reasearching rel profess devel learning task #4

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Reasearching Relevant Professional Development Learning Task #4: What are my coworkers seeking? A. Interview/survey a minimum of 5 colleagues regarding the professional development questions mentioned previously.

Question 1: In what ways will agriculture echnology change in the form of recordkeeping?

Recordkeeping will no longer be at the end of the year for taxes. As margins get smaller farmers will need information at least quarterly. Accountants will play more of a role as for as cashflow planning. The FinPak program will need to change to evaluate each enterprise on a farm along with the whole farm. Crop information will be kept separate from the livestock.

Question #2: What ways would it be best to provide training to farm producers in new technology? Seminar length?

Small classes are needed and most feel that no more than 10 per instructor when using computers. Larger classes will not be very easy for the students nor instructors. Instructors will not be able to get to each student quickly and nor be able to keep the class together on the program. Some may work ahead while other struggle or get left behind.

Question #3: What areas do ag producers have a strong/weak understanding of financial records and ratios.

Most producers understand how to fill out a financial statement and understand debt to worth ratios. they may know other ratios but not what they mean nor how to look at a financial statement to determine if cashflow problems could occur because of poor debt structure. Most producers do not understand how debt should be structured.

Question #4: How could one get farmers to understand the importance of good financial records? If groups, what size?

Groups probably will not work. People will be less likely to share their financial information. One on one sessions must be held. The process probably will need to take place over two years. Areas that need to be covered are reading financial statements, debt structure and how it effects cashflow, and financial ratios and how they can be used to help an operation determine if they are working in the right direction. It would be nice to have ratios for each enterprise to compare their operations also.

Question #5: Of the farms you work with, how many have computers and what financial information do they keep?

A lot of people said that the farms they work with have the program "QuickBooks", "Farm Ultra", or "Farm Sense". Most use it for check book entries. No one had anyone using it to track inventory or pay bills. More training is needed to help them fully use the programs.

Question #6: What type of records should they be keeping?

Everyone said at a bare minimum they need to keep up with a check book entry on a monthly basis along with monthly inventories. by keeping up with income and expenses one can tell if they spent more than projected and if they have cashflow problems in the upcoming months. The next step would be to get them to unitize their operations to determine breakeven levels. Once they have this information they could compare their operations to other operations.

B. Summarize the resluts and analyze the similarities and differences.

One thing I found was that all Adult Farm Management instructors felt farms need to keep records. They are all finding that farms are keeping records for taxes and not for financial decision making. They all felt that the larger farms were doing more with records because they usually had someone paid to keep them.

Most thought that the Windows recordkeeping software was not as user friendly as the DOS based programs. "Farm Ultra" and "Farm Sense" were reported as very user friendly. "QuickBooks" and "QuickBooks Pro" were the most popular Windows based programs used by farms. The users only used these to record income and expense.

One instructor did not like the FinPak program promoted by the University of Minnesota. He felt that this program need to be enterprise specific and use unitized accounting. The records he keeps are kept by in his head because he has not found a program that has unitized accounting.

Learning Task #5 What do our clients/ constituents think?

A. Interview/ survey clients/ constituents for their perceptions about what they need to learn from you, their service providers, in the near future.

B. Summarize the results and analyze the similarities and differences.

All farms felt that they needed help with interpreting financial information the way lenders look at credit. They felt they do not have a strong understanding of what lenders look for in borrowing money. Most felt that banks lend money on collateral only and very little on cashflow projections. I think we need to help farms in this area along with how to negotiate erms, conditions and interest rates.

The farms' views on recordkeeping varied. Some farms wanted someone else to input the data while they would intepret the information. These farms were usually larger in size. The smaller farms wanted information on computer buying and software for farms.

Another area some farms wanted information in was commodity marketing. They want information on hedging, options and developing a marketing plan.

Most farms felt that service providers in the future will be specific to one area. Most operations felt there would be no need for services that provide general information like most extension agents. How they would pay for services in the future differed from pay by the hour to payment included in the cost of purchasing the product. They feel the information they receive will determine where they buy their products. Crop consultants is one area they feel they will buy fertilizer, chemical and seed from the supplier who provides the best service because there is very little difference from each competitors product.

Business planning and estate planning is another area most farms felt they needed help with. Most were looking at retiring and transferring the ownership from one generation to another.



-- Anonymous, March 02, 1999

Answers

I am learning from all this information. I am pleased by how this activity and the information relate to what you wrote about and learned about in the Learning Task #1. Something that now strikes me as really important--and I imagine you will address this in one way or another in some of the other learning tasks--is how it important it is to get this information out to farmers. I am in a technology class myself this week, and of course, so much is learned by hearing other folks talk about what software is useful and what isn't! I think you have in place formal mechanisms for communication between your office and all the farmers....do they get the job done effectively?

-- Anonymous, March 04, 1999

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