Farmers who are looking at retiring or farm succession need to take the time to have those discussions with family and financial advisers.

It’s important that you identify your goals and how to get there ahead of time.

Don Tobin, a Chartered Accountant with the Retiring Farmer says about 3 to 5 years prior to retiring producers will want to evaluate their options to reduce taxes.

"There's multiple different corporate structures, everything to partnerships to proprietorships and corporations, they're all taxed differently so when a succession or liquidation strategies you may want to move one or more of those to minimize your overall tax bill."

Tobin says there are a number of ways that farmers can reduce that tax burden working within the system if they are aware of their options, "simply splitting income with family members if your not incorporated or even if you are incorporated by paying wages, contributing to RRSP's, and so forth and some very basic things, if your incorporated, taking dividend from corporations in a matter that we can extract 35-40,000 an individual out with modest or very minimal income tax as opposed to just ignoring the issue of taxation all together."

Tobin’s firm has set up an online program that can help farmers through the process at www.canadianfarmlearningcentre.com, a government grant is available until 2018 to help qualified producers with some of the costs.