QUALITY Meat Scotland has launched ‘Graze+’, a new grazing initiative for livestock farmers who are keen to benchmark their business performance data in order to try and improve their productivity and performance from rotational grazing.

Aimed at farmers who already have some level of experience in rotational grazing, this three-year project is free to join and will help group members build on their existing knowledge and experience to help them improve their grazing management. 

Managed by its own members and facilitated by QMS, there will be two Graze+ groups – one based in the North of Scotland and one in the South. The main emphasis of each group, which will meet four times each year, is physical and financial benchmarking to improve their outputs from grass. 

Using shared benchmarked data, the group members will be able to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of their own grazing management systems and compare them with other group members.

They will then have the opportunity to visit group members’ farms and identify potential improvements they could make at home.

The two new groups will run alongside the new QMS ‘Better grazing’ programme, which will have six regional groups across Scotland. The programme is aimed for those keen to learn more about improving their grazing management, while ‘Graze+’ is more suitable for those livestock farmers who have already taken steps to improve their grassland management and are keen to progress further.

The first meetings of the two plus groups will be held at the end of August and QMS knowledge transfer specialist, Emily Grant, is encouraging farmers keen to take grazing management to the next step, to get involved.

“Feedback from farmers who attended the QMS grazing groups which ended in April this year indicated many were interested in looking at grazing management in more detail. They were also keen to analyse the financial impact of the changes they had made to their own grazing strategies,” said Mrs Grant. 

Due to the benchmarking element of the initiative, the number of members in each of the ‘Graze +’ groups will be limited. 

Group members will also be required to meet some key requirements, which include agreeing to undertake financial and KPI benchmarking, and to sharing results within the group. 

They should also be prepared to make changes to their own farming system to improve productivity and attend at least three meetings a year. 

  • Initial meetings are set to take place in Perth, on August 22, and Moffat ,on August 23. More information from Emily Grant on 07843 281129 or e-mail egrant@qmscotland.co.uk for further information.