McDonald's Business Tool Saves Dorset Farmer £10,000

UK – A digital business tool from McDonald’s has assisted a Dorset farmer in saving almost £10,000 by improving efficiency in the daily running of his farm.

16 April 2014

2 minute read

Europe

Beef producer Andrew Foot saved £9,917 after being given the ‘What if’ tool on a trial basis following four years of development work between McDonald’s and the environmental consultants at the E-CO2 Project.

Mr Foot said: “Monitoring business performance on the farm is incredibly important and I’m always looking to learn from other sectors and use technology to increase my farm’s efficiency.

“The ‘What If?’ Tool demonstrates that by making small changes to animal groups this can really make a big difference to overall performance.”

Costs were saved by highlighting improvements in silage quality, feed conversion rates and reducing carbon emissions, although McDonald’s says many other metrics can be used.

“Users of the tool are asked to input data including daily live-weight gain, feed use per animal, fertiliser use, forage quality and sale weights,” a spokesperson said.

“They can then adjust these variables and run different ‘What If?’ scenarios to understand which changes will have the most impact on their business and in turn drive cost and carbon savings.”

National Farmers Union Livestock Board chairman Charles Sercombe said the tool was user-friendly and showed how important simple changes can be to efficiency.

“I’m pleased that McDonald's has chosen to encourage all beef farmers to use the tool to see how they might benefit,” said Mr Sercombe.

“This is a great example of how we can all work together to support a sustainable future for beef farming."

The ‘What If?’ Tool’ has emerged from a six year project worth £1 million initiated by McDonald’s to drive efficiency in farms.

The tool will be available free of charge to the beef sector.