Evaluate the financial implications of adopting more regenerative practices with the attitude of a scientist.

The ideals of increased soil health, lower input costs, higher grazing capacity, more wildlife on the land and healthier livestock in your herd make regenerative ranching an attractive proposition.
“Those are the headlines that get our attention; that’s what we all want for our ranches,” Noble Research Institute’s Dan Childs says. “But the key question is, how do we get there without mortgaging the farm?”
Childs is an ag economist and senior regenerative ranching advisor at Noble. He’s spent more than four and a half decades working with ranchers on financial and business planning while owning and operating his own ranch business.
“The best approach I’ve found is, you’ve got to do just a little bit at a time,” Childs says, beginning with a good look at your financials.
Start with a true picture of your financial health
There’s a good reason your banker requires a profit-and-loss statement and balance sheet before offering a line of credit, Childs says. Unfortunately, too many ranchers record those numbers solely to satisfy loan requirements and then leave the documents in their banker’s file cabinet. But those who take the power of their P&L and balance sheet into their own hands place themselves in a strong position to make clear decisions at the start of their regenerative journey.
“Those statements should be the beginning of evaluating the financial implications of adopting more regenerative practices,” Childs says. “We want to ask ourselves, what’s our net farm income before we start down this journey, and do we have a record-keeping system in place that will support an enterprise analysis?”
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