Opportunity for goat producers to benchmark their business
29 March 2019
Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and consultancy business Holmes Sackett have partnered to offer 60 commercial goat producers the opportunity to get their businesses fully benchmarked against other goat businesses.
Interested goat producers would be able to have their business benchmarked against the average and top 20 per cent goat businesses at no cost. This service is valued at $6000.
Participating goat producers will receive:
- A customised report showing the production and financial performance of your goat enterprise.
- A comparison of your business performance against the pooled average and top 20% performance and a fresh set of eyes to help identify the opportunities for improvement.
- An idea of how you’re tracking against others in the red meat industry through an industry scale comparison of goat enterprise performance against other livestock enterprises over time.
MLA Goat Industry Project Manager, Julie Petty, said it was a convenient and efficient process for goat businesses to gather a great deal of knowledge and information about their business.
“Producers will also have access to the knowledge and skills of Holmes Sackett – a great resource to assist with questions or concerns about the business end of your goat business,” Ms Petty said.
“Producers will also be able to use the farm visit from the experts to identify ways to improve the profitability of your enterprise.”
Ms Petty said importantly the project would also provide significant benefits for the broader industry.
“Participating goat producers will be helping to build the bank of Australia’s goat industry business performance data through their involvement,” Ms Petty said.
“This will in turn help explain to new and existing producers the key production and profitability drivers for goat; demonstrate the effectiveness or not of goat levy investment; and show how the industry is tracking in terms of growth or otherwise.”
Ms Petty said there are two data collection timings proposed - one in autumn/winter 2019 and another in 2021.
“Given that drought is currently having a significant impact on production and is unfortunately not an uncommon part of the industry’s cycle, it’s important to collect data from good as well as poor seasons in order to better understand the volatility that producers and others in the industry experience,” Ms Petty said.
Producers involved in the project will need to:
- Devote a couple of hours to compile some paperwork prior to us meeting with you.
- Provide compliance (tax) or management accounts from 2015/16 to 2017/18.
- Where possible, provide livestock numbers for all enterprises from 2016 to 2018 including time of kidding/lambing/calving and typical time of sales
- Provide number of sales and value of sales for the goat enterprise.
- Provide opening and closing goat numbers (managed goat enterprises only).
- Devote at least three hours of time so that we can record your production and financial information.
- Provide a location on a map or co-ordinates for the best place for us to meet with you.
Holmes Sackett is a consultancy business that benchmarks the production and financial performance of over 200 farm businesses across south eastern Australia annually. For this project, we will be working with goat producers from across Australia to collect five years of goat enterprise data. This time frame will allow for the impacts of seasonal volatility between years to be assessed.
Producers who would like to be involved should contact Prue Francis of Holmes Sackett via email prue@holmessackett.com.au or phone on 0435 052 255 to discuss the project further and establish a time when it might suit to meet with you on farm.
A webinar will also be held for interested producers on Monday 15 April.
