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| Inadequate planning is not as obvious but potentially more disastrous, according to Bill Fox, a proponent of long-term strategic planning for farmers and ranchers. |
| "Just look at the statistics." he says. "More than 70,000 American farms and ranches are technically insolvent. Another 73,000 have debts equaling 70 to 100 percent of their assets. A further 222,000 have debts equaling 40-70 percent of their assets. The need for long-term strategic planning is the farm and ranch crises you don't hear about." |
| "Strategic planning has been used successfully in the corporate business community for many years." he says. "But has yet to be widely adopted by the agricultural community. The terms strategic planning and total resource management may be intimidating at first, but they simply mean selecting enterprise mixes that satisfy long-term goals and maintain sustainable natural resources." |
| To make the concepts come alive, the workshops center around the simulated 2000 acre Coleman River Property containing all the problems of real life including debt, drought and an uncertain future. It gives workshop participants a scenario for collaborative problem solving combining expertise from their individual backgrounds. Participants are assigned to work with partners outside their disciplines in order to stimulate systems thinking. |
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