efficiency and nutrient management. Such conversations inspire others to seek out funding to improve their farming and ranching operations. Agricultural regulations are often burdensome, time-consuming, and complex, but peer groups can play a valuable role in helping navigate the rules and requirements of agricultural regulations.
Reducing Risks
Many peer group members share how their group has helped their family farm reduce risk. These risk-mitigation measures are diverse, ranging from employee training, farm safety, disaster preparedness, and employment-law compliance, to liability insurance coverage, legal strategies, and crop insurance programs. One family noted how their peer group exposed them to a new insurance company with a greater understanding of risk coverage options, allowing them to reduce farming risks where they needed it most by using coverage their local crop insurance agent never discussed with them.
Outside Support System
Farmers and ranchers deal with emotional stress from many issues, such as drought, wildfire, markets, trade policies, economic conditions, and time pressures (Pinzón, et al., 2025; Woodmansee, et al., 2025; Kohlbeck, et al., 2023; Rudolphi, et al., 2024). While coffee shop talk may keep you connected with neighbors and other business owners, it is typically not the place to share business wins and struggles. Trust and confidentiality are critical components in healthy peer groups. In fact, peer-group participants list trust and confidentiality as being among the most helpful aspects of their group, noting that they feel supported and heard.
A peer group can create forums for deeply emotional topics such as death, addiction, suicide, and divorce within a family-agribusiness operation. Opening the door to conversations centered on emotional trauma can help participants recognize, process, and cope with the effects of trauma on the mind, body, and family. In a number of peer groups, these conversations include training from outside professionals. This can lead to new protocols on the farm, rebuild relationships, and thereby reduce future risks. In short, peer groups allow members to be open about their successes, setbacks, and struggles—and provide a forum to ask for help.
Succession Planning
Many businesses, including family farms and ranches, or closely-held agribusinesses, encounter significant challenges when it comes to transitioning from one generation to the next. This phenomenon is often referred to as the “third-generation curse” or the “family business succession issue.” A commonly cited statistic is that about 70% of family businesses do not successfully pass to the next generation.
Through peer groups, owners/managers get assistance, learn about successful transitions, and perhaps most importantly, learn to avoid the mistakes that peers encountered while transitioning between generations. Peer groups encourage an exchange of ideas on how to bring in the next generation, from mentoring 6, 7, and 8-year-olds on farming; to training early teens on operating equipment; to opening the discussion about farm finances with your high school senior. These conversations further evolve into planning how to integrate a college-educated daughter’s passion for farming into potential roles and responsibilities in the business. Finally, peer groups can help tackle the big elephant in many farming operations—the transition of the senior generation away from day-to-day management and administration.
Problem Solving
With many businesses, the owner/manager wears all the hats:
- operational
- financial
- technical
- mechanical
- supervisory
As a result, it is easy to “put your head down” and work through challenges without stopping to reflect before making strategic management decisions. Going to a peer-group meeting and hearing an outside perspective is extremely helpful in allowing an owner/manager to take a step back and look at the “30,000 foot view” instead of the day-to-day issues. It provides an outside perspective of a clear path forward, or perhaps a more simple solution, whether it be in the form of agronomic practices, financial strategies, or decisions on contingency or succession planning.
Networking Opportunities
Peer groups provide the opportunity to build relationships with other farmers, vendors, or agribusiness leaders. These relationships with tractor dealers, bankers, suppliers and consultants can lead to savings on inputs, expansion of the operation, or help professionalize a farm to withstand market volatility, succession, and more.
Know What You Want
Business owners or managers looking for a peer group need to know what they expect from their participation. They also need to find a group that aligns with their objectives. As an owner/manager, it is important to take the time to understand what you want from the experience. Many peer groups match owners/managers with people who are not from their geographic area. This ensures that members are not in competition with each other.
If you want to benchmark costs and buy inputs together with farms similar to yours, Davon Cook, Principal, Pinion, suggests “either an industry specific group—such as a feedlot or dairy or row crops—or a regional group so you have the same vendors, yields, and costs” (Pinion, 2025).
If, however, you are seeking new ideas that push you outside of your comfort zone, Cook suggests joining a peer group with diverse types of operations, perhaps far out of your geography. This provides an opportunity to travel, see new areas, and create a competitive advantage compared to your neighbors.
Other considerations include culture, like-mindedness, and age demographics. Some groups are all peers in a specific age range (e.g. 35–50), whereas other peer group consist of multiple generations, such as senior members (50–70-year-olds), emerging leaders (30–50-year-olds), and a rising (young adult) generation.
Finally, consider whether you are willing and ready to work “on” the businesses instead of “in” the business. The right peer group will challenge your strategic perspective.
Next Steps
Commit to Participate
Getting the most out of a peer group takes a commitment to participate. Jay Peterson, a peer group member and farmer from Saskatoon, Canada states, “You can’t just sit back either, you have to speak up to be part of the group. But these people are going to challenge you because they all have different life experiences.”
Give It Some Time
It is important to give the peer group a fair chance to help you with your business practices. It can take time to get comfortable with the format and the people involved. As with many new situations, bonding, community, camaraderie, and trust will often occur, but can take time to develop.
How Do I Find a Peer Group?
As a result of the success of peer groups in farming and agribusiness, several routes are available for finding one that meets your needs. The first approach might be to check with your local university extension office, farming associations in your area, or online farming communities.
In addition, a number of groups help facilitate peer groups for a fee:
- Pinion Global, LLC (pinionglobal.com) is a leading food and agricultural consulting and accounting firm with community roots and global reach. They offer peer groups for executive education, stating that, “Operating a successful agricultural business in a small town can be lonely and moving your enterprise to a more professional level is no easy task. Participating in a peer group combines executive education with support from others in similar situations.”
- Ag View Solutions (agviewsolutions.com) located in Iowa and Illinois, “presents services, tools, and consulting information to growers locally and globally.” They work with businesses to pair your business “with operations that will best facilitate growth, feedback, and synergistic networks for taking your farm to the next level.”
- UnCommon Farms (uncommonfarms.com) is based in Illinois, providing farm and agribusiness consulting and peer group facilitating. According to UnCommon Farms, “Our member farms share their best practices, struggles, and triumphs during our trainings, workshops, peer groups, and members-only conferences.”
- Backswath Management (backswath.com/peer-groups) is based in Canada and provides peer group and financial benchmarking services for “forward-thinking farmers working to sharpen their management skills, tackle challenges, and build stronger, more profitable operations.”
Conclusion
A peer group can become an invaluable source of new ideas, provide a sounding board, and be a source of great friendships. Take stock of what such a group could offer you and your business. If the benefits align with what you are looking for, seek out a group and put the experience to the test. When joining a peer farming/agribusiness group, one of the overarching goals is to improve your family farm or agribusiness enterprise across the spectrum of topics addressed above.
Multigenerational family farming and agribusiness enterprises go through stages, including survival mode, a more stable phase, an attempt to become more professional, and finally, they may contemplate becoming more institutional where most of the family may not be involved in the business but they continue to own the assets (Figure 2). Through peer groups, your farm or agribusiness can overcome setbacks on your business trajectory and achieve your personal metrics of institutional stability.
References
Kohlbeck S., Quinn, K., deRoon-Cassini, T., Hargarten, S., Nelson, D., & Cassidy, L. (2023). A social ecological analysis of farmer stresses and supports in Wisconsin. SSM – Qualitative Research in Health, 3, 100248. DOI:10.1016/j.ssmqr.2023.100248
Pinion. (2025). Davon Cook. pinionglobal.com/people/davon-cook
Pinzón, N., Galt, R. E., Roche, L. M., Schohr, T., Shobe, B., Koundinya, V., Brimm, K., & Powell, J. (2025). Farming and ranching through wildfire: Producers’ critical role in fire risk management and emergency response. California Agriculture, 79(1), 9–18. doi.org/​10.3733/​001c.128403
Rudolphi, J. M., Cuthbertson, C., Kaur, A., & Sarol, J. (2024). A comparison between farm-related stress, mental health, and social support between men and women farmers. Int J Environ Res Public Health, 21(6), 684. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph21060684
Tagiuri, R., & Davis, J. (1996). Bivalent attributes of the family firm. Family Business Review, 9(2), 199–208. doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-6248.1996.00199.x
Woodmansee, G., Macon, D., Schohr, T., & Roche, L. (2025). Building ranch resilience to drought: Management capacity, planning, and adaptive learning during California’s 2012–2016 drought. Rangeland Ecology & Management, 98, 63–72. DOI: 10.1016/j.rama.2024.07.009
