P.PSH.1526 - Herdflow: Livestock Accouting for Beef Businesses

Summary

Having accurate and reconciled herd numbers is a major challenge for the Australian beef industry. Getting accurate numbers in the paddock is difficult enough, but there are additional challenges in accurately recording, reconciling and using this data. This results in a significant bottleneck in understanding and improving industry and business performance. There is a need to improve on the industry standard language for categorising livestock classes and/or age groups on farm – this contributes to and compounds the problem of inaccurate herd records. This presents a problem in ‘translating’ herd records as animals can be misclassified in the process.

There is a need to fill a gap in the beef industry for standardising herd classifications and collecting, collating, and analysing herd information. This will improve the accuracy of herd data and allow the generation of high-level herd KPIs. The platform will be useful in calculating herd emissions and allow herd data to be imported into industry emissions calculators.  Bush Agribusiness benchmarking clients managed an average of 1.43M head of cattle, approximately 6% of the national herd. This client base, including projects such as NB2 pathways to practice, means this platform has the potential to cover a significant portion of the industry. The platform will also facilitate future growth in herd benchmarking.

Objectives

1. Develop a livestock accounting platform, in the form of a web-based interface that accurately records and reconciles herd numbers. 
2. Develop a livestock accounting platform that can accurately report on key herd productivity, profitability and emissions indicators. 
3. Develop a comprehensive set of guidelines to standardise livestock classifications and language for extensive herds based on the national bovine livestock language guidelines and validate language guidelines with the potential producers for acceptance.

Key findings

The HerdFlow platform is complete and launched. Bush AgriBusiness clients are using the platform, and it is available to MyMLA members to trial with a single year’s data.

The platform includes transaction entry (sales, purchases, transfers, natural increase, deaths, class transfers), a reporting module (Stock return and performance Report, Sales analysis, Emissions report), import/export functionality, and a whole-business emissions calculator.

An AI-powered assistant has been developed, drawing information from a comprehensive user manual and the updated Australian Herd Classification Guidelines to assist users.

The results for both herd emissions (compared to the SB-GAF tool) and herd performance (compared to precursor spreadsheets) were highly correlated (almost identical). The emissions calculations were further validated by CSIRO.

Benefits to industry

The HerdFlow platform provides the beef industry with a standardised tool for accurate livestock accounting. It allows producers to:

• accurately reconcile herd numbers
• track key productivity and profitability indicators and benchmark their performance
• calculate Scope 1 and 3 herd emissions, and whole business emissions and emissions intensity, using an externally validated methodology
• use the platform's outputs for business analysis and to adjust or validate their growth paths
• benefit from the standardised Australian Herd Classification Guidelines, reducing ambiguity for both producers and industry analysts.

MLA action

The HerdFlow tool is available to myMLA members as a free one-year trial.

Future research

The absence of standard property level herd classifications and herd performance measures has been a limiting factor in producers, and the industry as a whole, understanding and reporting of herd performance. It is recommended the herd classifications and the herd performance measures used in this project be adopted across the industry.