From feverish feed costs to anemic market prices, pork producers have endured many economic challenges over the past year.  That’s why a financial health checkup is just what the doctor ordered.  Join leading producers and financial experts for PORK$HOP.09, a free seminar sponsored by the Latta, Harris, Hanon & Penningroth, LLP CPA firm and FBS Systems, Inc. that will help diagnose past performance, search for opportunities and prepare for the future.

Noted for the dissemination of pork production cost benchmarks, the PORK$HOP seminar will encompass whole-entity financial analysis in 2009.

Tentative Agenda
9:30 to 10:30	2008 Comparative Information Report with Benchmarks
10:30 to 11:00	2009 Projections and Benchmarks Targets
11:00 to 12:00	Producer Panel:  "Opportunities we’re finding through managerial accounting"
12:00 to 1:00	Lunch
1:00 to 4:00	Financial Health & Financial Survey Report – Status 2009
	•	Process – How to conduct a financial checkup "Components of a comparative financial statements"
	•	The diagnostics test "Ratios" – interpretation and how to use to evaluate the health of your business
	•	What changes in your diagnostics test "Ratios" means to your lender
	•	Survey Results – "What the General Health of the Population" Impact of 2008 perfect storm on the bottom line.
	•	Health standard for the pork industry.  "Financial Benchmark for the Swine Industry"
	•	Utilizing the checkup to manage your business health.

PORK$HOP runs from 9:30 am – 4:00 pm at the DeWaay Capital Management headquarters in suburban Des Moines on Tuesday, June 2^nd, 2009, one day prior to the World Pork Expo.  Space is limited.  To preregister, e-mail sales@fbssystems.com or call 800.437.7638.

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Last month we covered three levels of computer applications:

•	Compliance—What We Have to Do
•	Decision Support—Where We Want to Go
•	Business Processes—How We Get Things Done

Since the early days of agricultural computing, which category do you think has been the most popular application?  And the answer is clearly....decision support, almost always based in “stand-alone, decision aid” software, often based on specialized scientific or economic models.  These programs are widely-accepted because they:

•	Offer instant gratification—solving the “question of the hour.”
•	Are forward looking—helping us make decisions in the future rather than ponder the past.  After all, as economist Howard Doster reminds us, “Past costs don’t count.”
•	Provide a logical outlet for domain expertise from universities, Extension and agribusinesses
•	Are often free or low cost (sometimes because they are used as “sales support” for a product line)
•	Can be created and maintained easily, often through a spreadsheet or web application.

The latent hazard behind this method of analysis is that it too often depends on “heroic assumptions.”

•	Easily-accessible “Rules of thumb” become “quick and dirty” substitutes for localized knowledge (which requires significant time and effort to accumulate and organize).  As a result, decisions are based on either an amalgamation of industry averages or even worse, assumptions cherry-picked from the upper echelon of performance standards (since what producer doesn’t consider himself “above average?”).  This ultimately leads to a vicious cycle as results from this “short-cut” methodology become the foundation for more rules of thumb which are plugged into another round of decisions aids.
•	The more specialized (and therefore parochial) the source of the knowledge behind an application, the more likely the developers will either ignore critical factors outside their field of expertise or even worse, use naïve or over-simplified assumptions as they venture beyond their competency.  For example, production-focused programs such as mapping and livestock feeding software often attempt to perform pseudo cost accounting by blending dollars with production coefficients.  A PhD or DVM may not appreciate the finer points of managerial accounting as well as a CPA (and vice-versa!).
•	Ad hoc decision aids assume that the end user understands the terminology and is providing data that is accurate, complete, objective and standardized.  A deviation in any of these areas will distort the reliability of the analysis.  For instance, if an economic crop model calls for a land cost input, it must be clear what is and isn’t included in that land cost.
•	Modern production agriculture is getting much too complex, dynamic and integrated to make critical decisions based on single-dimension, partial budgets isolated from other inputs and consequences within the business.

Next month we’ll weigh the benefits of decision support compared with compliance and business processes and see where these three types of applications may conflict…and even intersect.

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Join us for these free webinars at 10:00 am CST:

•	Crop production and cost analysis on Monday, April 6
•	LifeCycle Budget on Monday, April 13
•	TransAction Plus on Monday, April 20
•	Smart Feeder User Defined Reports on Monday, April 27

If you'd like to attend any of these virtual meetings, e-mail norm@fbssystems.com by 8:00 am CST on the day of the webinar to receive login instructions.

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