A community support record is a table of what the farm gave the community in twelve months, one row per item. Under it sit three lines saying who may say yes to the next request, and up to what limit. The farmer writes it from papers the farm already keeps. In this article’s example, a cattle and wheat farm in the Central West of New South Wales gave away A$ 2,918 in one March, in invented Australian dollars. Of that, A$ 1,018 went out as machine hours, diesel and paid time, logged only as ordinary work. This week, list the last twelve months from the livestock database, the machine logs and the fuel sheet, then write the three lines.
What counts as something that left the farm?
Machine hours, diesel and an employee’s paid time count, along with animals, produce and cash. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published sustainability guidelines for food and farm businesses in 2014. They define investing in a community as using “time, human resources, funds” to meet a need of that community. Time and people sit on that list beside money.
On the example farm, four requests left the gate in March. On 3 March the grader, a machine that levels dirt roads, spent four hours on the unsealed road the school bus uses. On 12 March a steer went to the school’s fundraising barbecue. On 19 March the farm poured 200 liters of diesel into the local rural fire brigade’s tanker. On 26 March the loader operator was away four hours, on pay, at a grass fire next door. Whoever picked up the phone decided each one, and no one wrote down who. Each left its mark on a different paper: the hour meter log (the machine’s running-hours counter), the NLIS database, the fuel sheet and the work schedule.
Letting the loader operator go spends four paid hours the way lending a trailer spends the trailer. The question is the same for both: who on the farm may say yes, and for how long. The FAO guidelines also list, among the signs that an investment works, “records of multiple positive socio-economic and environmental impacts”. For a farm, the word that matters is records: dated entries, not a good name.
Where do I find last year’s entries?
In three places: the papers someone outside the farm required, the farm’s own machine logs, and the memory of the people who answer the gate. The table lists the five columns and where each one comes from.
| Column | What goes in it | Where to find last year’s entries |
|---|---|---|
| Date | The day the thing physically left, not the day it was promised | The livestock movement records, the fuel sheet, the work schedule, the message that carried the request |
| What went out | Item, quantity and unit: one steer, four hours of grader work, 200 liters of diesel, four paid hours | The hour meter log, the fuel sheet, the work schedule, whoever drove or went |
| Who received it | A name, not a category: the school, the fire brigade, the neighbor by name | The person on the farm who took the request |
| Who said yes | The name of whoever on this farm agreed | Nowhere yet, and this column exists to fix that |
| Value | Quantity times the price or cost the farm already records | The farm’s price sheet, cost sheet and payroll |
Animals leave the best trail. Integrity Systems, which runs Australia’s national livestock identification system (NLIS), states that “Each time livestock are moved off a PIC, a livestock movement must be recorded on the NLIS Database”. A PIC is a property identification code, one for each property. The receiving property records the move, so the sender checks the database, and the same page calls checking all movement records to and from your PIC good practice.
Hours and liters sit in the hour meter log, the fuel sheet and the work schedule. Those papers show how many, not where they went. Only the person who took the request knows, which is why fuel that left without a note turns up later as a gap nobody explains, as an article on fuel bought against hours worked describes.
Memory comes up short. In a 2016 study in Tanzania, Arthi and three fellow economists compared farm labor that households reported once, at the end of the season, with labor reported every week. The households that recalled it once listed fewer working members and fewer plots, and up to four times as many hours per person and plot. The study covered family field work, not what leaves a gate. The lesson carries over: rebuild the year with the two or three people who answer the gate and the phone, not alone at a desk.
Part of the year may already be on paper with whoever collected. In a 2022 study of a gleaning program around Kansas City, which collects farmers’ surplus produce for food rescue groups, the farmers who took part agreed that the program’s staff reported their donations accurately. Ask any organization that collected from your farm for its own count.
What value goes in each row?
The price the farm already records, and no other. A price invented for the occasion looks like a figure and is really an opinion. For what the farm sells, such as the steer, take the price from a price record with a source. For what it buys, such as diesel, take the cost sheet. For an employee’s hour, take the wage the farm already pays. Where a value cannot be rebuilt, keep the item and the quantity, leave the money cell empty, and write the date and the reason beside it.
With a twelve-month total in hand, you set the next request against what already went out. Without it, you say yes until it hurts and then say no to the next caller, for reasons that have nothing to do with that caller.
Who may say yes, and up to what limit?
A position, not a person, and a second position for when the first is away. A rule that two people apply differently is two rules, and the crew usually notices before the office does. Write the position as it appears on the farm’s org chart, the drawing of who reports to whom. Then write the backup who answers when the first is in town, because a request that arrives at two in the afternoon does not wait.
Requests rarely arrive at a meeting. Harvey and colleagues interviewed 28 farmers near Kansas City, and one said he regularly gets over 100 phone calls a day in the growing season, a poor moment to decide what the farm can spare. Three lines under the table settle it before the phone rings:
- Who may say yes alone, and up to what amount of money or hours.
- What always needs a second person, whatever its size.
- Where the row gets written on the day, at the gate and not in an office nobody walks to.
For an employee’s hours, the first line needs two more decisions that only the farm can make. One is which outside calls justify letting someone go, such as the fire brigade. The other is which days of the year nobody goes except for an emergency, such as the middle of harvest. In New South Wales, the Rural Fire Service runs a program that recognizes businesses that grant volunteers leave to attend emergency incidents during work hours without financial disadvantage. The program fixes no hours for your farm and no days it closes. Those go in the lines.
Under these example lines, the manager could approve the grader, the diesel and the loader operator’s four hours alone. The steer needed the owner.
What do I write first, and how long does it take?
The table first. Half a morning with the people who were there rebuilds the year, and each outflow takes two minutes after that.
At the end of the year, read the table with the three lines beside it, decide which requests the farm keeps saying yes to, and write the name of whoever answers for that decision. Keeping this record is the same farm management work the farm already does for feed and fuel. The sustainability section of this library holds the other dated records a buyer may ask to see.