 |  Farm Management, 6/e Ronald Kay,
Texas A & M University
William Edwards,
Iowa State University
Patricia Duffy,
Auburn Universiy
Key Features Chapter 1 on "Farm Management in the 21st Century" responds to changes coming in the farm business that, "will require a new type of manager..able to absorb, organize, and use large amounts of information, particularly that related to new technologies." This gets students thinking about farm management practices in a way that will allow them to compete in the future.
"Chapter Objectives", "Chapter Summaries", as well as "Questions for review" are helpful learning tools for students.
Terminology and Guidelines in Part 2, (the accounting section), are based on standards maintained by the Farm Financial Standards Council.
More emphasis on Strategic Planning in chapter 1
As with the previous edition, this book is divided into five parts. Part One begins with the chapter "Farm Management in the Twenty-first Century". It describes some of the forces and technology, which are driving the changes we see in agriculture. We hope that by reading this chapter students will find both an incentive to study farm management and an appreciation for the management skills modern farm managers must have or acquire. Part One concludes with an explanation of the concept of management and the decision-making process with an increased emphasis on the importance of strategic decision-making.
Part Two presents the basic information needed to measure management performance, financial progress, and the financial condition of the farm business. It discusses how to collect and organize accounting data and how to construct and analyze balance sheets and income statements. In response to several suggestions, income tax depreciation (MACRS) has been added to the chapter on depreciation methods and asset valuation.
As in the fifth edition, Part Three contains three chapters on basic microeconomic principles and four on budgeting and planning tools. The topics in this part provide the basic tools needed to make good management decisions. Students will learn how and when economic principles can be used in management decision-making along with the importance of the different types of economic costs. The discussion of economies of size has been revised and expanded. Practical use of budgeting is emphasized in the chapters on enterprise, partial, whole farm, and cash flow budgets. An expanded discussion on using sensitivity analysis with partial budgets has been added and linear programming is covered in more detail than in previous editions.
Topics necessary to increase a manager's decision-making skills are included in Part Four. Farm business organization, analyzing investments, managing risk, income tax management, and whole farm business analysis are discussed. The chapter on income tax management has been updated with the latest changes available. Data from an actual farm is now used to demonstrate the analysis process in the chapter on whole farm business analysis. The chapter on investment analysis includes a new discussion of the concepts of annual equivalent and capital recovery values.
Part Five discusses the management alternatives and decisions related to acquiring the resources needed on farms and ranches. This part includes chapters on capital and credit, land, human resources, and machinery. The human resource chapter includes new sections on improving managerial capacity and bridging the cultural barriers that may be encountered in managing agricultural labor.
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2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education