Season 2023 National Vegetable and Onion Benchmarks

Level Up Hort is focused on working with Australian vegetable and onion producers to analyse their farm business through delivery of face-to-face advisory services to individual businesses that participate in the program. The business analysis process helps identify opportunities for business improvement, and enables the development of benchmarks. With year-on-year analysis, this program aims to drive individual business performance in both the short and longer term.

This is the first set of Australia-wide vegetable industry benchmarks. The data reported ensures that no business can be identified by features such as name, location,
yield or, crop type as these are not reported. All data from participating businesses is de-identified, aggregated and reported on a per hectare basis. This reporting style ensures consistent comparison between businesses regardless of scale or business structure.

Businesses within the benchmark report have been ranked on vegetable enterprise earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) on a dollar per hectare ($/ha) basis. This is referred
to as “profit” throughout this report. Rankings are reported within three main sub-groups and do not change throughout the report even when shifting between reporting tables. Rankings have been calculated:

• Most profitable (EBIT $/ha) – reports the average of the most profitable 25% of businesses

• Average(EBIT$/ha)–reportstheaverageacrossthewhole dataset in the benchmark

• Least profitable (EBIT $/ha) – reports the average of the least profitable 25% of businesses.

  Benchmark data is comprised primarily of data from the 2022-23 financial year. In some cases, where this was not practical, the dataset for the 2023 calendar year was collected.

  Being the first year of benchmark reporting for the vegetable and onion industries, the dataset is modest – in terms of number of participants – however it is robust enough to generate national benchmarks. As the program continues during the next four years, the number of participants is expected to increase. This will add considerable strength to the numbers being reported as well as providing longitudinal data over a five-year period for comparative analysis. As participant numbers in each state increase, state and regional summaries can be provided in future benchmarks.