Geoff Pearson says being adaptable and working hard is the key to thriving in WA

After a “very rough ride” on farm succession, WA live exporter Geoff Pearson now works on 1000km of coastal southern WA grazing country.

Geoff Pearson is one of the most significant players in Western Australia’s livestock industry.

Not only when it comes to the volume of cattle he runs, but also in live exports, feedlotting, branded beef and in the agri-political space, Geoff has made his mark.

He and wife Marissa’s agricultural story, based out of Myalup, is one of incredible growth over the past 30 years, diversity and adaptation within both production, marketing and vertical integration along supply chains.

With around 30,000ha of land spanning 1000km, all within 40km of the southern West Australian coastline, it is also one of geographical variety and resilience.

From milking 600 dairy cows on 1600ha in the 1990s, the Pearson businesses have grown to owning 14,200ha – almost a nine fold increase – and leasing the same amount of land again.

They, along with sons Tex, 23, and Cooper, 21, run 8000 beef breeding cows in a herd of about 20,000, including backgrounding and feedlot cattle.

Two live export facilities, feedlots, a grain mill and a branded, boxed Wagyu-Angus product, Lake Preston, rounds out the suite of businesses.

Another remarkable aspect of the three Pearson businesses is their efficiencies.

Fully staffed, Geoff said they employ 23 people, and were heavily dependent on contractors, but at the moment, he admits all businesses have lean staffing.

Geoff Pearson at his farm in Myalup, WA. Picture: Colin Murty

ROCKY START

It is not an uncommon experience, but Geoff’s frankness in describing how he started out in agriculture is.

“We had a very tough ride with succession,” he said.

“My grandfather was very successful, not so much my father and when I took over the business was run down.”

With three siblings, everyone had a view and “wanted to take different approaches”.

Without going into exact detail, Geoff said he had to seek his own finances to take over the business.

“I put everything on the table and got denied finance a couple of times, but I was determined to see it though,” he said.

The will to prove he could revive, and grow, the family business has proven a driving factor for his career.

Regarding family relations, despite the bruising early days, he said “time heals all”.

But the lessons of that period meant he and Marissa would now take a different tact with their own sons.

“We won’t put my boys through that; we will leave the door open to whatever they want to do so they can stand on their own and do what they see a future in, and we will have the scope to do that.”

“What I went though makes you more driven in your attitude, you work hard to make it work.

“I was always driven from an early age, I didn’t go to uni, I was on the farm from an early age.”

FROM CUPS TO CHOICE CUTS

The Pearson empire started in the 1920s when Geoff’s English grandfather began acquiring land for what would become a dairy, then beef business.

“My grandfather was very innovative and travelled to many countries looking at what successful farmers were doing,” Geoff said.

By the 1990s, the family was milking 600 cows in south west Western Australia – a sizeable herd for the time.

After that market was deregulated, the Pearsons increased their beef herd and pioneered feedlotting, then moved into live export, being the first in WA to set up a quarantine facility.

“In the 2000s we were the first export quarantine facility, with a feedlot and by the mid 2000s we ran two, one in the south and one in the north,” he said.

In the mid 2010s, the Pearsons moved into breeding significant numbers of cattle, following a ramp up in land purchases.

Then came a branded, Lake Preston boxed beef product, where their Wagyu and Angus herd’s progeny is marketed.

They calve almost year round, thanks to the geographical spread of the Pearson farms, enabling them to supply a consistent product for the brand.

Water supplies are secure, thanks to the coastal locations, which has “safeguarded the business”, Geoff said.

The proximity to the wheat belt and feed resources also helped.

Cattle on Geoff Pearson's property in Western Australia.

GROWING THE BASE

Geoff said the land acquisitions “fell into place, they join together”.

“We probably got in (to land purchases) before the bubble burst and lamb prices went through the roof, the grazing properties we bought were pretty run down and farming was tough,” he said.

“I think we got the timing right; you wouldn’t be able to do it now, from 2016-2019, that’s when it jumped,” he said.

“We have had 20 years of growth off our own back, we didn’t go to outside investors, we started with a reasonable foothold in a productive area.”

The Pearsons first focused on the long-fed Japanese and Korean markets for their boxed beef, and have broadened this to include other South East Asian destinations, as well domestic markets.

“We don’t just do live export now, we have boxed product too, and we are at both ends of that supply chain,” he said.

The live export cattle have been going into SE Asia and to the Middle East, with Israel a major market. The war in Gaza has disrupted that market in the past 12 months.

The variations in market demand, which Geoff said had long been a feature of the WA experience, meant building a domestic foothold for boxed product was crucial.

The herd is a 70:30 mix of Wagyu and Angus genetics, with Angus heifers joined to a Wagyu sire for their first calf.

Around 1000 heifers are artificially inseminated annually.

Carcass traits are paramount and milk a focus on the Wagyu side, as well as marbling scores.

Geoff said he doesn’t aim for extremes with Wagyu marbling, instead selecting for a “consistent flow of product at the lower level, a lot of our clientele want the mid-range product, they don’t want to go too high, so we blend our products to suit”.

About 60 per cent of the Lake Preston product is sold overseas and the remainder is marketed domestically.

“Covid time saw growth in demand (for home cooking) but that tapered off and we are shifting back to selling more to places like Thailand and the Maldives, to resorts there,” he said.

Calves are weaned at three to nine months, depending on the season, backgrounded close to the feedlot and fed grain rotations in the paddock during this period so they are constantly on a rising plane of nutrition.

After four to five months of backgrounding calves enter the feedlot at about 350kg, and the Wagyus generally go onto 400 days of grain, and Angus 200 days.

Wagyus are processed at around 34 months at a dressed weight of 420kg and Angus achieve the same weight at around 20 months.

Geoff said the domestic market for branded Wagyu beef products was saturated on the east coast, but less so in WA.

Growth opportunities also existed in Indonesia and high-end Vietnamese resorts.

Geoff said the Pearson farms were dedicated to grazing, only growing relatively small amounts of fodder crops.

The Pearsons started their own feed mill, Produce Link, to supply their own rations for their three feedlots and also sell to other producers.

“We utilise around 30,000 tonnes of grain and 7000 tonnes of fibre each year and at any time we will be feeding (supplying grain) for 10,000 to 20,000 cattle,” he said.

The only aspect of the supply chain that Geoff has not invested in is processing, but said the businesses sat in proximity to two facilities.

PULLING ON THE BOOTS

While the ethos was to run a lean staffing rate, with 11 current full time staff, Geoff said they were understaffed, needing almost double.

Staffing was one of the hardest challenges, he said, with competition from big-paying mining jobs draining personnel from WA farms.

“I don’t know what the solution is but I’m not afraid to pull on the boots; I spend a lot of time on the ground and am very hands on,” he said.

“We definitely use a lot of contractors so we aren’t running a heap of machinery or drivers, we outsource all that, plus all transport, and that helps keep costs and overheads down; we just manage our livestock.”

The business has looked to invest in greater automation and technology to reduce the staffing requirement.

Cattle are identified and recorded via Stock Book; water is automated and monitored on cameras, and biomass is monitored via satellite programs. Technology is also used to track work vehicles. “We automate as much as we can” he said.

To meet their grain and fodder requirements, Geoff said he has built relationships and contracts growers to ensure 12 months’ supply.

Rising compliance costs were also a concern, especially in the export facility and feedlot setting.

GETTING OFF FARM

Geoff is also president of WAFarmers livestock council, and said while he had to tackle issues on behalf of industry in that role, within his business he took a pragmatic approach.

“On things like carbon footprint, we are use going to have to deal with it and manage it, and that is what we will need to do to operate in the market,” he said.

“We are the solution, we are not the issue, and the emphasis on farming is too high.”

He said his roles on industry bodies, while undoubtably costing time, had given him an incredible network and knowledge base to draw from, which has helped him grow his business.

It also gave him a “break” from the farm, he said, adding helping others was great way to learn.

But he learnt the most from “being constantly on the ground, your gut-feel about your country, stock and business”.

“I guess I am an old school farmer, I read the play – there is no textbook that can really tell you how to be a farmer,” he said.