In an industry defined by “one-year-at-a-time” cycles, the greatest threat to a growing operation isn’t just a market downturn—it’s the inertia that comes with size. Farm Journal CEO Prescott Shibles argues that long-term survival requires a rare blend of faith and agility. To maintain an entrepreneurial mindset, leaders must lean into “conviction” as the core of a strategy that survives the lows.
Here is how four industry leaders are turning today’s constraints into tomorrow’s differentiators.
1. Build when times are hard.
When Brent Smith, president and CEO of NewLeaf Symbiotics, joined the company in 2023, the grain market was entering a significant down cycle. While some saw a risky time to lead a startup, he saw an opportunity.
“I learned in my first startup that the best time to build a business is in hard times,” Smith said said during a discussion at Top Producer Summit. “Because if you can’t withstand tough times, you’re not going to survive long term.”
For Smith, survival meant doubling down on the company’s core: science. Despite the pressure to cut costs, NewLeaf continues to spend half of its operating expenses on science.
“It would be very easy to peel that back,” he admits. “But we focused on projects that make the most impact the quickest, while keeping an eye on the long-term innovation in our pipeline.”
2. Control what you can control.
Farmers face the ultimate constraint every year: the weather. Scott Beck, president of Beck’s Hybrids, recalls the planting crisis of 2019 when constant rains kept tractors out of the fields well into May.
“I was concerned for our customers not being able to plant, but also for us not being able to plant our seed for the next year,” Beck says. “There was nothing that we could do to control the weather, but we could control how we interacted with our customers.”
Rather than retreating, the Beck’s team focused on transparency and empathy, using video series to connect with farmers and even forming small groups for prayer and support. Ultimately, they wanted farmers to know they cared and were there to support them however they could.
Despite the financial reality of what could happen if farmers didn’t plant and returned seed, Beck’s decided their course of action would not include employee layoffs. Instead, they prepared to sell land to protect their people.
“Fortunately, the weather broke and everybody was able to get planted,” he says. “Then the second miracle happened. We had the second warmest September on record, and that’s what brought the crop through to enable 2019 to not turn out as bad as it started.”
3. Turn disadvantages into advantages.
In 2014, Lamar Steiger, owner of The 808 Ranch, was tasked with a monumental challenge: helping Walmart reinvent its beef supply chain. At the time, the retail giant was at a disadvantage, forced to accept whatever the major meatpackers provided.
Steiger’s strategy was to turn that lack of control into a new kind of independence.
“I convinced the Walmart team to go around the traditional supply chain,” Steiger says. Today, Walmart sources 28% of its beef from its own “farm-to-table” supply chain.
There’s no question that decision was really good for Walmart. But Steiger says it was also really good for him personally.
“It reminded me that no matter how big you are, there are always challenges,” he says.
4. Create “white space” for the future.
When the day-to-day tasks of an operation become overwhelming, long-term strategy is often the first thing to go. James Burgum, CEO of The Arthur Companies, believes leaders must intentionally carve out “white space” for their teams.
“It’s important to find ways where people can actually spend their time working on the business, not just in the business,” he says.
By protecting time for team members to execute ideas that are three to five years out, Burgum manages the tension between short-term urgency and long-term viability.
“It’s hard to step away from the daily fires you’ll face in your operation, but it’s important,” he adds. “How we manage that tension of short term and long term is creating that white space and making sure that we consciously work on the business.
The Long Game
Ultimately, resilience in agriculture is about knowing when to push and when to pivot.
“You have to know when to put the gas down, and you need to know when to tap the brake,” Smith says. “And regardless of what you are doing, you need to stay focused on what you’re doing.”
Whether it is investing in science during a downturn or choosing customer empathy over the bottom line, these leaders say constraints don’t have to be roadblocks; they can be the very catalysts that drive an operation forward.
