Our Process:
Prepare – Match – Agree
How Abunda works from a Landholder perspective.
Prepare
0 – Abunda Consultation (Free)
Find out if and how Land Matching is right for your farm.
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A free 30-45min session with Abunda, where we get introduced to each other and walk through a short list of questions to check whether Land Matching is right for you and your farm.
The topics include Land details, Farm ownership and decision makers, Current operations, recent history of the farm, origin of Land Matching interest, overall vision for the future etc.
We’ll also give a brief intro to Abunda, how we work and what to expect from us.
1 – Holistic Scoping
Fully understand your farming context for Land Matching.
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A structured session that builds on the framework of ‘Holistic Context’ in Holistic Management. Usually takes 60-90 minutes.
We dig out all the relevant information to ensure an appropriate and longterm successful outcome for everyone involved. This includes questions that most Landholders rarely consider but are crucial
in order to find the right match in Landseekers and structure for an agreement.
We’ll send over a short preparation document ahead of the call and encourage the key decision makers to be part of the call together.
We uncover the full picture of the farming, people, values and ideas in the context of Land Matching. Strengths, shortcomings and opportunities surface, and new insights and nuances that enrich the Landholders’ own understanding usually emerge.
The core outcome is a clear set of priorities to check any Land Matching decisions against in all subsequent steps of the process.
2 – Defining the Opportunity
Defining Enterprise(s) and Landseeker profile(s) to match for.
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Using the new Holistic scope + an Abunda template, we are able to systematically test any Enterprise idea against a nuanced farming context and set of priorities.
We offer a session for this purpose, but this step can frequently be handled entirely by Abunda based on the gained understanding and our Template, which we then send for Landholder approval.
The outcome is a clearly defined partnership offering for Landholders, incl. the enterprise scope, role, structure and characteristics of an ideal farming partner.
Match
3 – Marketing & Outreach
Advert and marketing push to reach the right Landseekers.
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We create an Abunda Advert for our Listings page, which we distribute to our own network of Landseekers, our targeted outreach partnerships, forums, newsletters and social media.
We usually allow several weeks to a month for enquiries to come in and then start processing interested parties.
4 – Shortlisting & Interviews
Screening interest to critically test alignment.
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Using our digital enquiry infrastructure, Landseekers are systematically verified against the set criteria as they express their interest, while staying on top of the progress for each potential partner.
With kindness and in the interest of both sides, the lesser relevant enquiries are filtered out and a number of promising Landseekers are invited to complete a ‘Mini Holistic Context’.
Shortlisted Landseekers then receive an intro phone call, and Interviews are planned, carried out, and diligently followed up on. The outcome is that 3-6 highly relevant Landseekers that are invited for farm visits.
Note:
In the Fully Facilitated package, Abunda handles ALL enquiry handling and interview facilitation. In the ‘Semi Facilitated’ and ‘Cohort’ packages, Landholders use our digital infrastructure to shortlist and then carry out interviews themselves.
5 – Farm Visits
The most aligned Landseekers visit the farm.
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Visiting the farm is an important part of the journey. Here, the Landholders and Landseekers meet in person, walk the farmland and take stock of the situation together.
Abunda has a guide for farm visits, and the visits carried out by the Landholders in order to develop a personal connection and better informed gut feeling for overall assessment of alignment.
In some cases, Abunda can arrange to take care of farm visits as well, but it’s important that the people a new farming partner will meet on a day-to-day basis are part of the visit.
Abunda checks in with both parties in after the visits, and the feedback is used to confirm continued interest and invite the most suitable Landseekers to the next step: Whiteboard sessions.
6 – Whiteboard sessions
Co-create a farm plan live and test mutual understanding.
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Whiteboard sessions are a cornerstone of Abunda’s specialised offering. This is where true mutual understanding, prerequisites and alignment really shows.
Apart from being the truest test of skills, honesty and inter-personal dynamic next to actually farming together, this is a great chance to create more clarity for both sides. The key is to address the difficult (and sometimes even uncomfortable) questions, which includes the boundaries, freedom to operate and what you want daily life on the farm to look like.
The format is a semi-structured session, where Abunda facilitates the co-development of an overall farm plan incl. farm economics. In order to support this session, we use farm plan and P&L templates as well as a written session guide.
The outcome is that all the key facts are on the table, transparency has been created and the basis for a deeper mutual understanding is in place. This puts the Landseeker in a great position to finalise a proposal that actually makes sense in the context, and provides the Landholder with a rich nuance for assessment.
Agree
7 – Proposals & Commitment
With incoming proposals, a well-informed and tested match is made.
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Based on the insights from the Whiteboard session and available Abunda templates, Landseekers put forward their formal proposal.
8 – Agreeing terms & plan
Guidance from Abunda to agree on terms and overall plan.
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We offer suitable “Heads of Terms” templates…