East to west BPP's take off
East to west BPP's take off - Beef CRC - Beef Genetic Technologies
 Charged with accelerating the rate of innovation and adoption in the Australian and New Zealand beef industries, the Beef CRC’s Beef Profit Partnership (BPP) groups are going from strength to strength.With 23 groups actively established and new groups being formed, the BPP’s aim is to make beef businesses even more sustainable. As one producer advocate explains, the BPP system is a supportive network where participants can learn from each other. Prior to joining the Beef Profit Partnership group Phil Chalmer from Esperance in Western Australia had no idea how valuable it would end up being. “I was always looking for new ways to do things around the farm. Although I had no idea whether the BPP was going to be relevant, it has become an extremely valuable source of information,” Mr Chalmer said. The Esperance BPP comprises 6 livestock and farming enterprises and has been running since January 2007. Mr Chalmer said the BPP offers producers an incentive to try new ideas. “Sometimes you look at things and say ‘yeah that’s a great idea, I should do that on my place’. But when it boils down to it, you never get around to doing it,” he said. “But you can’t do that in a BPP. When you have to go back to the group and report on the results, there’s no excuse.” Although each group is supported by a facilitator, it is the responsibility of the participants themselves to identify the key issues they want to address. Mr Chalmer said the Esperance BPP has identified pasture utilisation as the best way to improve profitability. “We’ve been using the Feed Demand calculator from Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) to identify the times of the year when we have excess feed,” he said. “As a result we’ve been able to move our time of calving to minimise the risk of running short of feed at critical times.” Mr Chalmer said by better utilising the feed he produces he’s been able to double his stocking rate. “By implementing rotational grazing we now have about 700 store cattle being moved every few days. We hope to expand the rotational grazing area to about 1500 acres, so our carrying capacity will be increased even further.” |
 Mr Chalmer and the other participants in the BPP group recently travelled through the eastern states to gather information about rotational grazing.The fact that there are other Beef Profit Partnerships across Australia and New Zealand is one of the drawcards according to Mr Chalmer. “We’d already visited some farms in Western Australia but didn’t find all the information we were looking for. So we decided to head east, to see how farmers over there were doing things,” he said. “That’s the great thing about the BPP network. You get to learn about what works and what doesn’t. If you try something and it doesn’t work, you may give up altogether. But being part of the BPP allows you to minimise the mistakes you make.” He said the ultimate goal of the group is to produce a kilogram of beef per hectare per millimetre of rain. “During our tour of the eastern states we saw that goal was realistic. Not everything we saw would work on our places, but that’s the beauty of it, you get to pick and choose what would work in your own production system,” Mr Chalmer said. Although there is still a way to go, Mr Chalmer said he is on track to achieving his goal. “We live in a 600 millimetre rainfall area but our production was down to around 200 kilograms per hectare per annum. We’ve been able to lift that to about 400-450 kilos in a very poor year.” Mr Chalmer said another way of improving your profitability is by understanding your Cost of Production (CoP). “You can use the standardised MLA Cost of Production calculator to calculate two key performance indicators (KPIs); kilos of beef produced and cost ($/kg) to produce it,” he said. “People usually focus on the cost side of the equation. But if you can lift production by 20 percent at the same time as keeping costs constant, you can pretty much double your profit. That’s what we’re aiming to do.” But it’s not only BPP groups in the west who are joining the growing number of producers who know what their Costs of Production are. A group of very innovative beef producers from the Hernani/Ebor area in New South Wales have also been calculating their costs of production. For the last 3 years the group has not only individually calculated their CoP but have pooled their outcomes in a simple benchmarking exercise. They are about to add another year’s data to their individual results and repeat the annual benchmarking exercise. Bill Hoffman, Technical Specialist (Beef Breeding) with NSW Department of Primary Industries (NSW DPI) said after three years the group is keen to look deeper into how their businesses were performing. Members of the Hernani/Ebor group are trying to identify the profit drivers and manage them to maximise profitability, Mr Hoffman said. “Each business has different goals and different sets of resources. Therefore comparing businesses has to be done guardedly and with an understanding of what is going on in each individual business.” Large amounts of beef produced on one farm per dollar spent on pastures may not necessarily be sustainable in the long run. But it could also reflect in part better soil types or better pasture and grazing management. Mr Hoffman said for these reasons, the “informed” group discussion is critical to get the most out of the exercise. “Without doubt, the greatest benefit for the members of the group is the discussion generated by the process of collecting the data, collating it and reviewing the outcomes,” he said. It’s a sentiment backed up by Phil Chalmer in Western Australia. “There is nothing new about the information that we are using. It’s often available in the public domain. But being part of a BPP increases the rate of adoption of new technologies,” he said. “We probably would have come along the same pathway but it would have taken a lot longer.” |
| For further information about the BPP network contact Cynthia Mulholland, Beef CRC, (02) 6773 3525 |
