Farm Record Keeping: The Numbers That Help Small Producers Learn

Record the date, input, quantity, cost and reason for each important production decision. For livestock, add stock count, feed, health events and mortality. For crops, add planting dates, treatments, labour, harvest quantities and losses.nnThe goal is not paperwork for its own sake. Records help you compare expected and actual output, calculate cost per unit, identify periods of unusual loss and remember what changed between cycles.nnKeep the system simple enough to maintain. A clean notebook or spreadsheet used consistently is more valuable than a complex tool abandoned after one week.