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Improving the Welsh Dairy Supply Chain
The benefits of benchmarking
A dairy farmer who runs three separate herds saysevaluating the performance of each system withMilkbench+ has given him the confidence tochange the calving pattern of one of the herds.
Will Prichard, who farms in partnership with hisparents, Alan and Mary, is in the process ofconverting the 300-cow herd at Rhosmaen,Newport, from an all-the-year-round calving patternto block calving in the spring.
The Prichards also have a spring calving herd atEscalwen, Letterston, and autumn calvers atCwmwyntell, Fishguard.
When they analysed the performance of each farmusing their DairyCo Milkbench+ reports, it was clearthat the herd at Rhosmaen was less profitable thanthe other two.
“It was obvious that block calving was providing uswith considerably more income,’’ said Will. “Sincejoining Milkbench+ we are far more focused on
where our strengths and weaknesses are in eachsystem and it was the main reason for switching thesystem at Rhosmaen to spring calving.’’
The Prichards’ farming enterprise has expandedover a 15-year period. At Escalwen they run a 550-cow herd on a grazing platform of 460 acres and atCwmwyntell there are 200 cows on a 280-acregrazing platform. The herd at Rhosmaen has agrazing platform of 300 acres.
Each farm is run as a separate entity and this givesa clear picture of how each is performing.
As the business grew, the partnership developed asystem that isolated costs and transferred goodfinancial control to each of the units. When that wasdone they found that it was very useful tobenchmark with Milkbench+ to not only makecomparisons between each unit but withcontemporaries at a regional and national level.
They have been pleasantly surprised. Cost controlthroughout the systems at Escalwen andCwmwyntell is in line with the top 15% ofMilkbench+ farms. “We can see where we arepositioned in the league table, whether we areperforming well or not and if we are struggling toachieve the impossible or need to up our game,’’said Will. “The system allows us to analyseindividual costs, where we are winning, where weare losing.’’
Louise Thomas, a Milkbench+ regional officer,spends a day with the Prichards once a year togather their data. The family said this was anextremely valuable exercise. “It gives us an impartialset of figures. It is almost an audit of the figures wehave accumulated ourselves,’’ said Will.
www.dairyco.org.uk
July 2012
Will Prichard
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They share these figures with their farm managerstogether with financial and physical data. Theymeet with the managers once a week to reviewaspects of the farm such as grass growth but amonthly meeting is also held when the financialside of the business is reviewed.
“Part of their role is to formulate budgets for thecoming year,’’ said Will. “We use both Milkbench+and comparative farm profit figures to identifywhere the costs are going to be in the forthcomingyear and identify where we can reduce costs or, ofequal importance, to identify areas where we thinkour costs are going to go up.’’
One of the strengths of Milkbench+, Willsuggested, was the ability to benchmark on anational scale. Dairy farmers sell their milk to
national companies therefore it is important forindividuals to know where their standard is, hesaid. “At the end of the day we are in competitionwith other farmers and to know how we areperforming at a national level gives us a securebusiness model moving forward.
“For us in west Wales we can see how much moreefficient we can be on a national level because ourmilk price is generally below that paid to farmers inother parts of the country.’’
For more information contact the WalesDairyCo Milkbench+ team:
Louise Thomas, South Wales officer: 07767 001544 [email protected]
Ffion Jones, North Wales officer: 07767 001543 or [email protected]
Sarah Nesbitt, Wales Milkbench+ administrator:01554 748593 or [email protected]
TIME OUT: Milkbench+ regional officer LouiseThomas (right) takes a break from data collecting
to look at Will's silage.
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