Building on previously acquired
knowledge, training will focus on a
"systems thinking" approach to scaling up existing enterprises or adding additional business enterprises to reduce production, market, and financial
risk.
Through regular, face-to-face instruction, 34
farms (93 participants): 1) assigned financial transactions to their key
enterprises using Quickbooks® or Quicken®, 2) Twenty-six farms completed a
year-end FINAN® business analysis focusing on key enterprise benchmarks. The remaining
project steps became a moot point due to the drought's impact on yields
and weaning weights. Many producers were in reactive mode and did
not see value in bench-marking to gain any meaningful comparisons. Twenty farms benchmarked their data with regional
benchmarks but found little value in differences because of significant variances in yield due to some farms having wells, some farms having reserve water held
in a reservoir, and others, the majority, simply having no water available as the
mountain stream flows virtually ended in June.
In the end, 14 producers identified
benchmark variances but had no opportunity to make meaningful changes. However, the drought’s
influence did reinforce the reality of "systems" enterprise connections, scaling up enterprises or making
changes in one enterprise impacting other enterprises. Face-to-face
instruction facilitated approximately 252 instructional activities.