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?!

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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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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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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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While Elders may have tidied-up some of its debt, apparently it still has a large whack to go. i.e. It has sold-off the AACo stake, sold-off the auto business, and now also sold-off the Insurance business. And still has large debt! Gee, makes you wonder why people at the top of these companies responsible for getting them into these situations are ever lauded at industry events, doesn’t it!



The remaining debt is still concerning the analysts. And if that’s the case and there’s not a lot left to sell and not a lot of free cash-flow to deal with the debt replayments, then perhaps on a local level it’s not even as well off as your family-owned local independent. Will there be pressure applied to the local Elders agencies from where all of the cash has to come now that it’s not getting any more from other sources? And if so, what form will the pressure take?



A few other thoughts here too. Elders is listed on the ASX which brings with it more pressures. ie. It has just appointed a new COO and new CIO. These might be necessary for large organisations but their costs, along with that of the CEO, the various adminstration staff, office leasing costs etc etc add to the burden for which the local independent doesn’t need to account.



Before their ‘troubles’ both Elders and Landmark had begun their ‘fee-for’service’ models. e.g. $2.50 per ear-tag added and $2 per head for scanning. And I guess in a user-pays, capitalistic economy, that’s a fair thing if you want to cover your costs and be sure you can keep your business alive. The header mechanic doesn’t fix your rig and hold-over payment til the crop cheque is in, so why shouldn’t the agent be paid as they go. What this approach may affect however, is whether the value is in the 5.5% selling fees if it’s just covering loading and sale day.



What do you think?


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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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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

It seems that Carbon emissions trading is on the way.

The, “Global warming is/isn’t” debate (between environmental scientists and various ‘weather watchers’) seems to have been by-passed by the old-fashioned ‘dirty pollution’ should be cleaned-up-whether-it’s-involved-in Global-warming-or-not perspective.

The Leader of the Coalition was once one of emissions trading’s most vocal supporters so even with allowances, it is highly likely that farms will need to address how they are going to cut emissions – otherwise they will be taxed/charged for their role in ‘Carbon poisoning’.  (The primary food production industry can realistically hope for allowances but these may well be tied to proof of emissions decreases as distinct from removal from the ‘program’).

With cattle farms in the spotlight, I guess information on strategies such as dietary supplements to reduce belching, seem the most obvious options.
However, what else can you think of that might assist. Two come immediately to mind:
Gaining credits for the carbon fixing properties of trees on a per farm basis (tree plantations are apparently getting them), and direct sales as distinct from ‘yards based sales to cut down on freight.

What do you think?
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I bet AACo wished it had one of those little gadgets that you whistle to find your keys!
Then they might be able to find the 183,000 cattle Donald Fuller claims are missing ‘ghosts’.

Gee, imagine if we invented a similar tool for the whole Australian cattle industry where we could immediately find where any cattle are. It’d be simple, especially if we made it law to put RFID chips in the ears of all cattle and to register them all on a central database.

There would be all sorts of benefits and little tussles like the one between AACo and Mr Fuller could be solved overnight. (Then, if the cattle existed, AACo and the judge could find against Mr Fuller for defamation and tell him he’s not right about AACo doing ‘interesting’ sales deals ‘off-market’, so to speak, to circumvent full document disclosure about stock numbers – which he says don’t stack up).
 (Click to read AACo court case re claim 183,000 cattle ‘missing’ - “The Age”)

Hey! I know, what if NLIS could do this? We could use it instead of our new database gadget. It would also be able to trace cattle for other disease-related reasons.

Unfortunately, as both of these cases require 100% accountability and accuracy, we will unfortunately need to disregard NLIS. i.e. we know from the PWC Audit of NLIS that more stock have gone ‘missing’ from the NLIS dbase since that audit, and if we wanted to rely on it, we would all just be whistling Dixie!

What do you think?
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