The Veg Tool is a gross margin comparison tool for vegetables. The system was developed for the Australian vegetable industry by Schofield Robinson, with funding from the Australian vegetable industry and HAL.
The tool is not specifically related to assessing the impacts of climate change but it does provide the framework for developing realistic gross margins for Australian vegetable growers and can be used to compare various scenarios.
The program allows growers to enter estimated yields, prices and input costs in familiar units, e.g. without having to convert everything into “per hectare” values, to arrive at a gross margin. Users can decide on the level of accuracy, but it is envisaged that the main use of the tool will be to conduct relatively simple comparisons of different crop production scenarios.
The tool can be used to evaluate the financial impact of adopting some of the climate change adaptation measures suggested in this report, and could be used in conjunction with the Vegetable Carbon Calculator to assess the financial impact of reducing the carbon footprint of a vegetable farm.
The value comes from being able to input data that applies to individual farms, and so will be much more accurate than using generalised gross margins for particular crops.
For ease of use, a limited number of cost categories were included:
- Seed & Plants
- Fertiliser
- Fuel
- Chemicals
- Water
- Labour
- Electricity/Gas
- Packaging
- Freight/Transport
- Other Operating Costs
The Veg Tool can be downloaded from the AusVeg website