How profitable does 2022 look for your farm?
The MSU Cash Flow Estimator can help your farm answer this question.
What are the best opportunities to maximize profits in 2022? In any given year, there are tried and true methods that every farm pursues. Minimizing our investment in input costs or securing optimum prices for production are just a few. But deciding which opportunities are best this year is more difficult with additional factors of supply chain concerns and availability of inputs. As we move into spring, these factors have many farm managers continuing to weigh options and finalize plans.
As your farm’s manager, you may be considering making last minute changes as well. The use of budgeting tools can be a helpful way to fine-tune your plans. Michigan State University Extension offers several decision tools through the Farm Management website. Many of these tools focus on creating a projection of each individual enterprise. But what does the overall picture look like once those budgets are put together? MSU Extension has released a new decision tool to help answer that very question for your farm.
The MSU Cash Flow Estimator is intended to help create an overall cash flow projection for a farm’s business. Farm managers can create three types of projections based on which production enterprises make up their farm. The projection options include crops only, livestock only, or crop and livestock combined.
The tool design allows for five different enterprises into each of the projection options. Enter the per unit (i.e., acre, head, cwt.) income and expenses for each enterprise to create a total farm income and expense projection.
The estimator tool works best with the Crop Budget or Livestock Budget Estimator tools. Both the simple and detailed versions of these tools create a “per unit budget” that can be used. Those tools are found here:
- Crop Budget Estimator – Forages (Detailed)
- Crop Budget Estimator – Forages (Simple)
- Crop Budget Estimator – Grains (Detailed)
- Crop Budget Estimator – Grains (Simple)
- Crop Budget Estimator – All Crops (Simple)
- Livestock Budget Estimator – Beef (Simple)
- Livestock Budget Estimator – Dairy (Simple)
- Livestock Budget Estimator – Swine (Simple)
- Livestock Budget Estimator – Swine Contract Grower (Simple)
Knowing how profitable each farm enterprise looks is one part of planning. The key is understanding how those parts affect what is best for your whole farm and its current situation. Being able to see impacts from changing your plans will help you find your farm’s best path to profitability.
