The latest Red Meat Profit Partnership (RMPP) survey of farmers also showed that while nearly half of them were open to change and outside advice to help lift productivity, the actual uptake of digital farm management tools was low, at only 18%.
It found 52% of farmers were prepared to adjust farming practices but wanted to see evidence first of that working.
Another 23% said they would be willing to try change even if there was a chance it wouldn’t work and 17% said they did not need to make any adjustments.
Even though the “change” numbers were relatively low, the experience of pilot groups of farmers showed in many cases just some minor adjustments were needed to produce some “startling” results, RMPP general manager Michael Smith said.
One industry measure was that it could often take seven to 15 years for significant uptake of practice change but in the pilot groups that was being reduced to about six to eight months in some cases and 60% of participants were prioritising change.
“Something is working and while it’s early days we think that over two or three seasons we will see a good trend coming through.”
RMPP has 60 farmers involved in the pilot programme with another 10 or so to start in the next month, Smith said.
Farmers were selected in conjunction with the partnership’s meat processor group and covered a wide range of operational skill levels.
RMPP was also working with a group of 30 farmers, all in the top 1% of performance levels, but all looking for ways to make further improvement.
“We’re working with them on the basis of what RMPP can do to add further value and if we can assist them then we can use that information to help others as well.”
The research survey involved 789 sheep and beef farmers and was done over 2014-15.
While use of digital tools to support operational farm decisions was low, 62% of farmers had used a financial management tool, half had used benchmarking tools and 45% computer planning tools such as spreadsheets.
Connectivity of applications systems and training in computer skills and the use of digital farm management tools were crucial and RMPP was offering support for farmers in those areas, Smith said.
The major solutions farmers believed would most likely lead to increased profits were in pasture management (77% of farmers), animal health (76%), fertiliser management (75%), re-grassing (70%) and animal breeding and genetics (70%).
Other areas included growing crops (68%) and measuring animal performance (66%).
The survey showed while 75% of farmers said they regularly measured animal performance, numbers were quite a bit lower in specific areas important to red meat farming productivity.
They included 32% not regularly measuring lambing and calving percentages, 36% to 37% not measuring average carcase weights or liveweight gains and 42% not measuring feed supply and grass growth.
In the latter area, 84% said they mainly viewed results on “eye or gut feel”.
The measuring of farm operations, especially animal performance, was lower than expected, Smith said.
“Most farmers have a pretty good handle on how their farm is producing but that was one of the more interesting things to come out.”
RMPP was not planning to use top performer farmers to mentor other farmers but one of the findings among the high achievers was an appreciation of specialist support and advice.
