1. Home
2. Conferences
3. 2019 National Farm Business Management Conference

Improving Farm Management Training through Collaboration

Ryan Larsen and Jay Olsen

Summary

Farm management training programs delivered to farmers and ranchers are many and varied in their purpose, delivery method, length of training, and measurable impact. The Extension education system provides an effective manner to reach a large number of agricultural producers but the lack of individual training and aggregated data often leads to lower perceived value from participants. Empirical evidence suggests that there is value to the Farm Business Management (FBM) model of agriculture education, that uses, confidential and regular/on-going face-to-face teaching visits in the farmer’s/rancher’s home or business office. Collaborating with FBM programs provides Extension educators with relevant data and the means to provide benchmark information. Conversely, FBM programs can benefit from applied research developed by Extension educators and the resources of the state specific Extension system. Utah State University Extension and Snow College Farm Management program has a history of collaboration that provides a template for synergistic activities. One example of this is the development and use of benchmarks developed by FBM programs and utilized by Extension. 57% of participants in the Snow College Farm Business Management program indicated that they thought utilizing financial benchmarks was very valuable to their operation with close to 75% indicating that utilizing production benchmarks was valuable to very valuable. Utah Production Benchmarks are estimated from FBM data and utilized in FBM and Extension education activities. Utilizing these benchmarks provides Extension farm management educators with effective and relevant material to present at Extension workshops.

Details

---