TFF Benchmarking - "Grains of Thought"

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
“Grains of Thought” is our new idea to encourage collaboration and help us all benchmark our crops and businesses on The Farming Forum.

There have been may threads since TFF started trying to compare various aspects of how we all farm, yields, input spend, fixed costs etc have all been endlessly discussed but usually the result is the same, lack of equal comparisons make the discussion interesting but ultimately a bit meaningless !

I've been sure there had to be a way to get some more meaningful benchmarking out of these discussions and spent a lot of time trying to find a way to make that possible, What we have now is a test to see how this goes, if people like it it will continue, if they don't it will not, as usual with TFF we will do what the members want us to do.

Basically the idea is this – every couple weeks we will ask the forum a series of short questions and provide those that participate with the results. The topics will change throughout the year based on seasonality, industry trends, and requests from the community.

To make the results relevant to you, in the first set of questions we will be asking a couple things about your farm size and county. With this information, we will send you comparable results to farmers of like farm size and geography.

You can participate on your smartphone, tablet, or PC by clicking the links (in this post) on our website or by clicking the website banners that will appear shortly. Within 1-2 weeks of providing your feedback, you will be emailed a link to your personal report with instructions on how to view the results.

Finally, your personal identifying information and individual responses will never be shared with others. So, give it a go!

The continuation of this idea will depend on the interest from the forum over the next couple months. Initially, participation will be limited to winter wheat growers. However, if we receive good participation and positive feedback then we will keep it going and extend the idea to additional crops and create questions based on what you tell us you want to compare, yields, fixed or variable costs spends........anything really that's interest you, guided by topics in the thread that you create on the forum

We hope you enjoy this new opportunity and find it fun and insightful!

The link to take part is here

https://www.growingopinions.com/uc/global_admin/0e3d/

The report that we will provide show your answers in relation to others of similar business, farm size, area etc. will come back to you in a email newsletter format called "Grains of thought" and you will have access to a dashboard that will also show your results an link to which will appear on the TFF top menu bar soon

Results emails will look something like this



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The members dashboard will look something like this

PCSlide01A-02.png
 
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Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Will commercial companies have access to the information and if so which companies and what data. Also will they be paying for this data.

All is clear in the terms and conditions, nothing is being hidden, nothing is being shared about any individual with anyone and IMO there is nothing to fear, I have spent a lot of time trying to make sure we have something that in time will be of real benefit to TFF members

There is no way we as farmers can get the information we want to help us run our business more efficiently without paying for that service, there is no free lunch ! People are taking free infomation form us all the time and we get nothing back, this is an attempt to get us something we can use back for a change

what we have I hope is the return of information that will be useful to us as farmers and a by product of some that will benefit our suppliers, that's not a bad thing IMO - if for example a chemical manufacture can better predict use of a fungicide for they can plan production and avoid shortage or oversupply with is bad for both environment and only gets loaded on the prices we pay or if we are giving them feedback that a certain chemical is not working well for us then they can maybe act upon that infomation to both their benefit and also ours

As I say if it's not useful to us it won't continue so give it a try and lets see what comes back. Its basic in what it asks in this pilot but could evolve in many ways based on member feedback and become something unique and of real value to us all maybe
 

Daniel

Member
Yes, seems good, forced me to break out the calculator, have spent a good bit less than last year on fungs. T0 wasn't needed this year. But now the wheats are suffering and we should have spent the money saved on beefing up the T3. Hindsight eh?
 

Mad Farmer

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Worcestershire
Survey should show 2015/16 cropping year as I have not sown any winter crops in 2016 yet. Although I have answered as if I have.
I would hope that the email address I have given will not be sold on.
Keep it simple and it will work.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Survey should show 2015/16 cropping year as I have not sown any winter crops in 2016 yet. Although I have answered as if I have.
I would hope that the email address I have given will not be sold on.
Keep it simple and it will work.

email address cant be sold etc - doing so would be breaking the DPA - only reason it's asked for is so we can send you the results email in 2 weeks time and so you can log into the benchmarking dashboard that will appear after the first set of results
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Yes, seems good, forced me to break out the calculator, have spent a good bit less than last year on fungs. T0 wasn't needed this year. But now the wheats are suffering and we should have spent the money saved on beefing up the T3. Hindsight eh?

good to hear (not the bit about wheats suffering) - I really hope we can make some proper use of this, we tried with the yield surveys etc and response was great but we failed to get you all the useful information back that we could have, hopefully this should make that kind of thing loads better in the future
 

Daniel

Member
good to hear (not the bit about wheats suffering) - I really hope we can make some proper use of this, we tried with the yield surveys etc and response was great but we failed to get you all the useful information back that we could have, hopefully this should make that kind of thing loads better in the future

Yes I think I still have those rambling spreadsheets somewhere!

This is far more professional and has clearly had a lot of thought put into it rather than simply making it up on the hoof and being overwhelmed. Will look forward to the results.
 

Against_the_grain

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
S.E
I appreciate what your doing here @Clive but benchmarking can be done through AHDB in a more targeted way, with no commercial interests. Its all very well and I agree to an extent that some of the information may be useful...but at what cost? This commercially sensitive information WILL be used against us and to the advantage of our input suppliers (we cant rose tint that they are only in business for one reason and thats to make a profit!) so why on earth would we want to give them this information!

Good luck but Im out.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
I appreciate what your doing here @Clive but benchmarking can be done through AHDB in a more targeted way, with no commercial interests. Its all very well and I agree to an extent that some of the information may be useful...but at what cost? This commercially sensitive information WILL be used against us and to the advantage of our input suppliers (we cant rose tint that they are only in business for one reason and thats to make a profit!) so why on earth would we want to give them this information!

Good luck but Im out.

It can be doe though ADHB but they don't have 1500 farmers online every evening, and don't kid ourself that seemingly uncommercial intuitions (like the NFU) don't sell data - hopefully this will work well down to the size of the community the information is coming from

How do you envisage it being used against us ? noone can direct market to you as a result of participation in this, at worst they can maybe begin to anticipate your needs and better understand your views on the effectiveness of products we use, whats so scary about that ?

Nothing here is going to be used against us, we as farmers are going to get some valuable infomation back I hope and if along the way we help say a ag chem company to better plan production what's the harm in that for us ?

It's in our interest that the entire ag industry in the UK is efficient as possible and that includes our suppliers who only pass their inefficiency on to us in the price tag !

It's up to you if you don't want to do it of course but I think if this ends up being what I would like it to be you will be missing out due to an unfounded conspiracy theory attitude that really isn't warranted in this case, others take this info and give nothing back, the idea here is to make sure us farmers get their fair share of the useful information that might benefit their businesess
 

robbie

Member
BASIS
I done it earlier while waiting for the countryfile forecast. I'm looking forward to getting some results to see how I compare to others.

while doing it, it surprised me how I'd spent a very modest amount on fungicide and still have (I think) good results.
 

RushesToo

Member
Location
Fingringhoe
It can be doe though ADHB but they don't have 1500 farmers online every evening, and don't kid ourself that seemingly uncommercial intuitions (like the NFU) don't sell data - hopefully this will work well down to the size of the community the information is coming from

How do you envisage it being used against us ? noone can direct market to you as a result of participation in this, at worst they can maybe begin to anticipate your needs and better understand your views on the effectiveness of products we use, whats so scary about that ?

Nothing here is going to be used against us, we as farmers are going to get some valuable infomation back I hope and if along the way we help say a ag chem company to better plan production what's the harm in that for us ?

It's in our interest that the entire ag industry in the UK is efficient as possible and that includes our suppliers who only pass their inefficiency on to us in the price tag !

It's up to you if you don't want to do it of course but I think if this ends up being what I would like it to be you will be missing out due to an unfounded conspiracy theory attitude that really isn't warranted in this case, others take this info and give nothing back, the idea here is to make sure us farmers get their fair share of the useful information that might benefit their businesess
I am a great believer in being in charge of your own data. There are many people and places that I would not give my data to.

TFF is one of the few places where I believe giving your data will be of benefit to you more than the person you give it to.

I deal with DPA stuff every day as data is part of what I do. All sharing of data is a balance, this data collection is a one [and a very rare one] where you will get more back from offering your data than you do most any other time.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
I'm not into benchmarking. I just to try to find the way of growing as cheap as possible but recognise I'm biased on a lot of decisions

Thing is how do you know what cheap is without some kind of benchmarking ?

We all benchmark our performance somehow - or do you never ask others what yields they got compared to you ? All this does is formalise / gives you a much bigger pool of others to compare against
 
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Location
Cambridge
We have 800ha in a single block, and our 10 year average wheat yield is 9.3t/ha.

The southern half of the block averages about 8t/ha, and the northern half a bit over 10t/ha.

I can't benchmark one half of our farm against the other half, let alone look at what someone in the same region - or even parish - is doing.

Nice idea, I'd love to be able to do it, but never going to be practical...unfortunately.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
We have 800ha in a single block, and our 10 year average wheat yield is 9.3t/ha.

The southern half of the block averages about 8t/ha, and the northern half a bit over 10t/ha.

I can't benchmark one half of our farm against the other half, let alone look at what someone in the same region - or even parish - is doing.

Nice idea, I'd love to be able to do it, but never going to be practical...unfortunately.

you can compare your overall and individual costs vs similar size farmer in your area etc. or you machinery costs / ha etc - many possibilities in the future I think that all have to be more use than no info at all surely ?
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
If you really want to stir things up, create a constant survey of input prices and make the results public.

maybe thats where we will go with this in the future ??? :) frankly the possibilities are endless if we can get it off the ground beyond this pilot

as I said I want this to benefit farmers as well as others within our industry that might have use for some of the info
 
Location
Cambridge
you can compare your overall and individual costs vs similar size farmer in your area etc. or you machinery costs / ha etc - many possibilities in the future I think that all have to be more use than no info at all surely ?
Limited use, although would probably be superficially interesting. Just way too many variables, most of which it's not possible to account for.
 

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