Easy tips for northern producers to increase profitability

Dr Geoffry Fordyce, in conjunction with Gulf Savannah NRM, will host a free two-day workshop in Georgetown on May 30-31 on how producers can increase their profit margins.

The North Queensland Register spoke to Dr Fordyce to get an insight into how producers can benefit.

Dr Fordyce's first tip was conduct a business analysis to get an in depth understanding of the business.

"If you want to change you really need to understand your business to know where to change and where your opportunities are. That's something that a lot of producers are not traditionally doing," he said.

"They tend to make decisions based on perceptions rather than a structures, objective analysis of their business and part of the workshop is to help people develop the skills to do that business analysis.

"If you identify what is happening and where your opportunities are, that's where you need to focus, if you just think you know where they are you may not make the best decisions."

Dr Dr Geoffry Fordyce said some business owners got bogged down in the day-to-day running of the operation but needed to have a comprehensive look at the business and assess what did and didn't work.

"It's not that they don't consider it. They consider it on the run or in general discussion, but the challenge is to look at their business and work out if they are operating at an achievable level, and if not, why not.

"When you look at a business it is like any primary industry or shop in town. You have a product, in the beef industry our commodity or product is kilograms of live weight and if you don't know those figures how can you judge what you are achieving against what you could be achieving and how can you increase the opportunity to improve your production.

"An ordinary business might need to produce 500 tonnes of live weight but if they are only producing 450 tonnes of live weight a year, that is 50 tonnes - a huge income opportunity going to waste. So unless you actually measure it, you've got no idea."

Building on fundamentals is another must according to Dr Fordyce and making sure all the basics are working efficiently.

"We will also work on general management and key areas where people can improve their business margins. A fundamental is making sure the basics are working.

"I always say you need to give cattle and feed, a drink and get them under control and it is fundamental to any management situation or anything you do in life. You need to have sound basic approaches to build a more sophisticated businesses on.

"In cattle you need to make sure they're eating as much as they can, got water available and that you have them under control; if you can do that, you can do anything. If you can't do that all sorts of things are going wrong and you really can't apply high level management efficiency and you're missing large opportunities for production."

Dr Fordyce said bull power and pasture utilisation were also areas to consider.

"One of the simplist, low-risk ways to improve profitability is to sort your bull power out. There is huge problems in our industry with bull power.

"There are issues with pasture utilisation and getting that right. You grow pasture and turn that into live weight and sell the live weight, so if you're not focused on the grass to live weight concept then you might get pasture utilisation wrong and that is a grave mistake because that is what it's all built on and you can't build something out of nothing."

At the workshops, Dr Fordyce will work with producers to examine their own businesses and key strategies, also discussing topics of supplementation, lactation management and disease issues.

Positions in the workshops are still available and anyone interested can book in: https://bit.ly/herd-business-decisions