agri benchmark: Benchmarking Beef Farming Systems Worldwide

The agri benchmark Beef Network is a unique association of economists, scientists, farmers and advisors, as well as scientific and agribusiness partners from more than 30 organisations across 23 countries. The Network benchmarks 'typical' beef finishing and cow-calf farms from participating countries, which are generated from panel meetings of farmers and advisors and collated using a standard operating procedure. Once data are entered and processed using a series of Excel spreadsheet tools, it is broken down to the enterprise and animal level for performing unit cost analyses. The complexity of the data recorded enables detailed analyses and international comparisons on farm demographics (land size, stocking numbers, daily weight gain, prices), cost breakdowns by composition and per 100 kg carcass weight, physical and economic labour productivity (kg beef per hour, return per unit of labour cost), land productivity (carcass weight per hectare), short and medium term profitability (per 100 kg carcass weight) and whole farm profitability ($AUD '000). This paper discusses the approach and benefits of the agri benchmark model and network and presents key findings and results from the 2009 partner countries, as well as new developments, including sheep and emission analyses, from the agri benchmark Beef Network.