Monday, 09 January 2012 15:57

Dairy women talk finance

Written by 

Helping dairying women to take charge of their farms' financial planning will be the focus of a series of practical workshops being held across the country from next month.

Run by the Dairy Women's Network, the Dairy Days workshops have been developed to provide dairying women with the skills and knowledge to create a budget and cashflow, review their cash situation, and be able to benchmark their business against others. Plus, a new, advanced training module will provide women with higher level financial planning skills.

Dairy Women's Network chief executive Sarah Speight says around 1000 women have already been trained on a lot of the financial basics at similar series of Dairy Days in the past two years.

"DairyNZ has, again, provided funding for our autumn 2012 Dairy Days and we will use those funds to run the same workshops in new locations around the country in February, March and April," she says.

"Plus we've developed a new, advanced financial planning workshop for women who've already gone through our first round of training."

The financial planning Dairy Days consist of practical, interactive sessions that provide information about how to make the best financial decisions for dairy farming businesses.

There are three workshops running at the autumn Dairy Days catering for women at all levels. "The Organised Office" covers office systems, basic farm accounts and personal finance.

In the "Cashbook to Cashflow" seminars, participants are taught how to: calculate farm income from production data, deal with major categories of expenditure, calculate forecasted income, and estimate forecasted expenditure.

The new, advanced "Essential Farm Finance" seminars will teach participants how to use farm budget data to help with decision making. A large part of the day will be spent using budget data to look at a proposal to buy more land or look at a bigger sharemilking job. Benchmarking will also be looked at in detail as a tool to look at business performance.

"By attending a Dairy Day in their region, women will realise they already have all the information they need to adequately plan for the financial health of their farming businesses, even if they do not spend every day on the farm," says Speight.

"At most, women often just need a few pointers on how and where to collate the information.

"Financial management continues to be an area of farm businesses where women can add significant value. And through these workshops, they'll be empowered to make a real difference in their operations," she says.

For a complete schedule of the Dairy Days visit www.dwn.co.nz.

More like this

Keeping a watch on dairy farms

OPINION: Dairy farmers are under increasing pressure to safeguard their livestock, equipment and operations from a range of security threats.

Inconvenient truth

OPINION: You would've missed this one if you rely on mainstream media for your news, but your old mate reckons credit should go where credit's due: Emissions by dairy cattle decreased by 1.6% according to the latest NZ Greenhouse Gas Inventory report.

Taranaki dairy farms saved by $10/kgMS payout

Only this season’s $10/kgMS bumper payout has saved some dairy farms along the Taranaki coast from absolute disaster due to the present drought – dubbed as one of the worst ever for some.

Featured

LIC Space folds for good

Farmer co-operative LIC has closed its satellite-backed pasture measurement platform – Space.

Editorial: Time for common sense

OPINION: The case of four Canterbury high country stations facing costly and complex consent hearing processes highlights the dilemma facing the farming sector as the country transitions into a replacement for the Resource Management Act (RMA).

National

DairyNZ Farmers Forum underway

Over 300 farmers and rural professionals have gathered in Hamilton for the first DairyNZ Farmers Forum for this year.

Machinery & Products

Shearing legend hooked on CanAm

Sir David Fagan, world-renowned competitive sheep shearer with 642 shearing titles worldwide and a knighthood to his name, now runs…

50 years of tractor pull

This year, the Fieldays Tractor Pull, in association with PTS Logistics, mark a major milestone – 50 years of crowd-thrilling…

The Wrangler's birthday bash

It's the Wrangler Limited’s 30th birthday and to celebrate the milestone a prototype of the E Series Wrangler - a…

» Latest Print Issues Online

Milking It

Free speech

OPINION: The Free Speech Union is taking this one too far.

Drug survey

OPINION: New national data from The Drug Detection Agency (TDDA), a leading workplace drug tester, shows methamphetamine (meth) use is…

» Connect with Dairy News

» eNewsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter