Training Agriculture Professionals and Educators to Support Diversified Vegetable Farmers with Cost Analysis

View the project final report

Commodities

Practices

• Farm Business Management: agricultural finance, budgets/cost and returns, business planning, financial management, record keeping, cost analysis

Crop specific cost information is foundational to financial planning and ultimately to operating economically sustainable farms that support farmer livelihoods and allow farmers to remain in business for the long-term, yet many farmers don’t have these vital business records.

Oregon Tilth and Oregon State University’s Center for Small Farms and Community Food Systems have developed Know Your Cost To Grow (KYCTG), an online curriculum and cost calculation app that guides diversified vegetable farmers through a process to determine crop-specific costs of production and utilize cost information in business planning and decision-making.

This project focused on training agriculture professionals and educators from organizations in the Southeast to use the KYCTG program to support diversified vegetable farmers with cost of production analysis. After being introduced to the costing process themselves through a series of virtual training sessions, trainers shadowed the process of guiding a farmer through the costing process in Know Your Cost To Grow.  This approach to delivering the training provided trainers with practical experience in supporting farmers with using KYCTG, deepening their understanding of the costing approach used in the KYCTG program. While some trainers saw more immediate opportunity to use the KYCTG program with the farmers their organizations serve, others discovered that modifications to the program were necessary to make it accessible and a better fit for the farmers they work with. 

In response to this discovery, the PI developed "Getting Started with Crop-Specific Costing, a primer for the more robust KYCTG program. Trainers contributed input on the new curriculum through consultation, organizing a farmer focus group and reviewing the curriculum draft. The final curriculum, is comprised of six modules that include short instructional videos and learning activities which agriculture service provider and educators use to guide farmers through the costing process. The new curriculum was presented to a national audience of 50 agriculture service provides on June 26th, 2024 with over half of participants expressing interest or intent to use the "Getting Started with Crop-Specific Costing" to support diversified vegetable farmers with cost analysis.

The primary goal of this project was to train agricultural professionals and educators to become skilled and confident at using the KYCTG program.

Specific objectives for agricultural professionals and educators included proficiency with:

• Identifying key cost related records for farmers to focus on, emphasizing inputs that are variable with production volumes and crop specific (especially labor inputs).
• Supporting farmers to develop systems to capture in-season records using the time study approach.
• Identifying and implementing effective strategies for providing accountability and coaching to farmers through the in-season record keeping process.
• Supporting farmers with utilization of the web based KYCTG cost calculation app.
• Utilizing cost information to identify opportunities to increase crop profitability and make decisions about crop mix. 

By equipping service providers with both the KYCTG program and the primer to KYCTG, "Getting Started with Crop-Specific Costing", we have expanded the reach of this program, ultimately empowering more farmers to make more informed business decisions, improving the long-term economic well-being and quality of life of farmers and leading to more economically sustainable farms.