Gippsland Beefcheque Review

Summary

BeefCheque was a project for beefproducers which enjoyed diverse industry support. It operated in Gippslarid in Victoria forthe lasttwo years and received overwhelming positive reactions from participants. This review aimed to quantify and qualify the project so far and identify any areas where further development may be necessary. Participants have identified diverse benefits of BeefCheque as:

personal development and confidence

improvement of conflict and management

opportunities for on-going learning within a supportive network

The Departtnent of Natural Resources and Environment has surveyed the members of these groups to identify their usefulness. Results indicated that the project has been successful in:

encouraging members to try new farm management practices for the first time
developing confidence amongst BeefCheque participants (however there is still no measure of producers' capacity to successfully im​plement new practices)
The major disadvantages identified to implementing new practices are time and money.

Another key element of the project was the Farm Financial Monitoring which aimed to identify the financial benefits of the BeefCheque Project. Early results from the financial monitoring based on returns to date indicated that:

those that used the farmmonitoring book found the infomiation relevant and easy to understand (with the exception of the environmental data)
the operating costs of the top producers isn't much different to the costs of the average Producers
It is still unclear why many did not complete the financial monitoring, but the data gathered provided useful infonnation for further group discussions. Although the project was unable to provide detailed individual interpretation and analysis, the results provided​​ a useful benchmark for producers.