The FARMAX Accreditation programme has been running for five years now, with dozens of agricultural professionals partaking to enhance and test their FARMAX skills across three levels: Bronze, Silver and Elite.
We’ve created the programme alongside consultants which helps us ensure that the accreditation is as straightforward and valuable as possible.
One of our Elite Accredited consultants, Sandy Campbell, AgSupport lead at AgDesign, appreciates that the whole accreditation programme is broken down into manageable parts.
“The process from Bronze to Silver to Elite was helpful as it breaks FARMAX down – to initially get your head around how the programme works in terms of setting a farm up for Bronze and then bringing in the financial aspect through Silver and bringing everything together in Elite.
“By going through the accreditation process I really started to understand the complexity of the software and how much you could manipulate to get the desired outcomes. It gave me a lot of confidence around how FARMAX works and how I use the program,” says Sandy.
The intent of the FARMAX Accreditation programme is to recognise these rural professionals as having advanced FARMAX skills and enabling more in-depth and analytical use of the system. When asked if becoming accredited had led to more valuable conversations with co-workers and clients about their farm systems, Sandy said yes – without a doubt.
“Key to that is the background knowledge of my clients’ farming systems and background knowledge of practical management on farms. It is difficult for anyone to look at outputs from FARMAX and translate that into what that means on farm without having the background practical knowledge of what needs to be done day to day to make that happen,” explains Sandy.
“What FARMAX does is give me a pretty clear template or a visual template to show farmers, to tell them if you do x, y and z this is the likely outcome, and this is where we hope to be set.”
Sandy says he tends to do a lot of forward budgeting in FARMAX – sometimes up to four or five years ahead, which is useful for his largely conceptual work. On farm, the main FARMAX feature he uses is average cover, as it is “the biggest, major indicator of whether or not you will succeed”.
For new rural professionals starting with FARMAX, the accreditation process is a simple way to get up to speed in easy bite-sized chunks. The FARMAX team is always on-hand for support throughout the whole process and training materials are supplied.
Sandy appreciates that for new professionals entering the ag sector there is a lot to learn, but his advice is to be positively critical and inquisitive.
“Don’t view an outcome or common practice as verbatim fact. Look into the detail and view it in context of the wider picture. There are multiple complexities and outcomes that can come from any decision; we are facing big changes so innovation and adaptation are imperative,” says Sandy.
“FARMAX is great tool to look at the outcomes and see where they stem from initially and then to see how you can affect the future moving forward.”
We are currently doing our annual update of the FARMAX Accreditation programme, so if any accredited consultants have any feedback or ideas you are more than welcome to get in touch.
For those interested in completing the Accreditation, get in touch with Toni on the FARMAX HelpDesk for more information.
