Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/21
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. To date, complete financials for 3,353 participating farms from twelve partner farm management education programs are currently included in the National Farm Management and Benchmarking Database at http://www.finbin.umn.edu for the 2019 business year. Farms have been compiled and included in the database from 11 states (Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, and Wisconsin), with additional data still to be compiled from Colorado, Idaho, New England, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Participating farms are provided tools and access to make it possible to directly compare their farms with benchmark peer groups to highlight financial strengths and weaknesses. In 2019, 76% of contributing farms were small or mid-sized farms, the group most challenged by the volatile agricultural economy. Twenty-six percent (26%) were beginning farmers and 33% were young farmers. A special effort was made this year to reach out to veterans. Forty-eight (48) participating producers identified themselves as veterans. 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 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 the last three 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. Future research efforts are planned for organic production and the economics of cover crop production. Changes/Problems:The COVID-19 pandemic has led to challenges for all, benchmarking efforts were impacted as well. Meeting with producers, compiling the financial data, and presenting the results have all been impacted by the pandemic. Many efforts moved to a virtual format. Virtual settings are certainly viable for this type of work but pivoting quickly was a challenge. Additionally, many programs struggled to grow the number of producers they work with and new programs struggled to get established given the challenges. Hopefully, as the world emerges from the pandemic, project efforts like these can again gain their stride and continue to move forward. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?CFFM provides extensive training and training resources to partner groups who contribute to the National Farm Business Management Benchmarking Database. This training contributes to the goal of assuring the National Database is accurate and conforms to uniform standards of consistency and data integrity. During this period, CFFM staff provided onsite training to contributors in Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina, Colorado, and Idaho. Also, a training session was provided to a group of emerging community college programs in February 2020. There were participants from 4 institutions, representing 3 states. A national training opportunity is provided each August for benchmarking programs. The past two sessions have been held virtually given the pandemic. Newly hired collaborators are often the main participants in this training but given the virtual option, several mid-career individuals also participated in recent sessions to brush up on their FINPACK skills. Additional training has been held annually in December or early January focused on crop and livestock enterprise analysis. CFFM holds this training session to assist new collaborators with enterprise analysis. Training for other collaborating partners is offered on an as-requested basis. Finally, CFFM also maintains a full suite of online training resources for FINPACK users. During the reporting period, the online training modules were enhanced to include detailed videos on completing and interpreting the crop and livestock enterprise analysis. White papers providing tips and resources for all FINPACK users are found in the FINPACK Knowledge Base at https://www.cffm.umn.edu/FINPACKkb. Specific tools and resources related to benchmarking are provided to educators across the nation at https://sites.google.com/a/umn. edu/finpackbenchmarking. Encompassed on this website are resources such as training videos on the benchmarking process (including segments on advanced balance sheet analysis, advanced whole-farm analysis, crop enterprise analysis, livestock enterprise analysis, and advance enterprise analysis) and the use of the RankEm software in compiling and reviewing benchmark data for consistency and integrity. Educational programs across the country have also provided analysis efficiency-related resources to assist other users with initiating the benchmarking process with the farmers and ranchers in their area. CFFM hosts an annual National Benchmarking Project Leaders meeting in November to prepare for activities in the next year and to consult on strategic plans for the future. A virtual session was offered in 2020 and a hybrid session is planned for 2021. FINPACK software revisions are also distributed to users each November. The RankEm software updates are released in December. With the most recent update, the error check report was broadened to further help with data integrity and error checking prior to submission for the National Database. Lastly, the technical data dictionary is now compiled for the balance sheet; whole-farm variables and calculations used in the whole farm area of the FINAN financial analysis; the variables and calculations utilized in the crop and enterprise analysis areas of FINAN. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The primary method used to disseminate farm financial benchmark results is through public access to FINBIN. FINBIN is open to anyone to query for summary financial information or benchmarks on financial metrics. Data queries can filter by farm sizes, type, and several other whole-farm attributes. Enterprise-level queries can filter by specific production practices for crop and livestock enterprises. CFFM staff and others make several national presentations each year using data from the National Database to publicize the results. During this period, presentations included American Bankers Association National Agricultural Bankers Conference where Dale Nordquist, Pauline Van Nurden, and Robert Craven presented; FINPACK Lender's Conference; MOSES (Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service) Organic Conference; National Farm Viability Conference; local Agricultural Lenders Conferences in Minnesota; and to native farmers through the Native American Agriculture Fund's "Native Farmer, Rancher, and Fisher Sovereignty Series: Sharpening your tools to access data driven analysis". The Farm Financial Standards Council has incorporated benchmark reports from the National Database into its Financial Guidelines for Agricultural Producers. 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. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts What was accomplished under these goals?
The Center for Farm Financial Management (CFFM) worked closely with farm business management educators in partner states to support their educational efforts and to make the National Farm Business Management Benchmarking Database accessible to producers and to educators across the nation. To date, complete financials for 3,353 participating farms from twelve partner farm management education programs are currently included in the National Farm Management and Benchmarking Database at http://www.finbin.umn.edu for the 2019 business year. Farms have been compiled and included in the database from 11 states (Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, and Wisconsin), with additional data still to be compiled from Colorado, Idaho, North Carolina, New England, and South Carolina. In addition, staff from at least 20 new and emerging programs received training during the grant period from in-person and virtual training sessions. Additionally, CFFM worked closely with emerging programs to assist them with FINPACK training and database submission processes. These new and emerging programs are in various stages of the process to recruit farms, complete analyses, and provide enough quality data to be included in the database. These programs include the New England project that was part of this CFFM project including Extension educators from Pennsylvania and Extension educators from New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts; an Auburn Extension effort that is also part of this project to add producers from Alabama; a New York effort with Cornell Extension; an Iowa effort with Iowa Farm Business Association; a North Carolina effort with North Carolina A & T; a South Carolina effort with Clemson; an Idaho effort lead by University of Idaho Extension; a Colorado effort lead by Colorado State University; and a Tennessee effort lead by Tennessee Extension. CFFM has also provided training to a group of emerging community colleges that are interested in offering farm business management education to producers as a part of their curriculum offering. These institutions include Northeastern Junior College in Colorado, Mid-Plains Community College in Nebraska, Mile City Community College in Montana and Chadron State College in Nebraska. Initial talks of benchmarking collaboration have also occurred with three new states, Oklahoma, Montana, and Virginia. Data has also been included from three private farm management consultants as part of CFFM's effort to expand the size and scope of the database. FINPACK is the software tool being used to create financial statements for these operations. All data is carefully vetted at several levels to eliminate outliers and assure reporting integrity. The National Database is maintained at the University of Minnesota and is open to any producer or public user to use to generate benchmarking reports on farm financial statements, Farm Financial Standards Council ratios, other whole entity reports, crop enterprise analysis reports, and livestock enterprise analysis reports. During the most recent twelve-month reporting year, FINBIN was used by 10,405 unique users, with 17,555 user sessions. Almost 36,000 FINBIN reports were run in the last 12 month reporting period and over 558,000 FINBIN reports have been run since the site's inception. The 2019 database, compiled during 2020, includes 78 organic farms and 28 specialty crop farms. Forty-eight (48) producers identified themselves as veterans. CFFM provides ongoing training,education, and software support to partner farm business management programs. Findings from the Analysis Process Efficiency Survey have been used to drive training efforts and analysis support material creation for instructors across the programs involved in benchmarking. This survey was completed recently as a means to help programs gain efficiencies and learn the training needs of instructors and consultants. CFFM also continued to make software improvements to improve the educational value and to provide efficiencies to participating farm management programs. During this period, CFFM has continued the process of updating FINPACK's financial analysis software to include a market channel analysis component. This will be used by several programs to meet the unique needs of analyzing specialty crop and direct marketing farm businesses. CFFM has also been working with the Iowa Farm Business Association to build a tighter interface between the PCMars Farm Accounting Software and FINPACK. This effort will expand the capabilities of the current interface beyond the ability to transfer cash transactions from the accounting software to FINPACK. The expansion will include the transfer of balance sheet loan and inventory items and also more synergies in completing the crop and livestock enterprise analysis. The FINPACK Vault continues to be used by more and more of the collaborating benchmark programs. The Vault is a secure repository site for FINPACK data, providing a web-based redundant backup of farm data and seamless extraction for compiling individual farm data into databases. The use of this technology will improve efficiency in data transfer and will also be more secure than current methods of data transfer. In addition, the FINPACK training offered in August 2020 and 2021 was a virtual session utilizing our new FINPACK+ SaaS (software as a service) platform. This new platform provides an online version of FINPACK for users. The use of this platform will be tested for this training and offered to all educational collaborators in the near future. CFFM staff publicizes the National Database and the insights that can be gained from the data in various national venues and media outlets. Efforts continue to use the national database to support research programs. One such effort was finalized during the reporting period. This was a research project combing dairy production and financial data of MN producers to determine the characteristics of resilient dairy farms. The results of this research have been analyzed and several presentations and publications have included the results. Additional research projects are underway including evaluating the economics of cover crops and organic production and looking more specifically at feeds utilized by dairy operations. CFFM continues to foster the virtual farm management pilot initiated between Minnesota Farm Business Management instructors and educators in the New England states. Another virtual farm management effort was launched by CFFM in collaboration with the Farmer Veteran Coalition. The effort has begun with analysis results hopefully forthcoming yet this year. Results are also being disseminated as part of an NFO Beginning Farm project titled FarmStarts. CFFM staff made 36 total presentations across the Midwest using data from the National Farm Business Management Benchmarking Database to provide financial insight to organic producers and those considering organic production. A second FarmStarts program began in Aug. 2020. One in-person presentation has been given to date. A recorded version has also been shared with NFO for their virtual presentations. The hope is additional in-person sessions will be offered in the near future. This series of presentations focus on conventional grain, beef, and dairy production.
Publications
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
FINBIN, Center for Farm Financial Management, University of Minnesota, http://www.finbin.umn.edu
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Van Nurden, Pauline A., Rachel Purdy, and Nordquist, 2019 FINBIN Report on Minnesota Farm Finances, Center for Farm Financial Management, University of Minnesota, April 2020.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Van Nurden, Pauline A., Garen Paulson, Donald L. Nitchie, Tonya L. Knorr, Rachel Purdy, and Dale W. Nordquist, 2019 Annual Report of the Southwestern Minnesota Farm Business Management Association, Staff Paper
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Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20
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. To date, complete financials for 3,132 participating farms from eight partner farm management education programs are currently included in the National Farm Management and Benchmarking Database at http://www.finbin.umn.edu for the 2019 business year. Farms have been compiled and included in the database from 7 states (Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wisconsin), with additional data still to be compiled from Colorado, Michigan, Idaho, Ohio, New England, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Participating farms are provided tools and access to make it possible to directly compare their farms with benchmark peer groups to highlight financial strengths and weaknesses. In 2019, 77% of contributing farms were small or mid-sized farms, the group that is most challenged by today's volatile agricultural economy. Twenty-seven percent (27%) were beginning farmers and 35% were young farmers. A special effort was made this year to reach out to veterans. Forty-eight (48) participating producers identified themselves as veterans. 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 who can access FINBIN to generate reports to benchmark their clients, to generate educational material, and to 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 for farm financial management. A more focused effort on research has taken place over the last two years with the addition of Dr. Joleen Hadrich as a University of Minnesota faculty member. Dr. Hadrich has completed research of the attributes of top farmers, resilient dairy operations, and the impact of the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) government program. Future research efforts are planned for organic production and the economics of cover crop production. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?CFFM provides extensive training and training resources to partner groups who contribute to the National Farm Business Management Benchmarking Database. This training contributes to the goal of assuring the National Database is accurate and conforms to uniform standards of consistency and data integrity. During this period, CFFM staff provided onsite training to contributors in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina, Colorado, and Idaho. Also, a training session was provided to a group of emerging community college programs in February. There were participants from 4 institutions, representing 3 states. A national training opportunity will be provided for interested individuals in early August. This two-day FINPACK training session will be held virtually in 2020. Newly hired collaborators are often the main participants in this training. Given the virtual option, CFFM expects other mid-career individuals to attend with the goal of brushing up their FINPACK skills. Additional training is being planned for early 2021 and will focus on crop and livestock enterprise analysis. CFFM holds this training session annually to assist new collaborators with enterprise analysis. Training for other collaborating partners is offered on an as requested basis. Finally, CFFM also maintains a full suite of online training resources for FINPACK users. During the reporting period, the online training modules were enhanced to include detailed videos on completing and interpreting the crop and livestock enterprise analysis. White papers providing tips and resources for all FINPACK users are found in the FINPACK Knowledge Base at https://www.cffm.umn.edu/FINPACKkb. Specific tools and resources related to benchmarking are provided to educators across the nation at https://sites.google.com/a/umn. edu/finpackbenchmarking. Encompassed on this website are resources such as training videos on the benchmarking process (including segments on advanced balance sheet analysis, advanced whole-farm analysis, crop enterprise analysis, livestock enterprise analysis, and advance enterprise analysis) and the use of the RankEm software in compiling and reviewing benchmark data for consistency and integrity. Educational programs across the country have also provided analysis efficiency-related resources to assist other users with initiating the benchmarking process with the farmers and ranchers in their area. CFFM hosts an annual National Benchmarking Project Leaders meeting in November to prepare for activities in the next year and to consult on strategic plans for the future. A virtual session is currently being planned for 2020. FINPACK software revisions are also distributed to users each November. The RankEm software updates are released in December. With the most recent update the error check report was broadened to further help with data integrity and error checking prior to submission for the National Database. Lastly, the technical data dictionary is now compiled for the balance sheet; whole-farm variables and calculations used in the whole farm area of the FINAN financial analysis; and the variables and calculations utilized in the crop and enterprise analysis areas of FINAN. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The primary method used to disseminated farm financial benchmark results is through public access to FINBIN. FINBIN is open to anyone to query for summary financial information or benchmarks on financial metrics. Data queries can filter by farm sizes, type, and several other whole-farm attributes. Enterprise-level queries can filter by specific production practices for crop and livestock enterprises. CFFM staff and others make several national presentations each year using data from the National Database to publicize the results. During this period, presentations included American Bankers Association National Agricultural Bankers Conference where Dale Nordquist, Pauline Van Nurden, and Robert Craven presented; FINPACK Lender's Conference; MOSES (Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service) Organic Conference; MN Organic Conference; National Farm Viability Conference; local Agricultural Lenders Conferences in Minnesota. The Farm Financial Standards Council has incorporated benchmark reports from the National Database into its Financial Guidelines for Agricultural Producers. 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. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?CFFM will support partner groups as the complete financial analysis of the 2020 business year with their participants and finish compiling the 2019 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 England project leaders, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Iowa, Idaho, Colorado, and Oklahoma 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 in an effort to continue the expansion of the National Farm Financial database.
Impacts What was accomplished under these goals?
The Center for Farm Financial Management (CFFM) worked closely with farm business management educators in partner states to support their educational efforts and to make the National Farm Business Management Benchmarking Database accessible to producers and to educators across the nation. To date, complete financials for 3,132 participating farms from eight partner farm management education programs are currently included in the National Farm Management and Benchmarking Database at http://www.finbin.umn.edu for the 2019 business year. Farms have been compiled and included in the database from 7 states (Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wisconsin), with additional data still to be compiled from Colorado, Idaho, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, New England, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. In addition, staff from nine new and emerging programs have received training or will be completing training in August. These new and emerging programs are in various stages of the process to recruit farms, complete analyses, and provide enough quality data to be included in the database. These programs include the New England project that was part of this CFFM project including Extension educators from New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts; an Iowa effort with Iowa Farm Business Association; a North Carolina effort with North Carolina A & T; a South Carolina effort with Clemson; an Idaho effort lead by University of Idaho Extension; and a Colorado effort lead by Colorado State University. CFFM has also provided training to a group of emerging community colleges that are interested in offering farm business management education to producers as a part of their curriculum offering. These institutions include Northeastern Junior College in Colorado, Mid-Plains Community College in Nebraska, Mile City Community College in Montana, and Chadron State College in Nebraska. Initial talks of benchmarking collaboration have also occurred with three new states, Oklahoma, Montana, and Virginia. Data has also been included from two private farm management consultants as part of CFFM's effort to expand the size and scope of the database. FINPACK is the software tool being used to create financial statements for these operations. All data is carefully vetted at several levels to eliminate outliers and assure reporting integrity. The National Database is maintained at the University of Minnesota and is open to any producer or public user to use to generate benchmarking reports on farm financial statements, Farm Financial Standards Council ratios, other whole entity reports, crop enterprise analysis reports, and livestock enterprise analysis reports. During the most recent twelve-month reporting year, FINBIN was used by 9,189 unique users, with 16,766 user sessions. The 2019 database, compiled during 2020, includes 76 organic farms and 28 specialty crop farms. Forty-eight (48) producers identified themselves as veterans. CFFM provides ongoing training,education, and software support to partner farm business management programs. Findings from the Analysis Process Efficiency Survey have been used to drive training efforts and analysis support material creation for instructors across the programs involved in benchmarking. This survey was completed recently as a means to help programs gain efficiencies and learn the training needs of instructors and consultants. CFFM also continued to make software improvements to improve the educational value and to provide efficiencies to participating farm management programs. During this period, CFFM has continued the process of updating FINPACK's financial analysis software to include a market channel analysis component. This will be used by several programs to meet the unique needs of analyzing specialty crop and direct marketing farm businesses. CFFM has also been working with the Iowa Farm Business Association to build a tighter interface between the PCMars Farm Accounting Software and FINPACK. This effort will expand the capabilities of the current interface beyond the ability to transfer cash transactions from the accounting software to FINPACK. The expansion will include the transfer of balance sheet loan and inventory items and also more synergies in completing the crop and livestock enterprise analysis. The FINPACK Vault continues to be used by more and more of the collaborating benchmark programs. The Vault is a secure repository site for FINPACK data, providing a web-based redundant backup of farm data and seamless extraction for compiling individual farm data into databases. The use of this technology will improve efficiency in data transfer and will also be more secure than current methods of data transfer. In addition, the FINPACK training that will be offered in August 2020 will be a virtual session utilizing our new FINPACK+ SaaS (software as a service) platform. This new platform provides on online version of FINPACK for users. The use of this platform will be tested for this training and offered to all educational collaborators in the near future. CFFM staff publicizes the National Database and the insights that can be gained from the data in various national venues and media outlets. Efforts continue to use the national database to support research programs. One such effort was finalized during the reporting period. This was a research project combing dairy production and financial data of MN producers to determine the characteristics of resilient dairy farms. The results of this research have been analyzed and several presentations and publications have included the results. Additional research projects are underway including evaluating the economics of cover crops and organic production. CFFM continues to foster the virtual farm management pilot initiated between Minnesota Farm Business Management instructors and educators in the New England states. The effort has begun with analysis results are hopefully forthcoming yet this year. Results are also being disseminated as part of an NFO Beginning Farm project titled FarmStarts. CFFM staff made 36 total presentations across the Midwest using data from the National Farm Business Management Benchmarking Database to provide financial insight to organic producers and those considering organic production. A second FarmStarts program will begin during the grant period focusing on conventional grain, beef, and dairy production. CFFM will again collaborate on this project. One presentation has been given to date. The project is currently on hold given the COVID-19 pandemic.
Publications
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
FINBIN, Center for Farm Financial Management, University of Minnesota, http://www.finbin.umn.edu
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Van Nurden, Pauline A., Rachel Purdy, and Nordquist, 2019 FINBIN Report on Minnesota Farm Finances, Center for Farm Financial Management, University of Minnesota, April 2020.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Van Nurden, Pauline A., Garen Paulson, Donald L. Nitchie, Tonya L. Knorr, Rachel Purdy, and Dale W. Nordquist, 2019 Annual Report of the Southwestern Minnesota Farm Business Management Association, Staff Paper
|