In My Beef this week, Meat and Livestock Australia’s managing director Richard Norton, who recently made presentations through central Queensland, does a Q&A with Queensland Country Life livestock editor Inga Stünzner.
Q. You have been in the role for eight or nine months. What have the biggest challenges been for you?
A. Undoubtedly the biggest challenge has been communicating to levy payers the industry structure, because as a lot of people have been made aware over the past three days, it is a confusing structure.
I then break it down to just what MLA has been set up to do. It doesn’t collect the levy – it gets a distribution of the levy that’s collected from the Department of Agriculture to do research, development and marketing.
And the future direction of MLA is to be an open-book policy and take industry’s advice as to where they want the levy spent.
It doesn’t do advocacy and it doesn’t do lobbying. MLA doesn’t get to set the price for a National Vendor Declaration book.
It is an industry service provider, and industry tells MLA what it wants executed and how it wants the levy spent. As much as there have been certainly challenges for MLA, it gets reassuring when you get in front of levy payers and explain the role of MLA and explain the role of Cattle Council, AgForce and state farming organisations. It becomes a lot clearer and people then know which part of the puzzle is responsible for what.
Q. With this new structure that is being proposed by industry (New Corp), is this going to affect the role of MLA?
A. I don’t know that it’s going to affect MLA, but I have no doubt that the industry memorandum of understanding will be strengthened to give people more oversight of MLA and I have clearly said that I haven’t had anyone at MLA board level express that that is a concern.
If MLA wants to be the most efficient organisation for industry , the more people who have oversight, the better.
Q. My other question is about Aus-Meat, and you mentioned during the seminars there are whole raft of other issues that need to be addressed.
A. The feedback from levy payers around Aus-Meat is that they don’t feel that Aus-Meat is representing the producer part of the industry well enough around standard market trim and as an organisation that is taking up producer concerns to processors around how a carcase is assessed in both species.
I have committed to levy payers that Aus-Meat needs to be more open and transparent but Aus-Meat has also got to accept that the status quo and how things are done has to change. It has to be a lot more receptive to producer concerns.
Q. How receptive have they been to that in your meetings?
A. I have been on two board meetings and I think Aus-Meat is working through the issues.
I do believe that industry needs a new language, which will come out of the beef language white paper project.
We need to have objective carcase measurements so the way meat colour is assessed is the same from Tasmania to the Cape and all processing plants in between so producers have confidence around the product they are selling and get paid for the right specifications through objective measurements.
Q. You have been through central Queensland at least 11 times and around the country. Are there common themes for beef producers or do you find the challenges and issues are different for each region?
A. The challenges are obviously farm gate returns where ever you go. So it is around explaining the current situation – 19.5 million cattle that have been slaughtered or live exported. They are record high numbers.
Not since 1977 have we seen those sorts of numbers. So it is explaining why farm gate prices for the last two years have been as low as they have been, explaining why they are now starting to rise and then explaining to industry it is really around a processor capacity.
What industry should be asking MLA to do is to ensure that the barriers to entry to setting up a processing plant in Australia are reduced so that there is more competition in the processing sector and that is obviously something that I went through these sessions over the past three days.
It is around how we can use industry’s advice and strategic direction to deliver that.
Q. Are you enjoying your job?
A. Love the job.
Q. Are you going to be here for a while?
A. I am going to be here for a while. I have always been in agriculture and agribusiness, and I have been out of it at times – I have worked for Coca Cola and logistics companies in Sydney.
There is no better place to be than in agriculture and I have a deep passion for making sure that there is change, and I can’t stand the status quo.
I think now the whole industry – because of what it has been through over the past two years - is really looking at ways to make it a more efficient industry as a whole and I really want to be part of that.
