Winter Course: Use Your Numbers to Assess Profitability and Full Cost of Production

December 5, 12, 19, 2022 | 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

Registration is now open for this three-part winter course with farm consultant Ellen Polishuk of Plant to Profit! This course will build on the material covered in our introductory sessions in January and March 2022 (available below). Take a deep dive into the numbers you gathered from the season to understand your farm’s costs of production and calculate fair prices and wages.

The What: In order to increase farm profits, we have to dive into assessing IF and WHICH of our crops, enterprises, and markets are actually generating profits.

The Why: Growers are struggling to attract and retain excellent employees. We want to pay our people more. How much more can we really “afford” to pay?

The How: We are going to keep appropriate yield, labor, and cost data in the 2022 season.

The Deal: We will meet virtually in December to discuss how to discover profitability in three different sessions covering:

Individual Crop Costing Tool, provided by Kitchen Table Consultants
An informative and organized Profit and Loss Report, a tool for making decisions on increasing labor cost
An overview of powerful analytics tools to help you make better sense of the data and better decisions for your business

See this recordkeeping checklist and costing tools resource list to help keep track of your numbers this growing season.

We strongly encourage attendees to review the recorded webinars below prior to the first session. The cost of this three-part course is $75 and includes the opportunity for a one-on-one consultation session with Ellen.

Session 1 | January 27, 2022 | 12-1 p.m. How Can You Pay Your People Better When You Don’t Know Your Numbers? *Course Teaser*

Growers across the region are struggling to attract and retain excellent employees. Most sustainable farmers want to pay their people more already in recognition of how much they value their labor force. But how much more can you really “afford”? This pre-project teaser session will let you dip your toe into the pond of Full Cost of Production. What is it? What power does it give you in negotiating price? How can Full Cost of Production give you the platform to play around with increasing labor compensation?

Below is a recording of this session:

Session 2 | March 7, 2022 | 12-1:30 p.m. You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure

Let’s get clear on what kinds of numbers we need in order to get to Full Cost of Production. Then, how are you going to get those numbers this season so we can mess around with them next winter? This is an attempt to not say the energy-killing words “record keeping”! But that’s what we are going to strategize about–how exactly are you going to capture the data you want?

Below is a recording of this session:

Questions? Contact OEFFA Fair Farms Program Coordinator Adam Utley at adam@oeffa.org.