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Profitable farmers in the Wimmera Mallee
What will make Wimmera Mallee farmers profitable in the future? What will the keys to success be? How can we make our farming communities robust – even if confronted with challenging seasons?
Eyre Peninsula farmer and farm business consultant Ed Hunt, will be discussing this issue at the BCG 'From Surviving to Thriving' Grains Research Expo on Thursday.
Ed Hunt has been working with farmers on the Eyre Peninsula over the last two seasons and in 2009 is working with six Birchip farm businesses. The aim is to identify some keys to success in making farm businesses flexible enough to adjust to almost any seasonal or market condition.
BCG Extension Manager Fiona Best said, 'The work being undertaken in this project is one of the first attempts to really assess farm businesses as a whole rather than as discrete elements. For example, as an industry we have really focused on nutrition, herbicide management, whether to cut hay or not, but haven't really looked at the bigger picture of such things as farm scale, labour, off-farm investments or machinery purchase. Ed has been able to provide real insight into how to start analysing our businesses to incorporate some of these aspects.'
This discussion session is being supported by the Rural Financial Counselling Service, who work with farms and small businesses across the region to foster better decision making and information provision on the issues of risk management, marketing and general financial management. The Sunraysia Rural Financial Counselling Service will be on site at the Expo to talk to farmers about some of their new initiatives.