At this time of year I start to think about getting benchmarking results pulled tighter for my farm.

Generally, I don’t like looking back too much as it is so easy to get caught up in the past and think that if something has always worked, then you should not change.

Instead, I like to keep looking for some better and more profitable way of doing things. But to do this it is important to know where you’re at so that you can measure what progress you are making.

I have been benchmarking my farm for upwards of 15 years and I find it one of the most useful tools that you could have. As well as comparing your own data across different years, you can then benchmark yourself against other similar farmers to help identify areas for improvement.

Groups

When I joined the new CAFRE business development groups earlier this year I was of the opinion that everyone was going to benchmark at the start and then every subsequent year so that they could see what (if any) progress was being made.

I am now led to believe that you only have to do it once in the first three years. What a missed opportunity.

When benchmarking was mentioned at our recent business development group meeting, it was greeted with complete negativity. I was shocked and disappointed. This is a free and easy way to try and make you more money, but very few were interested.

There was a lot of grumbling about not wanting to share their figures with other group members. In actual fact, the figures are all anonymous and you don’t have to let anyone see how your farm is performing.

I believe that the true reason for not wanting to benchmark is probably because some don’t want to admit how poor their results actually are.

Unless it is made compulsory to benchmark at different stages in the business development groups process, then how are you going to be able to quantify any progress?

Hard truths

While looking through my own figures and performance for the last year, there are some hard truths. It’s easy to get caught up in everyday things and forget what happened a few months earlier.

For me, this has been the worst year I can remember since I started farming. The performance of my spring-calving herd was a disaster, with issues related to vitamin E deficiency and then salmonella. This has resulted in a lot less calves on the ground and a massive vet bill.

This vet bill will affect this year’s benchmarking figures, but the reduction in calves will have a knock-on effect on next year’s figures.

Then we had a really bad spring which resulted in extra meal and silage being fed which will also have a negative impact on 2016 performance. This then rolled into a rubbish summer, with cattle weight gains at an all-time low for July and August.

Because of the bad weather, cattle were housed early, although once housed they performed really well and actually were sold about three weeks earlier than other years. This probably won’t help my figures as they were fed roughly the same amount of meal as in previous years.

So in conclusion, the outlook for my benchmarking figures is not very good. But I am not going to dwell on this for very long. I have identified problems and I am going to take action to try and prevent the same issues cropping up in 2017.

There’s not much we can do about the weather so I have concentrated on the things that I can control. We have started to feed pre-calving minerals to dry cows and now have a salmonella vaccination programme in place. Here’s hoping for a more successful 2017.