‘Making data work’ key to hone cost awareness on arable front
Most arable farmers reckon they have a good handle on their expenditure through knowing the costs of their seeds and fertiliser but a leading agronomist has thrown a spanner into that pool saying far more could and should be done in tracking detailed costs of fuel, labour and machinery expenses.
Eric Anderson, senior agronomist with Scottish Agronomy, said he “passionately” believed making farmers data ‘work’ for them was the future.
“Working with some of our members has shown that as much as 53 per cent of wheat production costs are associated with machinery, fuel and labour inputs, yet there are no large-scale benchmarking projects that deliver an accurate picture of these costs per crop.
“By attributing fixed machinery and labour hours to each block of land, it will be clearer to farm business owners where efficiencies can be made, and, when combined with management tools, create opportunity to transform fixed costs for greater margins.”
Anderson was speaking about the work of 4sight Farming, a benchmarking group formed to analyse detailed machinery and labour costs.
These would be put alongside variable inputs to give farming businesses a greater understanding of true costs of growing a crop.
The pilot project involving 25 farms has been fully funded for just under £100,000 by the Scottish Government and the European Union and will, according to Anderson, help farmers face an uncertain future:
“With no clear commitment from the Scottish Government on the transitional changes after the UK leaves the European Union, it is more important than ever for Scottish farmers to have a full understanding of their business costs.”