Seminars Empower Dairying Women to Take Charge

Seminars Empower Dairying Women to Take Charge of Financial Planning

Empowering dairying women with tips and tools to take charge of their farm’s financial planning will be the focus of a series of practical workshops being held across the North and South Islands in March. Run by the Dairy Womens Network, the ‘Building Your Farm Budget’ seminars 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.

“When it comes to talking money, budgeting and cashflow need not be dirty words,” says Network General Manager, Lynda Clark.

“The value budgeting can add to a farmer’s business can’t be ignored, especially when it comes to making informed decisions,” she says.

“There are no excuses for not budgeting. It doesn’t have to be complicated and with a little confidence, the right tools and advice, anyone can do it.

“Getting the most from every dollar your dairy herd produces determines how fast you can reach your business goals. We want this Dairy Day to be a practical, interactive session that will empower women to make the best decisions for their farming business by giving them confidence in their ability to manage their own financial planning.”

Former rural banking manager and exfarm consultant, Rebecca Rowe, is guest speaker at the North Island Dairy Days. While performance improvement and people development specialist, Claire Harvey, is guest speaker at the South Island Dairy Days.

“Wereally want to demonstrate to the women attending these seminars that preparing budgets and cash flow statements is simple,” says Rebecca Rowe.

“By attending a Dairy Day in their region, they will realise that they already have all the information they need, even if they do not spend every day on the farm. At most, they may need a few pointers on how and where to collate the information.

“Once you learn how to prepare a budget and cashflow statement, it’s amazing how empowering having that information can be when it comes to making decisions on farm.

“As part of learning how to prepare a budget, we’ll show women in dairying how to develop smart ways to record information so it’s useful and relevant to their farm business.”

As part of the seminars, Rebecca and Claire will go through things like how to calculate farm income from production data, deal with major categories of expenditure, calculate forecasted income, and estimate forecasted expenditure.

“Perhaps one of the most valuable components of this seminar will be giving women the opportunity to develop budgeting templates to create useful relevant information for their individual businesses and learn how to benchmark their business against others,” says Rebecca.

“These days are a fantastic opportunity for women to develop skills in an area of their businesses that is often neglected. The value women will be able to add will be significant. Financial management continues to be an area of farm businesses where there is plenty of opportunity to improve.”

ENDS

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