Fostering the future with data-driven decisions

Hort Innovation invests in a range of programs to provide growers with the information they need to make effective business decisions.

Hort Innovation’s Industry Analysis portfolio of work is vital to Australian horticulture as it assists industry and growers to make informed, data-driven decisions by reporting on key data and insights obtained through the various supply focused data initiatives.

“The industry analysis portfolio is constantly evolving to deliver added benefits to growers. Each project is about enabling industry to make informed decisions through access to relevant data. I believe an inevitable and exciting development will be the inclusion of sustainability monitoring in the future.” 

Lucy Noble, Industry Analyst for Hort Innovation’s Data & Insights Team who manages this body of work.

A closer look at the macadamia industry

The macadamia industry has recently begun collecting data as part of Macadamia industry benchmarking and industry sustainability insights 2022-2027 (MC22000), following on from project Benchmarking the macadamia industry 2019-2021 (MC18002). By providing Australian macadamia growers with the opportunity to benchmark their production against a range of farm performance metrics, this project aims to establish a financially viable and competitive macadamia industry through the identification and widespread adoption of best practice.

Through this program and earlier benchmarking investments in the macadamia industry, growers receive free and confidential benchmark reports which provide a seasonal assessment of their farm performance. This helps individual businesses understand drivers of best practice, gain a better understanding of seasonal outcomes and aids in positioning themselves within the wider industry context.

In June 2022, a survey of MC18002 participants found that 88 per cent of respondents used their farm benchmark report to better understand how their farm compared with others and 83 per cent used their benchmark report to monitor and track farm performance.

Bruce Macquire, a macadamia grower from Kin Kin, Queensland, purchased his farm in the early 1990s and has participated in the benchmarking program since 2014. Through the benchmark report, Bruce learnt that his input costs over the last three seasons were higher than his historical average, however the average cost per tonne remained lower than the benchmark group average. Bruce said the benchmark report was useful for his business, as it clearly demonstrated where areas of improvement to his orchards were needed.

“Benchmarking has allowed me to track my kernel quality and highlighted the issue that mine wasn’t particularly good. It really gives you something to aspire to, and while we were thinking we are going well here, it shows we could do better.”

Macadamia Industry benchmarking and industry sustainability insights 2022- 2027 (MC22000) has expanded its focus from productivity and quality reporting, to establish measures of macadamia farm and industry sustainability. The project supports the delivery of Outcome 4, Strategy 3 of the Macadamia Strategic Investment Plan 2022-2026, that aims to ‘use industry production benchmarking activity to measure and track industry productivity and profitability and sustainability metrics’.

Aligning with Hort Innovation’s Australian-grown Horticulture Sustainability Framework, several potential sustainability indicators have been identified for this benchmarking project:

• Energy efficiency
• Soil health
• Carbon sequestration
• Water-use efficiency.

Once collected, this data will be used to help the Australian macadamia industry demonstrate its sustainability credentials, with the knowledge that this is a growing area of interest for consumers.