There is huge variation in the financial skills component of training programs for beginning farmers and ranchers (BFRs), reflecting the multitude of farm business types as well as the diversity of BFRs themselves.  This session will identify the characteristics of teaching methods that achieve educational impact.  Principles of effective instruction will be mined from the knowledge of presenters who have successfully used experiential training, benchmarking, direct incentives and other approaches to make financial skills education stick. 

If it takes a village to raise a successful farmer, why do BFR training programs often try to do it all themselves?  This session will examine how creating, leveraging, and nurturing effective collaboration among BFR training programs brings exponential benefits to BFR trainees.  Panelists will describe how partnering increases BFR exposure to different types and scales of farm businesses, subject matter training expertise, USDA resources, and helps each BFR build their own network of suppliers, advisers, and markets. 

No matter the job at hand, a tool that is easy to pick up, obvious in its use, and effective in its performance is what we are all looking for.  This session will show where to find lists of resources as well as specific tools for training BFRs, where to get them, how to use them, and what benefit the tools will provide for your BFR trainees.  The tools address farmland cost calculations, baseline knowledge survey of BFR trainee business skills, and farm business succession and transition.  Panelists will describe how they have integrated these tools into their existing training curricula, and what tools they would like to see next.

What contributes to BFR farm business success may depend on your viewpoint.  This panel will offer different perspectives on the same success story by pairing BFRs with their loan officers.  Loan officers will explain how to use a simple one-page annual cash flow budget for the type of farm business their BFR customer has started, essentially a benchmark against which farm business performance can be measured.  The benchmarked budget spreadsheets will be available for downloading by the audience. The whole process of farm start-up, planning, financing, mentoring, management, and assessment will be told with an ear towards what training, tools, decision points, and strokes of luck came together to achieve farm business success—and how some of that story can be told on a spreadsheet.

There may be no farm business situation that is more complicated than succession planning and implementation, and no more rewarding outcome for those who work with BFRs.  So, is there a viable farm business that can be transferred, or is this a farmland real estate transaction?  That is the starting point for this clear-eyed examination of farm succession planning and implementation. Panelists will explain farm succession planning, the implementation process, impact on the family and farm business, and success rate from different perspectives.