Dairy producers from across Nebraska attended the Risk Assessment workshop in Lincoln, NE December 8 and 9, 2016 hosted by Nebraska Dairy Extension.
Dr. Gonzalo Ferreira a Dairy Management Extension Specialist from the Department of Dairy Science at Virginia Tech developed the material and led the workshop. The Risk Assessment workshop wa
s a two-day hands-on workshop that gave the general overview of mission statements, cash-flow analysis, balance sheets, break-even costs, and investments. A major component of this workshop included active learning exercises in which participants used new knowledge in calculation based decision strategies to analyze cash-flow, determine budgeting, analyze balance sheets, calculate break-even costs while also evaluation decisions of future investments.
Workshop participants stated the workshop was “very valuable” and that it effectively built a base knowledge and then applied this base knowledge to real-world scenarios. Other participants noted that, “… developing partial budgets will be the most beneficial to calculate [their] cost per hundred weight [of milk] on [their] farm.” Another dairy producer noted that they, “… can use this information to determine where to makes changes on [their] farm,” and that, “… as [they] look [to] further into expanding [their] farm, [they] will be able to use the information [they] learned to evaluate the cost and how long it will take to receive a return on [their] investment.”
Overall, participants remarked that this workshop was successful and that they will be able to use everything they learned in managing their dairy farm and unanimously stated that they would recommend this workshop to their fellow dairy producers.
Nebraska Dairy Extension is working on programs for next year including a “Microbes on Your Farm” workshop, a tour of new and updated dairy facilities, an out with the old, in with the new technology workshop and much more. For more information on this workshop and upcoming workshops visit Dairy.unl.edu.