David Sullivan, a farm business consultant of more than twenty years and now with Global Ag Risk Solutions, joins Dan to take apart a set of farm financial statements and rebuild them into something an operator can make a decision with. He walks through the five-bucket framework two advisors taught him at his family's kitchen table in 1999, defines the terms the industry uses without ever explaining them, and shows why the statements an accountant prepares are built for compliance rather than management. The tension is that a farm's net worth can climb for a decade on land appreciation while the operation itself returns almost nothing, and most producers have no structure that would tell those two apart. Producers walk away with a framework they can apply to their own statements, a spreadsheet built to hold ten years of it, and sharper questions for their banker and accountant.
Most producers pay an accountant every year, file the statements, and use them for the bank. David Sullivan's position is that this wastes information the farm has already bought. A consultant for over twenty years and now with Global Ag Risk Solutions, he joins Dan to take a set of farm financials apart and rebuild them into something you can make a decision with, using the five-bucket framework two advisors taught him at his own family's kitchen table in 1999.
What's Inside
Resources Mentioned:
Global Ag Risk Solutions
The five-bucket worksheet, shared free
Connect with David Sullivan:
Global Ag Risk Solutions
LinkedIn: David Sullivan
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