Pacific delegation looks to Australia for ideas to improve their beef herds

The 15-strong group includes representatives from Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tonga and Fiji.

CQUniversity senior livestock researcher Simon Quigley said the delegation would be exposed to the Australian beef industry, its innovation, policy and structures.

He said this week's visit would also involve a strategic workshop to develop a regional collaboration around beef research and capacity building in the Pacific.

Representing the Vanuatu government, Noel Kalo, who was visiting Beef for the first time, said he was keen to learn about the Australian beef industry, how it operated, its services and its supply chains.

Mr Kalo said there was unmet beef demand in Vanuatu in that they could not supply their domestic market.

He said in terms of numbers the national herd in Vanuatu was between 100,000 to 110,000 head which was very small compared to Australia.

"We have some current development programs going on where we want to get numbers up to 500,000 by 2025," he said.

"That was the goal in 2016 and the government introduced the national livestock policy...but it is not realistic."

Mr Kalo said they were now reviewing those targets and looking at productivity rather than numbers.

He said 10 per cent of farmers in Vanuatu were large scale and supplied 90 per cent of the market while the small scale farmers with one to 50 head were 90 per cent of farmers, who only supplied 10 per cent of the market.

PNG government's Livestock Development Corporation managing director Terry Koim said he wanted to meet with farmers, supporters and those who played an important part in the Australian beef cattle industry in the supply chain during his visit.

He said he was also looking at partnerships to help the beef cattle industry in PNG.

Mr Koim said the national herd in PNG was only 60,000 cattle for a population of 10 million.

He said the big challenge was to get more cattle than people in his country.

It's hoped a five-year development program which started in 2023 would increase the numbers to 100,000 head.

"We want to import live cattle from Australia. I came here last year to Cairns and talked to some of the farmers in the Mount Garnet area and they were actually interested to work with us and sell some of their cattle to us so we can import them as live cattle into the country," he said.