Agriculture & agribusiness CFO services
A fractional CFO for founder-led farms and agribusinesses.
Saorsa embeds in your operation on retainer and covers the strategy side of the numbers — twelve months of costs against one harvest, the margin by crop or segment, the land and equipment paper, the lender — and works through them with you every week.
Tell us what you grow, raise, process, or handle. Duncan replies within one business day.
Prefer to talk? Call or text Duncan: (510) 626-0509.
What gets built in the first 90 days
Four problems every founder-led farm and agribusiness knows by heart
The costs run all year and the revenue lands once, and four problems follow from that gap.
Twelve months of costs, one harvest of revenue
Inputs, labor, water, and rent go out all year. Revenue lands in the harvest window, and you do not pick the window. The operating line carries the difference, drawing a little more each month until the crop is sold. The low point of that line, not the average, is the number that matters. Miss it by a few weeks and the line hits its limit before the packer or the huller pays you, with the next input bill already due.
Prices you don't set, costs that only go up
Commodity price and basis move without you. The input bill and the labor cost do not move back when the price falls. That leaves margin by crop, block, or segment as the one place you still make a decision. Blended across the operation, a losing crop hides behind a good one. Split out after inputs, labor, and freight, it gets a name, and you can decide whether to cut it, reprice it, or replant it.
Land and iron on long paper
The equipment note, the land loan, and the lease each carry a payment that arrives whether the harvest does or not. Term debt structured for a good year has to survive a bad one. So the refinance is a decision with timing and structure, not an event that happens to you. Put the payment schedule inside the crop-year model and you see which year it pinches, before you sign for the next piece of iron.
A lender who has seen three bad years
After a few weak cycles, the questions from Farm Credit or the ag lender get harder. Covenants get tested, the borrowing base gets recalculated, and the annual renewal stops being a formality. You want reporting the credit desk trusts before it asks for it: a current model, a clear collateral picture, and a downside case you have already run. Walking in with those changes what the renewal conversation is about.
Fit check
Who this is for. Who it isn't.
This work fits an operation that funds a full crop year before the harvest pays. To say it plainly, operations below the low end of the $2–20MM range are too small for this practice. The lists below sort out the rest.
For
- Growers, orchards, vineyards, and ranches
- Packers, processors, hullers, and mills
- Grain, commodity, trading, and transload operations
- Ag services and input suppliers
- Family- and founder-led, roughly $2–20MM in revenue
Not for
- Branded food and beverage products for the shelf
- Ag-tech software
- Operations below roughly $2MM in revenue
- Investors holding farmland only
If you make a branded product for the shelf, see the food and beverage page.
How the work runs
An embedded partner on retainer, not a report vendor
By day 90 you have a working model, a margin view by crop or segment, a lender package when one is needed, and a weekly session with us. We stay on retainer inside the operation and do the work with you, rather than handing over a report.
A long-term financial model you actually use
The model follows the crop year, not the calendar. It carries the input bill and payroll out month by month, the line draws and paydowns, the harvest receipts back in, and the low point in between. Price scenarios run against it. Before you plant a new block, switch a crop, or change a lease, it shows what that does to the line, so you see the answer before you commit.
A crop-, product-, or segment-level margin view
Your bookkeeper keeps the books. Working from the ledger you already keep, we cost each crop, product, or segment. Inputs, labor, water, and freight land on the line that used them. The segment that loses money in most years gets named. Then you decide whether to reprice it, restructure it, or drop it.
A bank package when one is needed
If the operating line is up for renewal, or you are asking for land or equipment, we assemble what the lender underwrites against: the model, the downside case, and the collateral story. When the lender is nervous, we add a formal risk-reduction plan. Placement is not our business. We do not lend and we do not broker, and the credit decision stays with the lender.
A weekly working cadence with you
Each week we work through whichever decision is next: the input buy, the labor plan, the equipment, the family transition. Bring the quote or the question, and we run it through the model together. The analysis is done before we sit down, so the hour goes to the choice rather than to assembling numbers.
Bank-side proof
An agricultural trading and logistics business under lender pressure, and the plan the bank accepted.
A founder-led agricultural trading and logistics business came to Saorsa under lender pressure. The work was a monthly three-statement model with rolling liquidity, the exit from an unprofitable division, non-core asset sales to pay down debt, a weekly planning cadence, and a formal risk-reduction plan the bank accepted. The line of credit came down by $1.2MM, profitability improved year over year, and the credit facility was renewed. We still manage the model.
At Crosslinked Components, where Duncan is a minority partner, the work was a partner buyout structured with a seller's note and no outside capital. If a family or partner transition is ahead of you, it is the same question: who buys, at what value, and how the cash plan keeps the operation funded through it.
See the Agricultural Trading Platform results$1.2MM
Line of credit paid down
+$500K
Year-over-year profitability improvement
Renewed
Credit facility, with lender confidence restored
Relevant reading
Start with the reading.
Not ready to talk yet? Three pieces from our Insights letter cover the bank, the forecast, and the capital stack, and they are a plain place to begin.
Start here
Tell us what is tight and get a straight read from Duncan.
Duncan reads every submission himself and replies within one business day, which means the person who reads your note about the operating line, the crop year, or the equipment note is the same one who answers it. If the fit is wrong, he tells you so and names a better page.
- You hear back from Duncan directly, with no intake queue in between.
- A plain take on what you named: the operating line, margin by crop or segment, the land and equipment paper, or the lender.
- When the work belongs elsewhere, Duncan says so and names the page that suits you better.
Prefer to talk? Call or text Duncan: (510) 626-0509.
Start a conversation
FAQ
Questions growers and operators ask before the first call
Short answers on cost, the crop-year cycle, lenders, and transitions, before you write to us.
What does this cost compared to a full-time CFO?
A full-time CFO in agriculture is a mid-six-figure salary plus benefits, and at $2–20MM in revenue the operation rarely has forty hours a week of CFO work. What it has is a short list of decisions: the input buy, the draws on the operating line, the next equipment note, the renewal. That list is what we take on, on a monthly retainer that costs far less than a hire and is sized to the model, the margin view, the lender work, and the weekly session.
We already have a bookkeeper and a CPA. Isn't this redundant?
Keep both. Your bookkeeper records what happened, from the input invoices to the harvest receipts. Your CPA keeps you compliant. We are not accountants, so we do not touch the books or the taxes, and the Schedule F and the entity returns stay with your CPA. Neither of them models a new block, a lease, or a refinance, or builds the package the lender underwrites against. The decisions are ours to model, and we start from the ledgers they maintain.
Our whole year is one cycle. Can a model handle that?
Yes. The model is built around the cycle, not the calendar. It starts with the low point of the operating line, lays out the draw schedule from the first input bill to the harvest, and runs price scenarios against it, so you see what a weak price or a late harvest does to the line. Twelve months of costs against one harvest is the exact shape it is made for, and a monthly view answers what a calendar-year budget cannot.
We bank with Farm Credit or an ag lender. Do you know how they think?
Yes. Duncan's background includes loan origination and underwriting on the credit side, so he knows what a credit desk looks for at a renewal and after a run of weak years. We build what Farm Credit or your ag lender needs before it asks: the model, the downside case, the collateral picture, and reporting that ties out. None of this makes us a lender or a broker: financing is not ours to place, and the approval belongs to the credit desk.
Can you help with a family transition or a partner buyout?
Yes. The work starts with a valuation view, then seller's-note structures that share the risk between the parties, and a cash plan that keeps the operation funded through the handoff. Crosslinked Components is the example: a buyout between two partners, structured around a seller's note, with no outside money. The same pieces apply when land, equipment, and the operating line have to carry a transition between family members or partners.
Get a straight read before the operating line comes up for renewal.
Send the renewal, the equipment quote, or the crop-year question that is on your desk.
Go to the formPrefer to talk? Call or text Duncan: (510) 626-0509.