The sugar beet module within Farmbench has improved significantly in recent months due to NFU Sugar collating grower feedback and working with the AHDB to implement change.
In common with other agricultural sectors, the sugar beet industry will experience significant change over the coming years and the knock-on effect for farm businesses is exposure to fluctuating prices, currency swings and adverse weather events, to name but a few. Growers’ ability to protect their businesses by managing these risks and build resilience is key.
Why use Farmbench?
Farmbench breaks down the costs of production, allowing you to compare your business to others in the sector. By highlighting business strengths and weaknesses, Farmbench allows growers to make informed business decisions.
In the post-quota world, coupled with the loss of key actives such as neonicotinoids, it is more important than ever to understand the costs of growing sugar beet. Being able to benchmark and compare these with similar growers is the first step to making improvements. With many of the growers using Farmbench now able to benchmark all the crops in their rotation, this will provide another helpful tool to make informed business decisions across their whole farm.
Measure profitability
It takes a bit of time to input the data, but you get out what you put in. Using Farmbench allows you to measure the profitability of your crop against others growers and see how improvements may be made.
A big part of the attraction of using Farmbench is that you can become a member of a benchmarking group, to learn about your data and speak to others about theirs. This enables the sharing of ideas and we have seen many participants become friends.
Constant improvements
Once you're using Farmbench, the team are keen to take suggestions to improve the system further. Just please email the email address below and we would be delighted to hear from you.
Get involved
If you are interested in getting involved in the benchmarking group, email Y2hhcmxpZS5wYXJraW5AbmZ1Lm9yZy51aw== by 10 September 2021 and you'll be set up with an account.
Farmbench tool is part of AHDB – visit Farmbench.