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Unit 1: Planning and Business Development

Step 4. Develop and Implement a Business Plan

After the farmer or rancher has confirmed the feasibility of their business idea and made the decision to move forward with the new enterprise or implement a new whole farm strategy, it’s important to develop some type of business plan. What is a business plan? Simply put, a business plan is a tool that business owners use to communicate their marketing, operations, human resource and financial plans for moving the farm business from its current situation toward a future vision. A business plan can be used to: 1) show that ideas – conventional or not – are viable and thereby attract investors, obtain financing and provide the confidence to move forward with an idea; and 2) monitor progress toward goals and ideas once the plan has been implemented.

There is no single recipe for writing a business plan. They come in all shapes and sizes and may be organized differently depending how it will be used. For instance, a business plan prepared for a lender in order to secure financing for a new hoop barn will look very different from a business plan that has been developed for internal use by other family members and the farm team to help monitor progress toward long-term goals. These two types of plans would contain vastly different information and be organized in different ways.