For the record, I've never seen anyone mention that running a farm is not a business.
Over the past forty years I have been a consultant to well over 1,000 businesses, probably over 1,500. Giant corporations, one person operations, and many in between.
Twice I have been begged to consult with farmers. I did. I also spent a week in Iowa visiting farmers and their farming communities. That is where I realized that farming was not a business.
Why? Business is about minimizing risk. Please, ignore the political nonsense that entrepreneurs are bold gamblers on new visions. Every competent businessperson who ever lived did everything possible to reduce the risk of failure to as close to zero as possible. That is just reality. I have no interest in some counter-example. I just told you, I've consulted over a thousand businesses; I know what business is about from the deepest empirical place.
Farmers total lives are based on unbearable, unfathomable risk. The weather can destroy a crop, several crops and crops for several years in a row. So can insects and disease. That is the kind of risk that no business mind can live with.
Farming is not business. It is mystical, religious or voodoo. You pick.
(This blog is from ten years ago.)
