Getting the best from your farm business

This to me is always an exciting time when you can finalise your business performance and see how you have done and then identifying what you can do better.

This year-on-year improvement, or being willing to make improvements and adjust the way you operate, is what makes good farming businesses even better.

There has never been a more appropriate time to make your business as efficient and effective as possible as Brexit draws nearer and the uncertainty of external factors is on our minds.

There is not much individuals can do about external factors, but what individuals can do something about is to plan and budget and prepare your farm business well for the coming year. Hardships will be reduced if your business is efficient and effective as possible.

Planning for the coming year is always difficult, trying to work out and calculate what the price of wheat or milk will be and how much will it will cost for seed or concentrates. These are all questions you must ask yourself and if only you had a crystal ball will you know the answer but an educated guess using your experience and your knowledge of the business will get you closer in making better decisions.

A good starting point is knowing your performance and what you can realistically achieve, whether this is tonnes per hectare or litres per cow or whatever it is, but be realistic.

Prices of commodities is a difficult one to estimate but start with what you averaged last year, making adjustments for increases or decreases in size of operation and then using your experience and knowledge for any other adjustments.

Something to think about is physical performance factors. For example, take a sheep farmer and the calculation of the Lambing Percentage – or really it should be called the lambs-produced percentage.

Think about the sheep production calendar starting with the number of lambs you sold or kept for breeding in one season and divide this figure by the number of ewes put to the ram and then multiply by 100. So if you sold 150 lambs and did not keep any for breeding and divided this figure by the total number of ewes you put to the ram, say 100, you would get a lambing percentage of 150.

Now work out your lambing percentage and thereafter how you can plan to improve this percentage in the coming year.

Chris Jones is involved in land-based education, training and mentoring