Regardless of the era, there are always popular phrases that encompass what some believe is the essential strategy to remain viable or progress in agriculture.
During my days as a farm management student in the early 1970s, the phrase "Get Big or Get Out" was the topic of many a discussion.
During my days prior to agricultural college, I worked as a jackeroo in the Caramut district in Western Vic, where I played in my one and only football premiership.
Most of my team mates were sons of soldier settlers, their fathers were awarded a block for their services in the second world war. For some, it was an assignment to poverty and for others, it was a springboard for the future.
One of my teammates became a lifelong friend and his father was provided with a 312 acre or 126-hectare block, which provided an existence.
To get ahead his dad would do hay carting and roustabouting to gain extra income. Without these extra dollars they just would not have survived.
Throughout time the better farmers bought out their service comrades and there are no farms of the original size left. This in some ways endorses the original phrase of get big or get out. It all depends on what you perceive the word big to mean.
In most of the Caramut situations it was a case getting bigger not necessarily big, when compared to the station sizes from which the soldier settlement schemes were created.
When you are farming with land being the limiting resource it is important the land is being put to the best use.
In the Caramut situation it was all grazing with prime lambs the predominant pursuit. It remains the same today. Given that you are in the right business you then need make sure the best possible gross margin is achieved.
If that is the achieved, the next step is to ensure all of the remaining inputs are used efficiently.
The 126ha block may have caried 700 to 800 ewes, which meant there was insufficient work to justify a full-time labour unit and part-time off-farm work was limited. It always impressed me the way these farmers helped each other at shearing, lamb marking and haymaking time.
After their experiences at war many of these farmers were not seeking wealth, they just wanted a stress-free lifestyle.
Very efficient farmers are still constrained by level of margin they can extract from their enterprises. Once optimum efficiency is achieved, then expansion becomes a good option.
With expansion comes more responsibility and pressure and as a result, the search for better methods becomes even more important. Expansion must achieve improved labour and machinery efficiency and overheads which increase in total, should be less on a unit per hectare basis.
There should be enough surplus cash to be able to invest in the best available technology as well, to help improve the bottom line.
In most farming districts, the farms have doubled in size every 20 to 25 years to the point that one efficient grazing family labour unit is running 4000-5000 ewes, 10,000 dry sheep equivalents or 800 breeding cows, the equivalent of 15,000 dry sheep equivalents, which includes replacements.
While modern technology is helping these figures to be achieved, most farmers are doing justice to another well hacked phrase "work smarter not harder".
In most cases, they are still working hard, but in the process, they still have the "business blowtorch" on their backside, which I find is essential in running a good business.
Start the day with all the big news in agriculture. Sign up here to receive our daily Stock Journal newsletter.
