New Mexico Farm and Ranch Management (NM-FARM) Program

• In 2023, NMSU received a grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture to participate in the FINBIN database housed at University of Minnesota. The New Mexico Farm and Ranch Management (NM-FARM) Program is now available to interested New Mexico farmers and ranchers, bringing benchmarking services to our state.

• New Mexico's producers operate under some of the most diverse agricultural and environmental conditions of any state, making it essential to be able to compare data to farms and ranches in the same region in order to support the financial well-being of agricultural producers.

• During the start-up phase of NM-FARM benchmarking program, program costs are covered by the USDA-NIFA grant award #2023-38504-41139. In most other states, the program is fee-based and participation is motivated by the managerial value of the information provided. Some states charge in excess of $2,000 because of the value of the financial analysis to participants.

Benchmarking

There is an adage that if something matters, it should be measured. The concept of benchmarking goes one step further and adds comparison.

New Mexico Farm and Ranch Management (NM-FARM) Program 

Offers the ability to anonymously compare financial data to:

• A farm’s own historic trends
• Local averages
• Operations of similar types or attributes

So farmers and ranchers can: 

• Evaluate cost and revenue streams
• Set realistic financial goals
• Identify areas for potential improvement

The unique challenges faced by New Mexico farmers and ranchers make it important for comparisons to be available among similar producers in the same region.

More on Benchmarking

Bringing FINBIN to New Mexico

The NM-FARM Program features a first-in-the-nation program utilizing farm accountants to streamline data collection and allow anonymous contributions.  

FINBIN

FINBIN is a national farm financial database. Through FINBIN, aggregated data from agricultural producers who use FINPACK for farm business analysis is summarized and anonymously offered through an online benchmarking service. 

In addition to farmers and ranchers, agricultural lenders, educators, and other agricultural professionals can access FINBIN to generate benchmarking reports for their clients, educational material, and to monitor the performance of the agricultural economy and/or ones own enterprise.

Click here to visit FINBIN's website.

FINPACK

FINPACK is a comprehensive farm financial planning and analysis software system used to help analyze farm businesses each year. FINPACK is developed and supported by the Center for Farm Financial Management at the University of Minnesota. 

Privacy

Farmers and Ranchers can decide the extent of financial data they want to include for analysis while remaining anonymous. Only aggregated data is available in FINBIN.

To protect producers who submit their data to the database, a minimum number of farms is set in order for a report to generate results. 

• Whole farm reports need a minimum of 10 records.
• Crop and livestock summary reports requiring 5 records. 

If a report does not generate or a column is missing that means there wasn't enough data for that specific criteria.  **Broaden your search criteria as needed to gather enough farms to yield a report.

Currently, if you try to generate a report for New Mexico producers using FINBIN you will find that there is no data available. This is because there is not enough producers available for a NM search.

More on Bringing FINBIN to New Mexico

Why Should You Participate? 

• Financial benchmarking helps operators identify better production and marketing strategies to: 
  • Increase revenue from existing farm assets by allowing farmers to evaluate the existing farm resources, production mix, and marketing programs. 
  • Reduce farm expenses by evaluating production costs, purchasing practices, inventory management, and culling non-performing assets. 
• Developing benchmarking data specific to New Mexico that accurately reflects New Mexico’s diverse agriculture and climatic zones. 
• Realistic New Mexico farm financial information benefits NMSU College of ACES research efforts and helps them better address the challenges faced by local farmers and ranchers. 
• Receive notice of programs and workshops for producers to improve farm financial management strategies.

Producer participants may receive individual reports.

Producers choose which data to share. Depending on submissions,

Financial Trend Reports Cover:

• Whole Farm Financials
• Crop Enterprises
• Livestock Enterprises
• Financial Ratios
• Comparative Cost

Through This Program We Aim...

• To make farm financial benchmarking opportunities publicly available to producers by maintaining and expanding the national FINBIN farm financial benchmarking database. 

• To improve the profitability and competitiveness of NM producers by expanding the national FINBIN farm financial benchmarking database to the state; allowing producers to evaluate their businesses strengths and weaknesses relative to similar operations.

• To improve the opportunities for producers to manage today’s risk and volatility through increased attention to financial strengths and weaknesses, including an understanding of how their costs of production compare to groups of similar operations.

• To work with producer associations to expand awareness and utilization of the farm financial benchmarking tools created through this program and improve the farm management skills of producers.

• Develop a first-in-the-country protocol for allowing anonymous participation through farm accountants. This is particularly important for mid-sized and larger operators. Ideally, this will help to increase the utilization of managerial accounting services.

• To advance data gathering and expand the applicability of NMSU research by basing recommendations on more accurate farm financial data. 

• Provide specialized training to meet the needs of small and beginning producers.

Populating the USDA FINBIN Database with accurate information about the costs and returns of agricultural production in New Mexico and reaching a sufficient threshold of participating farmers and ranchers will enable financial benchmarking services for New Mexico producers.  Ideally, this approach we are using will also encourage New Mexico farmers and ranchers to make better use of managerial accounting services.

More on Program Objectives

Funding was provided for this project through USDA NIFA grant Award #2023-38504-41139

Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication/work are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.