AU: New on-farm benchmarks increase macadamia productivity
The project is a collaboration led by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) in partnership with the University of Southern Queensland, New South Wales Department of Primary Industries and the Australian Macadamia Society, with funding and support from Horticulture Australia Limited.
DAFF's Senior Development Horticulturist, Shane Mulo, said benchmarking involved looking closely at the productivity of the highest yielding farms to understand why some operators consistently perform so well.
"Adoption of the management practices and decisions of these leading farms by the rest of the industry will have a major impact on lifting farm productivity," he said.
"The project has so far conducted four rounds of on-farm benchmarking covering the five production seasons from 2009 to 2013. The focus of these first four rounds has been on comparing, analysing and reporting yield and quality results. More than 260 farms have participated in the benchmarking so far, representing a cross section of farms in the Australian macadamia industry for location, farm size, tree age, irrigation status and management structures.
"Each of the major macadamia production regions in Australia have already been represented in the benchmarking, with the largest percentage of participating farms being in Bundaberg. It is planned that the scope of the benchmarking will be expanded in future rounds to provide a more comprehensive comparison of farm costs of production."
The project has involved collecting information directly from farm owners and managers and from macadamia processors, with full consent from the participating businesses.
Strict measures are in place governing how data can be used and protecting the confidentiality of individual grower's data.
Businesses individually received confidential reports comparing and ranking their farm performance with similar farms for which data was submitted.
The project team has looked closely at the productivity of the highest yielding farms within the benchmarking.
"The analysis showed that highly productive farms were not restricted to any one region, farm size, tree age or management structure," Mr Mulo said. "What is critical is the individual farm management practices and decisions."
The benchmarking project is being undertaken to compliment the macSmart project (by the same collaborators), which is delivering quality information to macadamia growers.
Macadamia growers can view a summary of the benchmarking results via the macSmart project's latest video - Lessons that can be learned from the 2013 season. Growers can access this video and more information by visiting the macSmart website.