Amy Cronin
2020
Scholar
Amy Cronin is a mother of six children, a hog, chicken and cash-crop producer, and a business owner in Huron County, Ontario. She, and her husband Mike, farm in Ontario, Iowa and Missouri and thrive on creating sustainable and innovative business plans that enable them to work with their team toward their vision: “Progressive, Prosperous, Best-In-Class”. Amy is actively involved at both the provincial and national levels. She is the chair of the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission, and Chair for the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan. In addition, she is chair of the Ontario Outstanding Young Farmers program and Vice Chair of Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmer Program.
Her leadership includes an eight-year contribution to the Ontario Pork Board of Directors, four years with Swine Health Ontario, and co-chair of the Premiers Agricultural Growth Steering Committee in 2016. With a desire to contribute to her community, Amy is actively involved in her parish community and serves as Vice Chair of the board of trustees for the Huron-Perth Catholic District School Board. She is a graduate of three leadership programs: Advanced Agricultural Leadership Program, Canadian Total Excellence in Agricultural Management, and the Executive Program for Agricultural Producers.
Amy’s commitment to family, faith, farm life and industry fuels her passion for having an impact and making the world a better place for the next generation.
Risk Management: Partnering for Prosperity
Risk is inevitable in agriculture. The decision to participate in risk is made the moment we decide to farm. How primary producers identify and manage risk has a cascading effect across the entire industry, affecting investors, supporters, and legislators. This report draws from interviews with farmers from 11 different countries across four continents, which were conducted in the midst of a global pandemic, war in Eastern Europe, battles over energy sources, rampant inflation, and a myriad of other crises. As such, it has a unique vantage point from which to identify common risks, and compare various mitigation strategies at local, national, and global scales.
By tapping into the knowledge and expertise of leaders in business risk management, stress psychology, and financial strategy, the practical case studies in this report (focusing on both local and government-level risk management) enable readers to gain a broader perspective of how risk is understood and handled in agriculture. The mission to create stability and security on the farm, must become a universal call to all stakeholders to create stability and security in a world of intertwined global food supply. Farmers constantly face both internal (originating on the farm) and external (originating outside the farm) risks, which present themselves in three ways,
Preventable risks: events largely within a farmer's control which can be mitigated through proactive measures and require a compliance-based approach,
Strategic risks: can present opportunities but may also impede the attainment of a company’s objectives. They are trackable enough to strategize around and have a degree of predictability that allows for more choice in whether to engage or not, and,
External risks: events that are entirely outside a farmer’s control (and often line of sight) that have the potential to seriously harm the business.
Despite the messaging that written risk management plans are a good business tool to have on hand, and despite the resources available to create them, farmers around the world rarely have one. It is the external risks that are often dismissed, not because they are unimportant, but because they are outside of a farmer’s control and are therefore deeply uncomfortable to think and talk about. Yet, it is crucial to find a trustworthy group, primarily comprised of fellow farmers, to talk through potential risks and overcome the fears associated with external risks. While farmers are primarily responsible for thinking about and managing risk, government and industry also have a role to play.
This can be done well, but in this report, we also see examples around the world in countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands, and Zimbabwe, where government got ahead of (or even worked against) the people. Ultimately, only a stable government can help farmers and industry to manage risk. It is, and will continue to be, essential for farmers and government legislators to work together, because only then can we ensure sustainable solutions. This report focuses on how we can create communities throughout the agriculture industry which can identify and proactively manage external and global risks that threaten farming around the world. Having a comprehensive approach to educate and support farmers on risk management is essential to ensure that, from the grassroots to the global level, there is dialogue and collaboration which aims to ensure sustainability on the farm: for people, planet, and profit.