great information this, not the sort of stuff you can pluck out of a magazine etc. I think we are in for a big shock in this country and finding methods to farm which are resilient and profitable are very important.
"Improving Our Lot" - Planned Holistic Grazing, for starters..
- Thread starter Kiwi Pete
- Start date
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
What we do isn't for everyone.
I love my land, enough to do whatever it takes to help it be all it can be.
Others love other things more, like having things look nice, or breeding their perfect sheep/cow, I can't see those things having as much of an impact on our business' future as loving our land... so it's all a work in progress.
Our first year or two weren't too flash, spent a lot more money setting the business up than I'd ever imagined, beginners mistakes; had no livestock, bought some.. sold them, made sweet FA on the deal.
Bought some ewe lambs and lambed them, bought more, had a great lambing or two, then realised that parking stock here and farming them well wasn't actually cutting the mustard as far as cashflow goes.
Well, it got us by but I knew there was much more potential in a smaller operation than simply doing what everyone else around here is doing, on a smaller scale. So I stopped looking at farming and started looking at "business".
Farming is similar to owning the house you live in, whereas what we're doing now is more like owning other houses where the tenants pay your mortgages and costs.. with enough left over to make progress on your own house.
NZ beef + lamb benchmarking show an average return on capital employed of around 1.6%, which really isn't that flash, and far from sustainable or attractive to my mind.
But when you look at our little business by comparison, (we've only got about $500,000 invested in it) I much prefer $38,000 in pay than $8,000. 1.6% return is a joke
- Location
- Glen Clova, Angus, DD8 4RD
The Savory Holistic Management Courses teach that you should aim for 50% profit on turnover before tax. It sounds mad until you work through the course when it suddenly makes sense and you can actually see how it could be done repeatedly.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
There's no going back, once you see the world beyond that door
bit of a numb figure that
Any of you guys getting near this figure. Obviously Pete is.
- Location
- Glen Clova, Angus, DD8 4RD
JohnGalway
Member
- Location
- Connemara, Ireland
I'm doing the financial module next month. The 50% is what you aim for, then you start looking at options how to achieve it. For further horror it also has farmers paying themselves for their own time.
- Location
- Derbyshire UK
Anyone know of a UK equivalent of Farmer Roys "Ranching for profit" group?Which Circle Are You In?
July 25th, 2018 by Dave Pratt
I go to a lot of meetings. I often hear people complain about how tough we have it. The three favorite topics are bad weather, low prices and government regulations (three things you can’t do anything about). Those are followed up by gossip about the neighbor … and if the neighbor is there … it turns to gossip about the other neighbor.
One of the things I enjoy most about the people who come to the Ranching For Profit School and who join Executive Link is their attitude. They aren’t there to complain about government policy, commodity prices or weather. They are there to figure out what they are going to do about government policy, how they plan to position themselves relative to markets and how they plan to prepare for and manage through severe weather. They work in a different circle.
In Stephen Covey’s all-time best-selling book on personal development, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey describe two circles: a circle of concern and a circle of influence. The circle of concern includes things that we care about but can’t impact. The circle of influence lies within the circle of concern and includes all of the things that we care about AND can do something about. Covey points out that the more time we worry or complain about the things in the circle of concern, the less effective we are. Highly effective people focus on their circle of influence. The more we focus on the things we can actually do something about, the more our circle of influence grows and the more effective we become. That’s where most RFP students and EL members spend most of their time and energy.
This is more than a theory. A young couple asked for my advice regarding a problem “with their parents.” They were excited about the things they’d learned at the Ranching For Profit School but were concerned that when they returned home their family would be resistant to change and would reject their ideas. “They won’t let us do anything!” they complained.
“They won’t let you do anything?” I asked. “They won’t even let you write a proposal?”
“They won’t show us the numbers,” they said.
We had just talked about how reconstructing last year isn’t very useful since you can’t change the past. It is much more valuable to make projections. I reminded them, “You don’t need last year’s numbers to make projections for next year. Can you project the impact of the changes you want to make on overhead costs, gross margin and turnover?”
They reluctantly agreed that they could.
I continued, “Can you project the cash flow, determine how much capital would be required or liberated, and show how labor would be impacted by your ideas? Could you project the implications in drought or low markets or other contingencies?”
They’d been focusing on their circle of concern and something that they couldn’t do anything about (their folks reaction). I was trying to steer them into their circle of influence and the things they could control (creating a proposal).
This isn’t just about effectiveness. It is also about happiness. It is easy to blame things beyond your control, but pity parties aren’t much fun. In fact, framing yourself as a victim leads to anger, frustration and depression. In contrast, there is nothing more motivating than producing results. ALL of the results you produce come when you work in your circle of influence.
There’s no point complaining about things you can’t do anything about. It’s not prices, government or drought that will determine your success or failure. It is how you position yourself relative to these issues and how you manage your business through this environment. To find proof, all you have to do is look around. Some people managing through drought, depressed prices and working with agencies, are more successful than others. It’s not just luck. It’s what they do that makes the difference. It’s not the situation but our response that counts.
It is easy to be distracted by all of the things we care about that we can’t change. The challenge is to find the part of these things that we can actually do something about. There’s plenty in our circle of influence to keep us engaged and productive. It’s time we rolled up our sleeves and get to work on those things.
- Location
- Hertfordshire
I’m working on it. The arable side of my business is letting the side down.
Next year though Rodney,.......
JohnGalway
Member
- Location
- Connemara, Ireland
There's an arable guy over here you might find interesting in that regard, his name is Thomas Fouhy. If you Google him his presentation at the National Organic Training Skillnet Biofarm 2019 conference should come up, very much worth a listen.
I already do that, I am on salary
to be honest, wouldn't know but shouldn't think so
ShooTa
Member
- Location
- Denbighshire - In the vale of Clwyd!
- Location
- Glen Clova, Angus, DD8 4RD
No but Agricology are well worth following:
Practical sustainable farming - Agricology
Agricology is an organic and sustainable farming archive for farmers including resources, farmer profiles, research projects, blogs, events.
www.agricology.co.uk
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
I pay myself at the beginning of the financial year, as you say if you don't spend it you don't have to claw it back...
this lights the fire, under my cauldron, because straight away the business is "at a loss" to the tune of $1000/ha and then I have to be innovative, reasonably energetic, and proactive
it's very easy to be reactive and not proactive, actually having said that I'm going to advertise some unused gear right away.
Also it's very easy to accumulate "handy things to have" which really don't serve a purpose in your business, for example I have a roller drill and a cultivator and a tip trailer and a spray boom sitting here in my yard doing nothing - all they represent are 'investments' which although not big, have a dollar value.
All those dollars doing nothing mean that the overall return on investment suffers a little, then I see them and have a weak moment that I could use them.. and that all costs money and time and actually ends up working against our core business, and really our core values.
Great to have this type of mental flatulence sometimes, otherwise things don't change, things don't get sold, things stay as they were/are
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Another day in paradise - feeling my age today. ☹
I backed off the SD a bit because I don't want things to be too time-bound while it's weekend, so the mob got 2 moves instead. Needed the fire-side time.
If I set the pogo back a little, they tend to all graze one cell and then all pile thru to the other, so they still provide quite a bit of pressure this way.
It's not until they've got full bellies that they spread out half-and-half between the two - takes about an hour? I don't sit out there long enough.
Leave an awful lot of manure behind though
..and the manure looks right enough, not too many slops and not like bricks.
lots of tunnels from earthworms, had a dig this morning while on the phone to Jono and although it's too damp to screen a spadeful of soil properly I counted 83 earthworms, mostly juveniles a couple of cm long, probably 65-70% juveniles.
Pretty happy with that as not long ago it would have been 25-40.
I backed off the SD a bit because I don't want things to be too time-bound while it's weekend, so the mob got 2 moves instead. Needed the fire-side time.
If I set the pogo back a little, they tend to all graze one cell and then all pile thru to the other, so they still provide quite a bit of pressure this way.
It's not until they've got full bellies that they spread out half-and-half between the two - takes about an hour? I don't sit out there long enough.
Leave an awful lot of manure behind though
..and the manure looks right enough, not too many slops and not like bricks.
Pretty happy with that as not long ago it would have been 25-40.
- Location
- Derbyshire
Over at the Positive Farmers conference a couple of years ago there was a speaker who talked about 'bottom up budgeting'from what IK can see of those enviro schemes it would be a few pet cows and get a job
right or wrong the way I look at it is work out your profit per animal then think how many you have to keep to pay the fert bill, to pay the reseeding bill, to pay for new machines to do all this and so on and so on
there is money in some of it but it can also be working for parasites
Goven your output by what you NEED, not what you WANT
So. We need to pay taxes, the rent, food/household, finance commitments, pretty much after that everything is a WANT.
It really does alter your way of getting the job done, and certainly leaves more money in the bank (and to pay taxes ?)
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Taxes are a bit of a barsteward TBH, when you look at how they waste the revenue. I tend to give it to various charities instead, like the Fred Hollows Foundation and Women's Refuge
You would be horrified at the gear we have here then, comes from the legacy of being here so long but mainly the remnants of our contracting business which is largely done with now.
As far as the machinery is concerned apart from the some of the silage making gear the rest has depreciated as far as its going to, in fact some seems to go up in value plus it don't actually eat anything but as you say it has a value and some of it should be sold, flip side of that is I can do more or less any job on the farm I need to myself the contracting bill is zero, yes getting someone in may be more economical in some cases but what do I do while they are doing the job ? stand and watch ? do something else ? there isnt much else to do, I know we will take on more land, pay to much for it but it will help pay the contractors and make me look like I have arrived. could just get a proper job I spose.
If contractors make money doing the job for me then there is money in me doing it myself
you are right in as much as if it never gets used for anything then it needs selling, trouble is the price of scrap is right down at the moment, but there is more than one way to look at what gets used on occasion
The tractors well anything with an engine, they do eat and that needs sorting out