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

These comparisons allow farmers to set realistic financial goals and 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.

For more on financial benchmarking, click here to see the University of Minnesota Extension page.

• 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

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.

How It Works: 

The FINBIN database summarizes actual farm data from agricultural producers who use FINPACK for farm business analysis. FINPACK is a comprehensive farm financial planning and analysis software system used by agricultural producers, professionals, educators, and lenders to help over 50,000 producers analyze their farm business each year. FINPACK is developed and supported by the Center for Farm Financial Management at the University of Minnesota.

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.

• To make farm financial benchmarking opportunities publicly available to producers expanding the national FINBIN farm financial benchmarking database to New Mexico; 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

• 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 work with producer associations to expand awareness and utilization of the farm financial benchmarking tools created through this program

• 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 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.