The environmental benefits of Management Intensive Rotational Grazing (MIRG) are well known. Farms under MIRG management experience less soil erosion and nutrient loss than row crops or continuous grazing management. However, there is a stigma that grazing is less economical than cropping. In this workshop, we will show how you can demonstrate that grazing can pay by using enterprise budgets. We will use Excel spreadsheets to compare the economics of several grazing enterprises with raising row crops and conventional beef. This training will focus heavily on grass-fed beef production, as well as grazing dairy heifers. We will also touch on how this enterprise budget approach can be used to sell other conservation management systems, particularly no-till. Participants will be introduced to a variety of pre-made enterprise budgets that will be useful to farmer and conservationist alike.

An enterprise budget focuses on a particular enterprise on the farm (cow/calf, vegetables, finished steers, honey production, dairy, chickens, etc.). It’s not a whole farm financial analysis which takes into account debt ratios, retirement, health insurance, sending children off to secondary education, taking care of aging parents, etc. You may have one or ten different enterprise budgets on a farm that looks at the profitability of each enterprise but you would only have ONE whole farm financial analysis (budget).

3 CEUs will be offered each day.

If you do not receive a confirmation email upon submission of your registration or if have any questions, please email Penny at Penny@wisconsinlandwater.org

Info here.