One of the biggest lesson I leant when working as a banker was that I can learn hell of a lot about my own farm performance by looking outside the industry I grew up in. I was very fortunate as a young bank manager to be exposed to the dairy industry when I was stationed at Warrnambool in South-West Victoria. The lessons I learnt about grazing management and running a profitable farm I still teach today at Marcus.

So I want to use today podcast to discuss profit drivers and the concept of resilient farm enterprises and what can we learn from the dairy industry about these concepts. I am lucky to have one of Oceania’s leading experts in dairy production systems and industry analysis to navigate us through this discussion.

Neil Lane was raised on his family’s dairy farm and has a lifelong association with the industry. He has a detailed knowledge of both the technical and financial aspects of a dairy business and how they influence profitability under the various dairy production systems. He has run his own consultancy business for 15+ years, has worked in the farm business management program at Dairy Australia and has overseen a large family corporate dairy farming business in Northern Victoria. He has co-authored a number of reports analysing farm profitability using industry data sets. He also has experience in milk supply management and has a detailed knowledge of the various milk pricing models employed through the industry.