THIRTY beef producers and industry representatives had a first-hand look at the benefits of beef backgrounding at an industry workshop in Gingin last Friday.
Kim McDougall, Harvey Beef, discussed supply chain opportunities, Ivan Rogers, Taurindi Beef, spoke on backgrounding and the Department of Agriculture and Food WA's (DAFWA) Roger Verbrugge and Rebecca Butcher highlighted the economics of backgrounding and feed base options.
Mr Verbrugge, DAFWA's Northern Beef Futures market analyst, has been collaborating with the West Midlands Group to evaluate returns from the value-added beef method.
He said backgrounding was the practice of moving cattle from a breeding property to a secondary property to grow-them out to a specific weight to suit a target market.
"Pastoralists can gain access to higher-value markets and turn-off cattle at times of the year when cattle prices are higher but stations are inaccessible by road due to weather conditions," Mr Verbrugge said.
"This opens up more market options for entry to feedlots and South West-based meat processors.
"The benefits for southern producers include an additional revenue stream, depending on the arrangement with the pastoralist, through the payment of backgrounding fees or profit shares based on weight gain."
WA backgrounder Craig Forsyth, Dongara, highlighted his experience in the sector and said he believed the workshop had helped local producers recognise the opportunities in backgrounding cattle.
"There is a barrier, where people are not sure, or think they can't do it," he said.
"It gives them a low-risk factor, if they are not quite sure they can get cattle they can go to suppliers such as Taurindi Beef to give them cattle.
"They have made us more accountable with reporting and they make it a lot easier.
"If you have the feed, it's just a matter of making an opportunity out of it."
Mr Forsyth backgrounds more than 3000 cattle and said if producers measured their feed base and dates they could get started.
"It's all about utilising your feed," he said.
"I hope the workshop helped producers realise there are other options."
He said good feed at Gingin and Badgingarra made backgrounding viable and there were some good weight gains this year.
Mr Forsyth got into backgrounding because he had good perennials but couldn't afford to buy cattle.
"I was told I didn't need to, I could just background them,'' he said.
"We have found that you need to build up relationships and the best way is through communication."
Backgrounding has reduced Mr Forsyth's risks.
"We don't have to outlay a lot of money and reducing the risk allows us to spend money on developing the Avoca farm," he said.
"We want to maintain and upgrade the fences, infrastructure and our perennials.''
Mr Forsyth said he believed the industry was working at 30 per cent of its potential and needed to improve pasture, and growth.
"We need to make better use of it, through utilisation and through better grazing management,'' he said.
"We have perennials that are producing about 200 kilogram of liveweight gain per hectare and annual pastures producing 60-70kg of liveweight gain per hectare and our aim is 1kg of liveweight gain per hectare per millimetre of rain."
The workshop was organised by the West Midlands Group, supported by DAFWA and funded by Royalties for Regions.
The West Midlands Group received funds to develop a robust pastoral cattle backgrounding sector for WA in two stages.
The first stage worked with producers to identify barriers to entering the backgrounding sector.
The second stage aimed to help producers get involved and stay in the sector.
Mr Verbrugge presented his economics modelling of backgrounding northern cattle in the southern areas of WA, developed with the West Midland and Mingenew Irwin groups.
The model will be developed into an app where producers can input specific property data.
Ms Butcher spoke on weaning growth paths and options for feeding backgrounded cattle.
She said backgrounding beef cattle was fundamentally underpinned by understanding what feed base graziers have, the quality of that feed base and the nutritional requirements of the cattle.
"There are nutritional charts that can be used to match protein and energy content of pasture or supplementary feeds with the needs of cattle for a different range of growth rates on a kilogram per head per day basis," Ms Butcher said.
