Peter L Nuthall - Böcker

Farming is a complex job with many unique challenges, but can also be a rich and rewarding career that is full of opportunities. Following the author's Farm Business Management series, this new textbook takes the core principles and techniques and distils them into an accessible student resource. This book: covers the most important aspects of farm management, such as observation, decision making, budgeting, risk assessment and record keeping; is organized into easy-to-navigate sections such as the farmer's environment, financials, key skills and farm systems; and includes student-focused pedagogy throughout, comprising learning objectives, focus study exercises and review questions. Written by an expert with decades of teaching and research experience around the world, this book also incorporates two brand new chapters on farm accounting and computer systems and software. Providing a hands-on learning experience for students of agriculture, it will continue to be a much-used resource throughout their farming career. This book is enhanced with supplementary resources.

The underlying economic factors that affect primary production are frequently studied and written about - soil quality, animal health, climate, machinery - but this is the first book to explore the role of the decision psychology of the manager running the farm business, the person responsible for staff, strategic and operational decisions and the success or failure of financial and other objective outcomes. This second edition addresses fundamental questions such as the process of decision making, personal skills, and methods to improve managerial ability. It is an essential reference for farm managers and students in farm economics and management. Key Features: This is the first farm business management book published worldwide focused on human factors and decision making in primary production The second edition introduces two new chapters covering the key decision method, intuition and its enhancement, and the importance of human characteristics in a range of decision topics and areas

Taken together the three books of Farm Business Management cover most aspects of the study of farm management, leaving the reader with a practical set of skills and knowledge. Books in this three volume set: Farm Business Management: The Core Skills (9781845936679) Farm Business Management: The Human Factor, 2nd Edition (9781789240733) Farm Business Management: Analysis of Farming Systems (9781845938390)

Management research has shown successful farmers have quite distinct personal characteristics which most farmers have seldom thought about. Farmers who are less successful tend to have processes and systems which are likely to be biased. The aim of this book is to help all farmers discover more about these personal attributes that impinge on the success of their management, and to show how their attitudes and personal resources can be improved. This book is not a straightforward textbook. Rather, it tells the story of a group of farmers who take part in an expert-guided experiment designed to test approaches to improving management skill. The group meet at each other's farms to learn about their issues and develop solutions to improving what is called their 'management style' with the aim of removing any identified decision system biases. The book covers issues like optimal decision rule systems and how they can become second nature. Each chapter is devoted to one of the common issues defining management approaches. One chapter, for example, has the farmers sorting out issues around succession planning, another covers the vexed problem of farmer anxiety, and still another has the farmers learning skills on self-critiquing. Overall, there are fifteen chapters covering both general and specific issues. The book is designed for all farmers but is also a valuable resource for students of farm management and agribusiness. A strong learning feature of the book are the references to formal theories and explanations provided in addenda to each chapter. These cover and list the main teaching points highlighted in each farmer meeting giving details of where the detailed methods of solving each situation can be found. Exercises and case studies can also be accessed both on line and in other CABI books.

Farmers face ever-changing production systems, markets and regulations. This means they must constantly review their long-term plans to ensure continuing economic and environmental sustainability. The challenge for the future is for farmers to assess opportunities strategically as they appear and overcome the temptation of just meeting the demand of day-to-day tactical decision-making. This long-term view is the world of strategic planning. Farm owners and managers must constantly review the future and systematically assess likely future scenarios in order to make adjustments to suit prevailing needs. Any manager or owner thinking about purchasing a new farm business either to expand, or replace, an existing property must conduct similar assessments. This book addresses these issues and provides methods and procedures that enable the development and assessment of future strategies. This book explains how to be a "strategic farmer" in an unusual way. Rather like a novel, it tells the story of a newly reconstituted farming couple who are searching for a new property on which to carry out their primary production plans following their departure from a family farm which was being assigned to the next generation. In a previous book in this series (Farm Business Management: The Decisive Farmer), this same couple were involved in a team approach to improving decision-making. This book covers the couple's efforts to find a suitable property meeting all their strategic needs having analysed the expected future scenarios. In this process the couple interacts with many of their farmer friends and advisors who also featured as characters in the previous books. Each chapter is devoted to one of the common issues facing the modern farmer when trying to create a long-term strategic plan. To assess each issue, tried-and-tested strategic planning procedures are demonstrated with full explanations of their logic and methods. Each topic is fully referenced to provide further reading and discussion. Lecture guides, case studies and exercises are also provided online on the CABI Digital Library. This book is a valuable resource for all farmers and students of farm management and agribusiness.

This book is about managerial ability and how it might be assessed and improved, and it focuses on rural Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Traditionally, business studies have seldom covered the manager as a person and a decision maker in any great depth. Personnel management, production economics, financing, operations analysis techniques, etc. tend to be emphasized but the personal attributes of the decision makers have as much influence on success as the rules of good decision making. This book aims to correct this imbalance. The human characteristics of managers that define how a manager operates are explored, as are their impact on managerial ability. The details of the competencies a manager must possess are also presented and discussed as well as potential detracting biases. The book concludes with methods and techniques covering personal characteristic changes and associated managerial improvement. The concepts and conclusions of this book are all based on a body of research, excerpts of which are quoted in the text, drawn from the rich sources available in the international literature. Case studies describing successful managers and management advisors are used throughout. · First book which specifically focuses on human factors and decision making for SME managers. · Introduces new research specifically on the quantification of intuition, the primary decision making method used in SMEs. · Contains essential material required by researchers of decision making processes, business studies teachers, and extension workers from the world of SME business.

Based on research carried out within the farming community and academic studies, this book assesses and explains the core skills needed to become a successful farm manager. Observation, anticipation of plan outcomes, and risk management are identified as key requirements, and each of these categories is broken down into isolated skills such as problem definition and visual observation, which are in turn dissected and analysed. Practical methods for acquiring or improving each skill are covered in detail, with practice exercises to engage the reader in active participation. This book is an essential resource for farm managers and students.