A big thank you is extended to many of you for responding to the Ohio Ag Manager electronic newsletter reader survey this past month. We were very pleased that 26% of our subscribers were able to provide feed back via this survey. The feedback received from this survey will help our team continue to address the farm management needs of our subscribers.
Results indicated that 100% of respondents believe the newsletter to be important to their agricultural business, 91% indicated the newsletter should continue to be published monthly, 94% believe the newsletter articles are well balanced between technical and practical, and 96% believe the newsletter contains the right amount of articles each month. Respondents to the survey were farmers (33%), educators (25%), lenders (13%), consultants (9%), ag supplier (3%), landlord (3%), and other (14%).
When asked the question, “Because of the information provided in this newsletter, I….” fifty-eight persons offered their perceptions. Some of these included: make better farm decisions, do a better job with my crop enterprise budgets, can find other educational programs, am a more confident and decisive decision maker, use the information with my bank clients, and have learned important practical things that are current and useful in running a family farm.
69% of farmers indicated that the Ohio Ag Manager Newsletter has saved their farm or business money or increased profit. The average savings per respondent was $2,406 for 2007. The consultants responding to the survey estimated their clients saved $1,500 each. 34% of the subscribers forward the newsletter to an additional 2,177 persons via email or an average of 55 individuals per subscriber. One subscriber indicated by cross posting articles on their web site, selected articles could be viewed by an additional 70,000 readers.
Subscribers were asked to choose the type of articles they like to read in the Ohio Ag Manager Newsletter. The top three preferences were farm business planning, financial management and management strategies. The total ranking of preferences can be viewed in the following table.
Preferred Articles of Ohio Ag Manager |
Readers Indicating these Articles as Preferred |
Farm Business Planning | 83% |
Financial Management | 75% |
Management Strategies | 67% |
New Technology | 66% |
Marketing | 63% |
Enterprise Budgeting | 62% |
Tax Management | 60% |
Estate Planning | 53% |
Information on OSU Extension Educational Workshops | 52% |
Information on OSU Extension Educational Resources | 47% |
Retirement Planning | 40% |
Transition Planning | 39% |
Investment Planning | 36% |
Employee Management | 33% |
Respondents were also asked to cite additional benefits they receive from reading the Ohio Ag Manager Newsletter. Respondents indicated the following benefits
Benefits of Subscribing to the Ohio Ag Manager |
Readers Indicating this benefit |
Make Better Informed Decisions | 82% |
Learned about Extension workshops | 47% |
Improved Budgeting | 35% |
Cut Cost | 29% |
Time Savings | 29% |
Improved Marketing | 28% |
Saved Tax Dollars | 22% |
Improved Employee Management Skills | 20% |
When asked to choose one additional farm management service that the Ohio Ag Manager Team could offer to clientele, the respondents ranked the following services: #1: additional OSU Extension farm management fact sheets (59%); #2: regional farm management workshops (21%), #3: podcasts (12%); #4: blogs (7%) and #5: highlight relevant research results of Ohio agriculture (1%).
To close the survey, respondents were asked to make additional comments about the newsletter. Some of the comments included: If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it, very helpful, this is a valuable extension tool, and keep the good information flowing. The Ohio Ag anager Team would like to thank Dr. Tom Archer for assisting with this survey and would like to thank each of you for responding to this survey. We will continue to work hard to bring you timely and pertinent farm management information.