In this episode, we talk to dairy farmer Justin Walsh about his business structure, resources and goals and how he uses his Dairy Farm Monitor Report to measure and monitor the farm’s annual physical and financial performance. Justin also talks about the importance of getting the daily decisions right on farm by calculating metrics like his margin over supplementary feed cost as ultimately it is good daily decisions that drive a profitable business performance at the end of the year.
Justin, his wife Libby and their family have developed a strong profile in the NSW dairy industry in recent years having been a very successful Focus Farm with Dairy NSW. He talks about making sure that the business is set up to optimise the use of resources available to it – in their case, matching their calving pattern to their pasture growth curve, improving pasture utilisation on their dryland farm and the importance of this in a pasture based system more generally. This and other decisions on farm have improved pasture utilisation on the milking platform by 2 tonnes of dry matter per hectare over the last 4 years which is a great result on a dryland farm through some tough drought conditions. There has also been an improvement in cow efficiency with the herd now producing 1 kg milk solids per kilo of cow liveweight.
The business has improved its profitability over the last 4 years from around $1.00/kgMS to over an impressive $3.50/kgMS in the 2019/20 financial year which translates to a Return on Total Assets Managed of over 6%. This is despite some incredibly high feed prices as a result of the recent drought conditions with their concentrate prices averaging $530/tDM for the 2019/20 financial year.
A keen participant in the NSW Dairy Farm Monitor Project, we talk through some of the numbers in their business over the last 4 years, and also the other value that the report provides, such as enabling a strong and robust conversation with financiers and financial planners.
Access the transcript of this episode here
Take a look at the NSW Dairy Farm Monitor Project and see past performance of the NSW dairy industry.
For more info on the Tocal dairy and the business report visit the Tocal dairy’s Monthly Business Report
Watch Justin’s Dairy Research Foundation presentation “On Farm Settings to Control Risk and Drive Profit” from 2020.
This podcast is an initiative of the NSW DPI Dairy Business Advisory Unit
It is brought to you in partnership the Hunter Local Land Services
Please share this podcast with your fellow farmers and colleagues and feel free to contact us with suggestions or comments via the following email address: thebusinessofdairy@gmail.com
Further NSW DPI Dairy channels to follow and subscribe to include;
DPI Intensive Livestock Twitter feed
Produced by Video Lift
The information discussed in this podcast are for informative and educational purposes only and do not constitute advice.
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