Business Plan for an Agricultural Venture

EMBA PROJECT WORK PROPOSAL

Topic
Charting the Way Forward through a Business Plan for Jokat Farms

CHAPTER ONE
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Motivation
There is a popular saying that “if you fail to plan: you plan to fail” (Simoneaux & Stroud, 2011, p. 92; Skripsky, 2002, p. 282). The Jokat Farms (JF) is a limited liability company which originated from my family’s undertaking of subsistence farming as a hobby, seven years ago. This farming venture, Jokat Farms, was incorporated and gained limited liability status only a year ago. The first two Directors of the company are my husband and I; and we aim at nurturing the company to becoming a major player in the agricultural sector of the Ghanaian economy. In view of the saying noted above, this project work offers me an opportunity to develop a comprehensive business plan as a means of charting the way forward for the company.
Business Plan: A Means for Charting the Way Forward for Businesses
Planning, according to Akoff (as cited by Drury, 2000, p. 545), is “the design of the desired future and the effective ways of bringing it about.” This definition tends to encapsulate the essence of putting forward a plan for one’s business. Likening such a plan to a Global Positioning System (GPS), Simoneaux and Stroud (2011, p. 92) noted that as the user of GPS is confident of not getting lost; so also is the user of a well documented business plan. This is because the plan assists the user in mapping out a journey for taking the company from where it is today to its intended destination by enabling the user to “identify the milestones, obstacles, and desired routes along the way,” (Simoneaux & Stroud, 2011, p. 92). The need for a business to have a plan cannot be overemphasized, for as pointed out by Barrow and Brown (2001, p. 6) “perhaps the most important step in launching any new venture or expanding an existing one is the construction of a business plan”. Skripsky (2002, p. 282), in buttressing this

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