A program operating within the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that assists farmers with financial management and decision-making welcomes a new CEO this August, while also celebrating a monumental milestone in their history.

Illinois Farm Business Farm Management is a cooperative educational service program that began as a University of Illinois Extension project in the 1920s. It is now fully supported by fees from farmer members. Today, FBFM cooperates within the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, and Illinois Extension, providing members with resources and services related to financial and production business reporting and analysis, counseling on decisions, and income tax preparation and management.

The program welcomes Scott Newport as the new CEO this August. With 35 years of experience serving cooperators, most recently as FBFM regional vice president, Newport brings a strong foundation to the role.

“I’m honored to be given the opportunity to lead such a great organization,” Newport said in a recent press release from FBFM. “I look forward to working with a very talented staff to build on our strong foundation driving continued success and innovation to benefit members of FBFM.”

Newport’s transition into the role comes after previous CEO Bob Rhea’s retirement. During Rhea’s 40-year career at FBFM — the past five spent as CEO — he provided invaluable leadership and dedication to the program and its members.

This leadership change comes at a milestone time for the program. This year marks the organization’s start 100 years ago when the first local FBFM association, the Pioneer FBFM Association, was founded in 1924. From there, a total of nine local not-for-profit associations were formed around the state. In 1949, a state level Illinois FBFM Association was established, and in 2018 they merged into one organization. 

“FBFM has been involved with many management and policy innovations over the years,” said Gary Schnitkey, professor and Soybean Industry Chair in Agricultural Strategy in ACE, who has a long-standing relationship with FBFM. “They pioneered the process of benchmarking in which farmers can compare themselves to their peers, adopted a new set of financial statements that are the standard for financial analysis of farm businesses, and generated the data used to design crop insurance and agricultural policy options. Financial results not only inform farms, lenders, and agribusiness professionals, but ranking policy makers in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. FBFM continues to lead and is truly a data analytics firm of the 21^st century.”

Over the past 100 years, field staff have provided services to over 5,000+ cooperating farmer members across the state. FBFM also partners with university faculty and students in providing information to stakeholders across Illinois through Extension and applied research efforts. With offices in the National Soybean Research Center on campus, FBFM staff collaborate closely with faculty, staff, and students in ACE. FBFM holds the most robust farm financial dataset in the United States and utilizes the information in a wide array of outreach efforts to producers, the public, educators, and researchers.

“Much of the farm management work that comes from the farmdoc team benefits from our relationship with FBFM,” said Nick Paulson, professor in ACE and director of the farmdoc project. “The University of Illinois crop budgets and historical cost of production information are highly informed and guided by the data FBFM collects from actual farmers across the state. The way FBFM collects, analyzes, and reports cost and return information for their members really serves as the gold standard approach to improving farm management decisions in the U.S.”

The essential contributions of FBFM to farmers' success reflect the dedication of ACES and Illinois Extension to supporting families, businesses, and communities throughout Illinois.

“We are grateful for the ways ACE and FBFM collaborate,” said ACE department head and professor Sarah Low. “FBFM is an extremely successful Extension program, becoming financially self-supporting. I look forward to working with Scott, and my sincerest thanks and congratulations to Bob.”

To learn more about Illinois FBFM and what they do, visit www.fbfm.org.