Australian Horticulture Benchmarking
Its own module
Crop-specific questions, quality and pest topics, and dashboards. The industry sets the questions and the reports.
University of Melbourne
Australian Horticulture Benchmarking Platform
One online system for horticulture industries. Each industry sets its own questions and owns its data. Growers see their farm beside the industry, every season.
One platform, configured for each industry
Horticulture industries have collected farm data in different ways, often through projects that stop when the funding ends. The time series stops with them. Metrics differ, so labour, water, energy and cost are hard to compare, and results often arrive as a report months after the season.
This platform is built once and configured for each industry: a survey engine, a secure database, dashboards, access control and reporting. Hazelnut and truffle are live on it today. A grower submits once a year and opens a private dashboard. An industry sees aggregates, never a named farm.
What each industry gets
A shared system
Survey, secure storage, dashboards and reporting are maintained once. Cost per industry falls as more industries join.
Ownership
The University of Melbourne builds and runs the platform. Each industry owns and governs its data, alongside its current advisers and data providers.
Industries on the platform
Two industries are live. Others can join by configuring a module, not by commissioning a new system.
Live
Hazelnut
Public pages and a secure grower login. A baseline survey once, then a short annual update with last year’s answers filled in. Four dashboards cover orchard resources, financial performance, farm practices, and storage and processing.
The first industry benchmarking report covers 2025–26. Kernel traits were measured on 46 grower lots from Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania.
Supported by AgriFutures Australia through the Emerging Industries Program, with Hazelnut Growers of Australia.
Open hazelnut.agribenchmarking.auLive
Truffle
The second industry on the same engine, configured rather than rebuilt. Growers give their figures once a year, with an email and a postcode, and no street address.
After submitting, a grower sees their farm beside aggregated figures for their region and for Australia. Those figures are never shown on their own.
Run with the Australian Truffle Program of Research and the Australian Truffle Industry Association.
Open truffle.agribenchmarking.auHow a grower uses it
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Invite
The industry body invites its growers.
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Register
A secure account needs an email and a postcode only.
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Baseline
The first survey records the farm. Later years skip it.
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Dashboard
A private dashboard is available after submission.
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Update
Each season opens with last year’s answers filled in.
Industries control their data
There are three levels of access. A public page shows only the summaries an industry chooses to release. An industry body can see regional and state aggregates, never an individual farm. A grower sees their own farm in a private dashboard, and sees more about that farm than anyone else.
The design follows the Australian Farm Data Code. Consent covers how data are collected, used and shared. Identifying data are deleted on request. Any cross-industry view is added only with that industry’s agreement.
What comes next
The live dashboards are the first step. Next, with each industry’s agreement, the same submissions can feed industry statistics and a cross-industry view, so the core of an annual horticulture statistics handbook need not be compiled by hand from separate sources.
An adviser inside the platform is planned after that. It would explain a season in plain English, rank a few actions, cite its sources, and refer chemical, financial and safety decisions to a qualified adviser. It is not switched on. Hazelnut and truffle growers use dashboards today.
Collaborators
Research, industry and funding partners of the hazelnut and truffle programs. The University of Melbourne leads the platform.