“This business group is taking farmers together on a learning journey of shared experiences, team building, personal understanding, and acceptance of the need for change.”
At the end of 2021, Scottish Agronomy invited its members to participate in Business, or Benchmarking, Groups. There are three groups located in Borders, Central and the North-East. FarmBench, which is an AHDB benchmarking tool, is used to analyse the data, with the meetings organised and facilitated by Gavin Dick and Julie Clarke (AHDB), along with input from Scottish Agronomy staff as appropriate.
The groups meet in November / December with a focus on the data, using it to highlight potential issues and areas of interest. A second meeting is held in February which has a business / personal development focus and, whilst related to the figures, the subject is selected from suggestions from the members and could encompass a wide range of topics such as marketing, policy, machinery planning, lean management, succession, and personal growth.
The third meeting has a technical focus and is held in May / June on one of the group member’s farms, exploring in practice how we can resolve the issues or areas of interest highlighted by the performance figures. Both the 2nd and 3rd meetings may incorporate a joint meeting or a visit to the other groups.
Here Farm and Rural Business consultant and the project’s facilitator, Gavin Dick, explains more about how the groups are working and why this approach is vital for the future of our industry:
Why has Scottish Agronomy formed a Business & Benchmarking Group?
This initiative is driven by the increasing need for farmers to change from their traditional production-led approach to a market driven, strategic business management mind-set, encompassing likely obligations to climate change and the environment. The aim, through sharing data and experience between those in the business groups, is to inspire Scottish Agronomy members to become even more business focussed, informed decision makers, able to build and manage resilient farming businesses to withstand global market volatility, reduced direct support payments and changing weather patterns. We are also looking at how farmers perceive climate change and demonstrating/exploring? the business benefits of proactive environmental management.
The group members are encouraged to analyse every aspect of their businesses and make the accumulative marginal gains across all enterprises to create efficient, innovative, and progressive farming businesses. The ultimate challenge is how participants improve technical efficiency, raise their market awareness, embrace innovation, and ultimately instil transformational change in the mind-set of how farmers make their business decisions.
So, what is benchmarking?
Many perceive benchmarking to be simply about looking at the financial data, however the dictionary definition is “the process of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry best practice or best practice from other industries”. The financial and physical data is used to highlight the issues and raise the questions, but the key outcome of benchmarking is to find the solutions, or best practice, through sharing ideas, thoughts, and experiences with other like-minded farmers.
We know the concept of peer-to-peer learning in a practical on-farm environment achieves excellent results, but why is this necessary?
To some extent, farmers have been cushioned by the CAP support they have received. This often allows practices which are not always the most efficient or economic.
Participation in the group takes the farmers together on a learning journey of shared experiences, team building, personal understanding, and acceptance of the need for change. It helps to break down the barriers of “this is what we’ve aye done” and initiates an attitude of adopting best practice together as a group so that the group members are confident and excited to take on a new attitude to their businesses by adopting change, taking new routes to market, and undertaking new business ventures.
Business Groups & Benchmarking can be a highly effective vehicle to lead a transformational change in helping farmers to adopt the best mind set for the challenges that lie ahead. The range of technical, market, and operational improvements explored will all be important, but are only useful if these changes are taken up. Sharing experiences and demonstrating real examples of how this can work is important in seeing how to reduce fixed costs, effectively target inputs and improve farm profitability whilst taking responsibility for climate change. The group structure creates a feeling of acceptability amongst participating farmers to the change process being advocated, making implementing new processes on their own farm much easier.
Where are the wins for the group members?
There are significant opportunities for farmers across Scotland to improve business performance through marginal gains. The aim is to use the group to help participating members to start bridging the gap in terms of measuring technical efficiency, calculating cost of production, monitoring performance, contributing to climate change, and implementing management procedures and protocols.
Farmers must look on their farms as an asset and a base for opportunities to use their land and building resources to create resilient businesses. Adapting management techniques and collective learning as part of a peer group of other inspirational farmers will cultivate ideas and move their businesses forward.
Cooperation and collaborative thinking, on which Scottish Agronomy is built, is a significant part of the solution to improving on-farm efficiency. Adapting management techniques and collective learning as part of a peer group of other inspirational farmers cultivates ideas and moves businesses forward. If farmers can embrace the coming changes in agriculture, there will be many opportunities for resilient and forward-thinking innovative businesses.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
Charles Darwin
