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Building A Vision: Financial Managment, Analysis and Planning

Jenny Vanderlin

Summary

Building A Vision: Financial Management, Analysis and Planning.


"Building A Vision" is the new Financial Analysis module in the University of Wisconsin/Extension Management Education Curriculum -- AgVentures. The focus of this module is to increase the ability of the participants to: evaluate the financial health of their farm business; to incorporate strategic planning concepts into their financial management decision-making process and to have participants “think strategically” about their future.

Building a Vision uses numerous interactive teaching activities for participants to work together in small groups applying financial and strategic planning principles to a case farm. Participants have the opportunity to review their own situations using principles learned. They are also given the chance to suggest changes they would implement to improve the case farm’s financial situation; participants review the impact of these suggestions on the financial situation. This has proven to be insightful in terms of what types of changes have the greatest impact on farm profitability. Each day participants are challenged to apply learned concepts to their own situation.

The strategic planning part of the program focuses on identifying stakeholders, reviewing mission statements, developing a vision for the future, identifying their critical issues and action plans to address them. Participants also work on developing their own vision.

The financial analysis part of the program includes reviewing the financial performance of the case farm in the Agriculture Financial Advisor (AgFA) report format. These reports are used as the basis for teaching financial concepts related to Profitability, Solvency, Repayment Capacity, and Liquidity measures.

Details

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