Adoption of research and technology remains crucial

By Jason Strong, Managing Director, MLA

Meat & Livestock Australia is committed to working with producers around Australia to achieve our industry’s target of doubling the value of red meat sale by 2030. To do this, we must continue to tackle industry’s biggest challenges, such as low levels of adoption of proven management practices and technology, for which we are starting to see a significant step change.

MLA’s recently released Producer Adoption Outcomes Report has shown that for MLA investments into adoption projects from 2015-21, participating red meat producers will receive an additional $803M net benefits for their businesses by 2045. This is an increase from the $484M that we reported last year, following the recent completion of a program impact assessment. This assessment has shown the net benefit to 2045 as well as annual impact.

The Report shows that, despite the challenges of COVID-19, nearly 8,500 red meat producers took part in adoption programs during the past year, with over eight and a half million head of livestock benefiting from practice change programs across 72 million hectares of land.

Northern Australia, especially Queensland, is an area that represents substantial investment and opportunity for creating long-term benefits.

This investment will be centred around MLA’s Northern Breeding Business program - known as NB2 – which will address calf loss in northern breeding herds, low profitability of many northern beef enterprises and low adoption of proven management practices and technology.

NB2 has the ambitious target to deliver an estimated $20 million/year in net benefits by 2027 to 250 northern beef enterprises – and we’ve just launched six new producer pilot groups as part of that program.

Elsewhere, 2022 will see MLA’s National Pasture Biomass Project kick into gear. This will provide every MLA member with the opportunity to access a monthly property level estimate of their pasture biomass through a secure and easy-to-use interface integrated into the MyMLA platform.

Providing all Australian red meat producers with the opportunity to routinely access regular, automated, objective satellite derived pasture biomass estimates represents a very significant initiative to create a step change in Australia’s grazing and feedbase management. This shifts the dial from “early adopters” using the technology to all MLA members being able to access information on the status of their feedbase in much the same way as they do for weather information.

New technology, improved data feedback and adoption of on-farm research outcomes remain a core focus for MLA so that we can continue working with producers to increase the productivity and profitability of the red meat and livestock industry.