CIEL | Case Study: The Beef Toolkit 

Genetics | Reproduction | Behaviour | Nutrition | Health & Welfare | Productivity | Food Integrity | Environmental Impact

Challenge

With Brexit, changing market dynamics and new a policy environment looming, Britain’s beef farmers need to continue improving their efficiency, productivity and competitiveness. Industry data indicates that there exists large variability in profitability and carcase & growth outcomes from beef herds in the UK, with around 44% of prime beef failing to meet ideal market specifications

Action

ABP UK, one of Europe’s leading food processors, teamed up with Harper Adams University for this CIEL-supported project to establish an Information and Decision Support (DS) network to ensure beef farmers have accurate information available for critical decision making.

Two key outputs from the project were to investigate if the prediction of liveweight gains in beef cattle can be improved, along with improving the effectiveness and applicability of benchmarking through developing farm specific benchmarks (as opposed to general industry benchmarks).

Impact

The DS framework developed and tested in this pilot project will enable beef farmers to benchmark against fellow contemporaries with regard animal liveweight gain, nutrition analysis, soil health, grassland management, precision grazing and economic efficiency. The network toolkit will implement continuous monitoring and KPIs to monitor efficiency and profitability, and to inform both business and livestock management decisions in real time.

Beef Toolkit for farmers | CIEL | UK farming innovation