Anexo 1 – Panel coordinador del servicio internacional SafetyNET
5 Estaciones terrenas móviles (ETM)
Background and Scope
The Dairy Moving Forward (DMF) initiative involves developing a national pre-farmgate RD & E strategy and capability plan for the Australian dairy industry. A report completed in September 2009 titled ‘Dairy Moving Forward: A National Research Development & Extension Strategy’ provided the strategic context and priorities for the RD&E strategy. The following five strategic priorities were developed for consideration:
› Feedbase: Developing the skills and knowledge that
allow retention and management of an internationally competitive feedbase in a changing climate
› Animals: Driving animal performance
› People: Increasing the skills and capacity of people; aggressively developing industry education and training options
› Sustainable natural resources: maintaining access to key production resources
› Farm Business Systems/Management: Assisting farm businesses to adapt to a demonstrably more volatile business/climatic environment; developing the skills of farmers to manage that volatility.
The Farm Business Management/Systems area was considered a high priority because improved understanding of Farm Business Management principles is critical in providing the necessary skills to adapt to the volatile climatic and economic operating environment. The scope for the Farm Business Management (FBM) area of DMF was defined as follows:
To improve FBM in the R, D, E and farmer sectors so that more dairy farmers respond to challenges and opportunities confidently because they have a rigorous process for analysing and making decisions that increase profit under conditions of variability and uncertainty.
Definition of Farm Business Management
The development group considered the following definition a reasonable representation of what Farm Business Management (FBM) entails. “Farm Business Management is the process by which resources and situations are manipulated over time by the manager of the farm system in trying, with less than full information to achieve their goals” (Dillon 1980). The key limitation of the above definition is the focus on an individual ‘manager’ (Paine and Morrison 2010). Replacing ‘manager’ with ‘management team’ would probably give a better reflection of how many dairy farm businesses currently operate (Weise et al. 2005). The ‘management team’ may
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Farm busines
s management
FBM is mostly about: FBM isn’t much about:
• Decisions to achieve goals in the future. • Looking at past performance. • Marginal return/responses to changes.
• What would an extra cow do to profit? • What would an extra kg of grain do to profit? • What would an extra 40ha do to profit?
• Average responses to change in inputs. • Linear responses to changes in inputs.
• How can I increase profit and return on capital from my resources?
• How does my performance compare to someone else or the ‘average farm’?
• Adequate net cash-flow to operate, called liquidity. • Cash-flow alone. • Considering the combination of cash, profit, wealth
creation and risk perspectives.
• Profit or wealth creation alone, or only under typical circumstances.
• Whole farm thinking.
(Earnings Before Interest and Tax, Return on Capital, Return on Equity, debt to equity, debt servicing ability, net worth).
• Partial measures of input-output performance, eg. per cow, per ha.
For farmers • Understand and use operational, tactical and strategic plans. • Understand why and when to use cash and profit analyses. • Understand marginal responses/returns to extra inputs.
• Understand interactions and trade-offs between components of the farm business/system. • Understand variability, risk and uncertainty in their business and how to manage the challenges
and take advantage of the opportunities.
• Understand how the above applies to their unique situation.
• Understand when and how to source relevant external expertise and the ability to filter and integrate the knowledge acquired from a range of sources and apply it to their unique situation (Note: not necessarily managing a large or overly complicated business)
For advisers • Understand and use operational, tactical and strategic plans. • Understand why, when and how to use cash and profit analyses. • Understand marginal responses/returns to extra inputs.
• Understand interactions and trade-offs between components of the farm business/system. • Understand variability, risk and uncertainty in their clients businesses and how to manage the
challenges and take advantage of the opportunities.
• Understand how the above applies to the unique circumstances of the range of farm businesses that they deal with.
include advisers, in addition to family members and employees. Most FBM decisions require integration of knowledge from a range of disciplines or perspectives, which is likely to be better represented in a team than an individual.
The following table provides some further clarification as to what the development group thought FBM entailed.
Table 1. Farm Business Management Definitions.
Approach to developing the strategy
A ‘Situation Analysis’ was completed, which involved a review of relevant literature and consultation with key people.
A workshop to develop the FBM strategy was held on July 15 2010 involving participants with expertise in FBM. A draft strategy was developed following the first project development meeting on July 15. Consultation following the development of the draft strategy identified an opportunity to collaborate with NZ who have been working to address similar concerns in the FBM area for some time.
A workshop on August 23rd with representatives from the other areas of DMF identified many linkages between the FBM area and the other areas in DMF.
A workshop on September 23rd enabled input into the possible areas of collaboration with NZ from a range of people involved in the Australian dairy industry. Wider consultation with people representing milk factories, banks, universities and other agricultural industries was also conducted.