Dairy Farm Business Summary and Analysis Program

Annual financial analysis supports business planning and benchmarking

For more than 60 years, the Dairy Farm Business Summary and Analysis (DFBS) program has offered dairies a powerful tool for financial analysis and benchmarking. Dairy managers work with Cornell Cooperative Extension and PRO-DAIRY farm business management educators to organize their financial and production data and enter the data annually into the web-based DFBS program. Participating farms receive an 18-page report that includes annual financial statements and detailed analyses of their dairy enterprise, crop program, capital and labor efficiency, and profitability. Participating farms can compare their business to the average performance of other farms to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement. Records submitted by participating farms provide the basis for applied research, extension education, and classroom teaching, benefiting the broader New York dairy industry. Participation is free for New York farms, and individual farm data are kept strictly confidential.

Benefits of DFBS Participation

Completing the DFBS helps dairy managers build financial literacy skills, improve recordkeeping systems, and access information for better decision-making. Specifically, the DFBS empowers participating farms to:

Analyze finances with annual consolidated statements
Identify strengths and opportunities for improvement
Benchmark performance against other participating farms
Set financial and production goals
Make sound financial decisions
Track changes in the business over time

The New York dairy industry benefits from extension publications and articles that use DFBS data to track industry performance, generate financial and production benchmarks and provide insight to management decisions impacting performance. These publications provide value to dairy operators, extension educators, agricultural service providers, and other dairy industry stakeholders.

30 years of variability

DFBS Farms, NYS, 1993 - 2022*

* 2022 preliminary results as of 3/28/23
*Increase in government receipts in 2020 due to pandemic response excluded from total cost to produce milk calculations for 2020

Prepared by: Jason Karszes,
PRO-DAIRY, Department of Animal Science, Cornell University

DFBS use

In 2022 more than 150 dairies representing over 168,000 cows completed the DFBS.

Impact

Participating farms range in herd size from fewer than 100 cows to more than 4,000 cows.
21 dairies have completed the DFBS for at least 30 continuous years.
97 percent of participating farms report making changes over time as a direct result of the DFBS.

How it works

Most participating farms complete the DFBS annually during January, February, and March, before the spring crop season begins. Dairy managers can complete the DFBS at other times of the year, but they often see greater benefits from completing the process in the first quarter.

Begin using DFBS

Dairy managers gather financial, milk production, herd, and crop data from farm information systems, and work with local and regional farm business management educators to enter the data into the online DFBS platform. New farms often make changes to their record keeping systems to streamline data collection and make the process easier.

To learn more or get started, please reach out to your local Cornell Cooperative Extension Farm Business Management Educator or the PRO-DAIRY Farm Business Management team.

e-mail the PRO-DAIRY team at DFBS [at] cornell.edu

For More Information

Jason Karszes

Farm Business Management Specialist

PRO-DAIRY

Jason Karszes

(607) 255-3809
jk57 [at] cornell.edu

Mary Kate MacKenzie

Farm Business Management Specialist

PRO-DAIRY

Mary Kate MacKenzie

mkw87 [at] cornell.edu

Support for the DFBS comes from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University through the PRO-DAIRY program in the Department of Animal Science, the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and the Cornell Cooperative Extension County Associations.