Crop Insurance Today August 2013 - (Page 23)

CropInsurance TODAY Step 10–Documenting, Sharing and Revising Q: How should I prepare to document, share and revise my plan? This is the tenth in a ten-part series of articles on “The Steps of Farm Business Planning.” The introductory article for the series was published in the November 2010 issue of Crop Insurance TODAY® and additional articles will be printed each quarter. By Dr. Laurence Crane, NCIS Business planning requires writing because writing clarifies concepts, focuses thinking, and reduces selective recall. It also helps identify issues that otherwise may be overlooked. Documenting, that is creating a written record of the decisions you make, the actions you intend to take, and the assumptions upon which they are both based, is essential to good farm business management. Identifying a structure to organize, update, and share the information needed to operate your farm is essential to effective farm business planning. This step encourages you to think about how you can organize, document, summarize, share, and revise the information about your farm business that is collected and developed during the planning process. This includes: • Documenting your business planning and vision for the future; • Preparing to share your vision with others; and, • Implementing a procedure for repeating and updating/revising some or all of the planning process on a regular basis. Documenting Your Planning Thoughts One product of the planning process can be a document which summarizes the owners’ thoughts about where the business is to go in the long-term and the strategy to reach that goal. Once prepared, the owners will likely use the document as they make decisions. They also may find that they use the information to answer questions posed by others, such as family members, lenders, landlords, future owners, partners/investors, employees, regulators, suppliers, and other people who have an interest in the success of the farm business. Preparing a written record of the ideas that were developed during the planning process involves cost—often the primary cost is the time and frustration of recording the ideas. However, a written record also offers benefits which often outweigh the costs. These benefits include: CROPInsurance TODaY® 23

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crop Insurance Today August 2013

"It could be, it might be, it is!" Baseball Insights for Crop Insurance
The PRISM Climate and Weather System An Introduction
Crop Insurance In Action
2012 U.S. Crop-Hail & MPCI Loss Ratio By State
2012 Research Review
Incorporating Crop Insurance Decisions into a Risk Management Plan
Step 10-Documenting, Sharing and Revising
Dave Snider Retires

Crop Insurance Today August 2013