A Farm-Level Financial Risk Assessment Framework for Dairy Farm Management Using Robust Statistical Indicators

Dairy farms face substantial financial variability arising from production costs, debt obligations, irregular revenues, and transaction timing. This study develops a farm-level financial risk assessment framework using 36 monthly accounting and production observations from a Bulgarian dairy farm covering January 2019–December 2021. The framework combines robust median-, MAD-, and IQR-based measures with classical variability statistics, correlation analysis, a scale-preserving risk-weighted economic importance indicator (RWEI), and an exploratory retrospective monitoring assessment. Scaled-MAD limits and standard 1.5 × IQR fences identify unusual monthly observations. Milk income is the dominant recurring revenue source, accounting for 81.35% of average component revenue, whereas grants contribute most to observed absolute monthly revenue variability. Among expenses, feed ranks first by RWEI (0.1627), followed by loan payments (0.0983), leasing (0.0378), and interest (0.0279). Mean recorded milk income per litre was 0.739 BGN/L, feed expenditure 0.442 BGN/L, and margin over feed cost 0.297 BGN/L. In one-month-ahead retrospective testing, the scaled-MAD rule detected two of three subsequent negative-surplus months, with 66.7% sensitivity, 22.2% precision, and a 35.0% false-alarm rate. The framework is therefore best interpreted as a data-light internal financial-monitoring and liquidity-support approach rather than as a validated predictive system or a complete decomposition of structural economic risk.