RUNNING an organic paddock to plate business on short term agistment may seem difficult but, for Chinchilla beef producers Daniel and Frances Prentice, it has proven an advantage in the battle to secure productive land.
The couple run a small herd of 100 head on their 202 hectares home block, Jubilee, and 129 hectares of agistment, putting Senepol and Droughtmaster bulls over their cross bred cows.
Six years ago they shifted from a saleyards reliant turnoff to offer monthly orders of their own grassfed beast under the label Clearview Beef and processed in Chinchilla.
In a bid to retain production off their home block, the Prentice family have made agistment a permanent part of their business.
“We are pretty mobile, a little bit nomadic,” Mr Prentice said.
“We necessitate that because the seasons are so variable and because we finish our own beef we have to have the conditions all year round, that’s just so challenging.”
While their operation isn’t certified organic, they run their business on the same strict criteria and personally limit their choice of agistment country to land that still meets organic standards.
It means they often find ‘hidden gems’ that other people would turn down by compensating for land without infrastructure.
Most recently they had their cattle on about 121 hectares near the railway line on the western side of Chinchilla which Mr Prentice said many people didn’t know existed.
“We can see the value in it rather than feeding at home,” he said.
“We will walk our cattle 15km across all sorts of environments to find places...on any road, under any conditions. By doing that we have been able to be resourceful and to find country that is also a bit cheaper.
“This last couple of years that have been super dry and our cattle have been fat and round, they knew nothing about any drought at all which is quite something actually.”
The couple, who started their cattle business 12 years ago, didn’t choose organics for the premium benefits but rather the health of their children; Esther, Caleb, Bethany, Liberty and Joshua.
With doctors unable to find a cure for some of their children’s symptoms, including bleeding from the bowel and sore joints, naturopaths alerted the Prentices’ to issues associated with their food intake.
“The doctors were like, she will grow out of it, but nobody could give answers to it,” Mr Prentice said.
“In the end we discovered that it was gluten and dairy and sugars and things that were just destroying her stomach linings.”
They altered their diet including turning to organic grass fed beef and saw positive results.
“I’ve got to give the credit to my wife, she has done an enormously good job and turned the health of our kids, not only around, but in the other direction phenomenally,” Mr Prentice said.
“I am a self-confessed perfectionist to my own detriment so we set really really high standards for ourselves and we said if we can’t do cattle organically we are just not going to do it. There is no alternative and that’s all there is to it.”
Lucy Kinbacher
Raised on a cattle property at Biggenden, Lucy Kinbacher has spent 10 years working across metropolitan, regional and rural publications in both Queensland and NSW. Lucy has been the editor of the Queensland Country Life and North Queensland Register since 2021.
Raised on a cattle property at Biggenden, Lucy Kinbacher has spent 10 years working across metropolitan, regional and rural publications in both Queensland and NSW. Lucy has been the editor of the Queensland Country Life and North Queensland Register since 2021.
