School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences - Theses
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ItemThe economic viability of automatic milking systems in Australia's pasture-based dairy farm systems: a case study analysis( 2016)Fluctuations in prices, costs and seasonal conditions, and increasing competition will continue to place pressure on profit margins for operators of all dairy systems. Good management and decision making skills is fundamental to ensuring that introducing new technologies, such as automatic milking systems (Mcwilliams et al.), are integrated into the whole farm system to make the best use of a given set of resources and circumstances, and realise the wide array of benefits technology has to offer some people in dairy. Increasing intensity of dairy farms and rising labour costs have helped to induce wider adoption of AMS technology in Europe and other countries. Similarly, the characteristics that have led to the wide adoption of AMS technology are increasingly evident in Australia’s dairy industry. Adapting the AMS technology to Australia’s pasture-based dairy systems has in the recent past been considered a complex challenge and requiring careful implementation as information remains limited on a national and global level. However, in recent years, the knowledge around the adoption of AMS in Australia’s pasture-based dairy systems has increased markedly with the ‘practical operated experience’ of AMS farms being fine-tuned and operating competitively. The key research question to be investigated in this thesis is if AMS technology adopted in Australia’s pasture based systems with voluntary cow traffic is competitive, in terms of profit, returns to capital, risk and non-pecuniary net benefits, when compared to Australian dairy farmers using conventional milking systems. This proposition will be tested by assessing the biophysical and economic performance of two dairy farm case studies, a Gippsland farm using ‘single box AMS’ and a Tasmanian farm using the ‘automatic milking rotary’. These two dairy farm case studies were chosen because they are deemed to have successfully integrated AMS into their whole farm system and are realising the benefits that are available from AMS. The case studies represent the use of the AMS technology at a steady state. For each case study, its biophysical and economic performance for an individual year was compared with the performance of other farmers in the region using conventional milking systems in the same year, where possible, and also over a hypothetical run of years with ranges of prices and seasonal conditions. Risk and uncertainty is also investigated in detail by running scenarios that represent long term typical prices, costs and rainfall. The major finding of this investigation is that the two AMS farms studied in Gippsland and Tasmania are capable, under the current management, of operating competitively under the seasonal and economic conditions that have occurred in the past and are likely to occur in the future, when compared to farms using conventional milking systems in the same region and under the same conditions. Ultimately, the success of incorporating AMS into Australia’s pasture-based dairy systems will depend almost completely on the human element. Good managers can make almost any system work well and profitability.
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ItemTactical choices of medium and high input dairy systems( 2013)In the last decade dairy farms in northern Victoria were exposed to increased volatility of input and output prices as well as variable climate conditions that include a big dry period. Two representative case study pasture based dairy farms of ‘medium’ and ‘high’ input were selected to examine the production and financial outcomes that arise from a multi-year sequence of tactical farm management decisions. The approach of the research had several key aspects; case studies were selected as the method of investigation, on-farm interviews of the case study farmers were carried out and their financial and physical history was collected. A stochastic multiyear whole-farm biophysical and economic spreadsheet model was developed to analyse the physical and economical performance of the case study farms. The study found that both farming systems had different optimum choices available year to year to increase profitability. In many of the scenarios tested, the decision option with the highest growth in equity compared to other options tested did not always result in the highest net cash flow. The decision maker would need to evaluate the net cash flow implications of their decisions to determine if they are worthwhile choices. For both farms, in years with greater upside, there was a greater range of outcomes between decisions compared to years with poor financial outcomes. This suggests farm managers cannot get too relaxed and complacent in the good years and need to ensure they are gaining the benefits of the good year as well as minimizing losses in the poor years.