The management of Christchurch milk supply farms

Abstract

The number of town milk producing farms in the Christchurch region is relatively small compared with other classes of farms. It is partly for this reason that a comprehensive farm management study of town milk dairy farming has not been carried out in the past. Work presented in this bulletin attempts to make a contribution towards meeting this gap. It is based on research carried out during the period 1965-67, part of which involved an analysis of the profitability of different management systems on a particular farm. It is this section, together with supporting information, that is presented. The farm chosen was carefully selected so that it would have similar attributes to as many other farms as possible, the selection being based on information obtained from a postal survey sent to all town milk producers in 1965. The bulletin consists of six sections. The first section defines the area in which milk is produced and discusses its soils and climate. In section two the major management decisions which must be made by a town supply farmer are discussed and some of the factors which should influence these decisions are outlined. In section three descriptive information obtained about farms in the area from the postal survey and the method used in selecting the case farm from this information is presented. In section four the method used to determine the optimum management systems for the case farm is briefly discussed while in section five the results of this analysis are given. Finally a summary of recommendations is given in section six. In order to widen the applicability of the results the analysis compared management systems for different quota levels. No claim can be made that the results can be directly applied to other farms. The most that can be claimed is that the method of selecting the case-form gives some confidence in making recommendations based on these results. Over four years have elapsed since the postal survey was conducted. In the interim some of the statistics used in selecting the case farm will have changed but it is believed that these changes will not have significantly affected the results. Statistics such as the area of farms and the number of labour units employed do not change much where a large number of farms is considered. Similarly, as the prices and costs existing at the end of 1967 were used in the analysis some of the optimum plans could change slightly if the analysis was based on current prices. In the original analysis the effect of price changes was explored and this indicated that the optimum management systems determined were quite stable in relation to price variations. It is therefore considered that the major conclusion of this analysis apply. Minor changes considered possible are outlined in the results section.