Business Advisor Professional Development Through Peer Learning Improves Farm Financials and Resiliency

Commodities

Practices

• Farm Business Management: agricultural finance, budgets/cost and returns, business planning, financial management
• Natural Resources/Environment: indicators, other
• Sustainable Communities: social networks

The project convenes business advisors for learning in peer and applied settings to improve outcomes in farm viability and resiliency. Business advisors are agricultural professionals working with farm financials in individualized farm settings to achieve farmer goals.

Newer business advisors need to learn to be successful with farm financial analysis in applied settings.

Established business advisors need to:

(1) maintain both deep and timely agricultural, regional food system and market knowledge from continual learning within a network of peers; and

(2) collaborate around commonalities and niches in service provision to tackle complex farmer projects.

Farmers need skilled advisors who can quickly optimize their financial margins, and support on-farm decision-making to increase resiliency. Farmers also require advisors with a combination of hard and soft skills training including broad cultural competencies.

Solution and Approach:

Farms struggle to maintain financial viability. Service providers skilled in farm financials are a small but critical subset. More than 50 organizations produced "The Blueprint" (Blueprint, 2019), describing issues and solutions around farm viability.

Farms receiving individualized, in-depth business advising increase their average annual net farm income by $30,612 in a strong growing year, (Carrot Project, 2022), and by $22,295 in a poor growing year with flooding in the NESARE region (Carrot Project, 2023). Farmers' income increases through business advising that builds resilience and offsets farmers' risk in the face of disruption.

Business advisor retirements and staff turnover continues throughout the Extension system and non-profit sector, the need to replace skilled providers is ongoing. In addition, business advisors need to continually update their skills, and benefit by operating in a peer context that keeps them up to date on knowledge, both deep and timely, that deliverers value to their farmer clients.

Our project will capitalize on two overall approaches in farm business advisor learning:

1. LEARNING IN APPLIED SETTINGS:
   • Successful instruction moves beyond financial management tools to providing insight on how and when these tools are most effective; as well as strategies for on-farm implementation.
   • Innovations include bringing work-learning expertise and adult learning best practices to training and embedding service provider learning within real-world applications.
2. LEARNING IN NETWORKS:
   • Participating farmers and business advisors succeed when learning within a network to which they already belong, and have ongoing support for implementing what they learn.
   • Farmers and business advisors perform best when experiences are not one-off and disconnected from ongoing relationships, but with integrated learning enriched by human connectivity.

50 agricultural service providers will increase their capacities in farm financials for farm resiliency, specifically in keeping records, correcting financial statements, analyzing farm financial health for resilience and on-farm planning. 80 farmers managing 1,800 acres will: (1) improve their record keeping for disaster recovery programs; (2) increase net farm income and/or farmer livelihood satisfaction; (3) or manage key risks, obtain plans or investments to improve on-farm resiliency.