Farmers will get some free tips on business planning in webinars starting this week.

FREE farm business planning webinars will be presented by Agriculture Victoria and Meridian Agriculture from this week.

To help farm business owners understand what best practice looks like, Agriculture Victoria is presenting four webinars: Planning, Budgeting, Managing Profits and Succession Planning.

The Planning, Budgeting and Managing Profits webinars will be presented by Meridian Agriculture farm business consultant Paul Blackshaw, The Succession Planning webinar will be presented by lawyer Claire Booth, a Nuffield Scholar and cropping and beef farmer.

Mr Blackshaw said the webinars will help with the short and long-term running of a farm business.

“The more you understand your business and where it is heading in the longer term, the more you can make informed decisions.

“Planning and Budgeting gives you the roadmap for financial performance and allows you to identify deficits or opportunities and make adjustments along the way,” he said.

“As for Managing Profits, a lot of businesses are generating profits they haven’t been used to in the past. Here is an opportunity and they need to know how to best use these profits to benefit the business in the long-term.”

The free, one-hour Farm Business Essentials webinars will be held at 7.30pm on:

Wednesday 27 October: Planning: How to develop, document and use strategic, tactical, and operational business plans.

Wednesday 10 November: Budgeting: How to create a budget, review it regularly, and use it as a communication tool.

Wednesday 24 November: Managing Profits: How to make the best of high prices and good conditions and ensure business profits are put to best use.

Wednesday 8 December: Succession Planning: How a succession plan helps a farming business manage succession challenges.

Register for any of these online events by 5pm on the afternoon of the webinar. To register, visit agriculture.vic.gov.au/events

The events are provided by the Local Economic Recovery “On Farm Recovery Support Services” project which is jointly funded by the Victorian Government and Commonwealth Government under the Commonwealth-State Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements.