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Farming on the front foot

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Farming on the front foot
By Admin

Farming is a tough business and with constantly changing conditions, profitable farmers are the ones that successfully control the controllables. The old adage” it’s what you do before a drought rather than during a drought that will get you through” is a good example. So anything that provides more control will be of great value to help farmers get ahead.

When armed with real-time and accurate financial information and forecasts, farmers and the advisors on their team can make better and faster decisions and achieve higher levels of performance and profit. Figured can help farmers ‘Farm on the front foot’.

A good example of this is an 800 ha King country sheep breeding and finishing operation that use Figured to plan, budget and monitor progress against their profit targets and projected cash on hand.

As is common in farming, the unexpected occurred and better than normal growing conditions in early January had grass and plantain heading for fence height at 60 kgdm/ha per day. The farm management team quickly identified an opportunity to purchase up to 1400 store lambs to finish through late summer and autumn and add around $35,000 of un-budgeted profit to the bottom line of the business.

Problem was, good store lambs in January were trading at $80-$90 so the team needed to extend the overdraft facility by $120,000 to make the opportunity happen. Fortunately after updating the cash forecast in Figured to reflect the purchase, husbandry and sale of the extra lambs, the team were able to quickly show their banker that the plan was robust and the cash implications were manageable.

The revised cash flow and P&L forecast was then finalised, sent to the bank manager and a decision to extend the extra $120,000 was authorised within 24 hours.

With well organised information and plans presented in easy to understand Figured reports, this team was able to farm on the front foot and quickly respond to a seasonal opportunity to make more profit. That’s good farming!