Dairy Management Fellowship

Topics

• Students will be able to integrate classroom discussions with actual farm data to construct action plans for individual farm businesses to improve productivity and profitability.
• Students will appraise real-life business and management decisions through interactions with dairy farm families and employees and actual financial data pertaining to the business.
• Cultivate the capacity to teach others how to evaluate dairy farm businesses and generate a logical plan to manage misinformation about animals and other management in a dairy and in animal agriculture.
• Develop technical and business management skills through presentations about farm business management and economic decision-making on dairy farms and develop plans for prioritization.
• Students will develop extemporaneous verbal communication skills.
• Conduct comprehensive dairy farm business evaluations that includes financial, human resource, herd level and CAFO level decision making and provide real-time feedback to the owner and manager and integrate sustainability and generational transfer as components of the process.
• Recognize how and develop the skill to transfer business equity among generations and how to do the same thing with non-family partners while maintaining the viability of the business. This includes the use of insurance and other risk management tools available.
• Recognize potential risks to the business (financial, environmental, market, human and animal welfare) how to use current tools to mitigate or minimize risk and develop the appropriate approach to ensure profitability and sustainability of the business.
• Properly identify actual and perceived risks by consumers and non-producers and further to effectively communicate a response to such inquiries and to take appropriate action when needed.
• Identify how and why conflict arises in family business and develop appropriate strategies for overcoming the conflict to minimize the effect of conflict on family and business function and dynamics.

Official roster learning outcomes