New Entrants : Enterprise Gross Margins – event summary

The second Stranraer New Entrants to Farming meeting was held on the 2 Nov 2016 at The Green Valley Golf Academy.  The basis of the meeting was ‘Using Figures to Make Money’.

Kev Bevan, SAC Consulting gave an excellent presentation on the importance of knowing your performance figures and using these to benchmark yourself against other farmers and industry standards to gauge your performance.  Read his presentation here.

The local agricultural team from the Royal Bank of Scotland gave a brief presentation on what services they could offer to New Entrants.

Key take home messages:

1. If you don’t measure it you can’t improve it
2. For a suckler herd a good KPI would be kg of weaned calf per kg of cow
3. An excellent target for lamb growth rates would be 300g/day
4. Weigh scales are a key piece of kit on beef and sheep farms
5. Use partial budgets to make strategic decisions on farm, such as whether to fatten cattle or sell store