intimate with EBITDA

Be Intimate with EBITDA

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No, not in the literal sense. This is a G-rated commentary…

EBITDA is an acronym for Earnings Before Interest Taxes Depreciation & Amortization. It is your business’ profit from operations. More than just understanding it, being intimate with how it affects your business is critically important.

EBITDA is pure because it does not include the effects of financing decisions (this is why is excludes interest,) accounting decisions (this is why it excludes depreciation & amortization,) and tax environments (this is why it excludes income taxes paid or payable.) It simply shows just how slick of an operator you really are.

ebitda calculation

If your accountant isn’t including this in your financial statements, you can figure it out pretty easily using the formula above. How has your EBITDA been trending over the last 5 years? Have you considered the reason why?

Your lender is keenly interested in your EBITDA. In fact, he or she will calculate it internally and measure it against your total debt payments required in the next 12 months. It is called “debt service coverage” or DSC for short, and is a deal breaker if it doesn’t meet your lenders’ minimum standards.

For many farms, net equity has been on a very positive trend over the last several years. While this is good news, like any news we can’t just take it at face value. What is the underlying story? If equity has been increasing from appreciation of asset values (namely land) and not from retained earnings, then it does not build confidence that the operation is profitable. If the operation is profitable, it is capable of growth and meeting loan repayment schedules (those same loans that help fund the growth.)

retained earnings

If a business is not retaining any earnings within the business, it limits its ability to fund growth, transition, etc.

To Plan for Prosperity

Recognize that EBITDA is the measure of your business’ operating performance. It has a key accountability in growing your business’ net equity. It is heavily relied upon by lenders.

  1. Calculate your EBITDA. Look at how it is trending. Acknowledge what it affecting the trend.
  2. Understand your lender’s debt service coverage (DSC) calculations.
  3. Decipher what has had the greatest inpact on your net equity: appreciation of assets, retained earnings, or both?

Your relationship with your EBITDA should be very, very close; some might even say “intimate.”

 

Average

Don’t Settle For Average

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It was the headline that struck me.

Don't settle for average _embedded

Settling for average in any aspect of your business will lead to certain demise. If everything was average (yields, quality, market prices, rainfall, heat units, weed pressure, disease pressure, input prices, equipment repair frequency, wages, overhead, etc, etc, etc…you get the picture) then farming would be easy.

But it’s not.

Fair to say that if you are projecting average yields and prices for 2017 you’ll be measuring those against higher-than-average costs. This is likely to total down to a negative bottom line.

I’ve never been a fan of “average.” As my old friend Moe Russell likes to say, “You can drown in a river that averages a foot deep.”

Average, to me, is nothing more than a feel good guide when looking to validate poor results. For example, acknowledging that yields were only a couple bushels below average means nothing Table for Averagewithout quantifiers like market prices (meaning we’ve calculated gross revenue), like input cost (meaning we’ve calculated gross margin), or like operating costs (meaning we’ve calculated profits from operations.) Here is a table to illustrate what I’m getting at:

If average is profitable over the long term, then we must acknowledge the need to adjust all facets of our profit calculation when one facet is below average. The problem is that generally we are seeing farms operate with higher than “average” costs and trying to pay for them with “average” yields.

To Plan for Prosperity

Our profitability is not determined by where it falls on a bell-curve, so why would we accept “average?”

 

CYFF

CYFF (Canadian Young Farmers’ Forum)

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Greetings from CYFF

The Canadian Young Farmers’ Forum brings together farmers from across Canada. This past weekend in Ottawa, they held their annual convention and invited me to speak as part of their agenda.

There were many takeaways from the event; here are a just a few, with my perspective following in brackets.

  1. Agriculture is incredibly diverse right here in Canada. (We shouldn’t just stay in our little echo chamber with others who produce the same as what we do.)
  2. Even with such diversity, young farmers face similar challenges across all sectors and across all provinces & regions:
    1. Building and protecting adequate working capital is difficult (I’ll keep preaching the importance of this;)
    2. Profitability is cyclical (we may have heard this before;)
    3. Competition is increasing for land, labor, etc (and they’re stressed out trying to figure out how to handle it;)
    4. Small farms struggle to compete with large scale & well capitalized operations (yes, there are large potato, berry, vegetable, dairy, poultry, & egg farms like there are large grain and cattle farms, and competing with them for land and labor is just as tough;)
    5. Young farmers feel lost when trying to determine if/how their parents ever plan to slow down/retire (this also applies to every other family business, not just farms.)
  3. The desire to learn more and be better is strong (learn, unlearn, relearn.)
  4. The desire to take part in something bigger, such as industry groups with lobby or policy influence, is significant.

CYFF is for farmers under 40. Based on the passion of these young farmers, and their desire to learn & be better at everything they do, I think the future of agriculture in Canada is in good hands.

To Plan for Prosperity

The issues you face, the challenges you struggle with on your farm are the same as almost countless other farms. The relief and comfort seen on the faces of these young farmers when that became evident was obvious. They felt less stressed and less alone when they realized that they are not the only ones feeling the angst, the despair, or the helplessness that dogs their personal situation at home.
Don’t sit alone and wallow in your own anguish over what challenges you in your business. Sharing your trials and tribulations will not only help mentor the passionate successors to our industry, it may help you find comfort in knowing “you’re not alone.” It might even turn up a solution.

paperclips

Paperclips

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Many farm offices and kitchen tables are buzzing right now doing crop plans and working out cost of production scenarios. What makes money? What doesn’t? What can we really yield? What are input costs going to be?

For too long, “cost of production” was “inputs.” Seed, chemical, and fertilizer were all that were considered when discussing “cost of production.” Slowly, the recognition of fixed, or operating, or overhead costs came into play. But even then, I still find that much is left to be desired.

Regular readers of this commentary know that I preach “Unit Cost of Production (UnitCOP).” The thinking behind UnitCOP is to evaluate what it cost your business to produce one unit, whether that be a bushel of canola, a tonne of barley, an “eight-weight” steer, a kilogram of butterfat, etc. Obviously, the more units you can produce without increasing overall costs lowers your UnitCOP, as does producing the same number of units but with a lesser total cost.

The mindset of including all costs and expenses when determining cost of production continue to evolve. When in discussions with anyone, client or stranger, about cost of production, I often need to look for clarification about their parameters by asking “Whole farm?” Even this leaves much open to interpretation: whole farm to some means “every acre.” To me, it means every acre, yes, but also every expense.

An example that makes me scratch my head is when I read new articles containing info or quotes from someone in Manitoba Ag. Recently, I read this article about management of agronomic economics, when as with other similarly sourced articles I’ve read in the past the content describes “break even prices and yields” for various crops excluding labor. Why? Will the crop magically seed and harvest itself?!?!

Every cost, every expense must be considered when calculating cost of production. Right down to the paperclips for the office.

To Plan for Prosperity

The business of farming is difficult enough without making it harder to define profitability by ignoring some of your costs. While paperclips may not be critical to “production,” as a farmer/rancher/dairy-person/etc, you are in the business or producing grain/beef/milk/etc. And the costs to run your production business includes things like paperclips.

When evaluating results that might not have met expectations, ask yourself if you remembered the paperclips.

accounting

Accounting

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It’s nearing that time of year when you’ll be paying a visit to your accountant. Whether you are delivering a comprehensive report for final vetting and tax preparation, or a shoe box for “the works,” there are a number of questions and specific reporting attributes for which you should be asking your accountant. Of course, there are important actions you are responsible for as well. Here are three of the most important aspects to make a priority this year on your path to prosperity:

Inventory

Record your annual inventory accurately. This is important when reconciling your production and your sales to calculate your operating income. One of my more recent clients hadn’t implemented clear tactics for recording year-end inventory at the end of their 2015 crop year. Now, as we review past years, we are challenged to understand why they show an operating loss that year. There are anomalies in many income and expense categories when trended year over year. I challenged the accountant to explain, but since the accountant does not perform any type of “checks and balances,” only a compilation of client provided information, my clients are now facing the obtrusive task of reconciling each and every invoice & slip to see if there was a recording error. While you may be wondering, “What’s the big deal” the fact of the matter is that this “not a big deal” contributes to a reported $300,000 loss which is putting the banker at some discomfort. Would it still be “not a big deal” if the operating credit limit gets slashed because the financial reporting doesn’t support the existing borrowing limit? Is this as simple as an incorrect inventory figure provided by the farmer to the accountant because of slack or sloppy “estimates” of what’s in the bin?

Reporting

Readers of this weekly commentary have heard enough of my ranting about accrual adjustments and their importance to evaluating your business year over year. So let’s bypass the stated obvious and look down another path: what are you not seeing in your financial statement that would be beneficial for management purposes? I am a proponent of “more is better” when it comes to information (we can always discard what is not necessary much easier than trying to make decisions with vague information by yearning for what is not there.) As an example of a basic start, I support breaking the single line item of “Repairs & Maintenance” into two separate lines: one for equipment, the other for buildings. If you, as management, are trying to discern the subtleties of your various costs, would it be helpful to have this separation made?
There are many other suggestions that could be offered, but in the end, it’s your report so ask for what you want.

Depreciation

Hebert twitter depreciationIt continues to be the scourge of farmers to this day: income tax. It then is no wonder that farmers love depreciation. It’s a non-cash expense that reduces taxable income! But Kristjan Hebert tweeted a very valid concern that all farmers should think about. Depreciation is hidden…from sight. It is not hidden from the government, and the government has ways of collecting if you don’t manage your accumulated depreciation.
Accountants inherently assume that all farmers want to maximize depreciation expense to reduce taxable income, so rarely will your accountant initiate a depreciation conversation with you. This does not mean that if your accountant does not initiate the conversation that there is nothing to discuss! Talk to your accountant about your capital asset “depreciation pools.” Share your capital expenditure (CapEx) plan. Set the appropriate rate of depreciation that is in your best tax planning interests (HINT: you don’t have to take the maximum just because you can.)

To Plan for Prosperity

The financial statements created by your accountant is a package of some of the most critical management tools you need to make informed decisions. You not only have the right, but the obligation to create a report that is useful and meaningful to your management needs (and your accountant, as a strategic business partner, is more than willing to work with you…if you ask.)
1. You bear the responsibility for recording and reporting your inventory accurately.
2. Ask your accountant to create reports that are useful to you based on how you want to evaluate your business (within acceptable accounting practices, or course.)
3. Have a strategic discussion with your accountant about depreciation (HINT: it helps to have a strategy to discuss.)

It’s your business. Be accountable for it.

Over-Optimism (a.k.a “It Can’t Happen to Me”)

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Recently I’ve sensed great concern from some bankers regarding the effects on the cattle market because of this TB outbreak in Alberta. The effects are still not definitive but could prove devastating.
The fallout from this recent harvest in western Canada is still being measured. Creditors are in full disaster preparation mode so as not to be bombarded by voluminous delinquent payments over the next 5-6 months.

A valuable part of the work I do is to help clients make capital expenditure and credit decisions. After a number of difficult crop years from excess moisture, many farms have great concern over their financial stability and fully recognize that they have very little room for error. Pains are being taken to consider how every decision could affect the farm’s future profitability.

Many long term business decisions have been made on the premise of $12 canola and $8 wheat, or $2/lb weaned calves (as a kid, I sold my first calf for $0.80/lb.) Servicing debt on land and/or equipment payments during the high points of the cycle is easy, but as we’ve seen, the debt often outlives the business cycle.

Some farmers, especially those who are relatively new to farming, have never experienced tough financial times. They have no first hand experience of BSE or the 2004 frost; they know little outside of high yields, good quality and strong grain & cattle markets. Sadly, there are many who have first hand experience of those dramatic market influences yet have permitted themselves to have short memories.

I remember giving a presentation in 2013, in a community I won’t name so that I don’t shame them, where the audience was verbally angry with me for stating that we were a “global average crop, not a bumper crop but an average crop globally from $9 canola and $4 wheat.” They thought I was crazy because, in their opinion, canola had a new floor price and it was $12.

Regularly I am forwarded an article from some US agency (it varies week to week depending on who is forwarding it to me) that provides insight into the rapidly decreasing appetite for risk into grain farming from US lenders, or the sizable decline in land rent rates, and the reduction in land values. I often tweet these articles with the question, “Does anyone think this can’t happen here?”

I am encouraged by a shifting focus among farmers that centers more on ROI (Return On Investment) and less on size & scale. It bodes well with a saying (it’s not mine) that I like to lean on: Better is better before bigger is better.

Direct Questions

How do you view risk and its potential to affect business results when making business decisions?

Have you considered how a major market shock could affect your profitability, and if so, what have you done?

If your profitability will be sub-par in 2016, what adjustments are you planning to make for 2017 and onward?

From the Home Quarter

While no one can deny that “things are different now,” there is still much we can learn from history. Maybe the most important lesson from history is that major business-impacting events are very unpredictable. As such, maybe we should be more prepared for the predictable events so that the unpredictable ones aren’t such a major shock…

success criteria

Success Criteria

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It is always interesting to listen to the variety of different opinions on how each farm views “success.”

For many it is measured by a tangible: number of acres under cultivation, number of combines in the fleet, etc.
For others, it is an intangible: family harmony.
Most of the time though, year by year success is measured in bushels.

Here is my response to a tweet just the other day:

Profit is always the supreme success criteria. Generally, I stop there because so much of the focus at the farmgate is primarily, almost exclusively on production, and it drives me crazy! But we simply cannot ignore the basic tenet of primary production: you need the bushels!

In the commodity business, and I don’t care if it is grains, livestock, oil, or minerals, the only businesses that produce commodities with consistent profitability are those that produce at the lowest cost per unit…period.

What’s the best way to lower your cost per unit? Produce more units, and in this case that means more bushels! Of course, the caveat is that you must produce more bushels without incurring more cost, or at least if costs must increase that their increase is not linear to (ie. less than) yield increase.

I am continually challenging my clients to find ways to reduce their overall costs. In an industry that has dedicated immeasurable amounts of focus on production, it is not unreasonable to admit that many farms are already producing maximum yields for their region, soil type, weather patterns, etc. Without further advancements in plant genetics, increases in yield beyond the average will mostly be achieved by the good fortune of ideal weather during the growing season.

Control what you can control (your costs) and accept what you can’t control (the weather.)

Direct Questions

How do you calculate your Unit Cost of Production (UnitCOP)? Do you calculate it at all?

How do you determine when the chase for more yield is no longer profitable?

What strategies do you employ to reduce your cost per unit?

From the Home Quarter

As read in the tweet above, “How about net profit?” Profit is the reason we’re in business, is it not? A business without profit is not a business, it is a charity!

Business is always evolving, growing, changing…maybe our definition of success should change too.

 

 

inadequate working capital

Critical State – Maintaining Inadequate Working Captial

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I’ve gone on record many times saying that I believe that the lack of adequate working capital at the farmgate presents the greatest single risk to the future of many farm businesses.

Working Capital is calculated by subtracting your current liabilities from your current assets.

wrkgcap-graphic

It is important to calculate working capital correctly, not only to satisfy the requirements of your creditors, but for your own management information as well. Overstating your working capital will give false confidence. Understating your working capital could cause you to unnecessarily inject capital into the business, or to miss out on taking advantage of business opportunities.

Maintaining inadequate working capital carries many risks, both direct and indirect, such as:

  1. Relying on operating credit and trade (supplier) credit.
    Heavy, or total, reliance on outside credit to provide access to the capital necessary to run your farm is as great a danger as a reckless crop rotation. There is no guarantee that these credit vehicles will continue to be available in the future as they were in the past. How will the crop get seeded next year if there is no working capital, and no operating credit, available?
  2. Using debt to pay debt.
    Many businesses have plead their case by illustrating that the debt payments were always made on time. What they failed to recognize was that the debt payments made were sourced from an operating line of credit, and therefore using debt to pay debt.
  3. Loss of profit potential.
    By leaning on outside credit, many farmers are forced to sell grain when they need cash to make payments, revolve credit lines, etc. instead of selling grain at a point of opportune profit. Selling grain when you have to instead of when you want to can mean the difference between profit and loss.

In regards to building and protecting working capital, here are just a few of the tactics I offer:

  1. Know your Unit Cost of Production.
    This goes beyond crop inputs. It includes ALL costs to run the farm from fuel, to insurance premiums, to paperclips for the office. Knowing UnitCOP allows you to clearly understand where your profit is made.
  2. Stretch loan and lease amortization periods.
    Interest rates are low, and recently there are hints that it might go lower yet. Stretching your payback period allows you to enjoy making lower payments. This is especially helpful in a year when cash flow & profitability will be tight. Accelerate payments in years when cash is abundant.
  3. Plan with Strategy; Discipline in Tactics.
    Far too often, we see businesses that operate without a plan by simply focusing year over year on operations (getting the work done) and as such, most decisions are made in reaction to a need or want. By building a clear & well-thought out plan, decisions become proactive when employing discipline through the execution of the plan. Deviating from the plan (IE. a great deal on a new pickup!) can jeopardize working capital and future profitability.

Direct Questions

How often do you calculate your working capital? (HINT: it should be monthly at a minimum)

What is your minimum level of working capital to have available? (HINT: it should be 50%-100% of your annual cash costs)

What is your strategy to increase and maintain adequate working capital?

From the Home Quarter

Inadequate working capital causes business owners and managers to make decisions they otherwise wouldn’t. It forces their hand. It takes away their control.
Abundant working capital creates opportunity, allows flexibility, and puts control of the business in the owner’s and/or manager’s hands.
Critical State can be only a breath away when working capital is inadequate.

borrowing-binge

Borrowing Binge: At The Farm and Beyond

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Last week, I was emailed an article by Rob Carrick of The Globe and Mail. Carrick writes about Canada’s borrowing binge; no not our federal government deficit and growing debt, but Canada’s household debt. Let’s see how it applies not only to household debt, but farm debt.
**NOTE: Carrick’s article is below in italics, with my comments inserted in bold.

“It’s getting harder to see anything but a messy ending for Canada’s household debt binge.

This isn’t the beginning of a lecture on reducing your borrowing. It’s more a resigned observation of human behaviour. You can warn people to act now to avoid a potentially bad outcome in the future, but they’re not likely to do anything unless they see trouble dead ahead.

The second quarter of 2016 was a vintage moment in debt accumulation. Incomes rose, as Statistics Canada puts it, “a weaker-than-normal” 0.5 per cent, while household debt growth clocked in at 2 per cent. This is the Canadian way – keep debt levels growing ahead of gains in income.

On two counts, this is bad personal finance. Your household spending flexibility is negatively affected in the short term (you have less money to save, for example), and you’re more vulnerable to financial shocks ahead, such as rising interest rates or an economic decline that kills jobs. Clearly, most people aren’t worried about these risks.”

What risks make you worried about your debt load? Can you control them (ie. fusarium, sclerotinia, excess moisture, interest rates, commodity prices?)

“The explanation starts with the fact that we live in a world in which conditions for borrowing are as good as they can ever be. Interest rates are low and the economy, while tepid, is producing enough jobs to prevent unemployment from becoming a big issue.

In the field of behavioural finance, there’s a term called “recency bias” that describes what’s happening here. People are looking at recent events and projecting them into the future indefinitely. So far, it’s working. We’ve had low rates and a slow-moving but stable economic for years now, and there’s no sign of imminent change.”

“Recency bias” describes the not so distant thinking that canola wouldn’t go below $10/bu, meaning that “$10 was the new floor” (circa 2012.) There were many other behaviors and attitudes that came with that thinking. How quickly forgotten are the years of poor quality and inconsistent yields…

“Under these conditions, there’s no reason to heed the repeated warnings from the Bank of Canada, economists, finance ministers, credit counsellors and personal-finance columnists about the dangers of taking on more debt. And so, the ratio of household debt to disposable income hit a record 167.6 per cent in the second quarter, up from 149.3 per cent in the second quarter of 2008.”

Is there a reason to heed the warnings from ag economists, management advisors, and creditors about the dangers of taking on more debt….? Depends how much debt you currently carry. 

“Recent warnings about debt levels give us an idea of what could happen if there are any economic shocks ahead. The credit-monitoring firm TransUnion said earlier this week that more than 700,000 people would be financially stressed if rates went up by a puny quarter of a percentage point, and as many as one million would be affected if rates went up by a full point.

The Canadian Payroll Association recently surveyed 5,600 people and almost 48 per cent of them said it would be tough to meet their financial obligations if their paycheque was delayed even by a week. Almost one-quarter doubted they could come up with $2,000 for an emergency expense in the next month.

These reports highlight some of the risks of the borrowing binge we’ve been on for the past several years, but not all. Decades down the road, we may find that people didn’t save enough for retirement in the 2010s because they were so burdened by debt. Student debt levels might rise in the future because parents weren’t able to help with tuition costs.”

An interest rate sensitivity test would answer this question for your particular operation. But more important that interest rates, which in reality are unlikely to experience any significant increase in the short-medium term, is income volatility. The debt payments won’t change, but a farm’s ability to make those payment will. If the debt payments can only cash-flow when yields and price are at high points, there is trouble ahead.

“That second-quarter data from Statscan show clearly how deaf people are to warnings about the dangers of debt. In the worst three-month period since the recession, economic output fell by an annualized rate of 1.6 per cent.

The reaction of employers to this economic dip can be seen in the fact that income growth was weaker than normal in the second quarter. Consumers barely flinched, though. They’re impervious not only to warnings about the dangers of high debt levels, but also to periodic bouts of economic volatility like we saw in the second quarter. Only a big shock will get their attention.

There’s no point trying to forecast when a shock will happen, but what we do know for sure is that the financial and economic conditions of today will change. We remain in an adjustment phase following the financial crisis and recession late in the past decade and it’s far from clear what the new normal will be.

Things could get better for the economy, or they’ll get worse and jobs will be vulnerable. Either way, people are going to have to make stressful adjustments that they could have avoided by reducing debt today. This could get messy.”

From the Home Quarter

It has been well documented that farm debt in Canada is high. In the next breath, there is all kinds of spin added to the argument such as stating current debt in 1982 dollars so as to compare to the carnage that was beginning 34 years ago. Not to try to deflate the validity of constant dollar comparisons, but the cold hard reality is that existing debts, today’s liabilities, need to be paid back. Compare the situations all we like, describe how “things are different now;” either way, no matter how you slice it, current farm incomes need to pay present day debts.

So when I hear of lentil yields often coming in at half of expectation, when I hear of wheat and durum crops again decimated by fusarium, when I hear of malt barley crops grading as feed because of all the rain, I can only hope that those farms who experience such production results this year are not over-leveraged. Is this a hint of “the big shock” Carrick wrote about, as it would apply to agriculture? Or is that big shock something already on the radar like China slamming the door on Canadian canola that doesn’t meet spec?

The borrowing binge at the consumer level, as Rob Carrick wrote about, could have drastic implications on the Canadian economy; his words also apply to agriculture. We could be in for a rough ride, “this could get messy” as Carrick wrote.

Sage words from a 30+ year farm advisor: “Take your worst net income over the last 10 years and measure it against today’s debts. How do you feel?”

If you don’t feel good from that experiment, please call me or email for strategies to help ease the discomfort.

swathing-canola

Making Noise on (Emotional) Business Decisions

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There has been a lot of noise this week about canola seed prices for the 2017 crop. Figures as high as $700 per bag (about $14/lb) for a sclerotinia resistant variety have been thrown around. As a moderate fan of Twitter,  I had to laugh at one particular tweet from @DavidKucher: “I’d have to #SellTheSwather in order to afford next year’s Invigor seed price increase”. This, of course, refers to the now popular production practice of straight-combining canola versus the traditional practice of swathing then harvesting.

This opens up the perennial challenge for farmers: costs are increasing with no guarantee that production prices will increase as well, margins become questionable, and emotional decisions get made. Is it better to keep the swather and plant cheaper canola seed? Or follow through with straight-combining canola, sell the swather, and grow the expensive variety that works better with straight-combining?

Aside from the cost/benefit sermon that would fit very well here, I believe that the real issue is differentiating between emotional decisions and informed decisions.

While I could go into a diatribe that includes harping on the how and why, instead, I’ll offer a list of questions that may help you determine whether or not to “sell the swather.”

  1. Will the more expensive seed provide enough extra yield to offset the added cost?
  2. Have you included the savings to your operating costs from eliminating the expense of swathing the crop?
  3. Does that saving to your operating expense include staff costs for you, or hired help, to run the swather?
  4. Have you considered the cost of owning the swather, and how eliminating it affects your fixed/overhead costs?
  5. How have you substantiated (actually measured) the seed loss from straight-combining and compared it to the loss from swathing?
  6. How cheap can you get new canola seed without sacrificing yield?
  7. What other benefits are you prepared to relinquish by opting for cheaper seed?
  8. Which canola variety matches your crop rotation, pest pressure, and operational timing & strategy?
  9. Which canola variety is most profitable?
  10. If you literally need to sell the swather to afford canola seed, can you see that there are bigger issues at play?

Selling assets to generate sufficient cash to cover operating costs is the beginning of the end. Selling assets that are minimally used to free up cash & leverage that could be redeployed elsewhere is a good strategy.

The answers the questions above are yours, not mine. There is no solution that I am prescribing by posing those questions. The solution will come from your answers. What I am prescribing is taking the time required to make informed decisions.

From the Home Quarter

Emotional decisions, made in haste, like shooting from the hip, will offer benefit…to someone…but not you.

Informed decisions keep you in control, on plan and on task, by ensuring there is benefit to you, your business, and your family.

For personalized guidance on determining if selling the swather is the right decision, call or email and ask about our Farm Profit Improvement Program™.