A tiny percentage of local farmers choose to have their farms benchmarked every year.

This number has now risen because of commitment to CAFRE Business Development Groups (where benchmarking is actively encouraged), thus giving a misleading impression that more and more people want to know accurate financial and physical detail about their individual set-ups.

The real hardcore nucleus who have always done it is miniscule, and I have never quite understood why. I’ve been involved with benchmarking for years, and have always been a stout defender and advocate of this free-of-charge service. Until now, that is.

I waited three months from data collection until the actual report arrived. Theoretically, this is perfectly acceptable, but after being used to the results coming back in a few short weeks, it seemed like years.

Also, after spending a couple of hours going through reams of files and paperwork to compile the relevant information, it focuses your mind on the business side of the farm.

But when a prolonged period of waiting happens, the interest fades, and all sorts of small ideas disappear to the recesses of your brain.

Thus, when the Whole Farm Report lands on your doorstep, you’ve sort of moved on, and the attitude tends to be a bit, ‘oh that thing, sure that was last year’.

Warning

It was the beef cattle results that alerted me and sounded a bit of a warning bell.

I was keen to compare them against the contract-reared dairy heifers, and in truth I already knew roughly what the score would be.

I remember them costing in the region of £1100, knew they killed into roughly £1470, and reckoned they stayed on farm for around 11 months. I expected this to translate into a gross margin of £60 per animal, and therefore the net margin was bound to be a minus figure.

However, glancing at the gross margin column, I nearly fell off the chair when I saw £509 per head, and an accompanying net margin of £371.

Closer scrutiny revealed the problem: a buying price of £270, and 25 months on farm. Since these two inaccuracies were so far off target, I didn’t read any more, because everything else was rendered pretty much irrelevant.

Scanned

Moving across to the dairy heifers, I scanned down the list and, lo and behold, noticed that 62 heifers had been transferred out.

I don’t know where this figure came from, because 29 heifers left here in December to start their careers as milk cows. Again, this surely makes a mockery of all other figures since it skews and distorts everything else in a sort of domino effect.

Sheep

The sheep figures are miles better than anything I have ever previously achieved, and I was eagerly looking forward to writing a piece for the paper, where I would modestly have to admit that I was a fantastic farmer.

I was planning how to word the article so that it looked as if I was reluctantly revealing a gross margin of £118 per ewe, a net margin of £79 per ewe, and an unprecedented 1.82 lambs weaned or sold per ewe, but at the same time letting everyone know that I was some fella. And now, that potential ego-trip has been replaced with the uncertainty of not knowing whether these figures are anywhere near accurate.

Problem

I’ve no idea where the problem lies. Perhaps the passing of information from me leaves a lot to be desired.

Possibly a different data collector every year is not ideal, compared with the good old days when the same person lifted your information every time. I liked this continuity, and always thought it helped to build a genuinely accurate picture of the farm business. And budgetary constraints within CAFRE are bound to have some sort of negative impact also, especially if less staff are working on more reports.

In all honesty, I’ve only ever used benchmarking as a very rough year-against-year comparison for this business.

My recipe for running the business involves mixing up the benchmarking reports, the tax return, tax deductible purchases, bank statements (past and present), cashflow status at any given point in time, and then I stir in how much pleasure I derive from different enterprises.

How each aspect of the farm fits together is also considered, along with the likelihood of avoiding excessive stress levels (this is increasingly important).

And no matter how many times I mull over the imponderables of this agricultural equation, I always arrive at the same conclusion: I’m glad my wife has a good job.

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