When it comes to farm oversight, understanding where you are, in terms of financial information and accounting is vital. Growth Path Accounting starts with asking where you are now and what your information goals are. Growth Path Accounting can be narrowed down to three objectives:

• Leveraging the technology available to you through software and applications
• Learning advanced accounting skills at your own pace  
• Preparing you and your operation for future expansion to integrated farm records
  
  

To get there, you first need to understand Growth Path accounting and all of its separate parts. That informs not just your understanding of where you are and which accounting method you’re currently using, but also where you’d like to be and the advantages of the other accounting methods available to you.

Farming is about growth. It’s the primary focus from crop and livestock to the back office. Crops don’t grow from seed without external factors, nor does livestock. So how can we hope for our overall farm or ranch operation to grow without considering all the growth factors that allow the business side to thrive or wither?

And, when we see a challenge or opportunity to address a production shortfall, we look at all the options on the table. The growth path decision tree applied to farm accounting allows us to do the same. We look at the accounting decisions that impact our decision making process and assess how we can use accounting methods to improve our operations and profitability.

As a farmer, your day is filled with tasks. As a farm manager, your day is filled with decisions. From small to large, every decision you make will impact current and future operations. While a farm ERP solution helps you gather the data you need to make those decisions, you’re still left with options on when and how you implement it. It’s one reason we suggest creating a growth path decision tree, even when it comes to accounting. Each decision leads to more decisions and different outcomes. So, understanding the accounting implementations options before you, and the ways those decisions can impact your growth, is important.

The world population continues to grow putting more and more pressure on not just natural resources but food production as well. Farmers and ranchers must find ways to meet those demands while still meeting their own goals for growth and success. Thankfully, there’s much more available, in the world of ag tech, to help you do both.

The agricultural community is notoriously slow to adopt new technologies. While it’s easy to see yourself putting off that autonomous tractor for a while, there are an abundance of ag tech opportunities out there for farms and ranches, both small and large, to be leveraging to improve productivity and profitability.

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There may be a lot of things that happen on the farm that present challenges, but for a lot of farms, nothing compares to the challenges faced in the back office. While creativity and ingenuity are great assets in the field and barn, the back office requires a different approach. For example, when it comes to applying general accounting principles to an industry that doesn’t necessarily function on other standard business principles, finding a balance between ingenuity and innovation and the right tools, solutions for back office and farm accounting problems are available.

Assets on the farm have value, but so does versatility. For decades, engineers have tried to find ways to increase the versatility of farm equipment and versatile products with multiple markets often reign supreme. Similarly, versatile team members who can move from task to task and handle a wide variety of responsibilities are coveted. The same should be true for your ag tech, specifically, the farm accounting software you use.

There are quite a few aspects of farming that are unpredictable. The best we can do is be prepared and ride out those challenges. We’re used to situations and plans that need to evolve. We’re used to being responsive. Similarly, as farmers, we’re used to production and marketing cycles. They dictate just about everything we do from planting and harvesting to breeding and market. The advantage with those cycles is they’re predictable. Accounting for those cycles, however, is a different beast.