Greenmount Benchmarking for beef and sheep farmers

This is the first question that is asked by farmers. The reply is usually a series of questions, "Do you know how much it currently costs you to produce a kilo of lamb or beef? Do you know if your business can make a profit without subsidies? What changes do you plan to make in the future to make up the lost income when subsidies are gone?"
Benchmarking will help to provide you with answers to these questions.

To get your business benchmarked, either a benchmarking technician or a DARD Development Adviser will come out to your farm, and go through the procedure with you personally and on a confidential basis. For any 12-month period, for example, 1 April to 31 March, records of all the expenses attributed to the farm are considered, that is, all the money going out of the business. This is mainly covered by your VAT book but other expenses, such as livestock purchases and cost of insurance need to be included. To complete the picture, a record of the income that the farm generated over the same 12-month period is needed. This mainly includes livestock sales and subsidies claimed.
With your assistance the necessary input sheets will be completed during the farm visit.

Your input sheets will be used to complete the details of your farm business in the Greenmount benchmarking program and a confidential financial report will be generated. This report will then be posted out to you and it will show you a complete breakdown of the costs of production and hence all the associated margins for your farm business. The report also shows averages for similar farms for comparison.

The DARD Beef and Sheep advisor in your area will be available to assess your report and help to advise you on areas where improvements could be made to help the business cope without subsidy and hopefully improve your farms overall profitability.

Donna Brock has been employed as a benchmarking technician by LMC to assist in collection of benchmarking data for farmers who are F.Q.A.S. members. (DARD staff will collect data from all farmers.)

If you are interested, please contact Donna Brock on 028 6634 4609 or 079 1754 3879 or your local Beef and Sheep Development Adviser, so that we can discuss benchmarking further and get an appointment arranged. Remember it’s FREE!

Robert Finlay, Kinawley, with Donna Brock, LMC and William Johnston, CAFRE during a Benchmarking visit.