Using the ‘now, where and how’ process can help create simple and effective strategic plans for your grain-growing business. Strategic planning focuses on establishing goals and actions to ensure farming businesses develop and prosper.

Key points

• A business plan should outline where you are now, where you want to go and how are going to get there.
• Business planning provides a process for putting your vision for the business into writing and action.
• A SWOT analysis is a great tool for analysing your business and determining goals and actions.
• Your business plan will be effective and useful if you document the action required to achieve your goal and overall vision.

Growers generally have a vision of where they want to take their farm business. This vision is often in their head and is not necessarily shared with or verbalised with family members or other business partners. Investing time in business planning can return efficiencies, harness energy and align resources to achieve business and personal goals.

To thrive in today’s farming environment a business planning process can provide an edge.

Five reasons you need a business plan:

1. To get plans out of your head, down on paper and shared with others in your business.
2. To learn more about why you do what you do and determine what you want to achieve.
3. To unearth unexpected opportunities and anticipate problems.
4. As a key resource to monitor progress and brief banks and other external advisers.
5. To be proactive rather than reactive.

We also need a clear point of view about where we are going - a vision about where we want to be tomorrow and about which direction to take today in order to get there successfully. Otherwise we may find ourselves driving aimlessly into the future - missing opportunities and stumbling into crisies - while others are racing ahead and take charge of their destinies.

- Charles Handy