From returning heirs to operations without successors, RSA is creating space for honest conversations surrounding the future of working lands.
by Haylie Shipp for Ranchers Stewardship Alliance
“If you look around, people don’t want to let go,” says Montana rancher Bud Walsh. “Often times landowners, cattlemen, they hang on to things way too long. I once said that if you’re 70 years old, you don’t need to own land after that, but I’m still a landowner and I’m well past 70.”
It’s a statement delivered with humor, but beneath it sits one of the hardest and most deeply human conversations in agriculture: what happens next?
For generations, agricultural succession often followed an understood path, particularly across ranching communities of the West. Children grew up horseback behind their parents and grandparents, learned the rhythms of calving and haying, and eventually stepped into the responsibility of caring for the land themselves.
Today, that path is far less predictable.
Not every ranch or farm has heirs waiting to take over. Not every child raised in production agriculture wants to return. Not every family operation can financially support another generation. And even when there is a willing successor, the road from one generation to the next is not always smooth.
At the same time, land has become increasingly difficult for beginning agriculturalists to access without family ties or generational footholds already in place. For producers without heirs, that creates another difficult question: who becomes the next steward of the land and legacy they’ve spent a lifetime building?
Increasingly, ranchers across the Northern Great Plains are recognizing that agricultural succession is no longer simply about inheritance. It is about continuity, stewardship, communication, relationships, and creating pathways forward in a world that looks very different than it did a generation ago.
For decades, many ranch families encouraged their children to pursue education and opportunities beyond the ranch gate. But for many producers, that guidance did not come from a lack of love for ranching. In many cases, it came from fear.
The farm crisis of the 1980s left deep scars across agricultural communities. Families lost land, livelihoods, savings, and, in some cases, entire ways of life. Even for those who survived it, the uncertainty lingered.
For many parents raising children during that era, encouraging the next generation toward college degrees and more stable careers felt less like turning away from agriculture and more like protecting their children from the financial hardship, stress, and instability they themselves had experienced.
They wanted their children to have choices. Security. Opportunity. A life that might feel less financially fragile than production agriculture often can.
But decades later, many of those same families are now navigating a new reality: children who built successful lives elsewhere while the future of the ranch became less certain.
“Our children will go to college and, you know, at 50 maybe we’ll ask them to come back,” says rancher Leo Barthelmess. “Well they’re not ranchers anymore. They’re whatever they were and they’re wildly successful.”
Barthelmess says returning home later in life is often far more complicated than people imagine.
“I’ve seen huge numbers of successful people but if you don’t have some insight into ranching, it’s real hard to come back,” he says. “There’s some things you learn by being here.”
For many families, succession is no longer simply a financial or legal conversation. It is deeply emotional. Careers have been built elsewhere. Spouses and children become part of the equation. Expectations surrounding housing, healthcare, retirement, income, and quality of life may look very different than they once did.
And for many agricultural families, the fear is not simply losing the operation. It is losing each other in the process.
Questions surrounding inheritance, fairness, retirement, responsibility, and expectations have fractured agricultural families for generations, particularly when conversations happened too late or not at all.
Historically, many ranch families simply did not talk openly about these things. Toughness, sacrifice, and endurance were often valued more highly than vulnerable conversations surrounding money, succession, aging, or emotion.
But increasingly, producers are recognizing that avoiding difficult conversations may carry greater risk than having them.
For ranch families successfully navigating multi-generational operations, communication often becomes one of the most important tools.
“It really does come down to communication and just working together. Being patient,” says rancher Anna Merriman, part of a multi-generational ranching operation alongside her father, Leo Barthelmess.
Merriman says her family holds weekly ranch meetings and uses a shared family calendar to help coordinate responsibilities across the operation.
“It doesn’t always get updated by everyone,” she says jokingly.
But beneath the humor is intentional effort. Merriman says working to understand one another’s perspectives has been critical to maintaining both the operation and the family relationships tied to it.
“We see the bigger picture,” she says. “We see what we could be and what we want to be and we want to keep our family together. At the end of the day, nobody wants to have an operation by themselves.”
Rancher Sheila Walsh, who ranches alongside her husband, Bud Walsh, says those conversations need to happen long before families reach a crisis point.
“In any ranching family, the biggest thing is to start the communication about what’s going to happen with your ranch and start it early,” Walsh says.
Because at the end of the day, no piece of ground is worth losing your family over.
And increasingly, ranchers are recognizing that succession does not always have to follow traditional inheritance models.
Some operations are building long-term transition plans with younger ranch managers or neighboring producers. Others are exploring mentorship opportunities, gradual ownership transitions, or creative approaches designed to keep working lands in agriculture long into the future.
For some ranchers, preserving stewardship and continuity matters even more than achieving maximum sale value.
South Phillips County rancher Dale Veseth drew national attention after donating his family’s ranch to the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance in an effort to ensure the property remains tied to working lands agriculture and continues benefiting ranchers into the future.
The Ranchers Stewardship Alliance recognizes there is no universal blueprint for succession. Every family, every operation, and every set of circumstances is different.
But the organization also recognizes something equally important: ranchers and agricultural producers should not have to navigate those conversations alone.
As RSA continues dedicating time and resources toward succession conversations, much of the focus is less about offering perfect answers and more about creating space for honest discussions, education, community-building, and connection before families reach a crisis point.
A recent episode of the Ranch Stewards Podcast featured financial advisor Ty McDonald joining Haylie Shipp to discuss retirement planning, long-term care expenses, wills, paying children for ranch work, investing early, and preparing operations for generational transition. The episode can be found on RSA’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ7bEvq9rUc
RSA says those resources and conversations will continue evolving based on what producers across the region say they need most.
Whether someone is actively navigating succession, beginning to think about retirement, hoping to bring another generation back to the operation, or simply unsure where to start, the organization encourages producers to stay involved in the conversation.
Questions, recommendations, ideas, or even simple conversations surrounding succession are welcomed by RSA Education Program Manager Mary Oxarart at 406-654-1405 or [email protected].
Because the succession of these lands matters.
Not simply for the future of individual ranches and farms, but for the families, communities, wildlife habitat, and working landscapes tied to them.
And while no two succession stories will ever look exactly the same, RSA hopes producers across the Northern Great Plains know one thing clearly: they do not have to navigate those conversations alone.
