Making decisions about your agricultural enterprise is all about managing risk.  Therefore being able to put some probabilities to the question of how a season will develop will be much less risky if you have at least five years worth of records to benchmark against in one simple graph.

If the season starts 3 weeks before the historical average date, allowing earlier pasture establishment before the winter chill,

• How many more animals would I be able to run during the winter and spring?
• Can I opportunistically increase the area of crop on the assumption of a longer growing season will provide a better than average yield?
• How will having green feed earlier in the season affect the fibre diameter profiles of my young animals?
• How will that affect the mean fibre diameter targets I have set for that group to access premiums?

Alternatively if the start of the season is delayed by 3 weeks,

• Do I reduce the area to be cropped on the assumption of lower than average yields?
• How much additional supplementary feed would I need until my pastures were established?
• By how much would the total pasture production be reduced this year due to the shorter season?
• How do I plan to conserve forage for next summer and what impact will that have on the total wool or meat per hectare produced this season?

Benchmarking against previous years

Our database of historical PGR started in 1995.  While this does not compare to the memory banks of most agricultural producers we are closely working with, it is sufficient to start placing some certainties to the decision based on this technology.