NPR - The Benefits Of Financial Benchmarking To Farmers In The United States (p275-282)

Benchmarking is a powerful management tool that agricultural producers can use to manage risk and improve profitability. Benchmarking allows producers to evaluate how they are doing compared to other producers, helps them identify where their business can be improved, and helps them provide high quality documentation to their lenders. The key to benchmarking is the databases of actual farm data that provide the benchmarking information. Where does the data come from and how do producers get access to the data? In the United States, publicly available databases have almost exclusively been developed from farms and ranches that participate in farm management associations and farm business management education programs. The Center for Farm Financial Management works in partnership with the farm business management education groups in Minnesota and several other states to make meaningful financial benchmarks available on the FINBIN website. The 2,401 Minnesota farms included in the FINBIN database represent a broad cross-section of Minnesota production agriculture. This paper summarizes some of the benchmarks available to producers through the FINBIN database based on 2009 financial results.