Addressing goat industry challenges: Insights from AgForce's Cunnamulla forum

More than 50 primary producers, industry members and researchers attended the goat forum and dinner.

A Q& A style discussion, hosted by the department of agriculture and fisheries goat extension officer, Bec Brayley, Charleville, was held, with speakers Campbell McPhee, Western Meat Exporters, Charleville, Richard Apps, Meat Livestock Australia, and Stephen Tully, AgForce sheep, wool and goat president, taking questions from attendees.

An apparent "over supply" of goats impacting the throughput of livestock through processors was also refuted by AgForce Sheep, Wool and Goat president Stephen Tully and supported by Mr McPhee.

Mr Tully believed "logistics constraints" were behind the 'waiting list' for producers trying to offload their livestock into market.

"We've got plenty of goats and plenty of markets, but what we have is processing and shipping constraints," Mr Tully explained.

"It's just the logistics and it's just takes time to sort that logistics out through government rules and regulations and changing visas.

"If we start getting in the mentality of telling everyone there is an oversupply of goats, overseas buyers will listen into the discourse and it will affect the price on the amount they're willing to pay."

On the topic of growing the domestic market for goat meat, Charleville's Western Meat Exporters general manager, Campbell McPhee shared his thoughts on the price, noting increases in some southern processors, which he believed was a positive sign.

He said the company was optimistic about the future of their business despite global market influences.

"We've already seen increases in our southern processors and some of our heavier weights have already gone up 20 cents," Mr McPhee said.

"We're starting to see some some changes in the market even with a large throughput of numbers, so I think there is positive signs on the horizon.

"The export market is currently gaining more and more momentum now with the way the pricing has been and also with the lower Australian dollar it has certainly kept its growth rate going forward.

"New and old markets have been opening up on the back of the availability of meat and Australia's ability to supply it."

Mr McPhee said domestic market has been constantly growing since Covid-19.

"Since the pandemic, we've kept up a constant supply into the domestic market and we've seen now the domestic market grow from seven to eight per cent to 14pc of Australia's total production," he said.

"It's certainly an area that is growing and we do our weekly suppliers into the regions and cities and it's never been more consistent than it is at the moment and we looked for it to continue."

Richard Apps from Meat Livestock Australia also provided an insightful view on the supply chain, production, genetics and processing.

MLA is currently supporting several bench marking projects, including five-year goat reproductive performance bench marking project across 15 commercial properties, involving 15,000 goats.

Another is the goat industry data collation and tracking project which is generating information to implement processes to increase goat industry access to data for supply and market forecasting.

Mr Apps also spoke on MLA's goat enterprise emissions and CN30 demonstration sites which are a three-year project that is addressing the gap in goat emissions.