AE 420 - Advanced Farm & Ag Business Management

3 Credits

This course prepares students for strategic and managerial decision making by investigating economic models and exploring how the Canadian agriculture economy functions. Working with frameworks that integrate previous course work in finance, marketing, human resources and operations management, student analyze complex business problems and provide recommendations for improvement.

Rationale:

This is a required course for students in the Bachelor of Agriculture Technology degree program.  The goal is to provide students with frameworks to analyze the elements of strategic farm management through the development and assessment of a various strategic management tools such as dashboards and scorecards. 

Students complete a comprehensive strategic analysis including financial and non-financial indicators as well as lag and lead indicators. This includes advanced risk management, investment decision making, financial review,  strategic marketing, strategic human resource management and internal process assessment. 

Prerequisites: AE 230  
Corequisites: None

Course Learning Outcomes:
Upon successful completion so this course, students will be able to:

1. examine the components of a strategic plan and transfer these understandings to new contexts within agribusiness.
2. assess the interactions between finance, marketing, operations and human resources and relate the impact of these interactions to the success of a farm enterprise.
3. Finance: evaluate financial performance and generate recommendations to improve results
4. Marketing: assess market and customer needs considering current global and domestic market trends
5. Operations: discuss the internal processes necessary to identify emerging strategic opportunities
6. Human Resources: describe how to effectively manage personnel policies, practices and resources as well as identify relevant regulations and legislation. 
7. discuss and synthesize how to think strategically about business decisions.
8. critique the tools used to acquire targeted data enabling informed analysis and problem solving within the business model.
9. explain the key concepts of advanced risk management before comparing and contrasting tools to manage those risks.

Partial textbook: Barry, P., & Ellinger, P.; (2012). Financial Management in Agriculture

(7th ed.).  Chapter Nine. Pearson Education Inc.

Canadian Agriculture Human Resource Council (CAHRC), HR Toolkit, Online Resource.

Various online article and publications as directed by instructor.

Optional Resource Materials:
None

Conduct of Course:

This course consists of 42 hours of lecture. Classroom instructor includes lectures and videos.  Lecture, discussion, illustration, assignments, group work and testing are used in the delivery of this course.

Classroom and laboratory attendance is considered vital to the learning process and as significant to the students’ evaluation as examinations and reports.

1. Students having a combination of excused and/or unexcused absence of 20 percent or higher for the scheduled course hours are required to withdraw and automatically receive a “RW” (required withdrawal) for the course, regardless of any other evaluation results. (RW is a failing grade).
2. An excused absence is one that is verified with your instructor. Verification should be prior to the absence or the next class day following the absence. Verification of the absence may take the form of a note from your doctor/College nurse regarding illness, or a note from another instructor regarding a field trip or other activity, or authorization by your instructor. An unexcused absence is anything NOT verified by the instructor prior to the absence or the next class day following the absence.

It is the students’ responsibility to know their own absentee record.

Normal hours are 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., with potential for evening courses, exams or extended field trips. Students are expected to be available for classes during these times.

Content of Course:
 

1. Introduction & Assessment of what “Strategic” means.       
2. Risk Management in Agriculture                              
3. Introduction to the Balanced Scorecard: a strategic management tool.
   1. Perspective One: Learning & Growth = Strategic human resource management
   2. Perspective Two: Financial = Strategic financial management and investment analysis
   3. Perspective Three: Customer = Strategic marketing assessment and plan
   4. Perspective Four: Internal Processes = Operational assessment to identify strategic   opportunities.
4. Building a Strategic Plan & Strategy Map for a farm enterprise.