Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
AMP presented the tool of farm business modeling in Zakarpattya
The training on Farm business modeling was held in Zakarpattya office of Agricultural Marketing Project (AMP) on the 4th of July 2005.
The training was organized and conducted by Inna Ponomarenko, the Agribusiness and Marketing Specialist of Kyiv AMP office and Juan Sacoto, the AMP consultant, the representative of Informa Economics, Inc., USA. The specialists of Zakarpattya and Lviv AMP offices, the Credit Specialist of Prominvestbank, some agricultural producers, and also the representatives of Zakarpattya Producers' Association and the Marketing Department of Mukachevo Technological Institute participated in the event.
The main objectives pursued by the business modeling for the fruit and vegetable producers are primarily:
- cost optimization;
- profit markup;
- demonstration of the alternative crop production, technologies, sales channels.
Farmers can get benefit from:
- better information for decision-making on the definite fruit and vegetable crop production;
- the precise estimation of input supplies and labor per 1 ha for the successful production of the competitive commodities;
- standardization of the business records;
- evaluation and analysis of the budgets for all crops and their structure;
- investigation of the possible advantages and risks;
- comparison of the farming business with the other farmers, evaluation of the competitiveness level on the market of the agricultural producers.
Business model is a decision-making tool; it helps to decide what crop to plant, what kind of technologies, seeds, plant protection assets to apply, where and how to sell the produce.
For the credit specialists it is possible to:
- get information on the farm expenses structure for a preloan review;
- see the cash flow and cost structure;
- evaluate the farm feasibility;
- forecast and analyze the activities of farmers - borrowers on the basis of the received data;
- have the reference information concerning the potential crop yield, the cost structure for the similar producers throughout Ukraine.
The other additional tools of the informational support are as follows:
1. The analytical information let the farmer-user simply learn the average production costs of the other Zakarpattya farmers and their colleagues in the other oblasts of Ukraine (AMP works in six oblasts - Crimea, Odesa, Poltava, Cherkasy, Lviv and Zakarpattya).
2. The information about the prices on agricultural commodities in the countries - leaders of this industry, which are the competitors of Ukraine on the world market, i.e. such exporters as Poland, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, USA, Hungary.
We can say that those farmers, who have already being using the model, treat it as an effective decision-making tool; one farmer got the bank loan on the model basis.
In 2005 the specialists of Zakarpattya AMP office plan to fill in 25 models with the budgets for 100-150 crops. In the whole in Ukraine, AMP plans to create 600 budgets, which are going to be the effective business planning tool for the agricultural producers in 2006. For the farmer his principal resource is land, and he is to use it efficiently on purpose to get the maximum profit.
The more detailed information on farm business model is available in Zakarpattya AMP office on a free of charge basis.
The address of Zakarpattya office of the Agricultural Marketing Project is:
43 Shvabskaya Str. (4 floor) Uzhgorod 88005,
tel/fax: +38 (0312) 67 14 85