Southern Beef Technology Services Launched

Simmental Australia is one of fourteen breeds to commit to an exciting plan to upgrade the provision of technical services to beef cattle breeders South of the tropics.  The project will be known as Southern Beef Technology Services (SBTS) and is an outcome of a recent Strategic Planning exercise for Australia’s cattle seedstock industry conducted by the Australian Registered Cattle Breeders Association.

During an initial four-year period from 2006 to 2009 inclusive, the focus will be:

Workshops:  a series of 64 workshops (16 per year) will be held to give all members of participating societies the opportunity for tuition in the fundamentals of the different genetic technologies that are available.  The initial workshops will cover BREEDPLAN, BreedObject, Internet Solutions and the soon to be released StockTake genetic auditing tool.

On-farm visits: Following each of the workshops, two days of on-farm visits are planned in each region. The on-farm visits will provide a valuable follow up opportunity for beef producers to gain advice regarding specific issues that they may have.

Technical Support : will also be provided to beef producers, Breed Societies and other service providers on an ongoing basis.  In particular, the team will work closely with the Technical Committees of the 14 participating breeds.  For Simmental Australia this service will commence in 2006.

The schedule of workshops in 2006 is as follows:

Enquiries for participation in these workshops can be made to 02 67 73 3555 or check the project web site http://sbts.une.edu.au.  Members of Simmental Australia will have concessional access to these workshops.

To ensure that the 2006 workshop program will “hit the mark” with industry, a pilot workshop was conducted in Armidale on the 17^th January, 2006. All participants were given the opportunity to give feedback on the pilot workshop. Comments from seedstock producers attending the pilot included:

“Good discussions and questions helped my understanding”

“Interesting, Beneficial”

“All very informative”

“All presenters did a good job”

“Today has helped me to understand the technology better, but there is more still to be learnt.”

Other breeds to participate in the SBTS project are Hereford, Poll Hereford, Murray Grey, Shorthorn, Charolais, Limousin, Red Angus, Wagyu, South Devon, Devon, Red Poll, Blonde d’Aquitaine and Salers.  Significant funding for the SBTS project has also been provided by MLA, ABRI, ARCBA and the BIA.

Veteran beef extension officer, Mr Bob Freer, told the inaugural meeting of stakeholders in the SBTS meeting; “SBTS provides breed societies with the world’s best resourced, most cost-effective, genetic evaluation technical support.”

ABRI’s Managing Director, Dr Arthur Rickards, stressed that, “SBTS will act as a valuable feedback mechanism to the BREEDPLAN development team in the Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit and also the operational team in ABRI”.

The services offered by SBTS will be delivered by a team of four young technical officers – Benita Davis, Christian Duff, Michael Beattie and Andrew Byrne.  All four have both a rural background and significant experience regarding the processing of BREEDPLAN performance data, the running of GROUP BREEDPLAN evaluations, the technical components of BREEDPLAN and related technologies, the extension of genetic technologies, the operation of modern Breed Societies, and the services offered within Internet Solutions.

The team of young technical officers will be supported by experienced beef cattle consultants including Bob Freer, Alex McDonald and Peter Speers.  All have over 30 years experience in the beef industry and will provide an invaluable mentoring program that will aid and assist the SBTS project.  Progress against Project objectives will be monitored closely in an Annual Project Meeting and by regular milestone reporting to MLA.  Dr Rickards is the Project Co-ordinator, Mr Peter Speers will chair the Project meetings and Christian Duff will lead the operational team.

Dr Rickards said that the SBTS Project would complement the very successful Tropical Beef Technology Services Project in Northern Australia.  In combination the two projects will give cattle breeders access to a well co-ordinated National technical support service.

The overall aim of SBTS and TBTS is to maximise the rate of genetic progress within Australia’s beef industry.  BREEDPLAN has been identified as the world leading genetic evaluation system for beef cattle, but we need to ensure that our industry is well informed so that it can make the best possible use of this technology.

January 18, 2006.