What made headlines in September

Demand for quality Droughtmasters outshone tough seasonal conditions across the state with a total 488 of 521 bulls selling to record a 92 per cent clearance and a gross of $4,763,500.

That was compared with the 2016 sale results with an average of $9596, a clearance of 98 per cent and a top of $80,000.

It was Oasis Dundee, from vendors Noel and Robyn Geddes, Oasis Droughtmasters, Emerald, who topped the sale from the first day at $135,000 to Mac and Gayle Shann, Lamont Droughtmasters, Clermont. 

Mac was preparing for a fishing trip while Gayle secured Dundee, a bull she said was the complete package and an animal you didn't come across very often. 

She said it was his muscling and sire appeal she admired most in the bull.

The second top price bull was Garthowen Xavier 2, from the Kinbacher family, Garthowen Droughtmasters, Biggenden, who was purchased for $78,000 by the McCormack family, Clonlara Droughtmasters, Glenmorgan.

That price was almost eclipsed by Oasis A Thurston, bred by Adam Geddes, Rosels, Emerald, who sold for $75,000 to Munda Reds, Gingin, Western Australia, losing bidders on the second top price bull.

Their truck was heading home with some precious cargo after purchasing another three bulls from Hamadra, Huntly and Garthowen. 

The volume buyer of the sale was Jersey Plains, Cloncurry, who purchased a total of 23 bulls for an average of $4652.

THE four-year surge of goat prices that sparked a significant shift to management, particularly finishing on improved pasture this year, plateaued in September. 

Over-the-hooks goat prices came back by just over 30 per cent, with Meat and Livestock Australia’s indicator hovering around 457c/kg carcase weight, compared to the peak of 683 in early July.

CHICKPEA harvest began in Central Queensland in September. 

Cowal Agriculture operate over eight properties in the Emerald region, and planted 1200 hectares of irrigated chickpeas this season, with Kyabra, Pistol, and the new variety Seamer in the ground.

Harvesting Seamer at Nyang, 220ha, Emerald, Cowal’s general manager Chris Brummell said while last year’s chickpea crop was what “dreams are made of”, 2017 saw a long, dry, season. 

“It has been dry and very warm through most of winter, then towards the end there was a bit of a cold spell that came through, and we’ve had very minimal rainfall,” Mr Brummell said. “In total we’ve had about 20mm of in-crop rainfall.”

Despite this, the crop only had one in-crop irrigation just prior to flowering.

The crop was planted at about 70kg of seed per hectare into moisture on May 12 after pre-watering began 12 days earlier. 

A late frost did cause some concern in the region. Cowal’s main crop is cotton, and they planted this year on the first day of the window on August 1. 

Prices were sitting at about $900/tonne, but Geoff Webb, Goldstar Commodities, Darling Downs, said Central Queensland growers were holding off on selling their crops. Mr Webb said with concerns about the southern chickpea crops, some CQ growers are holding off on cashing in on premium prices.

“I think part of that premium is that the growers aren’t selling it as quickly as the traders would have expected given the season,” Mr Webb said.

“They’re seeing what is happening in Southern Queensland, and northern New South Wales and thinking maybe there’s more in it, so chickpeas are a little slow to come to the market.”

Mr Webb said he was hearing reports of yields of about 1.5t/ha to 1.8t/ha for CQ crops – reasonable given the dry season. 

While the price was at $900, last year was testament to the volatility of the market, where prices fluctuated from $700 to $1100. 

”It used to be considered that $500 was a good price for chickpeas, and obviously in the past three years we’ve been well over that,” he said.

Semantics and political manoeuvring by Queensland’s conservative politicians were blamed for the failure of a last minute crossbench motion for primary producers to have “as of right” access to category H weapons in a Parliamentary vote.

Katter’s Australia Party, which put the motion, said the LNP and ALP were jointly responsible for the defeat of a “commonsense measure”.

KAP’s Rob Katter and Shane Knuth said it was another attack on farmers’ rights.

In response, opposition police minister, Tim Mander, said the wording had been reckless and KAP’s parliamentarians had been unwilling to negotiate.

Thanks to a technicality, the motion, “that this House supports primary producers’ rights to own category H firearms by providing as of right access to category H weapons for primary producers” was put forward with only a few hours’ notice.

The “as of right” phrase was the sticking point for the LNP, which Mr Mander said would have had unintended consequences if it had been agreed to.

“It risked the whole system by giving carte blanche for a whole category of people,” he said.

“KAP might have had good intentions but that’s not what the motion said.

“We tried to negotiate for an hour, for a right to fair assessment, but we were wedged on this.”

When the crossbench puts up the motion for the day, the debate is between themselves and the government, and the opposition can only speak to the motion with the mover’s permission.

Mr Mander said KAP hadn’t given them permission to speak.

AgForce weapons spokesman, Graham Park, said the LNP should not have been so rigid in its interpretation, given that a motion was being debated, not binding legislation.

“It was more a statement on the rights of primary producers,” he said. “It would have been far more productive if the LNP had been able to work more closely with KAP on preparing the motion.”

In September we published a Special Report on the challenges facing our red meat processing sector. The sector is now the largest trade-exposed manufacturing industry in Australia and bosses say that if Australia wants to stop the industry moving off shore, urgent attention to the costs of manufacturing is required.

The closure of the Churchill Abattoir in Queensland was the most recent in a long line of red meat processing plant shutdowns this year, triggering talk that Australia had now priced itself out of homegrown beef.

All signs were pointing to Churchill being just the tip of the iceberg.

Red meat processors were battling arguably the harshest terms of trade in the sector’s history and most expected that pain to continue for at least another 12 months.

The warning was clear: The offshore manufacturing mania that has wiped out so many other sectors is about to take a serious grip on red meat processing.

If our value adding goes overseas, how much more will Australians have to pay for a t-bone for it to be attractive to processors to send the end product back home?

Spiralling costs and challenges at abattoirs - livestock procurement, energy, labour, red tape - have reached boiling point.

Australian Meat Industry Council chief executive officer Patrick Hutchinson said it was time for government of all levels to recognise the impact that record input costs, regulatory burden and encumbered market access was having on the red meat processing industry, according to Australian Meat Industry Council chief executive officer Patrick Hutchinson.

We don’t want to blow our own trumpets too much but the Queensland Country Life team were pretty pleased to discover in September that they had been named the 2017 Newspaper of the Year in the regional non-daily category at the annual PANPA awards in Sydney. The biggest media awards in the Australasian region, this is the second time in three years that QCL has collected the coveted trophy.

THE kangaroo industry called for an immediate halt to the construction of exclusion fences in western Queensland. Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia CEO John Kelly said while exclusion fences were being funded by governments on the basis on stopping wild dog attacks to enable the rebuilding the sheep industry, the greater impact of the fences was on the kangaroo population.  More coverage here. 

Meat and Livestock Australia hosted the Queensland MSA awards in September. Chinchilla’s Kaylene Wonka took out the top prize – the MSA Excellence in Eating Quality Most Outstanding Beef Producer. Ms Wonka had exceptional compliance with just two head out of 102 falling outside MSA specifications. Goondiwindi’s Reardon family won the grainfed award.