Southern SAWG Pricing and Profits Course Materials Now Available!

 
If you didn't make it to the Pricing and Profits: Making the Right Decisions for Small-Scale Farmers finance short course during the 2009 Southern SAWG conference, you can now find three important presentations from this course on our website. These presentations, The Beef Cost Model, The Vegetable Cost Model, and Figuring the Cost to Own and Operate Farm Machinery, make up the critical first step in developing a complete farm financial plan. Click here to download these and additional materials from other short courses developed by Southern SAWG.

In the Beef Cost Model, Jim Munsch, a beef grazier and educator, presents a costing model appropriate to all meat, egg, and milk product enterprises. It includes examples for determining the costs of different production systems (cow/calf, stockers, finishing) working back from Carcass Yields and Cuts to estimating costs for producing and selling an individual calf. The budgeting process enables producers to make decisions about where to attack costs, how to price an animal, whether to buy or raise replacements, make or buy hay, renting additional land, and hiring labor. The presentation also discusses costing of logistics, sale, and marketing in addition to examining cost effective ways of gathering the data and provides additional resources.

The Vegetable Cost Model, also by Jim Munsch, is a model for the costing of vegetable production, and is appropriate for vegetable, fruit, or flower operations selling through CSAs, direct marketing, or wholesale. The presentation shows how to design a cost model to determine profitability by channel, crop profitability before overhead expenses, and how to estimate costs to grow, harvest, clean, and pack. The different analyses allow a producer to determine what crop to produce, whether or not to harvest a crop, what channels should be emphasized, and what price to set. Additional resources are also provided.

Figuring the Cost to Own and Operate Farm Machinery, developed by Paul Dietmann of the University of Wisconsin Extension Service, shows the steps of calculating the costs of operating farm machinery. These include the costs of operating machinery (repair and maintenance, fuel and oil, labor), plus the cost of ownership. The presentation examines several methods of deciding whether to purchase. Two examples are used-purchasing and operating a Massey Ferguson tractor, and purchasing and operating a flame weeder. Hiring or sharing equipment are also included as other options, and additional resources are provided.

While accessing these materials is no substitute for experiencing these and other educational offerings firsthand at our annual conference, we are pleased to offer them for your use, and hope you will find them beneficial. And by the way, mark your calendar now for the next Southern SAWG Practical Tools and Solutions for Sustaining Family Farms Conference, to be held again in Chattanooga, January 20 - 23, 2010.

This course and materials were developed, in large part, through support from the USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA) Small Sessions program.  

Florida Small Farms and Alternative Enterprises Conference  Sustaining Small Farms; Strengthening Florida's Communities August 1 - 2, 2009 Kissimmee, Florida

 
Two days of educational and networking activities geared to small farms will feature organic and sustainable farming topics, through workshops, demonstrations, and discussion groups on alternative energy, alternative enterprises, business and marketing, horticulture, livestock, and policy and regulations.

Sponsored by the University of Florida/IFAS and Florida A&M University Small Farms Focus Team, the conference is focused on helping small farmers, allied industry representatives, researchers, educators, institutional members, policy-makers, small farm commodity associations, foundations, and other interested in strengthening the small farm community in Florida, which represents close to 90 percent of all Florida farms.
  
For more info and to register…

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