Farmers can compare their businesses to others around the country thanks to a new whole-farm benchmarking service launched by AHDB.
The UK farmer levy organisation has appointed a new farm benchmarking manager – Scotland-based Doreen Anderson.
She will head up a team responsible for rolling out a new business management programme focused on benchmarking and peer-to-peer learning across crop and livestock enterprises.
“This is an exciting time for me and the team as we are at the beginning of an interesting and challenging journey,” said Ms Anderson.
“AHDB has long been involved in benchmarking programmes at sector level but a whole-farm approach will prove more beneficial to the farmers and give a better picture of their farm as a business by looking at all their enterprises together.”
She said whole-farm benchmarking, looking at different enterprises, would be particularly beneficial in Scotland because mixed farming tended to be the norm north of the border.
The benchmarking team will employ five regional officers across the UK working across beef, lamb, potatoes, cereals, oilseeds and eventually dairy.
The team’s primary focus is to help farmer and grower groups upload figures onto AHDB’s new benchmarking software, Farmbench, interpret the results and then discuss ways of reducing costs of production.
The regional officers will also provide training for consultants, advisers and vets so they are able to use Farmbench with their own discussion groups.
Ms Anderson said: “The number of groups is always increasing and so our diaries are forever full. The advantage of working with discussion groups is we can help farmers who wouldn’t necessarily think of attending a benchmarking group get together to discuss their recent issues with their peers and help them make informed decisions based on the reports.
“Our ambition is to get far more of our levy payers involved and help them to start seeing benefits to their businesses.”
Ms Anderson can be contacted on doreen.anderson@ahdb.org.uk or 07901 116 454.
