Beef Australia
The Angus Influence – from Performance to profit Cheyne Twist, Communications Officer
‘The Angus Influence – from Performance to Profit’ seminar featured as part of the Beef Australia 2021 program during May and showcased insights from a range of members of the beef industry, covering what makes businesses profitable and how producers have successfully utilised Angus genetics in their operations in northern and southern Australia.
A
Building a more profitable beef herd
Kicking off proceedings was Ian McLean, Director of Bush AgriBusiness, a professional service firm providing independent analysis and trusted insights to pastoral businesses across northern Australia. Ian is a co-author of the Australian Beef Report and lead deliverer of the Business EDGE workshop.
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Separating the top performers
During his presentation Mr McLean highlighted what separates the top performers when it comes to producers in the beef industry, the economic impact of selecting for fertility and how to improve business and industry performance. When analyzing beef businesses, Agribusiness lines them up from top to bottom, looking at how they perform based on return on assets and therefore comparing the top performers to those at the bottom end of the spectrum and identifying differences. According to Mr McLean, whether it’s family businesses or larger businesses that rise to the surface, there is one thing they all do best. “They’ve got more productive herds, which means they’re more efficient at turning grass into beef.” “It’s not just the size of the animals, that’s important and part of the efficiency, but it’s the given amount of grass they’ve got to go into the system whether it’s measured in DSE (Dry Sheep Equivalent) or AE (Animal Equivalent) 24
and how many kilos of beef are produced from that. This is something the better performers consistently do, converting that grass into beef more efficiently giving them more income per animal unit.” Mr McLean also highlighted that with the top performers, there was bettered targeted herd expenditure. When looking at their discretionary herd expenditure, which covered things like supplementation, animal health, mustering and selling expenses, the businesses that perform better spend less than the rest per animal unit. Therefore, the discretionary money that these businesses are spending is better targeted in finding ways so they spend money to make money, while understanding that if they do not get the return on investment, they will not spend this money. Genetics were also identified as a highly important area of investment for beef businesses. Mr McLean highlighted that when it comes to genetics, it is an area in which money well spent can provide excellent payback for producers, whereas money not well spent does the opposite. “When selecting genetics, producers need to ensure that their management systems allow for the chosen genetics to fully express themselves, and to ensure that when selecting genetics, they must be those that will improve the bottom line for your production system”. “You are able to select on different things and don’t forget to focus on the bulls because bulls have more than 20 times the genetic influence that females do in terms of calves produced.” “There is an increasing amount of data, which Angus have been on the forefront of for a while, available on genetics, so use the indexes for selection. Identify the index most applicable to your production system as it’s a great way to rank bulls’”. It was also highlighted that the top performers use labour more efficiently in their businesses. This means having production systems and the infrastructure set up to do what needs to be done while doing it with less staff.
