Progress 09/01/22 to 08/31/24

Outputs
Target Audience:The primary goal of this project is to provide a national farm financial benchmarking database that will allow any farmer in the nation to compare their financial performance with a selected peer group of like farms. Therefore, the target audience of this project is all farmers in the U.S. The more direct audience is that group of farmers who are participants in farm business management education programs and who contribute to the National Farm Financial Management and Benchmarking Database. All farms across the country have access to the FINBIN website, the portal into the national database to generate benchmark reports. They can also use the "Compare Your Farm" feature to enter their financial data and generate peer group benchmarks. A third audience is agricultural lenders, educators, and other agricultural professionals and policymakers who can access FINBIN to generate reports to benchmark their clients, generate educational material, and monitor the performance of the ag economy. Finally, the fourth audience is agricultural researchers who can use FINBIN reports to support research in various facets of farm financial management. A more focused effort on research has taken place over recent years with the addition of Dr. Joleen Hadrich and Dr. Nicholas Gallagher as University of Minnesota faculty members. Dr. Hadrich has completed research on the attributes of top farmers, resilient dairy operations, and the impact of the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) government program. Her current research projects include the economics of cover crop production and organic production. She also has graduate students researching the attributes of successful beginning farmers and feed cost economics on dairy operations. Dr. Gallagher has recently joined the University of Minnesota Applied Economics Department faculty team. Discussions have begun on how to collaborate on research and publications. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Consistently, CFFM provides extensive training and resources to partner programs and groups that submit data to the National Farm Business Management Benchmarking Database. This training program helps ensure the database contains accurate information and conforms to a standard of consistency and integrity. Both virtual and in-person training sessions are regularly conducted during the time period of this project. Virtual training sessions have proved to be invaluable as they allow a greater number of program educators to participate in a convenient and cost-effective manner. All virtual training webinars are recorded and made easily accessible for educators to reference or view at a later point in time. In the spring, CFFM hosted a recorded webinar dedicated to training newer educators and educators from emerging programs on the use of our RankEm software. Educators from several partner programs were in attendance at this webinar. The RankEm software program is used by participating programs for auditing and aggregating individual farm data before the data is sent to the CFFM team for review prior to submission to FINBIN. This software also enables program leaders to generate informational reports they often use in their respective annual summary data reports and presentations. Lastly, RankEm provides benchmark reports for individual producers which allow them to compare their farm financial and enterprise performance to their peers. This provides a powerful means for SWOT analysis by producers. In August, CFFM annually hosts an in-person FINPACK training session specifically geared for educational and benchmarking users. Educators from Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, Missouri, South Carolina, and New Mexico were in attendance this past year. Throughout the program effort, CFFM staff have traveled as requested to provide training for farm management programs. During this project time period, training has been provided to educators and consultants in Minnesota and North Dakota. These sessions are often for newer instructors but also provide necessary updates, resources, and education to all program team members. Additionally, CFFM staff presented at the National Farm Management Conference on FINPACK software and how this can provide efficient information to producers. In November, CFFM hosts the annual Benchmark Project Leaders Meeting which brings together all of the partner programs in person to discuss the successes and challenges they've experienced, how CFFM can best support their educational efforts, and to provide any updates on changes to the FINPACK software or the analysis procedures. This meeting enables the projects to connect with and learn from each other. Last December, CFFM hosted its annual webinar training series covering several topics to aid participating educators in their annual analysis work with producers. These topics included completing whole-farm and crop/livestock enterprise analysis, completing market channel analysis, analyzing fields using cover crop practices, tips for resolving analysis errors and data discrepancies, and important updates for the upcoming analysis season. The webinars are provided live via Zoom and educators can access the recordings after the fact to reference while completing a farm analysis with a producer. Recently hired educators and those still gaining foundational experience, as well as those from emerging and new benchmarking programs, are the target audience of this webinar series. Beyond delivering training sessions, CFFM provides an array of resources for its educational program partners. A Google Site is maintained by CFFM containing resources including the annually updated Closeout Manual (serves as a guide for the standard analysis procedure and for handling unique, uncommon or currently relevant situations) and the recordings of all the virtual training webinars conducted. Resources contributed by farm management programs are also housed on this site, providing a repository of resources for all collaborators. The FINPACK Knowledge Base is another CFFM website providing resources for educational users of the FINPACK software with a series of whitepapers and analysis completion resources. Information found here includes FINPACK analysis input forms, whitepapers explaining how to correct analysis discrepancies and other beneficial tips and resources to aid in the use of FINPACK. Lastly, CFFM maintains a full suite of online training videos for FINPACK where users can watch numerous, short videos explaining very specific components of data entry or output interpretation for FINPACK analysis tools. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Information from the National Farm Business Management Benchmarking Database is primarily disseminated through public access to the FINBIN website. Anyone is able to search or query the FINBIN database for summary or benchmark-level information on an array of financial metrics. These queries can be filtered by geography, farm sizes (using ranges of gross revenue, net farm income, or total enterprise size for example), farm type, and many other whole farm attributes. For crop or livestock enterprise data queries, filters are available for enterprise size and specific production practices. CFFM, as well as the partner programs, produce annual reports intended to disseminate benchmarking information to producers and other stakeholders. Each May, CFFM produces the Annual Report on Minnesota Farm Finances where information from Minnesota farms in FINBIN for the most recent analysis year is summarized and highlighted. CFFM also assists the Southwest Minnesota Farm Business Management Association, a partner educational program, with the development of its annual report. Both of these reports have undergone significant improvements recently to incorporate more modern data visualization and communication principles to better share insights from the data. CFFM collaborated with EDF and the EDGE Dairy Group to prepare two additional reports regarding climate smart practices of participating farms. CFFM staff also provided several presentations utilizing data from FINBIN. During this project, presentations included the Preconference Seminar and a breakout session at the American Bankers Association Agricultural Bankers Conference; the Michigan Association of CPA's Agribusiness Conference; the MIX co-op benchmarking annual meeting; the Minnesota Banker's Association Ag Conference, Minnesota FarmFest, and the Minnesota Crop Insurance Conference. CFFM staff regularly receives requests from national journalists to provide insights based on trends identified in reports generated through the National Database, including Farm Futures, Public Radio, Farm and Ranch Guide, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Successful Farming, Farm Progress, AgFax, Ag Week, Farm Journal's MILK Business, The Land, The Farmer, Corn and Soybean Digest, Progressive Dairy, and Wells Fargo's Food for Thought newsletter. FINBIN data is cited in educational resources published by farmdoc Daily, Choices Magazine, Farm Foundation Issue Reports, and Farm Table. Collaborative efforts have also been ongoing with Farmer Mac and the Minneapolis Federal Reserve regarding the state of agriculture in the U.S. and more specifically the Ninth Federal Reserve District. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Throughout this project, the Center for Farm Financial Management (CFFM) continued to work closely with farm business management education programs and their respective educators/analysts to support their educational efforts and to ensure the National Farm Business Management Benchmarking Database (FINBIN) is as accessible as possible to producers, educators, and other stakeholders across the country. The integrity, accuracy, and trustworthiness of the FINBIN database are crucial for it to act as a valuable benchmarking resource for producers. CFFM provides continual training and resources to help ensure analysis methods are consistent across all programs in all states. All the data submitted to FINBIN is thoroughly reviewed and vetted at several stages to eliminate erroneous outliers and to maintain the reporting integrity of the database. So far, for the 2023 analysis year, complete financial information from 3,118 farms from partner farm business management education programs have been submitted to and included in FINBIN from programs in Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Additional data is in the process of being aggregated, reviewed, and compiled from programs in Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, New Mexico, and Ohio. Of the 3,118 farms included for the 2023 analysis year, 77 farms were identified as being organic farms. 26 farms were identified as farms producing specialty crops. 54 producers self-identified as being Veterans. And, 520 farmers were considered beginning farmers, having farmed for 10 years or less. The database is hosted by the University of Minnesota and all the data for the 2023 analysis year, and for each year going back over two decades, is publicly available on the FINBIN website (finbin.umn.edu). On this website, any user can generate reports with whole-farm and enterprise summary reports. Additionally, benchmark reports showing both whole farm and enterprise-level information across deciles are available. Producers can also generate a report comparing their financial ratios versus those in the FINBIN database. All of the reports in FINBIN can be filtered into various groupings using markers such as year(s), farm types, operator age, state, total crop acres, farming practices, and more. For all of the reports, a minimum number of observations exist to ensure the anonymization of producers whose data is contributed to FINBIN. During the recent 12-month CFFM internal reporting period, over 12,900 unique website users visited the FINBIN database site. Those 12,900 unique users had 22,460 user sessions indicating that each unique user averaged just under 2 user sessions during those twelve months. In these same 12 months, users generated 33,695 reports, translating to approximately 2.6 reports per user. Since the inception of the FINBIN database more than two and a half decades ago, almost 667,000 reports have been generated. CFFM is working closely with several new groups across the country to broaden the data available in the national farm financial benchmarking database. These groups include an Aquaculture project in Maine and Maryland, the Iowa Farm Business Management Association, a beef project in Kansas, a dairy heifer project in Pennsylvania, a pilot project with Oklahoma State University, a specialty crop, small farm project with Tufts University, a new benchmarking project at New Mexico State University, and a collaborative effort between Minnesota community colleges and the Intertribal Agriculture Council in working with Native American producers. CFFM has begun working closely with select staff of the Iowa Farm Business Management Association to utilize the recently improved interface between the FINPACK financial analysis and PCMars farm accounting software programs to work towards contributing a sufficient number of Iowa farms into the database so reports can be generated by users of FINBIN. Work also continues with The Good Acre and the Farmer Veteran Coalition to recruit underrepresented farmers who could benefit from working with farm business management educators to analyze the finances of their farm operations. CFFM also continues working with these groups and others to recruit specialty crop fruit and vegetable farmers who could benefit from the recently added market channel analysis capabilities in FINPACK. This analysis enables a producer to analyze the profitability of the various market channels they participate in and sell to rather than analyzing the individual crops produced in their operation. When a large enough group of farm data has been submitted, this market channel data will also made available in FINBIN. This information will provide a great source of information and a benchmarking tool for those producers marketing directly to consumers. Furthermore, CFFM continued to work extensively with the Environmental Defense Fund and farm business management programs in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and South Dakota to begin analyzing and benchmarking the economics of cover crop enterprises on farms. This work will continue, and the hope is to have a rich dataset over time to analyze any trends regarding profitability resulting from the use of cover crops more thoroughly. During this past year, CFFM collaborated with the Environmental Defense Fund to publish a second-year report on the initial findings from this work. CFFM continues to develop and deploy software improvements in FINPACK to further enhance the value to educators and the producers they work with. CFFM continually aims to improve the software and increase the efficiency of participating in farm management benchmarking programs. Improvements made during this time frame include new software update technology, enhanced options to copy previous analysis reports forward year on year, improvements to market channel, and value-added analysis. Additional analysis efficiencies have been added to FINPACK with the latest release of the software. These enhancements allow data to flow through the program more seamlessly, saving users from entering the same data in multiple places. CFFM has also worked extensively on the development of the guided balance sheet. This is an interview-style balance sheet tool that can create a FINPACK balance sheet by guiding users through a series of questions, intended to aid underserved producers and producers who may not have the necessary knowledge to complete a balance sheet on their own. Balance sheets developed with this tool will be able to be brought in the traditional version of FINPACK, enabling farm business management educators to more efficiently work with producers who may have less financial knowledge and experience. In addition, CFFM has continued the development of extending the FINPACK+ cloud-based version of the software to be available for producers and educators. This version provides greater efficiencies for programs, a secure backup means for their data, and aids in the data review and compilation process for the FINBIN database. CFFM pilot tested FINPACK+ with the Southwest Minnesota Farm Business Management Association (SWMFBMA). SWMFBMA has been using this version of the software for over a year. Development related to this effort has included architectural program design, user authentication, and other security protocols for users. Lastly, CFFM is continuing to enhance the data visualization of FINBIN. CFFM is working to make the information gleaned from the national database more accessible and easier to understand for all audiences. Work has begun to integrate Tableau into FINBIN to provide a dashboard view of the database. This dashboard will increase interactivity and enable the user to explore the data that is most relevant to their interests. The Tableau integration is currently in a design phase, with internal testing and report design in process.

Publications

• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: FINBIN, Center for Farm Financial Management, University of Minnesota, http://www.finbin.umn.edu
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Van Nurden, P.A., Wilts Johnson, K.A., Nordquist, D.A., Beverly, M.D. (2024, May). 2023 Minnesota Farm Finances Annual Report. Retrievable at https://www.cffm.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/FINBIN-Report-23_FINAL_v2.pdf.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Van Nurden, P.A., Beverly, M.D., Wilts Johnson, K.A., Paulson, G.J., Knorr, T.L., Sandager, N., Nordquist, D.W. (2024, April). Southwest Minnesota Farm Business Management Association 2023 Annual Report. Retrievable at https://www.cffm.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023-SWFBMA-Annual-Report.pdf.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Van Nurden, P.A., Wilts Johnson, K.A., Beverly, M.D., Hoang, M.L., Gauthier, V. (2024, August). The Economics of Cover Crops on Minnesota Farms 2023 data report. Retrievable at https://www.cffm.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Economics-of-Cover-Crops-on-MN-Farms-Report-2023.pdf.

Progress 09/01/22 to 08/31/23

Outputs
Target Audience:The primary goal of this project is to provide a national farm financial benchmarking database that will allow any farmer in the nation to compare their financial performance with a selected peer group of like farms. Therefore, the target audience of this project is all farmers in the U.S. The more direct audience is that group of farmers who are participants in farm business management education programs and who contribute to the National Farm Financial Management and Benchmarking Database. All farms across the country have access to the FINBIN website, the portal into the national database to generate benchmark reports. They can also use the "Compare Your Farm" feature to enter their financial data and generate peer group benchmarks. A third audience is agricultural lenders, educators, and other agricultural professionals and policymakers who can access FINBIN to generate reports to benchmark their clients, generate educational material, and monitor the performance of the ag economy. Finally, the fourth audience is agricultural researchers who can use FINBIN reports to support research in various facets of farm financial management. A more focused effort on research has taken place over recent years with the addition of Dr. Joleen Hadrich as a University of Minnesota faculty member. Dr. Hadrich has completed research on the attributes of top farmers, resilient dairy operations, and the impact of the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) government program. Her current research projects include the economics of cover crop production and organic production. She also has graduate students researching the attributes of successful beginning farmers and feed cost economics on dairy operations. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Consistently, CFFM provides extensive training and resources to partner programs and groups that submit data to the National Farm Business Management Benchmarking Database. This training program helps ensure the database contains accurate information and conforms to a standard of consistency and integrity. Both virtual and in-person training sessions are regularly conducted during the time period of this project. Virtual training sessions have proved to be invaluable as they allow a greater number of program educators to participate in a convenient and cost-effective manner. All virtual training webinars are recorded and made easily accessible for educators to reference or view at a later point in time. In the spring, CFFM hosted a recorded webinar dedicated to training newer educators and educators from emerging programs on the use of our RankEm software. Educators from several partner programs were in attendance at this webinar. The RankEm software program is used by participating programs for auditing and aggregating individual farm data before the data is sent to the CFFM team for review prior to submission to FINBIN. This software also enables program leaders to generate informational reports they often use in their respective annual summary data reports and presentations. Lastly, RankEm provides benchmark reports for individual producers which allow them to compare their farm financial and enterprise performance to their peers. This provides a powerful means for SWOT analysis by producers. In August, CFFM annually hosts an in-person FINPACK training session specifically geared for educational and benchmarking users. Educators from Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, South Carolina, and South Dakota were in attendance this past year. Throughout the program effort, CFFM staff have traveled as requested to provide training for farm management programs. During this project time period, training has been provided to educators and consultants in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. These sessions are often for newer instructors but also provide necessary updates, resources, and education to all program team members. In November, CFFM hosts the annual Benchmark Project Leaders Meeting which brings together all of the partner programs in person to discuss the successes and challenges they've experienced, how CFFM can best support their educational efforts, and to provide any updates on changes to the FINPACK software or the analysis procedures. This meeting enables the projects to connect with and learn from each other. Last December, CFFM hosted its annual webinar training series covering several topics to aid participating educators in their annual analysis work with producers. These topics included completing whole-farm and crop/livestock enterprise analysis, completing market channel analysis, analyzing fields using cover crop practices, tips for resolving analysis errors and data discrepancies, and important updates for the upcoming analysis season. The webinars are provided live via Zoom and educators can access the recordings after the fact to reference while completing a farm analysis with a producer. Recently hired educators and those still gaining foundational experience, as well as those from emerging and new benchmarking programs, are the target audience of this webinar series. Beyond delivering training sessions, CFFM provides an array of resources for its educational program partners. A Google Site is maintained by CFFM containing resources including the annually updated Closeout Manual (serves as a guide for the standard analysis procedure and for handling unique, uncommon, or currently relevant situations) and the recordings of all the virtual training webinars conducted. Resources contributed by farm management programs are also housed on this site, providing a repository of resources for all collaborators. The FINPACK Knowledge Base is another CFFM website providing resources for educational users of the FINPACK software with a series of whitepapers and analysis completion resources. Information found here includes FINPACK analysis input forms, whitepapers explaining how to correct analysis discrepancies and other beneficial tips and resources to aid in the use of FINPACK. CFFM also maintains a full suite of online training videos for FINPACK where users can watch numerous, short videos explaining very specific components of data entry or output interpretation for FINPACK analysis tools. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Information from the National Farm Business Management Benchmarking Database is primarily disseminated through public access to the FINBIN website. Anyone is able to search or query the FINBIN database for summary or benchmark level information on an array of financial metrics. These queries can be filtered by geography, farm sizes (using ranges of gross revenue, net farm income, or total enterprise size for example), farm type, and many other whole farm attributes. For crop or livestock enterprise data queries, filters are available for enterprise size and specific production practices. CFFM as well as the partner programs produce annual reports intended to disseminate benchmarking information to producers and other stakeholders. Each May, CFFM produces the Annual Report on Minnesota Farm Finances where information from Minnesota farms in FINBIN for the most recent analysis year is summarized and highlighted. CFFM also assists the Southwest Minnesota Farm Business Management Association, a partner educational program, with the development of their annual report. Both of these reports underwent significant improvements this past year to incorporate more modern data visualization and communication principles to better share insights from the data. CFFM staff also provided several presentations utilizing data from FINBIN. During this project, presentations included the Preconference Seminar and a breakout session at the American Bankers Association Agricultural Bankers Conference; several presentations as part of the National Farmers Organization (NFO)'s AgProfit Strategies Seminars in several states including New York, Kansas, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; the Indiana Bankers Annual Conference; the Michigan Association of CPA's Agribusiness Conference; the Farm Future's Ag Finance Boot Camp; and the National Association of Credit Management's National Agricultural Credit Conference. CFFM staff regularly receives requests from national journalists to provide insights based on trends identified in reports generated through the National Database, including Farm Futures, Public Radio, Farm and Ranch Guide, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Successful Farming, Farm Progress, AgFax, Ag Week, Farm Journal's MILK Business, The Land, The Farmer, Corn and Soybean Digest, Progressive Dairy, and Wells Fargo's Food for Thought newsletter. FINBIN data is cited in educational resources published by farmdoc Daily, Choices Magazine, Farm Foundation Issue Reports, and Farm Table. Collaborative efforts have also been ongoing with Farmer Mac and the Minneapolis Federal Reserve regarding the state of agriculture in the U.S. and more specifically the Ninth Federal Reserve District. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?CFFM will support partner groups as they complete financial analysis of the 2023 business year with their participants and finish compiling the 2022 data into the national database. CFFM will provide training for all participants who request it and will continue to provide webinars and online training resources to support new and existing users. Special efforts will be aimed at working with the New Mexico, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Iowa project leaders to help them in their efforts to initiate and expand benchmark program efforts. These efforts also include fostering a virtual farm management trial with the Farmer Veterans Coalition to continue the expansion of the National Farm Financial database. And work will continue with The Good Acre and other partners to refine and expand the use of the market channel analysis. Work will continue on developing an online version of FINPACK for educators. Transforming this large, complex financial program to a web-based system is a multi-year effort that was initiated last year. The development of FINPACK+ for educators will require significant programming, architectural design, user authentication, and new security protocols. Also, work will continue on enhancing data visualization in FINBIN. These visualizations will help expand the audience for FINBIN data and increase awareness and value of the benchmarking database. A dashboard will increase interactivity and enable the user to explore the data that is most relevant to their interest. Other work will include developing a link between the business IQ assessment developed by Dr. David Kohl with the financial analysis in FINPACK and the FINBIN database to access how business IQ relates to actual farm financial performance. This will be used to learn more about which factors contribute to financial success. Developing a more automated approach to facilitate accessing the national database for research and data extraction. This will include developing protocols for who can access the data and how they will do so in a secure and confidential manner. And a new QuickBooks interface with FINPACK will be developed. QuickBooks has changed its data structure, creating the need to develop a new interface tool. Finally, other software and database enhancements will be ongoing, as requested by benchmarking partners.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Over the course of this project, the Center for Farm Financial Management (CFFM) continued to work closely with farm business management education programs and their respective educators/analysts to support their educational efforts and to ensure the National Farm Business Management Benchmarking Database (FINBIN) is as accessible as possible to producers, educators, and other stakeholders across the country. The integrity, accuracy, and trustworthiness of the FINBIN database are crucial for it to act as a valuable benchmarking resource for producers. CFFM provides continual training and resources to help ensure analysis methods are consistent across all programs in all states. All the data submitted to FINBIN is thoroughly reviewed and vetted at several stages to eliminate erroneous outliers and to maintain reporting integrity of the database. So far, for the 2022 analysis year, complete financial information from 3,097 farms from partner farm business management education programs have been submitted to and included in FINBIN from programs in Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Michigan, Utah, and Wisconsin. Additional data is in the process of being aggregated, reviewed, and compiled from programs in Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, Vermont, Kansas, New Jersey, and Ohio. Of the 3,097 farms included for the 2022 analysis year, 99 farms were identified as being organic farms. 20 farms were identified as farms producing specialty crops. 53 producers self-identified as being Veterans. The database is hosted by the University of Minnesota and all the data for the 2022 analysis year, and for each year going back over two decades, is publicly available on the FINBIN website. On this website, any user can generate reports with whole-farm and enterprise summary reports. Additionally, benchmark reports showing both whole farm and enterprise level information across deciles are available. Producers can also generate a report comparing their financial ratios versus those in the FINBIN database. All of the reports in FINBIN can be filtered into various groupings using markers such as year(s), farm types, operator age, state, total crop acres, farming practices, and more. For all of the reports, a minimum number of observations exist to ensure the anonymization of producers whose data is contributed to FINBIN. During the most recent 12-month CFFM internal reporting period, over 8,200 unique website users visited the FINBIN database site. Those 8,200 unique users had 17,000 user sessions indicating that each unique user averaged just over 2 user sessions during those twelve months. In these same 12 months, users generated 35,878 reports, translating to approximately 4 reports per user. Since the inception of the FINBIN database more than two and a half decades ago, over 632,000 reports have been generated. CFFM is working closely with several new groups across the country to broaden the data available in the national farm financial benchmarking database. These groups include an Aquaculture project in Maine and Maryland, the Iowa Farm Business Management Association, a beef project in Kansas, a dairy heifer project in Pennsylvania, a pilot project with Oklahoma State University, and a collaborative effort between Minnesota community colleges and the Intertribal Agriculture Council in working with Native American producers. CFFM has begun working closely with select staff of the Iowa Farm Business Management Association to utilize the recently improved interface between the FINPACK financial analysis and PCMars farm accounting software programs to work towards contributing a sufficient number of Iowa farms into the database so reports can be generated by users of FINBIN. Work also continues with The Good Acre and the Farmer Veteran Coalition to recruit underrepresented farmers who could benefit from working with farm business management educators to analyze the finances of their farm operations. CFFM also continues working with these groups and others to recruit specialty crop fruit and vegetable farmers who could benefit from the recently added market channel analysis capabilities in FINPACK. This analysis enables a producer to analyze the profitability of the various market channels they participate in and sell to rather than analyzing the individual crops produced in their operation. When a large enough group of farm data has been submitted, this market channel data will also made available in FINBIN. This information will provide a great source of information and a benchmarking tool for those producers marketing directly to consumers. Furthermore, CFFM will continue to work extensively with the Environmental Defense Fund and farm business management programs in Minnesota to begin analyzing and benchmarking the economics of cover crop enterprises on farms in Minnesota. This work will continue, and the hope is to have a rich dataset over time to analyze any trends regarding profitability resulting from the use of cover crops more thoroughly. During this past year, CFFM collaborated with the Environmental Defense Fund to publish a report on the initial findings from this work. CFFM continues to develop and deploy software improvements in FINPACK to further enhance the value to educators and their producers. CFFM continually aims to improve the software and increase the efficiency of participating farm management benchmarking programs. Improvements made during this time frame include the redesign of the value-added enterprise analysis; refinement of the analysis methodology for evaluating the impact of cover crops on cropland over time; and additional development of the market channel analysis in the software. Additional analysis efficiencies have been added to FINPACK with the latest release of the software. These enhancements allow data to flow through the program more seamlessly, saving users from entering the same data in multiple places. CFFM has also worked extensively on the development of an interview-style balance sheet tool that can create a FINPACK balance sheet by guiding users through a series of questions, intended to aid underserved producers and producers who may not have the necessary knowledge to complete a balance sheet on their own. Balance sheets developed with this tool will be able to be brought in the traditional version of FINPACK, enabling farm business management educators to more efficiently work with producers who may have less financial knowledge and experience. In addition, CFFM has begun the development of extending the FINPACK+ cloud-based version of the software to be available for producers and educators. Having cloud-based software will empower greater efficiencies for farm business management education programs, provide a secure backup means for their data, and aid in the data review and compilation process for the FINBIN database. CFFM is pilot testing FINPACK+ with the Southwest Minnesota Farm Business Management Association (SWMFBMA). SWMFBMA is currently testing this software option and will be discussing it with its Board of Directors later this fall. Development related to this effort has included architectural program design, user authentication, and other security protocols for users. Lastly, CFFM is continuing to enhance the data visualization of FINBIN. CFFM is working to make the information gleaned from the national database more accessible and easier to understand for all audiences. To start, the graphs used by CFFM, and other benchmarking partners have been refined to better conform to data visualization standards of today. In addition, integrating Tableau into FINBIN is being explored to provide a dashboard view of the database. This dashboard will increase interactivity and enable the user to explore the data that is most relevant to their interests.

Publications

• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: FINBIN, Center for Farm Financial Management, University of Minnesota, http://www.finbin.umn.edu
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: " Hadrich, J., Van Nurden, P.A., DiGiacomo, G., Weir, R. (2023, October). 2020-2022 Organic Farm Performance in the Upper Midwest. Retrievable at https://www.cffm.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/2020-2022-Upper-Midwest-Organic-Report-Final.pdf.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: " Van Nurden, P.A., Brand, D.L., Wilts Johnson, K.A., Nordquist, D.A. (2023, May). Annual Report on Minnesota Farm Finances. Retrievable at https://www.cffm.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/2022-FINBIN-Report-on-Minnesota-Farm-Finances_Final.pdf.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: " Brand, D.L., Van Nurden, P.A., Paulson, G.J., Knorr, T.L., Sandager, N., Nordquist, D.W. (2023, April). Southwest Minnesota Farm Business Management Association 2022 Annual Report. Retrievable at https://www.cffm.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2022_SWAnnualReport_WebVersion.pdf.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: " Van Nurden, P.A., Wilts Johnson, K.A., Brand, D.L., Gauthier, V. (2023, August). The Economics of Cover Crops on Minnesota Farms. Retrievable at https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/2023-07/Economics%20of%20Cover%20Crops%20on%20MN%20Farms%20Report%202022.pdf