WITH nearly 20 years' experience with WAFarmers livestock council under his belt, Geoff Pearson took the reins as the advocacy group's new livestock president last Friday.
Speaking to Farm Weekly at the WAFarmers and National Farmers' Federation (NFF) Towards 2030 Forum, held on June 24 & 25, Mr Pearson said he had been prompted to fill the role many times before but, only now, he felt the timing was right.
Moving up from the role of WAFarmers livestock vice-president, Mr Pearson is the owner of a 28,000 hectare cattle enterprise which stretches from Dongara through to Esperance.
Mr Pearson said he would do his best to advocate for the State's livestock farmers as the sector continues to face challenges and opportunities.
"The future is in biosecurity, technology, carbon neutrality, retaining markets and we have a very good Free Trade Agreement with the UK now, so we need to work out how Western Australia can be a part of that," Mr Pearson said.
"We aren't the cheapest beef and sheep producers with the cheapest products, so we would like to focus some of our efforts into how we can get into that premium market in the UK."
With stoppages to live sheep exports also hitting the sector hard, Mr Pearson said the group would be looking at live export cost recovery.
"It is very expensive to ship and regulate our animals at the moment so we need to be looking at how we can best address some of those issues as well as play an active role in the conversation of animal welfare in our industry," he said.
As a member of the Cattle Council of Australia, Mr Pearson said the position provided him with a rare opportunity to see what was happening in the livestock industry across the country as well as in other markets.
Outgoing president David Slade, who will still play an active role on the livestock council as vice-president, said it was important for the organisation to rotate jobs so that energetic people continued to represent the group.
"We need fresh blood to get involved with our councils so that we have a continuous flow of new ideas coming through, otherwise it gets a bit stale," Mr Slade said.
"Geoff is highly qualified so we thought it was a good idea to rotate our jobs and have a fresh face as president."
Mr Slade said some of his proudest achievements as WAFarmers livestock president included the organisation's defence of live export and helping change WA's sheep dentition regulations so that the State is now in line with New Zealand and isn't disadvantaged in the world market.
"I'm also proud of the defence we provided of the border control on cattle coming into the State for bovine Johne's disease," Mr Slade said.
"The rest of the country wanted us to drop the borders but we get significant savings and market advantages from not having Johne's in this State.
"If we had to manage BJD in the Great Southern - it would take the profit margin out for our cattle farmers, so that's another big win for WAFarmers."
Mr Slade and his family operate a mixed farming enterprise northwest of Mt Barker which includes a cropping program of 3000 hectares of barley, wheat, oats and canola as well as 7000 Greeline maternal composite ewes and about 600 Sussex cross Angus cows.
