The PhD studies by Isermeyer (completed in 1988) and Deblitz (completed in 1993) formed the basis for the international comparisons of production systems and the economics of dairy and beef farming within agri benchmark.

Both studies used existing data sets from the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), the European Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), the Ontario Dairy Farm Accounting Project (ODFAP) in Canada, the New Zealand Meat and Wool Board Economic Service (NZWMBES) and the account statistics of the New Zealand Dairy Board (NZDB).

While most data sets were more or less representative, they also revealed significant weaknesses for performing cost comparisons:

• The data sets were not comparable and often outdated.
• There was a lack of quantity structure figures required for a cost-per-unit analysis.
• The data was usually limited to gross margin and the access to data sets was often limited.
• Calculations, for example for depreciation, were often not transparent.
• There was no perspective for a sustainable continuation of cost analysis and model use without a network infrastructure.

The conclusion was that the establishment of an own database was better than the use of existing data sets.

Based on the previous experience, Isermeyer founded the European Dairy Farmers in 1990.

EDF is a farmer’s network with participation by more than 300 farmers at the end of 2006. It works on an annual schedule with a yearly conference and performs comparative in-depth analysis of costs, returns and profitability. EDF can be characterised as follows:

• The issues raised by ad-hoc studies mentioned above were addressed and solved.
• A sustainable network was established and operates under the joint leadership of the DLG (management part) and FAL (scientific part).
• All dairy farmers are welcome to participate, i.e., there is intentionally no process of selecting specific farm types, sizes, etc.
• The possibility to generalise results may be limited due to the farm data’s individual character.
• The cost allocation is done by the farmers.
• The network is (still) limited to Europe and to dairy.

In the following years, the farmers’ club idea was extended to the European Arable Farmers and the European Pig Producers, both managed by DLG.

In the next step, the International Farm Comparison Network IFCN was founded jointly by Folkhard Isermeyer, Torsten Hemme and Claus Deblitz in 1997. It uses a partnership approach and involves scientists, advisors and farmers.

The reasons for adding another network to the existing farmers’ networks were the following:

• The new network was operated on a world-wide scale from the outset.
• Instead of an individual farm approach, a typical farm approach was chosen. The main advantages are a) the reduced number of farms required to represent the farm population, thus maintaining the feasibility of managing the data on a world-wide scale and b) the possibility of better generalising results.
• The objective was to cover not just milk production but also cash crops, beef, cow-calf and other products.

Data were collected on the whole farm level, and models and tools were developed which were suited to do both benchmark calculations and the simulation of farms over a period of ten years for policy and farm strategy analysis.

The Network started with Dairy (1997) and was then extended to Beef (2001) and Cash Crops (2003).

In 2006, a re-organisation of the existing IFCN infrastructure was undertaken. To facilitate further and unrestricted growth for all product branches, new organisational structures had to be implemented as described above.

The Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute (vTI) is one of four German federal research institutes under the auspices of the German Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMELV). The vTI was created on January 1, 2008 from the German Federal Research Centre for Fisheries, the German Federal Research Centre for Forestry and Forest Products and part of the German Federal Agricultural Research Centre (FAL). The agri benchmark project will be unaffected by this.