Community benchmarks for productivity and profitability for diversified pastured livestock farmers

View the project final report

Commodities

• Animals: bovine, poultry, sheep, swine

Practices

• Animal Production: feed management, grazing management, grazing - multispecies, meat product quality/safety
• Education and Training: farmer to farmer, on-farm/ranch research, participatory research
• Farm Business Management: whole farm planning

Diversified pastured-livestock farming has become a popular business model for beginning and family-scale
farmers, but a lack of clear benchmarks for productivity and profitability may be hindering the continued
improvement of these systems. Many farmers are attracted to this model because of the relative low initial capital
requirements and the high price points achievable through direct-to-consumer marketing, but staying in business
can prove very challenging. Inconsistent recordkeeping systems on individual farms and a lack of current,
publicly available data may prevent these farmers from clearly understanding their farm’s financial position and
finding strategies to become more profitable. If pastured-livestock farms are to become a more widespread
feature of a sustainable food system, these farmers will need to set and improve benchmarks including animal
production, meat yield, net profits, gross margins, and net returns on assets. In this project, the Pennsylvania
Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) will work with a team of diversified pastured-livestock farms to
establish effective protocols for farm recordkeeping, share management and financial data for 2016 and 2017,
and set community benchmarks for farm performance. Farmers will participate in workshops where they examine
their farm’s performance relative to the community benchmarks, identify common management challenges, and
explore new strategies for improved outcomes. Project results and insights will be communicated to a wider
audience through field days, a conference presentation, and a fact sheet distributed through print and online
channels.

Our objective is to establish shared benchmarks for productivity and profitability on pastured livestock farmers, so
that farmers can clearly understand how their performance varies over time and how their farm compares to peer
farms. Collaborating farmers will help develop a common recordkeeping framework for sharing data on animal
numbers, live weights, and meat yield, as well as data on expenses and revenues, separated by poultry, pig, and beef enterprises. We will develop a flexible recordkeeping framework that will allow for paper-based and
spreadsheet approaches, but we will also engage participants with modern decision support tools, including
FarmOS, an open source farm management application, and Quickbooks, a structured financial recordkeeping
program. Project staff at the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) will help organize this
data into community benchmarks for production and profitability that will be shared with the network of
collaborating farms through reports, workshops, and field days. Workshops will involve exploring detailed reports
of farm data and benchmarks, identifying common management challenges, and exploring new strategies for
improved outcomes. Results will also be shared with a wider agricultural community through field days, a fact
sheet archived on PASA’s website and a presentation at PASA’s 2018 annual conference.