Today’s Focus Farm host, Sean Cambridge, who runs a mixed beef and sheep enterprise near Fair Head, believes that livestock farmers must have a firm knowledge of their cost base before they can address the myriad changes impacting on their farm businesses in the wake of Common Agricultural Policy reform and ever tightening environmental legislation.
‘The Greenmount beef and sheep benchmarking programme is a computerised farm management accounting system that offers farmers the opportunity to record their production costs and compare their results with other similar farms on a free and confidential basis.’
Mr Cambridge told the Irish News. ‘Benchmarking helps individual farmers to identify the specific strengths and weaknesses of their business when compared to the “best in class” farms. This information will then help them focus their efforts on the areas of performance that will make the biggest difference to farm profit.’

Discussion points
1. How is the management accounting system intended to help farmers?
2. What does ‘benchmarking’ achieve for the farmers?