Benchmarking Your Herds Economic Facts

Managing for
March 2002 Today’s Cattle Market
and Beyond



Benchmarking Your Herd’s Economic Facts

By
Harlan Hughes, North Dakota State University
Dwight Aakre, North Dakota State University


more is the fact that farmers and ranchers generally Introduction do not have access to other beef producers’ herd data.
With this limitation in mind, North Dakota State Benchmarking is the process of conducting a
University designed its IRM educational program in comparative analysis of your beef cow profit center
the early 1990s so that each IRM Cooperator’s herd with the averages of a set of benchmark herds and is
production and economic data was recorded in an the single most powerful farm and ranch management
annual Northern Plains IRM Benchmark Database. tool available. Benchmarking gets its management
These databases were used in benchmarking each power from its identification of a herd’s business
IRM Cooperator’s herd annually. Selected years of strengths and weaknesses in the beef cow business.
this database have been published for use by all beef Capitalizing on the business strengths identified and
cow producers. correcting some or all of the business weaknesses
We now have a decade of benchmarking identified is a sure recipe for increasing profits from
experience and have proved databasing’s potential for the beef cow profit center.
2improving beef cow profits. Our assessment of this Economic areas where the producer’s herd ...