| PROJECT SUMMARY |
Small farmers in Southern California face a tremendous financial risk with increasing cost of raising crops mainly induced by rising resource competition for land and water between urban expansion and agriculture. This increase in cost of production, however, has not been offset by increase in returns of many of the currently produced crops. We have used an on-going risk management education program focusing in redirecting small farm and minority growers to produce high value specialty and new crops, encouraging them to diversify their enterprises as well as practice multiple cropping. The objective of this project was to provide training on the use of a Windows based budget generator (BG) software that equips growers with the ability to develop enterprise budgets and analyze the cost- benefit relationships of their enterprises so that they can increase their risk managment capability through selection, mix and diversifcation of profitable enterprises. The training of the BG operating system was enhanced using actual budget development and analysis.
The evaluation of the project showed that almost all of those who filled the evaluation expressed that the tool has made development of budgets/cost study easy and user friendly. Through many of the questions, we have learned that the ability of many of the attendees to develop enterprise budgets and analyze the cost-benefit relations of their enterprises have improved. |
| NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 70 |
| TOPICS COVERED |
| Product and enterprise diversification |
| Financial records, analysis, and bench-marking |
| Understanding of economic risks associated with new production technologies |
