Farm Business Management and Benchmarking Competitive Grants Program (FBMB)

The Farm Business Management and Benchmarking (FBMB) Competitive Grants Program provides funds for improving the farm management knowledge and skills of agricultural producers by maintaining and expanding a national, publicly available farm financial management database to support improved farm management. The program aims to support intellectual talent and collaborative efforts to maintain the national, publicly available farm financial management database needed to meet the challenges facing the nation’s agriculture and food systems. The program has the following objectives: * Maintain and expand the already established national, publicly available farm financial management database to support improved farm management knowledge and skills for producers of a variety of crops and livestock throughout multiple regions of the United States. * Establish or expand collaborative farm management educational programs and association partnerships that will contribute data to the existing national farm financial management and benchmarking database to improve the farm management knowledge and skills of agricultural producers. Some key features of the program include: * Advancing data gathering and conducting research on cost of production, farm profitability factors, and farm policy * Developing or expanding cooperation and data sharing among existing farm management associations and business management education programs across the nation to convert their financial analysis activities to a uniform system * Providing training, assistance, and software to states with farm management associations to facilitate uniform financial procedures and software * Improving the profitability and competitiveness of small and medium-sized farms and ranches by providing access to high-quality, uniform farm business management benchmarking information * Improving producers’ abilities to successfully manage their agricultural operations through periods of high risk, volatility, and financial stress Eligible applicants include state agricultural experiment stations, colleges and universities, university research foundations, other research institutions and organizations, federal agencies, national laboratories, private organizations or corporations, individuals, or any group consisting of two or more of these entities.