Ballance dinners demonstrate path to profitability

19 October 2011

Ballance dinners demonstrate path to profitability

Ballance Agri-Nutrients has pulled together a raft of experts to present at its Business Development Dinner series over the next few months.

Ballance Sales and Marketing General Manager Graeme Smith says the business development dinners are held every year as part of the co-operative’s programme to provide more information and tools to farmers.

“We want to be able to seed new ideas and new ways of thinking with our customers as part of our commitment to help them farm more profitability and more sustainably,” Mr Smith says.

“We recognise that farmers are busy people so one way of reaching out to them is by providing expert information, both from our own fertiliser specialists and scientists, but also other key industry players.”

Mr Smith says farming is about getting the balance right, not just with soil and pasture management, but the entire business.

“We don’t have all the answers ourselves, but our dinners give us the opportunity to pull together other experts to provide a more complete picture.”

One of the speakers is Beef + Lamb New Zealand Chief Executive, Dr Scott Champion, who says that while sheep and beef revenues have increased over the past 12 to 18 months, farm profits are always tight and farmers need to keep focused on productivity improvements and managing their costs to maximise the opportunities the higher prices bring.

He says the top performing farmers are consistently achieving improved lambing percentages about 10 percent above the farm class average.

Beef + Lamb New Zealand is currently undertaking some detailed analysis to help better understand the characteristics of top performing farms. For example, Dr Champion says that while the most profitable sheep and beef farmers improved their lambing percentage through ewe scanning, it was not so much the process of scanning that delivered the benefit, but the management systems put in place to manage the ewes identified as having twins.

Mr Smith says Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s involvement at some of the meetings provides farmers with an opportunity to learn more about some of the research that is underway across the industry and get access to information that will ultimately help them boost farm profitability.

“The purpose of the dinners is to provide farmers with ways to better understand their businesses and equip them with solutions that fit their own unique circumstances.”

Former Chief Executive of AgResearch, Dr Andrew West, will also be speaking at some of the upcoming Ballance Business Development Dinners in dairy regions throughout the country.

The Ballance Business Development Dinner series is coming to Te Puke 20 October, Pio Pio 22 November, Hawera 23 November, Te Anau 28 November, Invercargill 29 November, Dannevirke 14 March and Feilding 15 March. If you would like to know more about these events please contact your local Ballance Technical Sales Representative on 0800 222 090.

ENDS

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