Short Articles and Notes An Approach to Farm Management Education *

As fann management education programs evolve to serve business-oriented farm firms, planning, implementation, and control functions become major areas of emphasis. Integration of three computerized management tools-a budget generator, a management game, and LP-FARM-in a farm management course provided students with practical experience in each management function. COURSE structure and computer assistedtechniques are being used at OklahomaState University to emphasize the pro-cesses of planning, implementation, and control ina senior level farm management course. A key component of this course is the direct utilization of computerized tools by students to solve farm management problems. It is recognized that teaching a student how to use service-oriented computer programs does not necessarily teach the concepts that can be used in further analyses. However, these pro-grams can be used to reinforce theoretical and analytical concepts and provide experience in performing managerial functions. The general objectives of undergraduate farm management courses can be summarized as teaching the student to integrate concepts and information from the biological, physical, and social sciences in making decisions and to apply decision-making procedures to the problems of organizing and operating the farm business. As educational programs in farm management evolve to serve larger-scale business-oriented farm firms, the processes of planning, imple-mentation, and control become the major areas of emphasis [8, 9]. Continued emphasis on the planning process is a necessary, but not a suffi-cient condition for successful completion of the objectives of farm management education. Ex-perience in the implementation of plans an