A new Teagasc business planning workbook, ‘My Farm, My Plan, Planning my Future’ was launched by the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Tom Hayes, at the Teagasc Beef 2014 event this week.

This workbook will be available for use by farmers as part of their farm planning process. It can be used for all enterprises, dairy, drystock or tillage. New dairy entrants will find the workbook useful as part of the new Cash Plan 2014 programme. The process of completing this workbook will better position farmers to discuss their future plans with stakeholders in their business, including financial institutions.

James McDonnell Financial Specialist in Teagasc said: “Farming is exciting at the moment with lots of opportunities and potential hazards. It is essential that a farmer’s future path is properly planned. This workbook makes the process of farm planning easy.

“Farm planning is not just about looking at the financial figures, it involves looking at workload, analysing the other resources available and improving current efficiency levels.”

The planning workbook provides a framework to allow ideas and targets to be worked into a well thought through plan for the business. This is an essential step in the planning process and gets the groundwork in order to allow a financial plan, complete with cash flow and profit projections, to be built around the plan afterwards in a way that clearly links the financial figures to the physical plans for the business.

The workbook is available to download here.