The Carrington Farm Business Management Program is a collaborative effort by the Carrington Public Schools and the North Dakota Career and Technical Education Department that is housed at the Carrington Research Extension Center. 

The program is one of 15 through the state and consists of two instructors working with roughly 85 clients operating farming and ranching enterprises in central North Dakota.  The farm management program is designed to help farmers and ranchers set and formulate goals for their operations, increase their general knowledge of items involved with management, and to do an analysis of the farm or ranch each year to measure their progress towards their goals as well as improve the ability to make management decisions based on benchmarks measured in the analysis.

Below you will find some of the highlights from the 2013 analysis of 74 farms enrolled in the Carrington program: 

• Farms enrolled in the program were made up of an average of 2,650 crop and hayland acres plus 467 acres of pasture.

• The average net farm income was $216,633 and the median net farm income was $128,931.

• The average farm borrowed $1,106,898 while making principal payments of $1,013,272.

• The average farm spent $0.71 for every $1 of income generated while the high profit farms spent $0.65 and the low profit farms spent $1 to generate $1 of income. 

• Pinto beans led the way for crops with a net return on rented land of $337.58/acre, including government payments.  They were followed by barley at $203.44/acre, soybeans at $128.14/acre, prevent plant at $64.59/acre, spring wheat at $54.20/acre, and corn at -$47.12/acre.

• Cattle recorded an average net return per cow of $236.61.

• The following pie charts show where all of the cash inflows and outflows came from in 2013.  $1,243,433 was the average cash from income while $804,083 was the average cash expenses.

Expenses 

Income

You can find more detailed publications and information at www.ndfarmmanagement.com.  You may also contact Steve Metzger or Jory Hansen for further discussion or if you are interested in enrolling your farm or ranch.

Jory Hansen
Farm Business Management Instructor