Listed below are the benchmarks that are presently available for retrieval. In the future we will keep you informed of the latest benchmarks as they come to hand.

We have not yet got sufficient use in South Africa to justify the calculation of published South African benchmarks.  However we have produced our first benchmarks based on the data already entered into Red Sky.  These are presently only accessible to those people using Red Sky in South Africa as we consider the reliability too low for us to make the results publicly available.

The benchmark data listed below is a combination of New Zealand and Australian data that has been converted to Rand and analysed on the same basis as any South African farms. It includes NZ national data plus the 3 large dairying districts in Victoria (Australia). These districts include Northern Victoria (predominantly irrigated), Gippsland (primarily non-irrigated with reasonable all-year rainfall), and South-West Victoria (primarily non-irrigated and summer very dry).

NEW ZEALAND & VICTORIAN (AUSTRALIA) DAIRY BENCHMARKS – OWNER OPERATORS
Login Name: bcnt5927 Password (none)  2003/04 Red Sky Dairy Owner Operator Benchmarks

The New Zealand and Victorian (Australia) data comes entirely from farms that have had their full data entered into Red Sky. Although all data is marked as ‘Average’ or ‘Top 10%’, this could reasonably be considered as coming from the top 50%-70% of farms and hence the Top 10% coming from the top 5%-7% of farms.

Sample numbers are continuing to increase.  Most of the data has been entered by rural professionals and a majority has full physical as well as financial data available.  The New Zealand Red Sky dairy data has 243 farms in the benchmark (from over 450 now in the database), and the Australian Red Sky dairy benchmarks a total of 193 farms (from over 320 now in the database).  To generate the split in district performance for Victoria there was a need to include two years data on a weighted basis and assume some core costs would be similar across the districts.

As a result of these issues and overall sample size, care should be taken when interpreting this data.  No claim is made that this data is fully representative of the dairying districts/countries identified.

To obtain benchmark data after installing the program you go to the second wizard screen and enter ‘Retrieve Farmer/Clients’ or go to the Main Menu and ‘Farmer/Clients’ then ‘Retrieve’.