Maximising Pasture Performance

Farmax is totally focussed on planning, monitoring, reviewing and analysing. This process equips you as a professional farmer to make strong decisions and have a clear vision of the best way forward.

The Farmax Engine®

The Farmax Engine® drives both the Sheep, Beef & Deer and Dairy versions of Farmax. It contains the latest scientific research regarding how a farm system works and portrays the delicate balance between the feed intake demand of livestock and the ability of the pasture to supply that demand.
  

Getting started

You start by setting up land units and their likely pasture growth rates, including when growth occurs – is the block cold, does it have dry summers or are there high growth rates in spring?

Next, you set up the livestock enterprises and performance targets. These targets are determined by the liveweight profiles in each month. This in turn determines how much they must be fed each month, or in the case of the Dairy model, milk production targets.
  

Calculating feasibility

From this information your Farmax software calculates whether a farm will be feasible - does the future pasture cover support the livestock policies? The ability to enter actual data into Farmax and compare it with the original plan gives you the opportunity to make more proactive decisions that can enhance farm profitability. This feedback mechanism ensures you do not waste efforts trying to get stock to achieve the unachievable.
  

Interactive decision making

Consultant and farmer use the model in an interactive manner and together work out ways that farm profit can be significantly increased by asking these questions:

• How well does feed supply and demand fit?
   
• How efficient is the farm in converting pasture into profit?
   
• What opportunities are there to manipulate or increase feed supply?
   
• What flexibility is needed for periodic variability in feed supply?

Farmax can answer all of these questions, allowing different farm strategies to be evaluated to maximise the goals of the farmer.
 

Setting a 12 month plan

Once the strategy has been finalised, your farm consultant uses the power of the Farmax Engine® to set you up with a specific model for the coming 12 months.

The farmer uses the Farmax system to record monitored information about the farm. At any time the parties can reassess if changes are needed and the software will quantify the value of these changes in dollar terms.
 

Year-end evaluation

At the end of the year, the Farmax Engine® has transformed a model into an actual record of farm performance. This is then used as the starting point for the next 12 months in a continuous cycle of planning, monitoring, reviewing and analysing.

                                                   The Farmax Cycle

Farmax in action

See case studies showing how Farmax is boosting productivity on farms throughout New Zealand.