Farm Finances
Farming is a business and requires savvy business skills if you want to be profitable. These resources can help you determine crop profitability, set up record-keeping processes and provide important tax considerations.
CAFF video: Record keeping tutorial – From the 2023 CAFF Farm Taxes Workshop, this segment is on record keeping for farmers and discusses how to use software such as QuickBooks and Square. The speaker is a certified accounting EA who runs a small, family-owned vegetable and fruit farm in Arkansas. This Growers School is presented by the Center for Arkansas Farms and Food, part of the University of Arkansas System, Division of Agriculture.
CAFF video: 2022 Tax webinar – This is a recording of a tax workshop for farmers presented by the Center for Arkansas Farms and Food, part of the University of Arkansas System, Division of Agriculture. The focus is on small-scale farms.
The Organic Farmers Business Handbook– Richard wrote The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook to help farmers become financially sustainable. In an easy to read style, Richard’s book is packed with incredibly useful information that is hard to find elsewhere.
Compass Tools Whole Farm Profitability Management– Compass Tools are free downloadable spreadsheets. These tools help farmers actively manage for increased farm profits by helping them understand their cost of production, by product and by market channel. This enables farmers to make strategic decisions to adjust prices, reduce costs, shift market channel focus, reduce or drop unprofitable products, and expand production of their most profitable ventures.
Livestock– An addition to the compass tools focused on livestock to help farmers measures the profitability of their meat and eggs enterprises.
Fruit and Nuts – Veggie Compass is a farm management tool for diversified fresh market vegetable growers.
Organic Grains– Ograin Compass is a forward-looking tool to help grain producers examine the financial outcome of converting to certified organic production.
Enterprise budgets
Carolina Farm Stewardship Assn, Organic Enterprise Budgets – Acess to downloadable enterprise budgets for 10 organic fruits and vetetables to help better decision making on what crops to grow, how much to grow, and how to allocate their resource to meet thier production goals.
University of Missouri Enterprise Budgets – Univeristy of Missouris Farmes Corner is a central location for informaiton and tools to help farmers be successful. They have resources on not only enterprise budgets but a plethera of other resources.