Cattle market ‘in limbo’

As the cattle market bounces around, one New South Wales producer is pivoting his operation to be more resilient across business and the paddock.

A New South Wales beef producer has described the current cattle market as being “in limbo”, as he pivots his operation on the back of seasonal extremes over the past few years.

Simon Wright operates a beef cattle operation about 70km north east of Armidale in New South Wales’ Northern Tablelands, and expects the cattle market to bounce around until something significant changes.

“There’s some fundamentals that you read about with global beef and protein demand, but the seasonal grass market is keeping a lid on the potential upside of the market at the moment,” he told The Australian Ag Podcast.

“I heard someone refer to it as a bungee cord, where you ride it down, it bounces back up then goes down again … it might take a decent rainfall event that is fairly widespread to change things.”

While averaging about 900mm of rainfall a year, the seasonal extremities Mr Wright has faced in the past few years has seen him pivot the operation slightly to lessen the impact of such extremes.

“In 2019 we had probably the worst time in living memory, it was particularly bad, and then we had some good years, and then a reality check in spring last year,” he said.

“We thought we needed to try and flatten out the peaks and troughs of our business, but also out in the paddock with our pasture availability.

“Hence, we’ve scaled back our breeding operation and become more of a trading operation, or at least a 50-50 split, so we have the ability to upscale and downscale quickly.

“We want to try and make not only our paddock and pasture systems more resilient, but also our business, by having the ability to pull the trigger quickly and change our enterprise mix (if needed).”

‘Over the Fence’ is sponsored by Ram Trucks Australia. You can listen to the full podcast on Spotify or here.