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Virginia Cooperative Extension -
 Knowledge for the CommonWealth

Dairy Management Institute to be held in Rocky Mount

By Eric Eberly (eeberly@vt.edu), Extension Agent, Farm Business Management, Central District

What is DMI? A two-day seminar (February 12 and March 26, 2009) designed to give dairymen the opportunity to come together and focus on profitability and business management. The goal is to provide dairymen with financial benchmarks that can be used to evaluate the financial status of their operations.

How does it work? Day 1 - February 12, 2009: An in-depth look at financial measures of dairy profitability (such as net farm income, milk sold per worker, debt to asset ratio, etc.). Guidelines or benchmarks will be given as to what each measure should be on a typical operation and how to easily calculate the measures.

Between sessions: You will be asked to fill out an information sheet with your 2008 actual income and expenses. This will be submitted by March 6, 2009 to the Farm Business Management Agent to compile the information into a group average for all farms participating. Your information will be kept strictly confidential and will never be shared with the group or other individuals. Only one Farm Business Management Agent will have access to the raw data. Only averages and high-low values will be shared with the group. No names are attached to information presented to the class or in reports.

Day 2 - March 26, 2009: Receive the group average as well as your own individual figures. The focus of this session is to allow participants time to evaluate their own results relative to the group averages with discussion of how to interpret the averages with time for questions and discussion.

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