FARM business success starts at the kitchen table with parents keeping an upbeat attitude to their work in front of their children, says dairy farmer and former boss of one of the world's most successful agricultural giants.
Former chairman of New Zealand dairy industry goliath Fonterra, Sir Henry van der Heyden, admits agriculture is hard work and often disappointing, but more than ever the next generation of young farmers needs to grow up thinking and talking positively about the industry's growth opportunities and business rewards.
Transitioning into farm management at an early age was also critical, he and a fellow NZ dairy high flier, Jim van der Poel, told a recent Rabobank forum in Melbourne.
In part, Sir Henry blames agriculture's chronic shortage of "young blood" as symptomatic of too much negative reinforcement of farming's difficulties at grass roots level, driving potentially talented young farmers to seek careers elsewhere.
Even in NZ, where agriculture is the nation's economic engine room, less than 14 per cent of farmers are younger than 35.
"Farming is hard work - harder than most other industries," he said.
"It's very easy to come home and talk about all the negatives you can't control.
"I made the decision to talk positives at the kitchen table, reinforcing at home the need to be positive about the job, about the dairy industry and its prospects, and keep discussing our strategies as a farm business."
Sir Henry, who won Rabobank's 2015 farming and food sector leadership award last month, said staying upbeat was also critical in business negotiations at farm level, or elsewhere, and it appeared to be a defining characteristic of good leadership.
Positive reinforcement and planning helped cultivate the right environment for farm family businesses to expand and transition to the next generation of managers.
He was "handed the baton" to take over his own family's Waikato dairy at 33 and later headed Fonterra until 2012, having led industry organisations which drove unification of various co-operatives and government bodies to create the world's biggest dairy export business in 2002.
Fonterra now has sales of more than $NZ20 billion a year, processing businesses worldwide and is responsible for about a third of the world's dairy exports.
While his own experience of been "thrown into the deep end" at a relatively young age was a shock, his parents continued providing background management guidance, unlike many who Sir Henry said risked completely quashing initiative and new generation growth by keeping control of the family business into their 60s or 70s.
Mr van der Poel, also a recently retired Fonterra director, couldn't agree more, advocating it was essential to grow "keen young people" in family environments or farming partnerships "with a warm heart while you're still alive, rather than giving them a cold hand as you die".
His own family's big dairying business started from a South Island contract milking partnership and now includes a joint venture over 4300 hectares with 4700 cows on the South Island; 3000 cows in the North Island's Waikato, and a 3000 cow partnership in Missouri in the US.
While he conceded the capital cost required to get into farming was a huge and rising barrier for many young farmers, share milking in NZ, or similar share farming partnerships elsewhere, still provided good foundations for growth, as long as both partners had a win-win philosophy.
"It's not a shortage of capital that's the issue here, it's how well different individuals put it to use," he said.
Farm family businesses often had their own reasons for not achieving more.
"Many go into partnerships thinking for them to be a winner somebody else must lose something, or be less well rewarded," he said.
"But even minority shareholders win if you all have the same business attitude.
"We built our South Island (partnership) business from scratch, sharing common goals and without ever taking a management decision to a vote - it was always working towards a win-win for all parties.
"But, sometimes successful partnerships also run their course, so you must always be ready to understand when its time to wind up a structure."
