1 week Ago
Farmers in Washington could benefit from their bottom lines by keeping a closer look on their finances, a Washington State University farming consultant told a collection of roughly 75 Lewis County farmers Wednesday night. “When prices aren’t good, and when droughts are bad, the way you make the most money is with a pencil, not with a plow or a disc or a no-till drill,” Jon Paul Driver, a WSU Extension specialist with the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network, said during the 42nd annual Lewis County Farm Bureau meeting. “The way you make the most money is knowing where you’re making money, and where you’re not.
” Driver, who grew up on a dairy farm outside of Spokane, consults farmers throughout Washington on how to effectively manage their finances. “In my role, by the time producers get to me, they’re having some fairly serious financial difficulties,” Driver said. “And there are things that you can do, regular businessy things, that you can do from having problems.
” The advice doesn’t have to be time-consuming or tedious, Driver said. Often, the first place he begins when advising a farmer is with their bank statements. “Have you categorized your expenses? These are like the most bare minimum things that you do in record keeping,” Driver said.
“And it’s wonderful now that we can just look up bank statements and we’re not balancing checkbooks.” A negative mindset around taxes can also do farmers a disservice, Driver said, because it can disincentivize keeping proper records. “Your records are for you,” Driver said.
“So you know in your own operation what’s working and what’s not.” Driver also challenged the crowd to budget their expected income and expenses for a year, which he said allows farmers to capitalize on their profits. While farmers often face unexpected costs when paying for parts or other repairs, Driver said a proper budget helps cover the costs when crops aren’t in season.
“Go home and build a stronger operation and see if your mental model actually matches your production records,” Driver said. “That’s what we should be doing this time of year. We should have set expectations in the spring and now we’re going to check our expectations to see what actually happened to figure out why we are wrong.
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