Progress 09/01/20 to 08/31/22
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 3,349 participating farms from ten partner farm management education programs are currently included in the National Farm Management and Benchmarking Database at http://www.finbin.umn.edu for the 2020 business year. Farms have been compiled and included in the database from 10 states (MI, MN, MO, NE, ND, PA, SC, SD, WI, and New England), with additional data still to be compiled from ID, IL, NC, OH, and TX. 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 2021, 68% of contributing farms were small or mid-sized farms, the group that was most challenged by the most recent downturn in the agricultural economy. Twenty-six percent (26%) were beginning farmers and 34% were young farmers. Forty-four (44) participating producers identified themselves as veterans. Ninety-four (94) identified themselves as using environmental type practices. Lastly, there is an increased effort to reach minority producers. Program participants do not identify their ethnicity, but efforts have been underway with programs like The Good Acre in Minnesota. This organization works with immigrant and minority producers in their farm production. 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 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:The COVID-19 pandemic 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. Additionally, one of the CFFM economists left her position. This individual was leading the data visualization enhancement project in the national FINBIN database. In recent months, a replacement has been hired and onboarded in CFFM. The data visualization efforts are again being explored and plans are underway for future use in benchmarking projects. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?CFFM provides extensive, ongoing 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. Trainings have been held both in-person and virtual. Virtual training opportunities allow educators from distant programs to more easily and economically participate. Sessions have been offered for new benchmarking collaborators and benchmarking programs interested in refresher type trainings. Another training related to specifically to crop and livestock enterprise analysis is planned for December 2022. Additional training has been provided to instructors in Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Colorado, Idaho, Pennsylvania and North Dakota since the beginning of this grant project. These are in addition to our annual, multi-day training for educational users in August and other requested training sessions received each year from programs. 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. Recently 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 or December to prepare for activities in the next year and to consult on strategic plans for the future. This year's meeting is currently being planned for early December 2022. FINPACK software updates are also distributed to users each November. This year's release includes Farm Financial Standards Council ratio updates, additional livestock enterprise analysis efficiencies, the addition of market channel analysis, the addition of aquaculture analysis, and other data entry efficiency enhancements. These enhancements are aimed at bringing efficiency, accuracy, and new analysis types to the financial analysis process. The RankEm software updates are released in December. With the most recent update, the error check report will be 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 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's Annual Convention where Dale Nordquist and Pauline Van Nurden provided a Pre-Conference training session. Additionally, Bob Craven and Pauline Van Nurden offered a breakout session at the conference. Upcoming presentations scheduled include Indiana Bankers Annual Conference, FINPACK Lender's Conference, NFO AgProfit Strategies workshops, and the MOSES (Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service) Organic Conference. Other presentations are scheduled on an as requested basis. 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. Collaborative efforts have also been ongoing with the Minneapolis Federal Reserve regarding the state of agriculture in 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?
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 3,349 participating farms from partner farm management education programs are currently included in the National Farm Management and Benchmarking Database at http://www.finbin.umn.edu for the 2021 business year. Farms have been compiled and included in the database from 10 states/cooperating programs (MI, MN, MO, NE, ND, PA, SC, SD, WI, and New England), with additional data still to be compiled from ID, IL, NC, OH, and TX. In addition, staff from 17 states received training in 2021-22. In December, CFFM will host a training series on completing enterprise analysis in FINPACK for the enterprise reports in FINBIN and training series on benchmarking topics of interest, like market channel analysis, cover crop analysis, and 2022 analysis updates. These participants are new instructors or are members of new and emerging programs we have begun collaborating with. 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. Programs include the New England project; Aquaculture project with Maine; IA (with Iowa Farm Business Association); NC (with North Carolina A & T); SC (with Clemson); ID (with University of Idaho Extension); PA (with Penn State Extension); a pilot project with Oklahoma State University; a renewed effort with Illinois FBFM; and a pilot project with Texas A&M University. Data has also been included from a private farm management consultant 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 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 10,692 unique users, with 17,937 user sessions. There were 38,192 reports run by users the last year. The 2021 database, compiled during 2022, includes 130 organic farms and 38 specialty crop farms. And, forty-four (44) 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. Additional analysis efficiencies have been added to FINPACK with the most recent software release. These enhancements allow data to more seamlessly and efficiently throughout the program. 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, some recent FINPACK training sessions have been offered virtually 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 is being tested for use with educators during these training sessions. The opportunity for FINPACK+ to be used by all educational collaborators will be available 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 has been finalized recently, with additional research opportunities pending with this data. The initial project was research combining 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 virtual farm management initiatives. Assistance has been provided to Minnesota Farm Business Management instructors in their work with educators in the New England states. Additional efforts are in the works related to virtual farm management, including an effort with Farmer Veteran Coalition and another effort to work with specialty crop farms in Colorado on market channel analysis. These efforts are beginning, with the goal of having analysis results in the future. CFFM continues to teach the financial management component of NFO Beginning Farmers projects. The "AgProfit Strategies" project focuses on conventional grain, beef, and dairy producers in 15 states across the Midwest. CFFM staff made 7presentations for this project in 2022. A recorded version has been shared with NFO for their virtual presentations as well. Data from the National Farm Business Management Benchmarking Database is used to provide financial insight to conventional and organic producers. Additionally, the "Plan on a Page" report has been added to myFINBIN and is being utilized by benchmarking programs. This effort will provide a snapshot of financial information and trends for producers participating in farm management programs. Additional enhancements are being researched for inclusion in FINBIN. One such enhancement is the inclusion of data visualization for the national database. Additionally, value-added enterprise analysis is currently being researched for the analysis and national database. Lastly, an updated benchmarking survey was completed of benchmarking program participants and their field
Publications
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
FINBIN, Center for Farm Financial Management, University of Minnesota, http://www.finbin.umn.edu
|
Progress 09/01/20 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 3,329 participating farms from ten partner farm management education programs are currently included in the National Farm Management and Benchmarking Database at http://www.finbin.umn.edu for the 2020 business year. Farms have been compiled and included in the database from 10 states (Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Ohio, Pennsylvania, 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 2020, 72% of contributing farms were small or mid-sized farms, the group that was most challenged by the most recent downturn in the agricultural economy. Twenty-six percent (26%) were beginning farmers and 34% were young farmers. A special effort was made this year to reach out to veterans. Fifty-one (51) 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. 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. In 2020, a small research project was also completed with University of California, Davis regarding feed costs on Midwest dairies. 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. Additionally, one of the CFFM economists has left her position. This individual was leading the data visualization enhancement project in the national FINBIN database. Therefore, this project is on hold for the time being. A search is currently underway for a new team member in this role. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?CFFM provides extensive, ongoing 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. With the ongoing pandemic, CFFM staff have mainly been hosting virtual training sessions. Sessions have been offered for new benchmarking collaborators and benchmarking programs interested in refresher-type trainings. Another training related specifically to crop and livestock enterprise analysis is planned for December 2021. Additional training has been provided to instructors in Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Colorado, Idaho, and North Dakota since the beginning of this grant project. These are in addition to our annual, multi-day training for educational users in August and other requested training sessions received each year from programs. 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. Recently 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 or December to prepare for activities in the next year and to consult on strategic plans for the future. A hybrid session is currently being planned for early December 2021. FINPACK software updates are also distributed to users each November. This year's release includes additional capabilities for the PCMars farm accounting system interface and also other data entry efficiency enhancements. Both of these enhancements are aimed at bringing efficiency and accuracy to the financial analysis process. The RankEm software updates are released in December. With the most recent update, the error check report will be 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's Annual Convention where Dale Nordquist and Pauline Van Nurden provided a Pre-Conference training session. Additionally, Bob Craven and Pauline Van Nurden offered a breakout session at the conference. Upcoming presentations scheduled include FINPACK Lender's Conference and the MOSES (Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service) Organic Conference. Other presentations are scheduled on an as-requested basis. 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. Collaborative efforts have also been ongoing with the Minneapolis Federal Reserve regarding the state of agriculture in 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 2021 business year with their participants and finish compiling the 2021 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. CFFM will host the National Benchmark Leaders meeting in the next month and will work on requests and feedback received from this meeting. Special efforts will be aimed at working with the New England project leaders, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Colorado, Texas, 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 3,329 participating farms from partner farm management education programs are currently included in the National Farm Management and Benchmarking Database at http://www.finbin.umn.edu for the 2020 business year. Farms have been compiled and included in the database from 10 states (MI, MN, MO, NE, ND, OH, PA, SD, UT, and WI), with additional data still to be compiled from CO, ID, IL, NC, New England states, and SC. In addition, staff from 16 states received training in 2020. In 2021, staff from 17 states have been trained throughout the year. In December, CFFM will host a training on completing enterprise analysis in FINPACK for the enterprise reports in FINBIN. These participants are new instructors or are members of new and emerging programs we have begun collaborating with. 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. Programs include the New England project; NY (Cornell Extension); IA (with Iowa Farm Business Association); NC (with North Carolina A & T); SC (with Clemson); ID (with University of Idaho Extension); CO (with Colorado State University); PA (with Penn State Extension); a pilot project with Oklahoma State University; a renewed effort with Illinois FBFM; a pilot project with Texas A&M University; and TN (with 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 colleges in Nebraska, Montana, and Colorado. 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 10,405 unique users, with 17,555 user sessions. There were 35,959 reports run by users the last year. The 2020 database, compiled during 2021, includes 106 organic farms and 18 specialty crop farms. Fifty-one (51) 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. Additional analysis efficiencies have been added to FINPACK with the most recent software release. These enhancements allow data to more seamlessly and efficiently throughout the program. 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, recent FINPACK training sessions have been offered virtually 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 is being tested for use with educators during these training sessions. The opportunity for FINPACK+ to be used by all educational collaborators will be available 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 has been finalized recently, with additional research opportunities pending with this data. The initial project was research combining 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 virtual farm management initiatives. Assistance has been provided to Minnesota Farm Business Management instructors in their work with educators in the New England states. Additional efforts are in the works related to virtual farm management, including an effort with Farmer Veteran Coalition and another effort to work with specialty crop farms in Colorado on market channel analysis. These efforts are just beginning, with the goal of having analysis results in the next year. CFFM continues to teach the financial management component of NFO Beginning Farmers projects. The "AgProfit Strategies" project focuses on conventional grain, beef, and dairy producers in 15 states across the Midwest. CFFM staff made 1 presentation before the project was put on hold because of COVID. A recorded version has been shared with NFO for their virtual presentations. The hope is additional in-person sessions will be offered in the near future. Data from the National Farm Business Management Benchmarking Database is used to provide financial insight to conventional and organic producers. Additionally, the "Plan on a Page" report has been added to myFINBIN and is being utilized by benchmarking programs. This effort will provide a snapshot of financial information and trends for producers participating in farm management programs. Additional enhancements are being researched for inclusion in FINBIN. One such enhancement is the inclusion of data visualization for the national database. Additionally, value-added enterprise analysis is currently being researched for the analysis and national database. Lastly, an updated benchmarking survey was completed of benchmarking program participants and their field staff. This survey gathered data on the value of benchmarking for farm and ranch operations.
Publications
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
FINBIN, Center for Farm Financial Management, University of Minnesota, http://www.finbin.umn.edu
|