Windhoek
The revised AgriStat was developed by the Namibia Argiculture Union (NAU) during the past 12 months, and aims to capture basic production and financial information on farm level.
The first trial run of data was collected since the beginning of 2015, which is used to set production and financial benchmarks against which individual farmers can measure themselves.
Jaco Hanekom: Assistant Manager: Commodities (NAU), speaking at last week’s 69th NAU congress, said the aim is to eventually have benchmarks both on a regional and national level.
“The declining trend in terms of profitability in the cattle industry as highlighted in the production-cost index of the NAU, can eventually also be tested on farm level once time series data is collected through the AgriStat model. The first trial of data collected already set benchmarks for both cattle and sheep production respectively, but the size of the sample needs to be increased in the next 12 months to ensure the benchmarks is representative on a regional as well as national level.
The production side focuses on measuring critical success factors such as stocking rate, kilogramme per hectare produced and production percentage, while the financial side measures net farm income per hectare, net farm income per kilogramme produced and production-cost percentage, amongst others.
“Record-keeping in terms of production and financial information is critical in order to operate effectively in a dynamic environment.
The information not only allows the farmer to compare against the industry average or benchmarks, but also allows for monitoring of past performance and planning ahead. The NAU strongly encourages farmers to participate in AgriStat,” he said.