Benchmarking is the process of continuously comparing the production costs within your operation with those of your piers.

The Saskatchewan Pork Development Board in partnership with the Canadian Pork Council is preparing to launch a benchmarking pilot project under which producers will have the opportunity to provide production cost data for comparison.

Sask Pork industry and policy analyst Mark Ferguson says producers will have the opportunity, under a voluntary framework, to benchmark their costs.

Mark Ferguson-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board

What we we'd like to do is put this information into a database and to get some great results back on perhaps what other farms' costs are and to allow them to figure out how they can improve.

As to who should participate, certainly the producers in Saskatchewan would be encouraged to participate.

We're also going to make this benchmarking tool available across the country so that other producers in other provinces can voluntarily put information in if they want too.

I think the key thing is you need a critical mass if you're going to do benchmarking and the more producers we can get the better.

basically if you can plug in your numbers, what your feed cost was, your feed costs per tonne, what your labor costs is and compare it with what other farms are doing then, if you find that in a particular area you have a higher cost than someone else, it allows you to focus in on something and explore more research and to find out what you can do to improve.

Mr Ferguson notes Sask Pork conducted a benchmarking study in 2005 but that data is getting old.

He says the database for the new pilot project is currently being developed and he expects it to be completed in early 2011 and which time producers will be informed of how they can participate.