WHY do farmers do the things they do?
How is it that two farms next to each other can be running entirely different enterprises?
Which farm is doing it 'right'?
These questions have left Kojonup PhD student Michael Young pondering for hours while working in the middle of a paddock.
A young business owner, an innovative software designer and a down-to-earth Aussie bloke, Mr Young is impressive.
And he hopes to have answered the ultimate question of how to best optimise any given farm with his new software called AFO (Australian Farm Optimisation model).
Having originally planned on studying engineering to help settle his curious mind, Mr Young had a change of heart after spending a gap year working on farms at Kojonup.
He would work on neighbouring farms and find that they were completely different.
"I was trying to work out why they did what they did - surely one of them is right," Mr Young said.
"And one of them is wrong as far as who's going to make more money - they both can't be right."
To answer the age-old farming riddle, Mr Young began to look to farm modelling for an answer.
Currently, farm modelling software is most commonly used to map out a farm's predicted output.
However, according to Mr Young, these software packages come with their own limitations - as they may simulate real life and the average year, but they don't account for differences between years or calculate a farm's optimal levels.
"It's good (software), but in my opinion, it doesn't explicitly represent seasonal variation," Mr Young said.
"This type of modelling allows me to actually identify the optimum.
"So essentially, what is the optimum management for your farm as far as optimising for profit."
The software can predict, for example, with each change in tonnes per hectare of fertiliser how much yield will change - analysing the millions of different scenarios from tiny changes.
The model can also break the year into chunks - telling the farmer that perhaps yield would be higher if they put varying amounts of fertiliser on during different times of the year.
"The model examines each scenario and decides which one is going to work best," Mr Young said.
Mr Young hopes to help farmers make their land more economically efficient by helping with strategic and tactical onfarm decisions.
"Your experiences are only good with what you've tried - there might be better, but you don't know because you didn't try it," he said.
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The software will especially help with those who have been thinking about trying a new crop, but don't want to commit to four years to see whether it was the right choice.
"The software should give you a pretty accurate answer, which would save you four or five years of trialling," Mr Young said.
He has big dreams for the software and plans on converting it into a user-optimised interface so it is accessible to more farmers.
He also plans on incorporating a benchmarking software - where farms can compare their productivity to the neighbouring farm and see whether they have room for improvement.
Mr Young has already started offering his services to farmers looking to optimise their farm using the software and is extremely excited to be running his own business, Youngs Farm Analysis.
"I've always liked the idea of running my own business, it's just something that's been interesting to me," he said.
"A lot of farmers are collecting data, but it doesn't necessarily inform their decisions - this sort of modelling stuff is tricky.
"So I like the idea of being able to take farmers' data, plug it into the model and come up with almost a farm plan."
Mr Young said economic modelling wasn't particularly expensive when farmers look at how much money they make off the investment from small changes on their farms.
On top of starting a business and completing his PhD at The University of Western Australia UWA, Mr Young also has some impressive achievements behind him including a Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development scholarship, a Channel 7 Young Achiever finalist award and a UWA Mike Carroll Travelling Fellowship.
With the fellowship Mr Young travelled to New Zealand and experienced farming there.
He said the biggest difference between the two countries was the quality of land.
"Their land is worth almost four times more than Kojonup, which (NZ land) is super expensive, and they've got smaller blocks," Mr Young said.
"But at the same time, they might get three times more pasture production for a year."
More information: To get in contact with Mr Young about economic optimisation of your farm go to youngsfarmanalysis.com.au
