lactation. Then there is Feed to Milk which is all about what the cows do in lactation, and the fourth pillar is forage. “Historically we would never have spoken about what grass seed the farmer was using and whether they were using forage maize, but now we see that as part of the overall nutrition. So it is very much about living up to the Total Feed Business concept,” says Steven. All of this links back to not just selling a product but having an ongoing dialogue and involvement in the farm business. We want to be seen as their trusted advisor.” Steven sits on the Dairy Productivity Collaboration Group which


end and certificates are awarded, which demonstrate that passing the module is something to be proud of. The Academy concept, which started on the continent and was brought to the UK initially with pig and poultry modules in 2016 followed by ruminant modules in 2018, covers not only product knowledge, but also service. “We are not just about animal feed, we’ve got a whole toolbox, so modules cover nutrition, husbandry, enterprise, costings and so on. We try to make sure everyone is reaching a level of knowledge and they are using the same techniques. The Academy system gives people more of a career path and it enhances confidence. For example, if you have sales guys going down farm drives, the conversations they don’t want to be getting into are the ones about the price of the cheapest 18% cake – that’s a killer for us and a killer for the whole industry.” With the confidence gained from participation in the appropriate modules, the dialogue can be moved towards “How can we improve your transition cows?” or “What can we do for the herd’s fertility?” It’s about moving away from a product based sell to having the quality of personnel capable of making an assessment of what is happening on-farm, establishing where there is room for improvement and identifying what needs to be addressed. Sometimes, says Steven, salespeople have so many options and opportunities, the most important thing is to help them zone in on one in particular. For example, in ruminants the company has four main pillars on which they ask their sales teams to focus. The first of these is youngstock, with a range called VITA, which is about getting the progeny right and bringing through the best quality of heifers to reduce age of first service. The next pillar revolves around the TRANSLAC range, which is about the transition period between calving and first


was set up as a collaboration between industry and Government and is headed by Volac’s Andy Richardson. This is all about the fact, recognised by Government, that productivity on British dairy farms is not where it could or should be, and needs to be improved especially if they are to compete on the world stage post-Brexit. The aim is to raise awareness amongst the farming community and change the narrative from being passive recipients of price at the whim of the supermarkets to proactively focussing and benchmarking to identify what can be done to improve things. As a farmer’s son and having been involved in the industry throughout his working life, it is a subject Steven feels passionately about. “We are not here today, gone tomorrow, but need to protect the future of farming. Naturally farmers are wary that any improvements they make can be gobbled up by the retail and processing giants via reduced price. But farmers can control more than they think and, equally important, they will benefit from appearing more professional both as individual businesses and as an industry as a whole,” he argues.


The third major theme for the group is their investment in big


data. They launched the concept in the pigs sector last year under the name Agriscoop and are now working with Proagrica on a similar initiative for dairy. The idea is for a data sharing platform which takes information on an individual farm basis from milk processors, feed suppliers (not necessarily ForFarmers), farm records, national milk records, animal movement records etc and pulls it in directly. Where costings and benchmarking have relied on farmers inputting data, they have fallen down – it just doesn’t happen. So this is a more automated system which gathers information from a variety of sources without the need for farmers to input everything manually. Once this has been done, then any account manager can look at the data and see where an individual farm fits within the benchmarking platform and identify areas for improvement. ForFarmers is building the capability of the platform currently for ruminant farmers, so it has only had a limited launch to allow a trial to take place, before it becomes widely available in the sector. This kind of thing is commonplace in Europe and it is one of the aims of the government/industry co-operation taking place within the Dairy Productivity Group that what they refer to as the first limiting factor (but is essentially benchmarking by another name) should become more widely practised within the UK dairy industry. ForFarmers has the size to be able to create such a platform to allow


PAGE 32 JULY/AUGUST 2019 FEED COMPOUNDER Sponsored by B2B Nutrition


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