While more than half of the seafood in the world is sourced from aquaculture, the U.S. is experiencing slowing or declining growth in its aquaculture sector in recent years. Contributing to this decline are economic and market conditions such as competition from cheaper imports, rising input costs, a complex regulatory environment, and a lack of information on investment, market risk, and profitability.
To help tackle some of these challenges, we developed three customizable, interactive business plan models for pond, raceway, and oyster production to allow producers to understand their current or future financial health, profitability, risk, and costs on their farms. These models ask producers to enter their farm information, production characteristics, gross receipts, input costs, and investments for capital goods and equipment allowing for each model to consider the unique characteristics of an individual farm. Then, the model walks the user through each output which includes an enterprise budget, sensitivity analysis, income statement, balance sheet, financial indicators, loan repayment schedules, and amortization schedules. Farmers can then save and print their outputs to have a record of the information that they entered.
The links to these models will be hosted online to allow them to be accessed by a broad audience. Additionally, these models will be featured at in-person training workshops held around the country as a part of an effort to increase financial literacy and enhance economic decision-making for U.S. aquaculture farmers.