Setting directions
This is module 1 of the MLA More Beef from Pastures – The producer’s manual, which offers practical information to help lift the productivity and profitability of southern beef businesses.
It will help you to consider the economic merit of options for increasing feed supply, changing feed demand, or targeting particular markets.
What this module is about
- Set clear business goals and monitor and review your progress.
- Use specialist advisers to decide on business, herd structure and market options to maximise profit.
- Plan, cost and test beef enterprise options.
- Determine the sequence of investments (capital and time) that will best meet enterprise goals.
- Maintain accurate records for comparison of performance with expected targets.
There are 3 steps for setting the strategic direction of your beef enterprise
- Determine the enterprise strategy and herd structure most likely to maximise profit
Enterprise strategy refers to the allocation of resources such as labour, pastures and finance that will support the chosen herd structure and markets. Herd structure refers to the stocking rate, numbers of each stock class, age and sex, breed, calving date, weaning date, target market and time of sale and the buffers you require to manage risk.
- Develop a transition plan to achieve beef enterprise targets
Use a process to test, prioritise and sequence the project options to maximise return on investment of time and capital and annual business profit.
- Measure and analyse current performance, compare with expected physical and financial targets and periodically review the strategic direction
Monitoring and evaluation provide an extremely important check on the accuracy of the inputs and predictions from the analyses used to set the enterprise strategic directions.
Toolkit 1
These tools will assist the on-farm implementation of each step in this module:
- Specifications for a typical enterprise simulation model
- Template of partial budget calculations for comparing change scenarios
- Enterprise audit sample form
- MLA cost of production calculator (beef)
Linkages to other modules
This module sets the initial strategic directions of the beef enterprise including targets for stocking rate for a set of pasture growth patterns, market prices and other constraints.
Matching animal feed demand to feed supply is a frequent and essential part of management. The process of manipulating stock numbers is described in Module 2: Tactical stock control and this is strongly linked to Module 4: Pasture utilisation. The selection of markets is detailed in Module 8: Meeting market specifications and Module 5: Cattle genetics also affects producers’ capacity to supply target markets.
More information
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