EIP-AGRI Focus Group: Benchmarking of farm productivity and sustainability performance

Benchmarking can support farmers to improve their productivity and sustainability performance. At its simplest, benchmarking is defined as improving the performance, of a farm, for example, by comparing with peers, learning from others and identifying actions. Valuable lessons can be drawn from benchmarking by raising the subsequent questions: why are others better?, how are others better?, what can be learnt?, and how can the farm catch up?

The European Innovation Partnership for Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability (EIP-AGRI) aims to stimulate innovation and seeks practical solutions to on–farm problems by bridging the gap between practise and science. A Focus Group on Benchmarking of farm productivity and sustainability performance has been established by EIP-AGRI. This Focus Group has to address the question: How can farmers and advisers use benchmarking data and process to improve productivity and sustainability performance? In understanding how a benchmarking environment can be facilitated, a distinction should be made between the micro-benchmarking environment (farm level), meso-benchmarking environment (sector/market/business environment level) and macro-benchmarking environment (policy/regulatory level). This clearly set out in Annex 4, Why do we do benchmarking and what objectives are we aiming to meet? This Focus Group concentrated on the farmers and advisors, but also dealt with the meso and macro levels in proposing various questions and suggestions on what it would take to make benchmarking for farmers a reality.