What's Your Beef

When Michael Patching was mulling over his career choices as a teenager, morality and a passion around animal production were at the centre of his decisions. Initially settling on a veterinarian degree, Michael has spent the years since travelling the world with various roles in the beef industry.

They call it the Olympics of meats and you're invited to a friendly showdown at Beef2024! Every two years, over a hundred of the World’s best butchers converge on a host country to battle it out in interesting cuts and innovative ways to present meat in the most tantalising way at the World Butcher’s Challenge. The captain of the 2024 Australian team is Adelaide’s Luke Leyson and what better way to warm the team up for the 2024 World Butcher's Challenge in France than a friendly appearance at Beef2024? In this episode we hear from Luke - what made him pick up a butcher’s knife to start with (not his Mum’s cooking) and how he is preparing his team to bring home the beef at Beef2024.

Carbon is no longer a buzz word in modern beef businesses- it’s here to stay. But many producers and land owners are still in murky territory around their understanding of the applications to our businesses. Luckily we have enough early adopters that have led the charge and can explain the situation.

One of the jewels in the Beef Australia crown is the Westpac Property Tours. There’s another stellar lineup of properties for the 2024 event and in this episode we’ll meet two of the owners opening their front gates for visitors; Justine and Matt McLeod at Lake Pleasant, Goovigen and Ainsley and Rob McArthur at Mystery Park, St Lawrence. As a property tour guest, you will experience firsthand some of Northern Australia’s premier properties, and why the Rockhampton region is acknowledged as the true Beef Capital of Australia.

There is something about Chloe Gould's commitment to bettering the beef industry for everyone from paddock to plate that is infectious.

20 years ago, Nhaya Nicky Hatfield, a proud Darumbul woman from Central Queensland and her husband Trevor took a vow they were no longer going to speak their language in secret. They wanted to use it not only to preserve their culture within their family, but bring the wider community of Australia together. It’s their ethos of inclusiveness and sharing of ideas across cultures that has made Nhaya, or Aunty Nicky an icon in Rockhampton.

In this episode Aunty Nikki talks about what reconciliation means to her- and how language is central to how it will work. It’s also her story… of growing up on country, and the passion she has for teaching as well as her community and the lands in which she lives. We also talk about how she’s turned her experiences of racism on their head and the fact that despite eating it for most of her life, she still finds cooking with beef mince irresistible.

The Beef Australia event has long been hailed as the epicenter of innovation and business for the global beef industry. Nathan McPhee attended Beef21 with a seed of an idea for a beef business, but after a chance encounter with some industry leaders, the idea blossomed into what’s now a world first in farming investment through his app Invest Inya Farmer. Attending Beef Australia’s study tour to the USA, he says the experience not only opened doors for his business, but he learnt more in the few weeks travelling with industry peers, than he would in a couple of years researching from the comfort of his desk.