Marie Guay, Senior Loan Officer from Chazy, and Mike Farmer, Vice President from St. Albans, worked with 8 UVM students who are spending a semester at Miner Institute including the 2+2 Dairy students to prepare them for the Northeast Dairy Challenge. Students included Michael Fitzgerald, Leanna Scholten, Claire Stanley, Henry Pearl, Virginia Purrier, Megan Foy, Brittany Sweeney and Spencer Bates. Marie and Mike met with them on February 16th and March 3rd.The students worked on a case study involving a dairy operation owned by two generations of a fictional family. Their assignment was to evaluate 3 years of balance sheet, profit & loss statement, and farm production data to give the family a better understanding of their own business. They presented a SWOT analysis pointing out the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats to the family business, and a suggested course of action. The family has several issues that must be dealt with. The students worked in two teams and presented a PowerPoint summarizing the SWOT analysis and the goals.
The financial tools used required the students to convert a cash profit & loss statement to accrual, and to analyze the business using a gross and net margin concept where they split expenses into variable and fixed costs.
This is the fifth year that Mike and Marie have done this to teach students dairy farm management related to evaluating farm profitability and asset utilization. See this older post for last year's program.
