Mr Benton hosted more than 30 people, including Mr Thomson, at the nearly 2500ha sheep, beef and deer property in Kaiwera at a B+LNZ field day this month.
Mr Thomson, who started in his role in November last year, said he was conscious B+LNZ was a compulsory levy entity.
"You get a choice every five years but once you’ve made that choice, you’re stuck with us."
Consequently, the organisation needed to deliver what farmers wanted, he said.
"I’m desperately keen to hear what you have to say about what we should keep doing, stop doing and start doing."
A month before he started the role, a farmer asked B+LNZ chairwoman Kate Acland what she wanted in a new chief executive. She responded someone with a commercial background who could drive real efficiency through the organisation as declining sheep numbers might require B+LNZ to ask farmers for a levy increase.
"We can’t do that until we’ve absolutely driven the most efficient and effective organisation internally," Mrs Acland said then.
Asked how he would drive efficiency and if there would be a levy increase, Mr Thomson said he would work to ensure
B+LNZ’s leadership team were functioning as well as they could so the levy was producing as much value as possible for farmers.
"My vision is to be the best industry group in the world," Mr Thomson told those at the field day.
He wanted to work more closely with the dairy, deer and horticulture sectors and Federated Farmers to reduce farmers paying multiple levies and to reduce groups doing the same work.
"You reach a juxtaposition where if you cut the capability or quality of delivery, you start to spiral down in the value," he said.
He did not know if a levy increase was coming, as he had not been in the job long enough to realise opportunities to save money but he would know more soon as the budgeting round was coming up.
Mr Thomson began working as a technical fertiliser sales representative for Ravensdown in 1982, soon after changes to the supplementary minimum prices scheme.
A memory of the time was sitting at a kitchen table with "big tough farmers" who had broken down.
"They had just shot 200 ewes because they were worth nothing and farmers were making a loss for the next two to three years," he said.
A motivation for accepting the chief executive job more than 40 years later was that New Zealand sheep farmers continued to struggle to remain profitable.
Despite farmers considerably increasing productivity, they continued to battle financially. He aimed to improve outcomes for farmers, Mr Thomson said.
Jeff Farm runs about 27,000 stock units including mating about 12,000 ewes, 3000 hoggets, 420 Angus cows and 550 red hinds.
In-lamb ewes’ pregnancy scanned at 195% on average last year.
About 135% of the ewes’ lambs made it to weaning.
The reason for the drop between scanning and weaning included the impact of storms and many ewes producing triplets, Mr Benton said.
"The biggest work on for me is trying to close that gap ... we want to get our lambing percentage up to a more consistent level and to minimise the wastage."
The hinds fawned at 92% and 96% of beef cows were pregnant at a 50-day mating period.
For the first time, all the steer calves were sold to a Five Star Beef feedlot near Ashburton, owned by Anzco Foods.
Historically, the steers were finished on Jeff Farm but it required inputs to be brought in and it meant lambs could not be finished and had to be sold as stores.
"Everything on farm needed to be prioritised at the same time of year and trying to finish lambs and cattle at the same time became too much," he said.
Sending the calves to the feedlot rather than finishing them meant more land was available to finish lambs to heavier weights.
More winter crop was put in this year to get hoggets off grass so more pasture was available for lambing.
Another objective was managing drench resistance in the flock.
That included quick stock rotation, ensuring lambs were given access to the best pasture and then shifted on to minimise their chance of eating parasites.
"The ewes follow and if there is anything left, the cows mop up, or if it is just thistles, then the tractor mows it."
A long-term goal was to finish every class of livestock on farm in a cost-effective way with limited inputs.
Jeff Farm had the potential to finish its own stock and for store lambs to be brought in to finish, he said.
