Rural Australia » rural australia

MLA And Cattle Council Conspiracy In ‘At Risk’ BSE Imports?!

ruralaustralia — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:57:03 +0000

Thank God that Agriculture Minister Tony Burke has personally initiated action to keep foreign beef at risk of BSE off Australian shelves. However, there is a strange stench in this issue. While the Australian Beef Association has been very loud in its lobbying against the BSE at risk imports, MLA has been very quiet and Cattle Council has for some reason seemingly been complicit in supporting the foreign BSE at risk imports.

It easy to understand how the public could run scared from beef due to the perceived risk of imported beef bringing BSE into Australia. After-all, look what ‘Mad cow’ did to the UK and Canada a few years back!
But with Australia’s producers as the primary source of Meat & Livestock Australia and Cattle Council funding, the question has to be asked as to why these groups haven’t been more vocal in their concerns about this issue. Surely they haven’t rolled-over to Government pressure because livestock levies go directly to the Government’s Consolidated Revenue (as tax revenue), who then funds MLA et al. That would make sense in so many ways for so many issues over the years, wouldn’t it!
However, perhaps MLA thought letting-in BSE at risk meat would be a great way to push their NLIS and LPA programs around the World to countries wishing to export meat to Australia! Unfortunately for them even Minister Burke has now realized that not only do these programs not work within Australia but the rest of the World has absolutely no interest in them – with President Obama recently removing NLIS from their programs!

It is a reasonable decision for Minister Burke to put-off any possible importation of beef for at least two years as protocols for the importation of beef are developed. However, let’s hope MLA and Cattle Council can get together and support the Australian Beef Association’s efforts in protecting all Australians after that 2 year period has transpired, especially their enforced tax-paying constituents/members.

What do you think?
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STOP THE PRESS! OBAMA DROPS NLIS!

ruralaustralia — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:31:00 +0000

The US has dropped its version of the NLIS called National Animal Identification Scheme (NAIS).
US Dept Agriculture Notification
New York Times article

There was tremendous opposition from US farmers and ranchers, particularly cattle producers.
Where does this now place NLIS’ with one of its base tenets being to provide Australian beef with increased export leverage? Japan and Korea have already illustrated over several years that they don’t require nor pay a premium for Australian NLIS beef. And US beef is not being hindered in its competition with Australian beef within these markets.
Does this really beg the question as to whether Australian farmers can look forward to the near future when their paid employees at MLA and in Government, finally realise that NLIS is now just a cost impost on Australian farmers – in terms of time and money. Not only are there data holes big enough to drive hundreds of B-Doubles laden with stock through, but en masse it just doesn’t provide any value. The NVD has been shown to work well while NLIS in theory sounded OK but just isn’t practical – apart from the huge expense. If processors and branded-beef labels want it, then as with QA systems e.g. LPA, commercial and fair sense says they, as the user, should pay.

What do you think?
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Maximising Livestock Prices In Australia

ruralaustralia — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:10:24 +0000

Why is the sale of livestock so different from the sale of shares listed on the Australian Stock Exchange? e.g. for BHP, Comm Bank, NAB, Rio Tinto, etc ?

Wouldn’t it be niece (ideal?) to have 21 million potential purchasers (or more) eyeing your livestock off and bidding on its price.
Well, why doesn’t this happen? Can it happen? If so, how?

Currently, in a nutshell, shares are displayed for the World to see and their owners and agents (or stock brokers) go about marketing them to their clients. They are then sold (by brokers in a competitive market) and their last price (and price history) is displayed for public consumption from anywhere in the World. Livestock on the other hand is a very disorganised marketplace – and as the analysts tell us, there is money in confusion.

A head of livestock is the pure embodiment of a ’stock’ because what you see is what you get. You can know its breed and age, have it weighed, you can see its color and muscling, know the region it was grown in and its feed for the past 100 days, etc A share on the other hand is representative of the company in which it has ownership. While you can know a lot about a ’share’ too, it has a lot more information underpinning it and its information is much more easily obtained or ‘transparent’ and there are so many more analysts crawling over its data and advising the market of its profile.

For livestock, there are:
Direct sales from the farmgate where the owner (producer/farmer) has to guess whether they are getting a fair deal, (i.e. How do they know the ‘true’ market price at the time of sale?)

Direct-to-Processor sales where producers transport stock to abbatoirs who kill and process them and then decide what the carcass is worth, paying the producer once that is done. (An interesting phenomenon to grow stock for 380 days and then have someone else decide what price its worth AFTER they cut it up!). This certainly doesn’t leave a lot of room for price control or negotiation.

Physical saleyards is the other major sales method, where stock generally won’t come home at any price offered otherwise transport and fixed (non-success-based) selling costs are incurred. Frequently there are few competing buyers at saleyards. Stock here are at the mercy of event management. (And stock quality is poorer than on-farm sales, despite improvements in yards over the years).

Online selling is currently very old-fashioned emulating a physical saleyards and almost mandating agency intervention at inflated fees. However, at least it does enable stock from various regions to be placed on the one market and have buyers from anywhere compete for the purchase. It still has a way to go until it mirrors the ASX’s 24×7 abilities and agents competing for work if at all (like eBay), but stay-tuned this is not far away.

So, the really big defining difference between the two stock markets is that shares are displayed for the World to see their profiles and prices and to be bought and sold 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year and all buyers must operate through their listing market, be it new York, ASX, Newcastle, London or Dubai. Livestock on the other hand is a confused market where prices for the same animals can vary significantly on the same day in the same town!

Hold your hats, people! In a global World of cost-savings, more powerful online marketing and more savvy producers, this situation is going to change and change appreciably!

Is AACo’s CEO Worth Less Than MLA’s CEO?

ruralaustralia — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 01:34:39 +0000

AACo. has just announced that it’s new CEO will receive $600,000 base salary with incentives that can take it to $1,000,000. See Media Report Here
I think MLA’s CEO, David Palmer receives around $750,000 (+ expenses, of course).
How do you compare the worth and/or effectiveness of these employees? Is one worth more than the other?
Who is AACo’s CEO answerable to and how and
who is MLA’s CEO answerable to and how?
As a group listed with the ASX, AACo. must follow strict rules and guidelines on reporting to its shareholders who have invested in the company.
MLA is also a sorporate entity that must follow the rules of ASIC. (That is why only around 2.6% of Aust levy-paying producers voted in the recent MLA AGM but it is still funded by the Fed Govt See Figures here). MLA is a tax-payer funded organisation with those taxes coming from a per head fee on livestock sold (taxes) and Federal Govt funding (from taxpayers). So, the rules followed by MLA are different from those followed by AACo.
AACo. has published the salary of its new CEO. How easy is it to access the salary of MLA’s CEO?
AACO. shareholders will see the salary of their CEO paid from company revenue and his incentives paid from measurable commercial company performance. How is the performance of the MLA’s CEO measured? Is there a component that is also based upon the performance of the MLA. Is it related back to the commercial benefit to its livestock growers?
If so, how is this performance measured?
Presumably MLA is using a different set of figures its media releases that show it has only produced $0.91c per beast over 30 years of spending. See Rural Australia Analysis Here

What do you think?
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E.coli Cripples US Hamburger Consumer & NLIS?

ruralaustralia — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:44:44 +0000

Question: If someone can be crippled from eating bad hamburger meat (where most of Australia’s exports to the US end-up), should she be able to locate the livestock from whence it originated? And if so, is this possible?
New York Times article

The long and the short of this article is that after being crippled by the E.coli from eating minced meat from the food giant, Cargill, this poor girl attempted to back-track the meat’s pathway. The meat was manufactured from a plethora of ground-up rubbish including some cattle meat and marketed as “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties”. However, because it originated from a variety of animals and by-products, processed by a variety of personnel there was no hope of tracking-down the originating beasts or their ‘home’ properties. (The side issue here is that the ingredients were listed only as “beef”).

The reality is that a cattle ID system such as NLIS or LPA would not and could not have assisted this victim or others following in her eating ‘footsteps’? Perhaps this is one of the reasons America and Japan don’t have a livestock ID system. If they don’t, then how can MLA justify Australian producers paying their levy taxes to fund one here?!

What do you think?

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NZ Farmers Vote Against Industry Levies

ruralaustralia — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:27:42 +0000

Does this sound familiar? It’s a aged ABC Rural report but may be relevant given the forthcoming MLA vote on livestock taxes/levies.
As reported, “New Zealand lobby group Federated Farmers says wool growers voted against paying levies because they were fed up with wool prices and disenfranchised by the industry.”

“Wool research and development body Meat and Wool New Zealand will get no levies from wool growers, after a vote last week.” Read the ABC Rural report
“Federated Farmers says it’s concerned about the long term future of wool, now no-one is looking after the industry.”

Chairman Hugh Taylor says wool growers are upset with Meat and Wool New Zealand spending money in areas that didn’t help them. Heard that before?!
“I think the vote will take the shackles off [the industry] in some ways,” he says. It’s got to be market-led.
We’re going to get the industry all together and work together for the benefit of the grower.”
Hah! If only!
Do you see any parallel’s to this vote and that of the forthcoming MLA AGM and vote on Australian cattle taxes/levies?

Related link – MLA Returns $0.91c per Beast!

What do you think?
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Receivership For Elders?!

ruralaustralia — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:25:41 +0000

Gee, who would have thought it!
“If the share issue does not happen, Elders will hit the wall on September 30, its debt renegotiation deadline. Receivership will be difficult to avoid”.Clock running down for Elders.
To avoid receivership (in an attempt to renegotiate its debt), apparently Elders is having to savagely slash the value at which it’s offering its shares to large investors. To this extent it has so far pitched shares at, “…61 per cent below market (39c before shares were halted days ago), and a sobering 95 per cent below Elders’ peak price of $2.83 in July 2007, just before the global debt crisis erupted.” (‘The Age’, Malcolm Maiden)
The worrying aspect of this issue would seem to be that as Maiden says, “The institutions believed that Elders’ debt reconstruction deal was priced as if Elders would still be in a fight for its survival after the debt reconstruction and the share issue had put that issue beyond doubt.“

Then if Elders can/does survive to fight another day, can a business like this that depends upon 5.5%(?!) sales commissions and merchandise sales expect to survive in 2009/10+ (especially if it sells down its HiFert shares)?
Additionally, can much value really be added by a centralised administration (ASX listed) group to a large agency network that survives on the personal relationships of its staff/operatives? And if it’s the relationships that count, why aren’t these operatives out working as independents without being tied-down by Head Office? (Perhaps this is cause for wonder about the ability of a lot of Elders employees who think they need a red shirt to get their work).
Makes you consider whether some red shirts might be looking to change to a more positive color in the near future.

What do you think?

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Farmland Appropriation Without Compensation!

ruralaustralia — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:16:20 +0000

The Victorian government has stepped-over local councils to prevent landowners from developing their farmland without awarding any compensation to land owners or the councils for the loss of revenue each would receive if they were to develop the land.

While the argument for locking-up farmland in the US is about preventing land sprawl, in Australia it seems to be more about keeping a nice vista for holiday makers and city/townsfolk wishing to see some ‘real Australia’ as close to home as possible.

Whatever the merits of the Australian philosophy, this is plainly a case of farmers yet again having to bear the brunt for the rest of the community? If the community and its representative government wants to keep specific farmland as such, then the fairest method in a commercial democracy would seem to be to purchase the land at a commercial rate. We would then see just how valuable the philosophy is to all involved. Otherwise, farmers have been made to pay for land that is basically being appropriated by Big Brother!
At least the Californian govt provides tax breaks to farmers for a similar process, although they stop short at Communistic appropriation! Info on Californian tax breaks for farm land

What do you think?

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The Great Meat Rip-off Much Is More Than High Fuel Costs

ruralaustralia — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:58:40 +0000

Agforce is right to advise consumers that they are headed for even higher costs if the fuel rebate is scrapped. Agforce on fuel costs
However, they are stuck between a rock and a hard place, aren’t they as we should be more focussed on the current rip-off by processors and retailers. Australia’s meat is purchased at the lowest cost in the developed World and sold at the highest! Click for the facts
While it’s all very well for MLA to advertise to increase consumption, I would prefer they work on removing the rip-off. It must be difficult for them though when they are representing both producers and the processors ripping them off!

What do you think?
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Beef Association Supports Mulesing

ruralaustralia — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:17:40 +0000

Chairman of the Australian Beef Association and wool producer, Mr Bellinger has congratulated The Australian Wool Innovation Board (AWI) for giving wool producers some long awaited commonsense, with their decision to continue marketing wool from mulesed sheep past the 2010 deadline.

The message Mr. Bellinger and the ABA have supported is, “If you want wool from unmulesed sheep – then pay for it.’ Read more from ABA here

This RuralAustralia forum has other posts regarding the mulesing issue you can read here: Post i) on mulesing, Post ii) on mulesing

What do you think?
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