Find out how your farm compares

Cattle weights can be recorded on the Beef+Lamb online benchmarking tool to provide farmers with an indication of farm production. Photo / Supplied

It was great to see farmers giving Beef + Lamb New Zealand such a strong mandate for the next six years. The 2015 Sheepmeat and Beef Levy referendum passed with more than 84 per cent support from voting farmers.

As an organisation we have come a long way. But there is plenty more opportunity for us to help farmers meet their production and profit goals. Beef+Lamb will continue to evolve and welcomes all feedback that helps inform that evolution.

It's a relatively positive time for our industry. Beef+Lamb has just published its annual "New season outlook". For the Northland-Waikato-Bay of Plenty area, gross farm revenue is expected to increase to $384,900 per farm during the current season - up 2.6 per cent on last season. This is driven by a lift in the cattle count, which is up 7.3 per cent over 2014-15.

Sheep revenue remains static at $116,100, increasing only 0.2 per cent from 2014-15 levels. Ewe condition at mating was generally good, with better-than-average feed availability and this is expected to have a positive effect on lambing percentages this spring. However, prime and store lamb sales are estimated to be down due to declining flock sizes - the result of two consecutive drought years and competition from beef returns.

The big question is: What effect is the weather going to have? We are expecting an El Nino, but most of us have our fingers crossed that this doesn't eventuate. However, some operators will benefit and already be gearing up to take advantage of surplus stock that may come into the region.

As we come into the magic 100 days - the period where farmers make most of their money - it's timely to benchmark.

Beef+Lamb has a great benchmarking tool that gives you the ability to compare meat and wool production to other farmers in New Zealand. It works in a similar way to our established and popular lambing calculator.

The idea of the benchmarking tool is to get you thinking about production in a different way. You can take the weights from your scales, enter them into the online tool and get a fair idea of whole farm production.

The tool also accounts for variables. For instance, if your farm engages in significant trading activity - such as finishing lambs that have been purchased in store condition - then your operation's real production needs to take into account the weight of lambs purchased, as this weight was not "produced" on the farm.

Similarly, have your base stock numbers changed significantly, as can occur when drought forces a reduction in stock numbers? In this case, the sold weight will be inflated by the sale of capital stock. Again, real production needs to adjust the sold weight for the change in the stock numbers.

Do take the time to have a play on the benchmarking tool. It will give you a good understanding of your production and you'll also be able to tap into other Beef+Lamb data to measure yourself against other metrics, such as profitability.

The benchmarking tool can be found under "Interactive tools" on the home page of the Beef+Lamb website.