In an effort to facilitate communication between agricultural producers and their local officials, the Texas AgriLife Extension Services' risk-management specialists and county agricultural agents developed region-specific model farms through the FARM assistance program. Financial and Risk Management (FARM) Assistance is a highly specialized Extension effort aimed at helping farmers and ranchers with strategic planning and risk management. The program is a computerized decision-support simulation model that uses both farm-level information supplied by participating producers and market price forecasts from the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) at the University of Missouri. It provides a ten-year financial forecast of the individual farm or ranch. Additional work has focused on identifying the characteristics of successful versus struggling producers.