RawAg Podcast

Jon Wright is a beef cattle seedstock producer from Woodstock NSW near Cowra. Being the 4th generation on the property, cattle have been in his blood from the start. Passionate about breeding and maximising production gains, he started the Blue - E line of cattle in 1997. Blue - E was a composite of 50% Shorthorn 50% Angus that has recently included Simmental cross composite genetics. He has developed a line of cattle that has included testing and selecting for feed conversion from its inception. Coota Park Blue - E have a fully automated feeding system (Growsafe -Vytelle) imported from Canada that records the intakes of each bull day to day.

Jon is passionate about innovation within the beef industry and how we can better reduce our costs of production. He is also a passionate grass producer, who is trying to reduce the impact we have on our surrounding environment. Jon is very concerned about how the beef industry will fit into the future of food supply in the world and very much encourages discussion in this area.

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Matt has worked with the Animal Genetic and Breeding Unit (AGBU) since October 2004, in the development and improvement of genetic evaluation technologies for beef cattle breeders. Key areas of research have included the development of new traits to describe female productivity in tropically adapted beef breeds, with a focus on cow body composition and reproductive performance. He was also involved in a Trans-Tasman collaborative project to improve our understanding of factors impacting cow productivity in temperate beef breeds, with a focus on characterising and establishing the genetics of age of puberty traits.

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Oli Le Lievre is the Content Marketing Manager at AuctionsPlus and the Founder of Humans of Agriculture.

His career to date has seen him working in a variety of roles ranging from farm management, to fresh produce export, corporate agribusiness advisory to agtech startups.

Oli is passionate about increasing consumer awareness, showcasing career opportunities in agriculture to the next generation and believes that innovative people and ideas will deliver solutions for businesses and communities to thrive.
Oli takes on these tasks in his day to day role as well as through his initiative Humans of Agriculture, which is on a journey to share 10,000 stories of people influencing our food and fibre system.

He is currently the Vice-Chair of The Future Farmers Network and a current participant in the Australian Rural Leadership Program, the flagship program run by the ARLF. In 2021 Oli was a Zanda McDonald Award finalist and in 2018 was selected in the inaugural National Farmers Federation ‘2030 Leaders Program’

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Lewis Frost is chief operating officer of Ceres Tag, the world’s first direct to satellite smart ear tag and data platform for livestock.
In other words, Lewis is a brainiac; and brings to the beef industry a background spanning animal monitoring, livestock genomics, animal health and molecular diagnostics.

He is also an advocate of tech adoption in production animal industries. Recently appointed Queensland board member for the Australian AgriTech Association, Lewis is working to foster a world-class agritech ecosystem and help create a prosperous future for Australian agrifood innovation.

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Garry and Leanne Hall are cattle producers from the Macquarie Marshes in north central NSW.

Part of their property is Ramsar (International Convention on Wetlands) listed, which creates an extra level of responsibility and connection with their landscape.

The Halls, with their two children, are passionate about the sustainability of their production system and their role as an ecosystem service provider, managing their land to ensure they have positive environmental outcomes. They are involved in water management at all levels on a daily basis and regularly host visits from political level to government agency staff.

The Hall family have cared for their property for four generations and their families have had landholdings in the area for seven generations.

With a strong interest in traditional land use practices and how they can learn from the ability of a culture to survive for 50,000 years prior to European settlement.

Garry and Leanne are passionate about building strong business relationships and never lose sight of the fact that every kg of beef they produce is destined for human consumption.

They live and work with their livestock on a daily basis and are well over 100km from the nearest town, as such, they are believers in a strong local community and surrounding themselves with positive people.

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James Wagstaff is editor of The Weekly Times. Having grown up on a sheep station in the NSW Riverina he started his career as a journalist at the Daily Advertiser in Wagga Wagga in 1998. In 2004, he shifted to Melbourne and The Weekly Times and served in a number of roles including Deputy Editor, Chief of Staff and Business Editor. During his time at The Weekly Times he has spearheaded such successful projects as The Weekly Times Coles Farmer of the Year Awards, which has grown into Australia’s leading agricultural awards, and the multi-platform Who Owns Australia’s Farms series. He is a four-time Rural Press Club of Victoria journalism award winner.

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20 years ago, Doug embarked on a journey of change. Driven by the need to survive drought, it's been the most rewarding journey of his life. Writing the Resilient Farmer was Doug’s way of saying thank you to the people and processes that drove his change.

Doug, his wife Wendy and their family, live in Eastern Marlborough, New Zealand. Bonavaree is a 2343 ha owned and 420 ha leased dry land farm. Over the last two decades, huge changes to pasture type and use, stock type and farming systems have seen a dramatic change in the fortunes of that farm and the Avery family.

The changes achieved at Bonavaree are now being applied on many other properties across the country.

A large part of the change was driven by Dr Derrick Moot of Lincoln University and his Lucerne (alfalfa) based pasture system. It was taken to its ultimate development by a New Zealand Land Care Trust facilitated project, the Starborough Soil Conservation Project which was funded by the Sustainable Farming Fund. This was a six pronged science effort which systemised a package of activities to make Bonavaree the amazing property it is today.

Doug wrote The Resilient Farmer in 2017. He writes with great insight, romance for the land and people he loves, and is a genuine and skilled storyteller. He is working on his next book, which we eagerly await.

To find out more about Doug or to order The Resilient Farmer, click here https://www.resilientfarmer.co.nz/ Should this episode cause distress, please contact your local crisis centre or in Aust. call lifeline on 13 11 14.

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Colin Henke grew up in the South East of South Australia. He pursued a farming career by starting at the bottom as a jackaroo before purchasing his own land (courtesy of an initiative of the Rural Finance Corporation of Victoria targeting young farmers). By combining management of the family farm and running his own land, enabled the eventual purchase of a stand alone property in 1998 in South Western Victoria, which is being farmed by Colin and his wife Karen today.
An initial 50 : 50 split between cattle and sheep has been transformed into a cattle only enterprise, encompassing a 1,000 cow, spring calving , Angus herd, producing feeder steers for the medium to long fed feeder steer market. Relatively high interest rates in the 1980’s and 90’s ( from 10 to 16% ) has ensured a pursuit of productivity and profitability along the way which continues to this day.

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The Quality Meat Scotland podcast began in April 2020. With guests including Diana Rogers, author of the Sacred Cow and topics ranging from market trends, profitability and resilience, best practice and developments in the red meat sector. In this episode, Tom Gubbins, host of the RawAg podcast and Director of Te Mania Angus Australia, chats with Mark Stephen about the Te Mania Angus programme. Data is central to what we do, in this discussion Tom highlights that we first need to identify what drives profit, the requirements of the target market and how the animal fits in to the environment. From there, we can discover, collect and utilise the data to improve the genetics and increase profitability.

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Professor Robert Banks has been involved in developing and managing RDE projects with very high impact nationally. This includes the establishment and growth of LAMBPLAN and MERINOSELECT, the significant increase in the rate of genetic progress in beef cattle in Australia, and the development and implementation of the Information Nucleus concept to underpin implementation of genomic technologies in sheep and beef cattle. Together, these programs have helped make rates of genetic improvement in sheep in Australia as fast as or faster than in any other country in the world, and in beef the rates are close to those of our major competitors including the US. His contributions have been recognised via several awards from professional associations and the wider community.

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