5/10 year Business plans

[Missymoo]

Hello, I’m looking for some advise/help

does anyone provide a service that can help create a Business plan for a tenancy. We are current young farmers farming 2 small bft but looking to progress futher. We currently have 55 suckers, a small flock of sheep, a few pigs we have about 50 acres plus abit of arable ground. We plan to expand but need some guidance.

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated, thankyou!

 

[Frank-the-Wool]

You don't say where you are!
A good Land Agent (not the ones with funny coloured trousers) will be a big help especially if they have a knowledge of the area where you are looking at getting the tenancy.
Do either of you have any formal agricultural qualifications?
Doing budgets and gross margins is not too complicated and will be an important part of any submission.

At least you already have a good track record.

 

[Missymoo]

We are in the south east, near reading, we both have qualifications and much experience

 

[Formatted]

Have you got a farm in mind to apply for or wanting to prepare yourself? What specifically do you want help with? Preparing a plan because you don't know what you want to do or making an existing plan one that looks good on paper?

 

[Missymoo]

Have you got a farm in mind to apply for or wanting to prepare yourself? What specifically do you want help with? Preparing a plan because you don't know what you want to do or making an existing plan one that looks good on paper?

We want to prepare ourselves, we have missed opportunities for a livestock farm as we haven’t had a Business plan down on paper so we would like advise/help preparing one so if the opportunity arises again we have the upper hand

 

[An Gof]

This chap Might be able to help

About Us | Andy Guy Consulting

Can’t vouch for his work personally but knew him in my college days.

 

[Bill the Bass]

A lot depends on the type of farm and therefore landlord you are tendering for. Some landlords don’t want an agent cut and paste job and some do and some just want every penny they can get out of you. It really is horses for courses but if you have decent qualifications and experience then an agent helping with a business plan isn’t going to offer much other getting it presented neatly and in the right way.

 

[Hfd Cattle]

With 55 sucklers you will have a good deal of knowledge . If you sell through your local market then I would be engaging one of the auctioneers to help you . They will be dealing with this type of thing day in and day out . Unfortunately when it comes to 'tendering' for ground it's often who you know rather than what you know.

 

[chaffcutter]

If you both have ag qualifications you must have done budgets and cash flows at college ? To be quite honest it’s not difficult to do either. Once you have decided what your enterprises will be, construct a spreadsheet in Excel or whatever, then start filling in the figures. An agent will not be cheap so don’t pay for something you could do yourselves with a bit of effort and imagination.
If you get a tenancy and likely need to borrow, the bank will want to see this stuff as well, so much better if you can do it yourselves.

 

[Sid]

If you both have ag qualifications you must have done budgets and cash flows at college ? To be quite honest it’s not difficult to do either. Once you have decided what your enterprises will be, construct a spreadsheet in Excel or whatever, then start filling in the figures. An agent will not be cheap so don’t pay for something you could do yourselves with a bit of effort and imagination.
If you get a tenancy and likely need to borrow, the bank will want to see this stuff as well, so much better if you can do it yourselves.

Banks like a consultant to do the budgets for larger borrowings.
But at the end of the day they only use the information that you supply.

 

[Missymoo]

We just want someone to show us what a business plan looks like on paper and help us do one, neither of us come from a farming background so things can be difficult somtimes. we are happy to pay someone to help us and then we can tweak it up ourselves

 

[N.Yorks.]

Have you got your hands on the latest Nix, Farm Management Pocketbook? https://www.thepocketbook.co.uk/

Do it yourself with spreadsheet and tweak figures to the local situation.

 

[N.Yorks.]

We just want someone to show us what a business plan looks like on paper and help us do one, neither of us come from a farming background so things can be difficult somtimes. we are happy to pay someone to help us and then we can tweak it up ourselves

Have a look at this from Ireland, there's a spreadsheet template...... https://www.thinkbusiness.ie/articles/cash-flow-plan-farming/

Do the gross margins for each enterprise then work out fixed costs over the land area and then start to work out how those costs and incomes will flow on a monthly basis, use the irish template as the starting point for that.........

 

[organicguy]

[email protected]
This man is good , based at Newbury.

 

[chickens and wheat]

I did budgets for natwest , I used the farms average figure's from the 5 previous years for grain seed and fert prices.

The accountant looked them over and rubber stamped them.

The bank wernt impressed they prefer nix costings.

Hsbc looked at the figures and said it was great that i had used real life figures.

either way its 75% guess work.


I dug my cash flows out of the draw 2 years later and amazingly i was very close to reality. I dardnt look at them 4 years down the line ,2 wet autumns will have changed everything

 

[bitwrx]

We just want someone to show us what a business plan looks like on paper and help us do one, neither of us come from a farming background so things can be difficult somtimes. we are happy to pay someone to help us and then we can tweak it up ourselves

Are you able to apply for this?

Tesco Future Farmer Foundation

Tesco Future Farmer Foundation has been established to support new entrants and young farmers to launch their farming careers. Enhance your farm business and personal skills, build your network, meet like-minded young farmers. Join us!

www.tescofuturefarmerfoundation.com

Don't be put off by who is running it. It's a great course, and free. I did it in 2018. The workshops were run by Promar, and we went through all the elements of a business plan. I grew up on a farm, but never studied agriculture. It really helped me get to grips with the finance side of things.

In my old job, there was a saying: if you can't write it down, you don't understand it. You need to be able to sketch out your business plan on a few sheets of paper. e.g. So many animals sold through a given outlet at a given price equals so much income. Cost of sales us made up of so much of X and some of y per an animal. This gives a gross profit of z, which covers overheads of eleventy billion pounds and a return on capital of umpteen percent. Now I've got my head round the numbers of our business, I could do that in 20 mins. I couldn't do that before, because I didn't have the knowledge. Anything a consultant wrote for me at that stage would have been a work of fiction.

 

[Formatted]

I think rather than spending money on preparing a plan for a farm you don't know might come up yet you would benefit from some mentoring. Couple of places I would contact

http://www.dairyfutures.org.uk/ if you want to go into dairying
https://www.thehenryplumbfoundation.org.uk/ they open for applications twice a year you can apply for a grant and the mentoring is top class
https://www.princescountrysidefund....ogramme/the-princes-farm-resilience-programme run a farm resilience program that is workshop support for your business

If you're in Wales Farming Connect are also meant to be quite good.

 

[betweenthelines]

You should really be using the Accounts you already have for your business as the basis for future Plans and Cash flow forecasts.

You do have accounts don't you................?

 

[Courier]

You should really be using the Accounts you already have for your business as the basis for future Plans and Cash flow forecasts.

You do have accounts don't you................?

Main problem is that the next 5 years are going to be a in very different financial climate which makes forecasting based on past performance somewhat difficult - Best of luck...

 

[RAF]

How the hell do you plan anything in this job ? I ain’t got a clue what I am doin tomorrow let alone 5 years.
Just roll with it