Canadian Cost of Production Network 2023-2028

Background

Understanding whether it makes economic sense to adopt a new management practice or technology on any beef operation is impossible if a producer doesn’t know their cost of production. Confidentially sharing cost of production data among comparable operations in the same region allows participating producers to know whether they’re doing well or how they could be doing better. Cost of production programs delivered by provincial agriculture departments used different methodologies, making it impossible for producers in neighboring provinces to compare their results. Most provinces have also drastically scaled back their cost of production programs or eliminated them altogether.  

Objectives

• Conduct scenario analysis of different practices to identify barriers and opportunities for technology transfer,  

• Revisit the initial focus groups to understand how they responded to the future farm scenarios and if it impacted their actions,  

• Expand understanding of sector competitiveness with international comparisons,  

• Communicate results to industry through presentations and fact sheets, and 

• Support peer learning through a network of connected producers. 

What They Will Do

The COP Network will gather regionally-relevant producer-level information around on-farm economic realities related to opportunities and barriers regarding production practice change and technology adoption. The Network will update detailed cost of production data from 200 separate cow-calf producers in all regions of Canada, representing a variety of operation sizes and production systems. Individual operations will also be grouped together with other operations of similar size and production characteristics (e.g., mixed crop, retained ownership, dairy-beef operations, etc.) in the same geographical region. These groups of comparable operations will serve as benchmark scenarios to help producers to understand the operational goals and the cost:benefit of (and barriers to) adopting practices that interest them. Focus groups will follow up on previous “future farm” scenarios and additional future farm scenarios will be created. These scenarios will evaluate the whole-farm impacts of adopting improved production practices on their operation that could reduce input costs or increase the value of their production by 5%.  

Implications

In addition to the individual producer benefits, information from the COP Network will help the BCRC prioritize extension efforts to appropriately encourage the adoption of recommended production practices and technology. Aggregated COP data is also valuable for price insurance programs, and for informing industry or government policy development. The economic model underlying the COP network is used throughout the world, so COP Network results will help assess the international competitiveness of Canada’s cow-calf sector.