Agmates

Central QLD Grazier Natalie Williams writes:

Steve, this is the information John Rains has sent me on the recent Gamba Grass Conference.Brazil is looming as a world player in the global beef market and will eventually put enormous pressure on Australia’s traditional beef markets.Brazil has hundreds of thousands of hectares of highly productive (African) Gamba grass pastures.

Gamba Pasture at ribeiro Campo Grande Matto Grosso du sol Brazil.
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Brazil is embracing productive pasture plants. Unfortunately Australia did so twenty years ago but have since lost the plot writes John Rains of Southedge Seeds Pty Ltd at Mareeba.

At present no public pasture research is being done here in Australia. We are relying on hand outs from South American research. Attending the Gamba conference held on the 29th of October John wrote, “I had the feeling from the tone of the Conference that the decision to ban the planting of Gamba grass in QLD is a fait accompli. (the Department of primary Industry wants to declare it a noxious weed).

I get the strong impression that if Gamba is knocked off, other productive forage plants like Buffel, Leucaena etc. are next on the hit list, Mr Rains wrote. Gamba under control grazing at Mareeba North QLD.

Some facts about Gamba:

Gamba grass is a tall (c. 4m) grass native to tropical Africa. It is sold and planted in QLD to provide forage for cattle. Gamba grass provides fodder for cattle when fenced and grazed heavily. Its estimated that after sowing Gamba grass on a 5,000ha cleared and fertilised area, stock numbers could increase from 100-250 to 1,250 head and liveweight gains could increase from 80-100 to 110-140 kg/head.

It is climatically suited to Northern Australia, particularly the gulf country.

Savanah fire at Daly Waters in the Northern Territory.
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The main thrust for Gamba to be banned would appear to be driven by the situation and experience at Bachelor in the Top End of the Northern Territory where urban development has encrouched into bush land where Gamba is present and grazing systems have been removed.The dry matter fuel load that Gamba can produce can produce in an uncontrolled situation can create destructive fires when they occur at critical high temperature times of the year. Gamba grass in a grazing system, because of it’s high palatability, will not get to critical fuel loads.

Mr Rains asks:

1. Why are these intended controls aimed at graziers only?
2. Why is there a percieved perverse attitude to grazing plants, by governments and research agencies?
3. Why arn’t resources being directed at controling Giant Rats Tail,Thatch grass and other useless plants. Giant Rats Tail and Thatch grass have a far greater environmental impact, have a greater climatic range, and have a much lower palatability for grazing animals.

For more information on this topic just leave a comment and we will forward it onto John Rains or you can contact him at:

J P Rains General Manager, Southedge Seeds Pty Ltd, 24 Tinaroo Ck Rd. Mareeba
PH 61 740 86 2400  FAX 61 740 922 345 Email Click here

Website www.southedgeseeds.com

Agmates Eiditor Steve Truman writes:

On Sunday the 26 November I had the absolute pleasure of attending a bull inspection at John Mercer’s Kandanga Valley Charolais & Charbray Stud in the beautiful Mary Valley, SE Queensland.A grazing family was there to look at buying 5 Bulls. Johns presentation was first class. He was ready, the bulls were in the yard, but there was a few pleasant suprises.

Whilst the buyers were there to look at Charbray Bulls, John had yarded a line of Charolais Bulls to show them just in case “they knew someone who was looking for a good Charolais Bulls”. This is some of them below.

Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes

South Korea shut its doors to American beef in late 2003 after mad cow disease was found in cattle in the U.S. The Australian Beef industry received huge benefits as it became South Korea’s major supplier of imported beef to the extent that in 2006 over 90% of imported beef was sourced from Australia.

Since 2003 Australian Beef has enjoyed a stella run with the absence of U.S.A beef in the worlds two premium beef markets - South Korea and Japan. That looks like it’s all but finished as this report from the Korean times shows. Prices of imported beef have been falling drastically this year since the conclusion of a free trade agreement (FTA) between South Korea and the United States and the resumption of imports from America.

Information source: The Korean Times

Mississippi U.S.A - Cattle Broker Joel Gill R-CALF USA National Membership Co-Chair submitted this article and writes:

Hello Steve,

I’d like to introduce an innovative beef processor in the United States that is willing to share the beef profit dollar with those who produce it to your Australian readers.He has stood in opposition to corporate interests that pit shareholder profits against a fair production profit for those who do the actual raising of the animals.

Mike Callicrate of St Francis,KS USA has been a strong supporter of the US cattle producer and R-CALF USA. Few people in the US are as informed and active as Mike on not only cattle production, but the downstream meat packing, processing and retailing segments of the industry as well. I encourage your subscribers to take the time to read what he has to say.

MIKE CALLICRATE: WHO HE ISÂ Â

• OCCUPATION: Independent cattle producer, feed-yard operator and owner of No Bull Enterprises, which manufactures and distributes a castration device; the Ranch Foods Direct meat company and the Ranch Steakhouse & Market restaurant in Colorado SpringsÂ
• HOMETOWN: Evergreen
• EDUCATION: Attended Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, and Lamar Community College before earning his bachelor’s degree in animal science from Colorado State University in 1975
• AGE: 55
• FAMILY: Divorced. Callicrate has one surviving son, Teegan, 20, a student at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas. Tyler died in a car accident in 1996, at age 19.
• AWARDS: Westerner of the Year from the Western Ranchers Beef Cooperative; the first Legacy Award from the Kansas Cattlemen’s Association; and the Carl L. King Distinguished Service Award from the American Corn Growers Association
• HOBBIES: Reading, flying
• QUOTE: “Teddy Roosevelt did something about abuse of corporate power with the break-up of the big meat packers, the oil companies, banks, railroads and the tobacco interests. That was a hundred years ago and today we need to do something about it again.”

Ranch Foods Direct is a retail store and meat packing facility created by rancher Mike Callicrate to bring healthful, high quality, naturally tender meats directly to consumers straight from the ranch.

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The goal of this one-of-a-kind program is to create a business that benefits both ranchers and consumers. RFD’s cattle raising, processing, and distribution system assures incomparable quality, wholesomeness, eating satisfaction, and a mutually rewarding relationship of trust and responsibility between the rancher and the customer.

When you buy from
Ranch Foods Direct, you
are supporting rural
communities and farm
and ranch families who
care for the land and
animals by utilizing
environmentally sound,
humane, and sustainable
production practices.

Article by Jim Bainbridge of the Gazette writes:

Mike Callicrate doesn’t mind a good scrap now and again. He’s a frequent critic of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has taken on Wal-Mart and publicly called the owners of Tyson Foods “old-time gangsters, thugs and thieves.”Â

In Colorado Springs, Callicrate is best known as owner of Ranch Foods Direct meat company and Ranch Steakhouse & Market. Others know him as a staunch advocate for independent ranchers and farmers, a Don Quixote tilting at big agri-business.Â

Callicrate was the lead plaintiff in the first class-action antitrust lawsuit against a major meat packer (Tyson Foods-IBP) since 1921, was one of the driving forces in getting the Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) clause written into the 2002 Farm Bill and lately has been fighting for mandatory price reporting in the industry.Â

Callicrate makes about 100 speeches a year to spread the word, often flying to meetings in his 20-year-old Comanche 250 aircraft. As much time as he spends as cattle producer, feed-yard owner and entrepreneur, Callicrate estimates he devotes a third of his time to industry activism.Â

“I am drawn to this because I’m just so troubled with what is happening with our economy,” Callicrate said, “with the severe concentration of power and wealth. There is nothing more important than an economy that’s fair, that offers people economic opportunity and fairness and justice. And that simply doesn’t exist today in this economy.”Â

The meat-packing and distribution company Ranch Foods Direct was launched in St. Francis, Kansas, just over six years ago as a sort of second front in a fight against big agri-business. The idea was to provide a nohormone, no-antibiotic brand of meat that is tastier and more healthful to consumers while also providing another option for cattle ranchers looking to sell their stock.Â

“The most significant thing I do is Ranch Foods Direct,” Callicrate said. “It impacts all my other businesses — producing cattle, the feed yards. Everything. “Without a market I wouldn’t be a cattle producer and Ranch Foods Direct is out there to be that alternative market for myself and to show others it’s possible to do that same sort of thing in their community.” Â

Callicrate moved Ranch Foods Direct to Colorado Springs 3½ years ago to work with G&C, a small meat packing firm in Old Colorado City that he admired for pioneering a technology called “rinsing and chilling.” It removes blood from the beef carcass with a cold saline solution, enhancing the natural meat-tenderizing process and increasing shelf life.Â

Ranch Steakhouse & Market followed in October 2005, Callicrate taking over the Hungry Farmer restaurant building on Garden of the Gods Road and pouring $5 million into renovations and furnishings. But while he works on expanding his businesses here and in St. Francis, Callicrate always has his eye on the big picture.

He believes somebody needs to be willing to speak out about inequities he sees in the food business “or it will only get worse.”Â

Callicrate said Tyson Foods, ConAgra and Cargill control about 80 percent of the American beef market and can dictate the price per head of cattle paid to ranchers and feed-yard operators. In many cases, Callicrate says, this has forced ranchers out of business and raised the price to the consumer while systematically lowering quality.Â

“I think Mike is sometimes wrongfully accused of being a packer basher when what he is really trying to do is create opportunities for ranchers,” said Leo McDonnell of Montana, founder of the cattlemen’s group R-CALF USA, or the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America. “He’s been a leader in that arena and I think he’s just as frustrated with the government agencies who are supposed to oversee the industry as he is with the packers.”Â

Growing up the third child of eight in a northern Colorado ranching family and working his way through college by making bull ropes and riding bulls on the pro rodeo circuit, Callicrate has always known the harsh financial realities of rural life. “I just feel so strongly that the food system that we have is wrong,” Callicrate said. “It’s not sustainable, it’s not healthy. It’s economically very destructive, especially to people who produce food as well as to consumers because of all the chemicals and the poor quality product that’s in the system.”Â

But Callicrate has found it slow, hard going, trying to find solutions for independent cattle producers and farmers.Â

- Callicrate and the 30,000 other cattlemen plaintiffs won a $1 billion judgment in the antitrust suit against Tyson in Alabama, but it was overturned on appeal, then denied a hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court this summer.Â

- COOL was made law, but the USDA shelved the requirement that meat packers put the country of origin on their labels, claiming it was too expensive to implement.Â

- Congress passed a bi-partisan bill that requires packers, processors and importers to provide price, contracting, supply and demand information to the USDA, which uses the information to create mandatory price reports for livestock producers. The bill is now facing a court challenge.Â

Callicrate concedes that it is hard to figure how much his activism has cost him, but he says “we can easily say that it’s cost $3 million” in lost customers, legal expenses, travel and lost business opportunities. “Somebody asked me the other day how Ranch Foods is going,” Callicrate said, “and I answered that it’s like climbing Mount Everest every day in a storm.”Â

Ranch Foods Direct, which Callicrate operates in partnership with Wyoming ranchers Doug and Susan Samuelsen and Susan’s father, Neil McMurry, is doing about $300,000 a month in gross sales, but Callicrate says the business is not yet profitable. “This is a new model for the production and distribution of food that the big meat packers really hate,” Callicrate said. “They don’t want consumers having this alternative.

We are always under the gun. Our wholesale accounts are constantly bombarded by predatory pricing from the big guys. I’m a target and I don’t have a problem with that. I’m not complaining at all because I feel I have to do this.”

Visit Mikes web sites:
www.nobull.net
www.ranchfoodsdirect.comÂ

Brad Bellinger, New England NSW Farmer and Chairman of ABA writes

ABA Releases Its Questions for the MLA AGM

ABA Chairman, Brad Bellinger today released questions that ABA/MLA members will attempt to ask at the MLA AGM at Rockhampton on 22^nd.November.

He said, “At previous MLA AGMs often there is limited time to ask our questions, so he thought it would be a good opportunity to make them public now before the AGM, which is being held in Rockhampton on Thursday 22ns November 2007.ABA would like to ask questions to all of the MLA Board and will include the following:
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NSW Cattle producer John Carter in his tegular contribution “Straight Talking” writes:

Australian cattlemen are taking a bloodbath with the trade steer dropping over 20% in three months. Mainstream Rural Media is saying little or nothing as to the effects of government actions over the US Free Trade Agreement and inaction over our 2 supermarket “duopoly collusin” bites deeper.

We are constantly told that we are in a global market. Fine. Let someone step forward and explain the following?

* We are down to 53% of the US cattlemans 274 cents /kg. live price.
* Australian consumers are paying prices greater than US consumers.
* We are still to fill 30% of the US quota with only a few weeks left.
* Brazilian prices are at record levels with Angus steers selling up to 240 cents/kg. Live.

Reasons given by some:

Losing some of the Japan/Korea market back to the US despite our NLIS. It detailed the amazing ’side letter’ to the US Free Trade Agreement, which Minister Vaile signed. In it, he pledged, through the OIE (World Authority on Animal Health), to help the US get back into a BSE free Korea and to Japan.

This soon damaged our prices here and this intensified as Canadian beef began to flood back into the USA due to the USDA abandoning its role as guardian of US cattle health and caving into processor / political pressure.

We now have the results of the UK Governments trial and cost benefit analysis of the use of RFID tags in sheep. It strongly recommends against its adoption as it will make the UK industry uncompetitive in the EU—and not improves animal health trace-back.

Australia, the most disease free country in the world, is pricing itself out of the world market to please some bureaucrats, idiot ministers, their selected producer puppets and greedy tag / reader manufacturers.

“The High Dollar”.

I have written for some 8 years about Australias galloping external debt. We have now reached $542 billion nearly $30,000 for every man, woman and child in Australia. The trade figures for the last five years have been abysmal in the midst of a mineral export boom we have had big deficits for each of the past 65 months.

The only way to keep international investors sending money to Australia to keep us solvent is by raising our interest rate. With New Zealand we now have the highest interest rates in the OECD and are closing in on Argentina.

A high interest rate means a high $Aus. Exporters are now in a catch 22 situation. As our debt increases, our interest rate must increase to attract lenders to carry our debt and our exporters become less competitive.

The drought.

This is a fair explanation for a drop in the price of light store cattle where feedlots are finding the price of grain too high and feedlot occupancy has dropped 25%.

However for finished cattle it is a real furphy—supermarkets are claiming that the drought is forcing the cost of their supplies UP as they push finished beef prices DOWN.

Unfinished cattle with some frame are ideal for the US market, which we can^‘t fill despite their cattlemen^‘s prices being almost twice ours! Give us a break!

Share of the Australian domestic consumer dollar NOT going to producers.

The feeder steer is the first price benchmark in the industry chain. US consumers have a graded product available, they pay LESS than Australian consumers and their consumption is HIGHER. The US has a Packers and Stockyards Act with rules for saleyards and for price transparency Australia has a rip off rat race.

MLA (Meat & Livestock Australia>altered their measure of promotional success some years ago when they moved from the domestic consumption figure to an in house figure on money spent on red meat. How this figure is arrived at is anybodys guess but their claim that more money is spent on meat meals each year is valid.

THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE PEOPLE PAYING FOR THE PROMOTION “THE PRODUCERS” ARE ACTUALLY GETTING LESS FOR THEIR PRODUCT. THE RETAILERS ARE GETTING A BIGGER SHARE OF THE CONSUMER DOLLAR WITH THE PRODUCERS PAYING FOR THAT SHARE THREE TIMES WITH CHEAPER CATTLE, WITH PROMOTION DOLLARS AND THEN IF THEY PURCHASE AS A CONSUMER!!

So What lies ahead?

1. The herd will not be rebuilt to 30 million. There may be small increases in the environmentally sensitive and widely indigenously held Gulf and Kimberleys. However this will be more than offset by native vegetation laws reducing development in Queensland and by permanent depletion in the south as the traditionally richer, safer, areas go under forestry, houses and alternate lifestyle blocks as is happening in Europe and the US.

Cows don’t survive on a ration of tiled roofs or pine trees! Australia reached its highest stocking rate in animals in 1977 and has been falling as humans have multiplied and replaced them ever since.
2. Feedlots face a frightening future with the drought and possible ethanol subsidies keeping grain prices at prohibitive levels. This applies, even more severely, to our main competitors for the consumer dollar pork and chicken. However, chicken has a production line that can pass on costs to the consumer better than the fragmented beef line. Imports may render Australian pork production a terminal industry.
3. World cattle numbers must fall as humans increase. More Chinese can afford beef but their Government is subsidising and protecting their industry and they are actually exporting more beef than they import.

4. The Australian dollar will be held at artificial levels with our very high interest rates necessary to attract capital to service our huge external debt.