Farming as a Business: Writing a Business Plan
This content is sponsored by Rural Farmers Hub, your #1 crop advisor and private extension service provider. While this presentation may be useful to everyone, it is particularly designed for young agropreneurs, past/present youth corp members, and farmers. Objectives of this webinar It is our expectation that when you complete this webinar, you will be writing your business plan primarily to help you mobilize personal funds and some other forms of support from your family and friends to start your own farm. For the benefit of doubt, what exactly is a business plan? The simplest way to define it is: A business plan is a formal written document containing business goals, the methods on how these goals can be attained, and the time frame within which these goals need to be achieved. Notice these key highlights: What are your business goals? How are you going to achieve these goals? When will these goals be achieved? No matter how passionate you are about your business, you must begin by writing it down in a structured manner. While you are excited about starting that agribusiness and having read a lot about it, you must acknowledge that a business plan is a living document; it should not be a “serious” document like a legal contract, if anything, anyone reading your business plan should be able to enjoy reading it. As a living document, you’d expect it to be improved upon over time. So, whatever you write in your business plan today is not permanent. Come back to it occasionally to puncture holes on it so as to find areas that need improvement. So as a summary, a business plan is meant to help align your thoughts on what you want to achieve with your business, how you are going to achieve those business goals, and when those goals will be achieved; don’t lose focus of these three (3) questions as you prepare your business plan. For this webinar, our focus is on business plan writing for farming (as a business) Writing a business plan for farming (particularly crop production) is very different from writing a business plan for other business ideas. This is because farming is similar to manufacturing than it is to other businesses like e-commerce, app economy, tech startup, subscription services, etc; and like manufacturing, your overarching goal when writing a business plan for farming business is to maximize profit by minimizing your costs and optimizing your farming method; frankly speaking, the profitability of your farm business depends partly on your ability to lower costs or not spend it at all, the other part is find better and more productive ways of carryout farming activities such as land preparations, fertilizer application, managing pest attacks, disease control, etc. So, your business plan must communicate this clearly. Please note that we expect you to write this business plan as your personal guide for running your farm with your personal money. Should you develop this discipline while writing your business plan, you’d end with a business plan that you not just present to investors or banks but also be able to talk about it like you were born with it. Happy listening!
