Business Excellence Program (BEP)

Rationale

The ability to subject business and technical farm management options to quality analysis using sound farm management economics is central to the adoption of improved dairy farm business management practices that improve productivity, profitability and sustainability. A range of recent dairy industry priority setting processes involving dairy farmers has regularly identified farm business management (FBM) as an area for significant potential improvement. Extension program evaluations supported by anecdotal evidence from a range of industry experts indicates that the complex and dynamic task of integrating farm resources into profitable farming systems is generally not done well by dairy farmers.

Target Audience and Aims

The outcome for the BEP is improved farm business decision making by dairy farm managers. The immediate target of the BEP is to improve the supply of high quality farm business management services from private sector advisers.

The BEP is structured around four objectives :

To improve the quality and supply of FBM services available to dairy farmers.
To demonstrate and promote the value of improved FBM to dairy farmers and hence the demand for quality services.
To increase the FBM skills of service providers and dairy farmers.
To continually improve the available data, information and knowledge of FBM in the dairy farm sector.

Methodology

Despite considerable investment the pace of improvement in FBM on farms has not been sufficient to meet the needs of the industry. This program will therefore take a more interventionist approach to:

Influence the supply of and demand for integrated FBM services.
Build capacity by setting and debating standards and establishing and promoting principles upon which sound FBM analysis should be based.
Provide an authoritative voice on analytical methods to remove inconsistencies and errors in the analytical methods used by service providers.
Work with the Research Centre for Innovation and Change at the University Melbourne to better understand the drivers of change in FBM.
Make available aggregate farm cost and return data to encourage a standardise approach to data analysis and promote the use of quality analytical services.

The initial seed funding from DA and DPIV will appoint a program manager whose initial task will be to undertake further scoping studies and commence several pilot projects and secure additional project funding and resources from other collaborators.