Future proofing your business

We look at the practical steps and elements that can be considered to enable you to future proof your business during uncertain times with Ian Powell, CEO of the Dairy Group.

Ian, along with Buscot Wicks' Phil Kinch, covered off practical advice around the power of recording key metrics to enable decision makiing and also explored elements that can be considered that make a long-term impact on your farm. These included investment judgements, buying groups, hedging, benchmarking, decision making strategies, mitigating uncertaintities and planning your processes.

• Energy utilistation is key - and farms should look closer at how much energy they are harvesting from their land as greater utilisation often increases yields.
• Certain criops absorb more energy and this often improves the performance of feed
• Working through a detailed plan of the elements and processes involved in producing milk supplies can often highlight areas of ineffeciency and waste
• We recommend doing this by first looking at the assets in your cycle that generally includes people, land, the buildings and the herd itself

Risk mitigation:

• Weather impacts might include utilising whole crop on mixed farms or moving youngstock onto a straw based diets when short on feed although this will incure costs that must be considered when choosing your most efficient option
• Milk price might involve fixed price offers currently around 28p per litre enabling you to plan better (often at 50% available to fix)
• Input costs would generally start with feed, again by fixing costs in forward contracts and dairy compound prices. It could also include joining local buying groups.
• Animal diseases such as TB which might incude accounting for additional herd replacements
• Cash flow in the business is to itentify you borrowing requirements well ahead. You could balance needs by postponing replaments of machinery, moving to interest only at certain times and have a close handle on your borrowing needs