Get a leg up with Level Up Hort

Interested in growing your farm profits? Delivered through Hort Innovation and led by Planfarm, and in partnership with RMCG, Level Up Hort is a new program focused on supporting vegetable and onion businesses to increase profitability and build long‑term resilience.

The free service provides participating growers with specialised horticulture business consulting to the value of $10,000 per year. The program runs for five years, equating to $50,000 in value.

The program has three focus areas 

• Link: Independent and highly qualified farm business advisers are linked with growers for detailed data collection, an in-depth analysis and a high-level review of your whole farming business to establish which factors affect production efficiencies, what drives profit in your business and how you may best grow your assets over time.
  
  
• Learn: Use the data analysis to gain greater insights into your business. Through face-to-face consultation, the review process will provide you with the knowledge to make data-driven management decisions that over time will make your business more efficient, more profitable and better able to cope with challenging seasons and market unpredictability.
  
  
• Leverage: Knowing your costs and how best to distribute resources within your business to generate profit allows you to control and influence the factors that turn small returns into greater returns and grow your business wealth over time.

Paul Omodei, Horticulture Lead at Planfarm, has been involved in the program since the pilot phase began in Western Australia in 2017. He is now leading this new national approach, with growers at the heart of the program.

Paul said what drives him every day is seeing clients make a positive change to their business.

“Our priority is to deliver a high-value advisory service to the growers involved that makes a tangible impact on their business. The growers come first, and the benchmarking data comes second.

“Success looks different for different businesses. For one client, it may be profit gains; for another, it might be having a succession plan in place or being able to spend time away from their business. Whatever success looks like for them, we can help them look at the health of their business and help them work towards that goal.

“We help our clients think through where they want to be five years, in ten years, and how they will get there.”

Paul sees Level Up Hort’s offering as giving clients a 3D view of their businesses.

“Growers are really good at their jobs, which is growing high-quality fresh produce. We are here to help them look at the health of their business as a whole.

“We help them to see which parts of their business are under pressure and what levers we could pull to change that.

“Being a third party, we can say things like ‘Hang on, what about this? Can we change how we do this?’ which is harder when you are in the weeds of running the business yourself.”

Stephanie Carstairs is the program manager at Level Up Hort and plays a role promoting the program’s benefits to growers.

“If I am talking to a grower about this program, I tell them that it delivers a farm advisory service that can directly benefit their business by improving their performance over time and that we will work closely with them to look at their profitability,” Steff said.

“However, if I am talking to someone who works in an industry support role (such as an industry representative body, agronomist or rural banker), in that case, the program has different benefits, such as benchmarking and seeing how the industry performs. The benefits for them are about higher-level industry trends so that they know what is happening across the board in vegetables, what production costs are, what the standout areas to watch, what the issues are if freight is different in different regions and things like that.

“It is vital for growers and industry to know that this is a unique program in that it is not just a benchmarking program; it is a program that gives growers something back; it gives them a high-value service in exchange for their benchmark data.”

Steff encourages interested growers to contact the Level Up Hort team to see what the program can do for them.

“After making initial contact, the first step is to visit the grower at their farm. This first visit involves gathering detailed information about the business and signing some agreements. An important aspect of this first meeting is establishing trust and assuring the grower that confidentiality is a core pillar of our business that we take very seriously.

“After this visit, we might need to follow up with the grower for more information. Then, within four to six weeks, we return to the farm to give them a detailed review of their business. This review looks at how well their farm is doing financially, including their production, cash flow, and overall financial health. We also discuss any issues they might have, like high costs in certain areas, cash flow problems, or efficiency issues, and suggest ways to improve.”

Steff said this part of the process could be a lot to take in initially, but it is a goldmine of helpful information for the participant.

“The review helps managers see their business from a different perspective, almost like a 3D image, going beyond basic financial figures.

“Having that extra set of eyes on your business is valuable, giving growers a chance to pause and look at their businesses. Growers do not often have the time to stop and look back and reflect on their businesses and ask if they are on track. Are they in a good place? Where do they want to be in the next five to ten years?”

The national Level Up Hort program officially began in mid-2023, with the initial focus being getting the word out about the program and what benefits it can bring to growers and industry.

“Our current focus is on promoting this distinctive benchmarking program to industry,” said Steff.

Building a resilient vegetable industry

AUSVEG chief executive officer Michael Coote said Level Up Hort would enhance the resilience of the vegetable industry by providing clear and effective measures of success.

“This program is going to help the vegetable industry focus on how they conduct their business,” Michael said.

“Growers currently do not have access to holistic data which gives them meaningful insights into how they are performing in comparison with others. This initiative will give growers a mechanism to evaluate their business’s performance compared to others based on their specific crop type and location.

“The data will also provide insights to the industry as a whole, so that we can identify areas to invest more heavily in to enhance our competitiveness and unlock a more prosperous future.

“Growers will have the tools to identify areas for improvement and enhance their competitiveness in the industry, unlocking the potential for a more prosperous future.”