What is the Feeding Pastures For Profit Program?
The concepts and tools that make up the Feeding Pastures for Profit (FPFP) program are aimed at helping farmers to gain the skills and confidence to make two major decisions.
These are two of the daily decisions that can have the largest impact on farm profit.
- How much pasture do I allocate to the herd today?
- What amount of supplements do I need to offer the herd to maximise my profit?
The program is about ‘making the most of the available resources’ rather than changing the resources.
It also provides valuable information on:
- Managing Pasture
- Using Supplements
- Profit knowledge
- A practice based ‘individual’ systems approach
FPFP is not about getting it perfect, It’s about having a system that allows the farmer to improve on the system, and change the system based on the changing conditions (good or poor growing conditions, higher or lower supplement or milk price, etc). It is practice based.
On most dairy farms two of the major decisions that need to be made each day are:
- How much pasture do I allocate to the herd today?
- What amount of supplements do I need to offer the herd to maximise my profit?
What is covered in the FPFP program?
The first part of the program looks at getting the rotation right using the "Rotation Right" tool. The tool takes the quality and quantity of feed in the paddock into account and uses this information to round the number of feeds to be allocated from a paddock to a whole number.
The end result is a tool that allows the farmer to make simple strategic decisions on how many feeds to take from each paddock in order to achieve any target rotation, and leads to a more consistent daily pasture intake for the herd.
The second part of the program is all about getting supplement use right. For every farming system there is a point where offering the herd more supplement reduces farm profit.
Similarly, if we are not using enough supplements we may be missing out on potential profit. The program uses simple tools and concepts to allow participants to find the point where the cost of the last kilogram of feed offered to the herd is equal to the ‘income’ generated (where income includes cash profit, benefits from cow condition, lifestyle benefits etc.)
The FPFP program attempts to explain where this point is, and provides a range of simple practical tools to allow each individual participant to find this point for their farming system. The program is about making the most of the available resources, rather than changing the resources.
The program has two core days and some 'on farm' days afterwards. It is run in all the dairying regions of Victoria.
For more information contact:
Phil Shannon, DPI Cobram
Phone: 03 5871 0600
