Use Of The Balanced Scorecard As A New Advisory Approach In The Implementation Of Strategic Planning To Farm Managers

The Danish Agricultural Advisory Service and the Danish Research Institute of Food Economics have during the last two decades been involved in the development of strategic planning to farm managers. Our latest result of these efforts has recently been published in the article “Development of Strategic Consultancy to Farm Managers: Experiences From an Action Research Approach” (Lund & Larsen, 2003). In 2002 a new Danish interdisciplinary project has been initiated with the purpose to improve the production efficiency, market competitiveness and income generation of Danish diary farmers. Like in most other OECD countries dairy farmers in Denmark are required to become more economic efficient in the future as a consequence of increasing production costs, declining milk prices, decupling and decreasing EU support, enlargement of EU with new member countries from east and south Europe and new rounds of WTO negotiations, which most likely will further increase the competition on the world markets for dairy products. The need for economic improvements is reinforced by the fact that Danish milk producers in average are generating the same farm income as ten years ago, whereas the average herd size has increased to about 80 cows (75 per cent) during the same period. Continues .........