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| Benchmarking Your Dairy Business (Continued)
Sponsored by ANZ. Winners get $1500 and a wall plaque.
Participants who have entered for the last two years are eligible for the Most Improved award. The participant who has increased their return on capital by the largest number of percentage points over the last two years wins.
Wayne and Linda Hansen (pictured on previous page)
Wayne & Linda Hansen and Duncan & Sally Sadler, Flowerdale
Change in Return on Assets went from 4% to 15%
Currajong is 122ha fully irrigated milking platform with approximately 60ha of irrigated run-off area.
The Flowerdale dairy farm is owned by Duncan and Sally Sadler and the run-off blocks, livestock and plant are owned by Wayne and Linda Hansen. The property is run as an equity partnership arrangement.
Return on assets increase from 4% in 2006-07 to 15% in 2007-08. The increased return was due to: - an increase in stocking rate from 400 to 450 cows;
- an increase in pasture utilisation due to the extra cows and better pasture management;
- an increase in milksolids per cow;
- an increase in milksolids per hectare; and
- the biggest contributing factor, although most input costs were higher, was a 56% increase in milk price on the previous season.
Measure | 2007-08 | 2006-07 | | Return on assets | 14.9% | 4.1% | | Cows | 450 | 400 | | Milksolids/ ha | 2,115 | 1,975 | | Milksolids/ cow | 574 | 559 | | Pasture, t DM/ha | 13.9 | 13.0 | | EBIT/ ha | $5,375 | $1,512 |
Fonterra sponsors this Award. Winners get $1500 and a wall plaque.
Participants with highest Return On Capital are visited by two judges separate to the DBOY Award who use a points scoring system to decide the Share Dairy farmer winner. The categories assessed by the judges include financial management, physical resource management, attitude, herd management and labour management.
Nick and Jane Smith
 | Nick and Jane Smith, Togari
21% Return on Assets as sharefarmers
With fifteen years of dairy farming experience, Nick and Jane farm are 50:50 sharefarmers with 340 cows on 93 milking hectares. They produced 152,913 kg milksolids (1635 kg milksolids/ha and 450 kg milksolids/cow). They matched this impressive production with an equally impressive 21% Return on Assets and an EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Tax) of $1224/ha.
Nick and Jane operate the farm using casual labour as required and they fed about 1.4 tonnes DM of grain per cow. They also bring their rising two-year old heifers back to the home farm where they can better manage them to achieve their target live weight at calving.
Production Trend
2005-06 – 280 cows -132,730 kg milksolids
2006-07 – 300 cows -137,306 kg milksolids
2007-08 – 340 cows -152,913 kg milksolids
Goals- To maintain a healthy balance between family life and business.
- To consolidate our position within our current arrangement.
Keys to Success- Managing the resources that are available to us under our contracts as sharefarmers to the best of our ability.
- Staff.
- Equity growth.
- Developing business skills, gaining knowledge, networking.
- Communication.
- Rhys Palmer and Ron Hall – farm advisers with milk company (someone from the outside looking in), budgeting (feed and financial) and monitoring performance.
- Managing the Bank Manager.
The Van Diemen’s Land Company (VDL) sponsors this Award for entrants who utilize the most pasture. Four winners get $400 each. In addition, Serve-Ag Pty Ltd also provide a voucher for a soil nitrate test for each winner.Irrigated Pasture
Rhys, Cecily and Michael Palmer, Sisters Creek – 16 t DM/haNick and Jane Smith, Togari – 15 t DM/ha
Dryland Pasture
Wayne and Angela Huisman, Togari – 14 t DM/haJohn and Beth Oldaker, Togari – 12 t DM/ha
Roberts Pty Ltd provides a voucher for $500 of pasture or forage seed to the entrant who achieves the highest Earnings Before Interest and Tax per hectare.
Paul & Nadine Lambert, Merseylea, $7,100/ha
Dairy Awards Field Day | Some 110 dairy farmers, industry people and others attended the 2009 Impact ANZ Dairy Business of the Year Award and Share Dairy Farmer of the Year field day held in April.
The Award, conducted through the joint efforts of the TIAR Dairy Centre and DairyTas, together with sponsorship from agribusinesses, provides an opportunity, free-of-charge, for all dairy farmers to benchmark their dairy farm businesses and obtain feedback on their business performance.
The associated field day recognises and celebrate dairy farming excellence in business performance, farm management, human resource management and environmental integrity.
The Award program, now in its twenty-eighth year, showcases successful dairy farming enterprises and their people by demonstrating what is possible and why dairy farming, managed in the right manner, can be enjoyable, rewarding and highly profitable.
Dairy Awards Field Day | At the morning session of the field day at Togari on April 21 included presentations to overall Dairy Business Award winners Wayne and Angela Huisman and Hatfield Dairies and winners of other Award categories. Comments were given from the Award judges.from ANZ Bank and TIAR Dairy Centre on the Huisman’s win.
The morning session also included comments from Award judges from the Fonterra dairy company and TIAR Dairy Centre who judged the Share Farmer Award. Presentations were made to Share Dairy Farmer of the Year winners Nick and Jane Smith.
The afternoon session at each field day consisted of a farm walk on the neighbouring property farmed by the Award winners, with various “stops” to show and discuss key aspects of their farming operation.
The field day featured guest speaker, John Mulvany, a farm consultant with 25 years involvement with the dairy industry in Victoria. John spoke to the farmers attending about checking the foundations of their dairy business given the unexpected downturn in milk price for the last part of the 2008-09 dairy season and the unknown of the milk price for 2009-10.
John said that he believed that there have been gradual changes to many dairy businesses over recent years of high milk prices, the sum total of which has resulted in a fragile industry in the current environment. John emphasised that while this was not true for all dairy businesses, it was important for farmers to check the foundations and assess their ability to “weather the storm” of a reduced milk price next year. He indicated that there is no recipe or one direction in the future and discussed whole of business aspects, not just business performance; important for achieving a resilient dairy business in uncertain times.
For broadband users:
This is a Portable Document Format (PDF) file and requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader. The Reader is easy to download and is free of charge.
For users on slower connections:
For ease of downloading the booklet has been divided into three parts:
2009 Field Day Booklet - Part A (10 pages, 378 KB)
2009 Field Day Booklet - Part B (10 pages, 469 KB)
2009 Field Day Booklet - Part C (15 pages, 483 KB)
For broadband users:
This is a Portable Document Format (PDF) file and requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader. The Reader is easy to download and is free of charge.
For users on slower connections:
For ease of downloading the booklet has been divided into four parts:
2008 Field Days Booklet Cover (2 pages, 1.03 MB)
2008 Field Days Booklet - Part A (6 pages, 1.81 MB)
2008 Field Days Booklet - Part B (5 pages, 1.31 MB)
2008 Field Days Booklet - Part C (7 pages, 1.09 MB)
Contact: Senior Dairy AdviserDairy research, development & extension is delivered by the Dairy Centre of TIAR
Senior Dairy Adviser - Dairy Centre
Mark Fergusson
PO Box 303
DEVONPORT TAS 7310
Phone: 03 6421 7676 / 03 6431 4901
Fax: 03 6421 7666
Email: Mark.Fergusson@dpipwe.tas.gov.au
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