Family Farm Agribusiness is Alive and Well with CareerTech

If your farm records have outgrown the Red Wing boot box your dad used, you may be a prime candidate for the Agriculture Business Management (ABM) program at your local technology center.

With just two percent of the nation’s population directly involved in production agriculture, according to a report by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, much too often the agriculture in the business world is overlooked.

Yet, according to government statistics, agriculture is the nation’s largest employer with more than 22 million people working in some sector of the industry and the largest contributor feeding the world’s population.

With the rising number of corporate farms, good business skills have become important to a family farmer or rancher to compete in the global market. Evolution from simple production of the early 1900s to agri-business conducted on the family farm through Oklahoma’s CareerTech system is alive and well.

Recently celebrating its 25th anniversary, CareerTech’s ABM programs are currently offered at 17 of the 29 technology centers located across the state, according to Eddie Smith agricultural education program administrator at the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education.

“The main objective of Agriculture Business Management program is to help agriculture families achieve their business and family goals through improved management, organization, and efficiency practices,” Smith said. “The key component of successful management is decision analysis.”

A Farm Business Management program in Minnesota in the 1970s, designed for adults on family farms, inspired this concept.

In 1976 Dr. Francis Tuttle, now deceased, who was then director of Oklahoma’s Department of “Vo-Tech” (now CareerTech) traveled to Minnesota. He returned with the proposal of an idea for ABM courses in technology centers.

The ABM program was patterned after that program and developed to work with families that are involved in production agriculture for profit, according to Dennis Crawford, ABM Instructor at Canadian Valley Technology Center.

The program is individualized with class taking place on the actual farm, which is key to the program’s success.

“People tend to learn better when the instruction is geared for their needs and in their own environment,” Crawford said. “The instruction covers areas such as record keeping, financial statements, budgeting, cash flow projecting, whole farm analysis, tax management, and marketing strategies.”

Over the last 25 years there have been many changes in the way agriculture business is conducted.

“The biggest change in farming and ranching over the last 25 years that I have seen is that there are very few full-time farmers and ranchers and a whole lot of folks who farm and ranch and have jobs in town,” said Crawford. “Those few who do farm and ranch full-time most generally have some sort of off-farm income such as a wife in the workforce or mineral income.”

The advances in technology have also made a difference on the way business is done on the farm.

Farmers and ranchers have gone from doing everything by hand and calculator to using computers to conduct business. Information on the Internet provided to people in agribusiness is also helpful. Because of this, farmers and ranchers often rely on ABM instructors to help set up computers and provide computer skills training.

“The ABM program will continually adapt to the needs of their clients for years and years to come,” Crawford said. “We (CareerTech) have always been on the cutting edge of training for our clients, whether it’s developing plans for an Ag-Link Deposit Loan or conducting the Borrower Training for the USDA Farm Service Agency or working with local high school FFA programs.