The web-based software tool is funded by farmers through their DairyNZ levy and in recent years the number of farmers using it has increased significantly.
DairyBase senior analyst Karen Treloar said that more than 2600 farmers use the tool and that has allowed the range of benchmarks the system can analyse and report on to grow considerably.
Some farmers were still under the misconception that numbers on DairyBase were low but Treloar believed they were confused with numbers used in the Economic Farm Survey.
A small subset of about 300 farms on DairyBase were used for the annual survey, with each farm having to meet stringent criteria when it came to their data so year-by-year comparisons could be made.
“We’ve been able to create a lot more benchmarks from the 2012-13 data than we’ve ever had before because of the increased numbers of farms now entering their information into DairyBase,” she said.
It’s meant about 10-15 new benchmark standards, so farmers could compare their own figures against others across more indices.
Comparisons could be made by herd size, irrigation, milking interval, low-medium or high input, and the top 10%, 15%, or 20% of farms by operating profit – there are literally hundreds of benchmarks, she said.
“Having more farmers’ information also means we can be a lot more granular with the analysis,” she said.
For example, winter milk farmers used to be able to only benchmark themselves against other winter milk farmers on a North or South Island basis.
Now there are enough farmers to create benchmark comparisons on a regional basis and, in some areas, at a district level.
The more farmers the more powerful and useful the information is.
Owner-operators, owner-operators with contract milkers, variable order sharemilkers and 50:50 sharemilkers all have their own benchmarking categories, as do variable order sharemilkers, 50:50 sharemilkers and contract milkers on their own.
Treloar said the DairyBase system also had a group called diverse, which covered farms that had structures and financial reporting that didn’t fit neatly into the other categories.
Multiple farm businesses with different management systems on each, or sharemilkers who were also equity partners, could be accommodated and analysis teased out for their operations.
That ensures that a poor underlying business performance wasn’t masked by capital gain.
Benchmarking the physical parameters of the business could identify areas where improvements could significantly drive farm financial performance, but the inclusion of industry targets was also important.
Six-week in-calf rates and three-week submission rates, and percentage of first calvers on farm at the end of the season, were all indices that had flow-on financial implications.
The power was not only in knowing what your own farm’s KPI’s were across the range of indices measured in DairyBase, it was also about comparing with others and checking to see how you were doing in terms of industry targets.
“There’s a wealth of infomation there,” Treloar said.
