This project trained farmers to respond quickly to stress from rapidly changing business environments. It covered three overall risk management topics established as key
practices that successful farmers regularly implement:
- Maintaining up-to-date records and tailored recordkeeping systems;
- Using financial information to determine cost of production, create financial benchmarking, and manage assets;
- Comparing budgets to actuals to analyze input decisions in real time and manage assets/inputs to improve net income.
Each of these main topics were
divided into discreet skills and habits used by successful businesses,
resulting in 25 sub-topics in the training series.
Two live, interactive training series of four sessions
each were delivered online, and recorded and provided to registrants for
self-paced review or follow-up. These were supplemented with webinars and 1:1
business advising post-training. While the target audience was small farmers
(particularly those converting production and marketing systems to pursue new
markets) and value-added producers living in Southern New England (MA, RI, and
CT), we attracted farmers from the South and the Pacific Northwest as well.
The project was successful. One hundred percent of responding participants
increased their understanding of one or more skills and implemented one or more
areas of improvement to their financial record keeping systems.