Understanding the costs of production is a fundamental requirement for all businesses. It is however something that many in agriculture are blissfully unaware of.  AHDB as the levy body with the purpose of “inspiring the industry to succeed in a changing world” have recently extended their benchmarking service Farmbench to cover beef and sheep sectors.  The cereals and oil seed sector has been using the programme for a number of years.  Farmbench will incorporate dairy during 2018.

AHDB are particularly keen to involve more beef and sheep farmers in benchmarking for two reasons:
1. The financial performance of the sector has lagged behind other sectors over the last 20 years;

2. The potential impact from Brexit, from changes in the market and potential loss of some or all of the subsidies are the greatest impact on this sector.
Benchmarking is a journey starting with an initial review of one’s own farm data compared to industry groups and top third performers.  When carried out regularly year on year allows farmers to plot the progress that their business is making.  Once farmers are comfortable with their figures and information, some wish to join a discussion group who are prepared to discuss their systems and costs and this process often enables the business to move forward more rapidly.

Farm Bench is an online service and to start benchmarking farmers will need to register with AHDB’s team.  The information supplied is 100% confidential and producers can allocate costs to various enterprises or not at all.  Before reports can be issued the data is verified by independent experts.

The comprehensive reports associated with Farmbench show producers not only the cash costs of the enterprise but also the full economic cost of the system being run.  The report includes the key performance indicators associated with that enterprise and the combination of physical and financial data enables producers to adjust their enterprise.

AHDB will provide industry benchmarks for the enterprise as long as there are 15 businesses represented in that category.  If a group of farmers (at least five) want to come together to benchmark their own farms then this is feasible within Farmbench.

I recently completed a Developing Beef Expertise training programme run by AHDB over a 15-month period.  If you would like to know more about Farmbench or our services for beef farmers, please contact William at w.waterfield@fcgagric.com or your regional agricultural AHDB beef and lamb manager.