The primary components of a business plan and how a business plan can be used as a road map to make decisions for the entire ranching operation will be discussed. In addition, we will demonstrate that rangeland monitoring data is an important component of the entire business planning process. A resource inventory is also an important component of the business plan and will assist the rancher anticipate any problems that may exist and identify opportunities for better utilizing current resources. Completing a natural resource assessment will help identify the land manager's awareness of the role of natural resources in the current ranching operation and monitoring will provide further data useful in making sound business decisions. Many ranchers have already incorporated rangeland and resource monitoring into their ranching operations. This session will further explain how these planning tools can be incorporated into the ranch business plan and why there is a need to do so.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.