Farm Business Resilience Program 

Business planning with Paul Blackshaw video

0:07  Paul Blackshaw

Farm business planning is important so the participants in the business can really picture out five or ten years down the track what their business is going to look like and to be able to describe that well to all the people who are involved in the business. Most farmers will have a form of a plan, but it's usually living in their head. So the beauty of this programme is that it lets the participants talk to each other about what the plan looks like.

0:30Paul Blackshaw

And then get it down on paper so they can really articulate that well with all the people who are involved in the business. The course really suits people who are brand new to farming, but also people who have been farming for a long time. It also suits young people and old people and also I think it suits really large commercial scale farmers, but also you know smaller farmers who might actually be relying on some off farm income can really get a lot from this as well.

0:56Paul Blackshaw

So the process in developing the plan really starts with the participants assessing where they are now, which involves a SWOT analysis which helps them to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats within their business. Then they move to trying to vision where they would like to be in the future. And the last step in that process is to actually put some actions in place that will help them to get there and prioritise them over say a one year time frame, a five year time frame or a ten year time frame. I think one of the hardest.

1:26Paul Blackshaw

Parts is actually stopping work on the farm and working on the business and recognising that that's actually a valid use of your time. Once they have the plan in place, I think one of the first steps is to share that with everybody in the business, make sure everyone understands it. But the next step is to go back at least every two years and preferably every year, and actually review what the plan says, you know, tick off stuff that you've been able to achieve, but also readjust the plan if you need to, depending on changing circumstances.

Farm Business Resilience Program 

Grain farmer Ed Rickard video

0:06  Ed Rickard

Hi, my name's Ed Rickard and I'm a farm manager on our family farm. Our farm is a broadacre cropping farm, which are wheat, barley, canola, lentils and fetch.

0:23Ed Rickard

It's a as I said, it's a family farm. So it's myself, my brother and dad who are working on the farm, and we run the farm collectively and the we at times employ casual staff. During busy times like sewing and harvest, we gain advice from accountants, agronomists, and other professionals.

0:51Ed Rickard

I worked in finance and my level of knowledge of farming and agriculture was was pretty low. So I wanted to sign up to this programme to better understand the financial decisions around running a farm business and also the operations and people management that's involved in the in the day-to-day operations of the farm. We're putting a bit more thought into each.

1:21Ed Rickard

Big investment decisions we make in terms of machinery and expanding our farm. The program also helped create a framework for succession planning, which we've started to implement. The programme was great in that it helps identify some technologies that we would find valuable. For example, we've installed weather stations all throughout the farm and soil moisture probes as well as video cameras across.

1:51Ed Rickard

The main part of our farm, it's early days and we're trying to better understand the technology, but initially the soil moisture probes will hopefully help us plant different crops in different paddocks due to different rainfalls. In the program we created a business plan. One of the aims was to create more records in in planning for different crops and so which has helped us.

2:21Ed Rickard

Have a lace tank quantity of all chemicals that were using throughout the year and that helps us go to supplies and source that supply better than what we were previously. The program involved different face to face sessions. I liked how broad it was and applicable to different types of farming and also like the part at the end where we.

2:51Ed Rickard

Met with the farm management consultant and he took a lot of his own time in understanding our business and coming up with some key objectives and ways to achieve those.

3:05Ed Rickard

I would recommend the programme to other farmers. You don't have to be an expert or you don't have to be a novice either. It caters for all levels of knowledge and I found the people at agriculture Victoria great to work with and keen to help better develop more knowledge in farming.