AHDB Farmbench Facilitation Fund

AHDB are seeking suppliers to recruit farm businesses with an arable enterprise to use the benchmarking programme Farmbench. Farmbench is AHDB's new flagship, cross sector benchmarking programme, for use by farmers and their advisers across the UK. The programme allows users to enter data to calculate total unit costs of production, gross and net margins and anonymously compare business performance to regional and national datasets. It helps businesses to identify strengths and weaknesses, which can be used to draft a plan to improve performance. For information, Farmbench currently covers combinable crop, potato and beef and lamb enterprises and by October 2018 it will be extended to cover dairy enterprises. For the purposes of this contract, a number of suppliers are sought to: 1) Recruit new farm businesses to Farmbench. Each business must grow at least one combinable cereal or oilseed crop in harvest years 2018 and/or 2019 2) Support those businesses in uploading their data to Farmbench 3) Validate each dataset ensuring completeness and accuracy 4) Bring the farmers and/or farm managers together into groups to discuss the figures and share knowledge

AHDB are seeking a number of suppliers to recruit in total, 2400 new farm businesses to Farmbench, with 1200 each for harvest 2018 and harvest 2019. This is an initial one year contract with the option to extend for a further year.

Additional information: Suppliers Instructions How to Express Interest in this Tender~: 1. Register your company on the eSourcing portal (this is only required once) - Browse to the eSourcing Portal: https://defra.bravosolution.co.uk and click the link to register - Accept the terms and conditions and click 'continue' - Enter your correct business and user details - Note the username you chose and click 'Save' when complete - You will shortly receive an email with your unique password (please keep this secure) 2. Express an Interest in the tender - Login to the portal with the username/password - Click the 'PQQs / ITTs Open To All Suppliers' link. (These are Pre-Qualification Questionnaires or Invitations to Tender open to any registered supplier) - Click on the relevant PQQ/ ITT to access the content. - Click the 'Express Interest' button at the top of the page. - This will move the PQQ /ITT into your 'My PQQs/ My ITTs' page. (This is a secure area reserved for your projects only) -You can now access any attachments by clicking 'Buyer Attachments' in the 'PQQ/ ITT Details' box 3. Responding to the tender - Click 'My Response' under 'PQQ/ ITT Details', you can choose to 'Create Response' or to 'Decline to Respond' (please give a reason if declining) - You can now use the 'Messages' function to communicate with the buyer and seek any clarification - Note the deadline for completion, then follow the onscreen instructions to complete the PQQ/ ITT - There may be a mixture of online and offline actions for you to perform (there is detailed online help available) You must then submit your reply using the 'Submit Response' button at the top of the page. If you require any further assistance please consult the online help.