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Lawmakers hear testimony on Farm Business Management; Representative Nelson moves bill to increase challenge-grant funding

5107419 · February 17, 2025
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

Minnesota State Farm Business Management instructors and college leaders described the one-on-one farm education program and urged increased funding for Farm Business Management (FBM) challenge grants. Representative Nelson introduced House File 653 to add $750,000 per fiscal year to FBM challenge-grant funding; the committee laid the bill over.

Keith Olander, lead of the Northern Center of Excellence for Agriculture at Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, and Tina Labrune, director of the Southern Ag Center of Excellence and longtime FBM instructor, described Farm Business Management (FBM) as a seven-college, one-on-one farm education program used by beginning and established producers to analyze records, benchmark performance and plan for transition.

"All 65 faculty, all 3,000 students will be utilizing that software to produce FinBin," Olander told the committee, referring to the enterprise data set FBM uses for benchmarking. He said FBM students range in age from 18 to 84, with roughly 30% classified as…

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