Tape #344 - Livestock and the Environment

Can everyone hear me? Good. I am actually a presenter not a moderator. We don’t have a moderator, so we have just thought things out ourselves a bit here. We have got somebody discussing this is livestock and environment session if anybodies in the wrong place. Stay if you are cause I am sure it will be a lot of fun. We’ve got poultry, we’ve got lamb and we’ve got beef on the menu. So, as I said, what we actually planned to do is talk about 15 minutes each and then we can have questions open to the whole panel. So if you’ve got any questions to anyone in particular, and they speak early, you might want to note them down so that you can ask them later on. As I said I am not a moderator, so everyone is going to introduce themselves and the first speaker is going to be Rajean Moncolo who’s from the VA Polytechnic Institute and she is going to speak about the poultry industry. Thank you all for coming. My name is Dr. Rajean Moncolo. I am from Jenate Institute but it I a bit strange because you can notice by my accent I am not American. I am from Africa. I am from Comwoon. But I did most of my study in this country. My Masters and my Ph.D. and I did a lot of work on poultry leader, mainly trying to find a way to apply poultry manure and save also the environmental problem. Since I came here on Sunday I went to different work shows and people were talking about trying to use organic agriculture. Some of them were arguing by saying oh, we are going to face the environmental problem if you use that. Some of them were saying is the best way to have like sustainable agriculture and some of them were saying oh, if you use organic agriculture we are going not to have very high yield as compared to inorganic fertilizer. And the type of research that I did hear I try to put down a way that we can use poultry litter at on the soil and at the same time try to solve the environmental problem that always we face. Ah, before I start I am going to divide my work in different parts. First of all, I am going to introduce the title of my presentation will be the impact of poultry litter yad with compost on compost reduction on the environment and I am going to divide my study (go ahead) by trying first of all to introduce the World production of poultry litter talk about the positive effect by using poultry leader on land and of course talk about the environment and I realize during the dicussion, we focus on a different problem without trying to bring a resolution and what I am going to do here I am going to put it into a small scale and tell woman for example how to solve this problem by using very low input but try to improve the evnironment and also increase the yield. For the world production, we know that the poultry litter industry is one of the lighest and fastest growing production in the world and if we look at what have on the world here, in 1991 for example, this is the statistic that I got from USDA. We have four median poultry turn of poultry meat. This is a considerable production and 600 billion eggs were produced in 1991. And the main producer were the US, China, the former Soviet Union, Brazil, France, and Japan. Just to illustrate that I said that we have a very fast increase of poultry production and many people know why because some people try to publicize white meat as compared to red meat and if you look at the US from 1998 to 1993 looking at the amount of meat that was produced, we see that the amount was quite considerable. And we can look at it at all the different countries that we have there. For example when we take the US in 1998, for the meat production we had like, 9,272 X 1000 times of ready to cook meat. In 1993 we have 12,157 just to show you the increase of production that we have in this country. But when we talk about the increase of production, we are going to face the problem of disposal. Now, apply poultry litter, I am sorry you see I am talking about using poultry manure tha many people know I am talking about poultry litter and if I wanted to describe what this poultry litter is a combination of escretar with seed and bedding material. The bedding material can be like wood, can be like paper and so on. If we tried to compare it to poultry manure, the big difference is that the poultry is wet compared to poultry litter and usually is mainly made by escretar so the poultry litter that we use here was collected on the poultry house floor and there you have all those different components. When we try to apply poultry leader we have different we have different benefits coming out of it. The first one is that the poultry litter can beil and maintain sulfatility everybody know that when you apply poultry litter, you can increase the yield. But what will happen with the environment and this benefit we can see it also by improving water holding capacity. That is one advantage if we look at people who use at people who use water irrigation to grow their crops, and also we can have the improved irrigation of soil and promote the beneficial effect of microorganisms. Microorganisms are very important also for crops. Land application, we have two ways to look at it, if we just apply poultry litter have it like waste disposal its quite different, but if we apply it like poultry litter like an objective to improve the fertility of soil trying to maximize the crop production then we are facing another type of problem. Therefore, using for example poultry litter in land application to improve the level of nutrients in the soil, the main thing you have to do is to try to minimize the water pollution and what I'm going to do here is to being a new technology in and to help us to do that and usually when you apply a poultry litter with that control you can have also efficiency of some nutrients. I would like to point out that among older animal manure, poultry litter is one of the one that contain high amount of nitrogen and high amount of phosphorus the highest even and so when you apply poultry litter anyhow you can have like zen dificiency and having zen dificiency you can decrease for example your yield. What I did we try to put it in a way every farmer can be able to use it. We did a compost everybody know how to do a compost, but here at the beginning I said we are going to use poultry litter and yard waste but we are going to compost that. Usually we know that during the composting you have a loss of nutrients. How does that happen? For example, when you compost, you have the smell and is generally characterization of ammonia and that can cause the loss of nitrogen. The loss of nitrogen is very important we establish that now we are going to apply 10 tons of poultry litter we know that we have this amount of nitrogen inside loss of it would not achieve the goal that we are looking for the goal that is to improve our crop production. So, one of the criteria very important when you are doing compost is to control the concentration what we call here carbon nitrogen ratio and many scientist say the carbon nitrogen ratio 25 to 35 part to one part of nitrigen is the best. And during our research we tried to consider that and the easiest way to do that is to allow any farmer to be at that level was to take for example I take just one carbon ratio here 15 part of carbon and 1 part of nitrogen we did that by using 900klg of poultry leader for example 500klg of yard waste compost and 45 to 50 percent of moisture. We too and put down the poultry leader on top of it we put a layer of yard waste composte we added water. We did it in several layers. And we have an opportunity to change it more often us to try to mix it. I know it is very demanding hand labor demanding in the end we have a positive result. And so by mising all these components we consider that we achieve the goal of having a carbon nitrogen ratio of 15 to 1 as I said at the beginning it is very important and I know that you can compost like poultry litter without taking all this into consideration but here we did by mixing something that have high carbon for example yard waste and something that has high nitrogen poultry litter (go ahead). To summarize our study before we get to the fun way how can we balance that in on the develop of developing coutries we realize that poultry litter compost in this study was a good source of phorphous for plants and how did we get to that we did for example we two different plods, one where we did not apply any poultry litter and one where we applied poultry litter that was composted that was composted by controlling the carbon nitrogen ratio and we realize that under plod where we use poultry litter we had 85% of yield compared to the plod where we did not use poultry litter. And that can be explained by several factors realize tht the 2nd year of our study, we did not apply any poultry litter and we have also high yield so we concluded that the mineralization of poultry litter keep on going even the 2nd year of crop production and thats because that mineralization increases the amout of phosphrous in the soil and at the same time we try to figure out what is the PH of the soil, initially the soil was very low in PH that mean the soil was very acidy and having very acidy soil we were not able to produce a good yield and by applying poultry litter and with compost we allow that we raise our PH to deliver and were significantly able to produce high yield. And the other problem that we had here by having very high acidity of soil we even if you apply 2 tons of phosphorus we are not sure that will be valuable for your plants cause of different interaction involved in the soil of that kind just phorphous and this will not be able to be taken by the plants. Therefore some compleiton of our recommedation. High nutritional value of poultry added with compost encourages the use of this type of compost and reduces soil water pollution. The pollution that I am talking about here, if you don’t manage properly your poultry litter, you can have leeching of nitrates you can have also runoff of your phosphorous. The talk that we had before, somebody said there is no point there is no study that people did in the water but according to the research work phosphorous can be indirectly an impact in water pollution, that means for example when you have runoff of phosphorous on water you have what we call introfication that means like algae that can grow on the surface of the water and absorb all the oxygen that we have in the water and therefore you have some fish that can be found dead in the water and having less fish can be an impact for the nutrition and the nitrate we found that nitrate in the water can lead to fatal child disease ah also using poultry litter we can have a problem with pesticide because use pesticide for example to kill some maggot around poultry houses so when we use this composting we have reduction of leaching of nitrogen inside out water that we use already an amount of nitrate and also we can reduce the dynamic of phosphorous in water also. And as I said at the beginning, the compost that we have we use increases the yield production because we realize that 85% of corn was increase of 85% of our production of our corn yield. Ok the more important point when I look at the environment type problem here I tried to divide it into 2 parts when we look at it in developed countries usually we have small farmer we have big farmer and the amount of poultry litter produced even in a small area for example you can have less amount for poultry production and then people attempted to just apply it. Just apply it on the areas over application occur. And that over application can be detrimental for water pollution and then when as I said at the beginning that when you apply poultry litter only to get rid of it you are getting rid of your waste, it can be problem so by using this type of compost we have an advantage we tie up of the nitrogen and we tie up also of the phosphorous nitrogen can be tie up by the microorganisms and also the phosphorous are called into the reserves that we have will tie up also of the micronutrients because we need it to they need it to for the development of microrganizam itself. So when we use it in the developed countries we can then the see the problem of pollution because according to the research that we have tested the water that we have and we have less nitrate and less phosphorous if we take it on the developed country that will solve problems we have small farmer with low income having poultry litter and having yard waste compost is easy and that doesn’t cost that much so at the level of the developed country that can be very helpful for woman for example I will tell the example of Africa where woman does really carry the whole agriculture and they dont have the income to solve that problem. By using this type of technology that would be very helpful for them. And the use of inorganic fertilizer we know the consequences the level of pollution, the leeching of nitrate, and then by using compost we can easily reduce problems. Uh also using compost we have beneificial effect when it come to undeveloped countries the lack of organic matter on the soil that is related with the type of climate that we have over there so they have less organic matter and by bringing in for example poultry litter we can increase the organic matter and that can help also to solve this type of problem and also soil in Africa where I am from so I know a little bit better about that area, soil in that area have very very low Ph and soil is very acidity by using this type of technology that can help. And the last problem is to control ground water pollution acidy by using yard waste compost we reduce the amount of nitrogen that was leeching in the ground and we reduce also the amount of phosphorous that was bound by the microorganisms. So talking about this type of new technology I thought that it would be very helpful for people with very low income to get involved in this type of thing. Thank you.

I am Maggie Haley and I am serving on the Natural Resource Council of the American Sheep Industry and I am also serving as past Chairman of Grazing Lands Conservation initiative and I am pleased to be here this safternoon to do a presentation on sheep ecology, the role of sheep in natural resource management. First I’ll give you a little backgound about what I am going to talk to you about. In Sept 1992, the American Sheep Industry initiated their project to investigate the role of sheep grazing in various aspects of natural rresource mangement and develop the information from this investigaiton into a technically applied science. The areas of sheep grazing commonly called sheep ecology which the industry has focused on include the role of sheep in sustainable agriculture waste management, biparian and water shed improvement, range and pasture improvement, noxious weed control, wild life habitat management, forest management or agriforestry, brush and fire fuel management, and multi-species grazing. I have brochures at the head of the table here that we will make available to you and you may get one at the end of our program. To initiate this project ASI brought together 7 universities and 4 federal agencies including the Bureau of Land Management the US Forest Service Environmental Protection Agency and the USDA Agricultural Research Service to form a steering committee. This committee initiated an 18 month literature reearch of all this research that had been conducted on the use of sheep in natural resources management. The committee reviewed more than 10.000 research papers from throughout the world and consolidated this research into 9 technical review papers. The papers after agency and peer review were then published in March 1992 in a special edition of the SID Sheep Research Journal. You may order one of these if your’de like there is a sample copy in our booth in our trade show. The technical review papers tell what can be done using sheep in natural resource management but do not supply the technical information on how to apply the principles of sheep ecology. The American Sheep Industry is currently developing a technical handbook that instructs research resource managers on how to actually take sheep out and achieve resource goals. The handbook include sections covering basic principles of range and pasture management, a section on the principles of vegatative management with subsections on the use of sheep and noxious weed control, brush control, silva culture and range improvement, a section on site evaluation and scoring, a section on monitoring, and finally, a section covering the success stories on various aspects of sheep ecology. Each chapter of this handbook is being written in a matter that allows the reader to weigh the costs and benefits in both economic and environmental terms. Going into the future direction of the sheep ecology project as many as 100,000 sheep are already being used in sheep ecology projects of one form or another in North America. In Canada, as many as 65,000 sheep have been involved in reforestation projects and British Columbia and Alberta sheep producers are paid for the use of their animals. These costs are offset not only by the use of herbicides but also by a reduction in tree planting costs of five cent per tree, increases of tree survival from 600 to 1,300 trees per hectare, and an increase in the growth of the trees themselves. By reducing the levels of vegetation competing with the young trees for sunlight and water researchers have noted a reduction in moisture, stress, on the seedling trees and by recycling the vegetative manner through the sheep researchers have found that the nuitrient levels within the soil are increased. Studies show that sheep in the spring of the year are contributing approximately 80 pounds of nitrogen per acre by recycling the grass and shrubby vegetation. This in turn has meant increased growth within the trees themselves. For example, sheep grazing has lead to an increase of 44% in the heighth of Western White Pine and increases of 56% in diameter. In addition to reforestation efforts, as many as 12,000 Canadian sheep are expected to be used on brush control projects in cooperation with the Alberta Ministry of Enivironmental Protection. Over 20% of the Elk habitat Alberta, Canada has been lost to brush infestation. Sheep are being used to control brush infestation on ski slopes in both the United States and Canada, and on Civil War battlefields in Virginia. Utility companies in the United States spend one billion annually managing vegetation under power lines and within utility corridors. While herbicides are commonly used, hand clearly is often necessary in rougher terrain and can cost as much as $400 an acre. Research shows that sheep grazing may be able to control this same vegetation for as little as $35 an acre. This year 500 sheep were shipped to the State of New Hampshire to begin controlling vegetation on an eleven mile stretch of utility corridor. Initial results of this project are very positive and the utility company and the sheep operator are currently investigating expanding this practice to as much as 11,000 miles of New Hampshire's utility corridors. I know a little about this project, because the 500 sheep came from our ranch in Montana. And one of the requirements they needed for this was that the sheep have herding instincts because they are being herded between electrical fencing. With increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide have also come increases in the levels of brushy vegetation. Invading areas of traditional grasslands in America. Some of these brushy species, such as juniper, can also absorb as much as ten gallons of water per pound of woody mass. This invasion of brushy vegetation has in turn led to disruptions in the hydrology of streams, aquafers, and watershed areas. For example, juniper invaded the rocky creek water shed area outside San Antonio, Texas. Rocky Creek only ran intermittantly until 1930, until the brush was removed with fire and chaining. And sheep and goats were used to control the reemerging juniper trees. Rocky Creek has flown continuously now since 1970, delivering over 2,000 gallons of water per hour to the city of San Antonio. Similarly, areas of Texas where the juniper has come to dominate more than 10% of these traditional grasslands have seen declines in aquafer recharge. By reducing juniper stands to levels less than 5% of the ecosystem, aquafer recharge can be increased from zero gallons of water per acre recharge to 100,500 gallons of water recharge per acre. Non-native plant species are also a problem in North America, causing reductions in biodiversity and declines in agricultural production. It is now estimated that over 4,000 acres of federal lands are being lost daily, to non-native plant envasion. While United States federal agencies have been reluctant to initiate sheep ecology projects. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has begun using sheep and goats on 8 national wildlife refugees to control the Euro-Asian plant species leafy spurge. Sheep are being effectively used as a biocontrol for this invasive plant with little or no impact on native plant species. Costs of using sheep to control this non-native plant species are as little as $1.80 US dollars per acre. Where herbicides have been costing up to $20 per acre. The Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service are also using sheep to control invasive plants including Russian Napweed, Tanziragwort, and Cudzue a Japanese ornamental plant that is covering entire forest regions of the Southeastern part of the United States. The United States Forest Service is also using sheep to manage black tail deer habitat. Studies found that protein during the critical winter months was the most limiting factor in black tail deer populations in Oregon. By grazing sheep on black tail deer habitat during the spring scientists found the protein content within the plant regrowth could be increased. Since initiating this practice, biologists have noted that black tail deer who share their habitat with sheep have heavier body weights and in better physical condition and breed earlier than deer feeding in ungrazed areas. Sheep are also being used to manage habitat for mule deer, antalope, sage grouse, and water fowl. While animal waste management and nitrogen and phosphorus management are becoming an increasing concern around the world. The American Sheep Industry is finding innovative use for animal waste. One example is in the areas of land based oil and petroleum spills. Traditionally if a petroleum spill occurs the contaminated soil is removed, incinerated and replaced. This process is not only expensive but the process leaves the soil sterilized and incapable of plant growth for many years following the process. By mixing the soil with one part sheep maneur, one part wood chips, and covering the contaminated soil with plastic for three months, scientists have found the microbes within the sheep maneur will digest the petroleum products. This process not only cleans up the petroleum spill to environmental protection agency standards but adds nuitrients to the soil, making reclaimation easier and cost less than one third that of traditional methods. Extensive research shows that grazing of America's natural rainland, rangeland and ecosystems is a natural process. Most of America's grazed lands evolved under the influence of grazing. By grazing sheep in a manner similiar to the patterns of native unguland species such as the Bison Elk and Deer we have found that we can have a neutral of beneficial impact on native rangeland ecosystems. Beneficial in terms contributing to the natural nutrient cycles and native biodiversity. Also beneficial in the fact, that renewable solar energy can be harvested through the plant and the animal to produce food and fiber for man in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner. I'd like to turn the second part of our program over to Cindy Sitaway who is Vice President of the American Sheep Industry. And has just served as Secretary-Treasurer. She is a sheep producer from Idaho, and maybe I didn't tell you but I am from Montana and arrange sheep operations there. And we'll answer questions afterward....and Cindy....

Thanks Aggie, now I don't have to introduce myself, do I? Just a little about our operation, my husband and my three children. My children will be fifth generation family sheep ranchers in Idaho, and we run about 12,000 head of breeding yews. My husband just wants to get bigger, and I don't know. I struggle with it a little, as you get bigger, you have to hire more people, and it's much harder. Just a question, how many in the audience are sheep producers or have some sheep. Fantastic. That's wonderful. I always feel at home when I visit with fellow sheep producers, I always have so much in common. Well as Aggie explained we started on this ten year project to in '92 to invest the role of sheep grazing. And dealing with the natural resource issue because that's such a big issue for all of us. And we all need to deal with that. And I'm just going to repeat the catagories that we tried to focus on and the handouts that we have up here give you far more information about each specific category. Number one is sustainable agriculture, two waste management, three repairing and water shed improvement, four range and pasture improvement, five noxious weed control, six wild life habitat improvement, seven forest management or agro forestry, eight brush and fined fire fuel management, and nine multiple species grazing. And we can't begin to go into the detail about all of these studies and the data that we've collected but the brochure certainly will. And many of you who stopped by our booth probably have copies already. In Aggie's presentation she explained many of the environmental benefits of sheep ecology in North America. But the concept of sheep ecology or the use of sheep and resource management also provides a means in which the economic income of sheep producers can be diversified as well. And I think we all know with the market price we all need to stimulate our economic income as best we can. This diversification acts to stabilize the industry during times of traditional market flexuations and helps to provide long term economic stability to the industry over generations. And if you watched the land market two months ago, it was in the low 50's and than overnight it jumped up the the high 90s. And that type of instability is very difficult to plan under. In regard to market instability, the sheep industry has traditionally looked at lamb and wool as it's only two commodity products. However, the use of the animal itself for management purposes can also be marketed as a commodity. As explained in the other session Canadian producers are currently being paid $5 or more per head per month, for their sheep reforestation projects. Other economic opportunities also lay in the areas of sustainable agriculture and noxtious plant control. For example, Wyoming economic studies show that sheep can control the non-native plant species for $1.80 per acre versus $20 to $40 per acre for other methods such as herbicides. Montana studies indicate that sheep grazing may be able to eliminate the need for one or two fallows in spring wheat and other small grain production. In addition, sheep my reduce herbicides and fertilizer needs resulting in substantial savings in the grain production, while increasing grain yeild. If a sheeper can contract the use of his sheep for six months for use in various sheep ecology projects and get paid for the use of his sheep. Than their are opportunities to break even, point of a sheep operation, from 65 to 80 cents per pound to a level of 30 to 40 cents per pound. At these break even levels, lamb becomes competitive with poultry products and industries should see an increase in quantity demand. The added income from contracting the use of the animal, will also result in increased market stability for many producers. In terms of labor, the sheep industry has not only seen a shortage in North American labor supplies, but there has also been a failure in of new operators to enter the industry. One reason that young people do not enter the industry, is the substantial financial contributions toward land, live stock and facilities that are needed to gain entrance. In Canada the vegetation managers that contract reforestation projects, may or may not own the sheep used in that project. In many cases, vegetation managers obtain their sheep supplies from various farms undercontractual relationship with the producer in the spring, and return the sheep to the farm in late summer or fall, once the years reforestation projects are complete. These vegetation managers are usually professionals, who are not only trained in sheep management but also in silva culture, which is the management of trees. In 1995, shepherds working for contractors on reforestation projects in British Columbia, earned $100 to $125 per day, and contractors earned a good living off the four to five month forest projects that they obtained. Here lies a opportunity for the sheep industry of America and for other countries. Presently, a graduating agricultural student, can return to the farm if his family owns one, or if the student's family does not own a farm, he or she can go to work in agro business in one form or another. Opportunities for a graduating student to purchase his or her own farm, and going into business for themselves are extremely limited. But if a student can obtain an education, not only in Agriculture, but also in forestry, or some other form of vegetation management involving other animals. A new type of profession is created. This does not require the vast amount of capital investment that purchasing a farm or a ranch does, and yet it offers that individual the opportunity to earn $30,000 of US dollars or more annually. An individual with the proper training could contract vegetation management projects such as noxicious weeds, sustainable agriculture for six or seven months during the year, he could pregnancy test or artificially inseminate animals during the fall, and than shear sheep or class wool during the remainder of the year. Sheep ecology could offer the industry a partial solution to it's labor problems, as well allow other individuals the opportunity to enter the industry. The third issue facing the North American sheep industry is predation. Typical sheep loses on reforestation projects in Canada have averaged less than 3 per cent compared to losses approaching 12 per cent in some of the states in the United States. One of the reasons for these low Canadian losses, is the constant supervision of sheep.....

.....and so that they don't do not damage the seedling trees by lying on them. Not only are the sheep guarded by the shepherds but also by guard dogs, to add even more protection for the sheep, wildlife biologists, inspect the areas around the sheep grazing projects, and then they warn the shepherds of any activity by predators in the proximidy. If this type of intense management of animals was combined with the cooperation among shepherds and agent of governments as seen on the Canadian reforestation projects, predation percentages would have a high likelihood of falling in the US. The American sheep industry is currently in the process of developing a technical handbook on sheep ecology that will be used by federal, state and private natural resource managers. It is our hope that sheep ecology, the management of natural resources, can someday become an entire field of study within colleges and university systems. Students graduating from colleges with this type of training will serve as the backbone and labor force for implementing this evolving science into an art of technical management. In addition to labor, the concept of sheep ecology also offers North American industry an opportunity to begin to address some of the market problems through the diversification of income and the reduction of cost. The opportunities offered by this concept however, are not only beneficial to the sheep industry. They also offer socially acceptable solutions to a number of environmental problems around the world, in a manner that is environmentally friendly, sustainable and cost effective. I thank you for your time and I want to let you know that it's really a pleasure to be here and mingle with such highly intelligent women from all over the world. And I'm proud of all of you that are here. Thank you.

Question: Can you keep sheep within electrical fences? Yes you can, they may dash out. When you have the person who is caretaking overseeing the project. But one of the pluses with trying the powerline in New Hampshire with the 500 sheep. They wanted to try with sheep that had herding instincts. So if they left, they would want to come back to the herd.

You've been sitting down for a long time. Does anyone have a question. Do you want a glass of water, there's one down the back I understand.

I'm going to talk about...I'm not a scientist, I'm a journalist. I actually run the beef association now in Australia. So, if your expecting technical talk, you'd better get up and leave now. If you want to talk about empowering regional beef communities. Than you can hang around for a little bit longer. Basically it's about returning power and responsibility to regional beef communities. We were told because we didn't have a moderator. It's a pleasure to be here, like the previous speaker, it's absolutely fantastic to be a representative for the Australian beef industry, at a conference like this, with the large number of people we're had here, and just with the interaction that has actually gone on, I've been to some great sessions today, and it's just been fabulous. I come from Australia as you've probably gathered and that's a satellite image up there. Australia's a fairly large country down south, under the equator. We've got 24,000,000 beef cattle in our country, which doesn't rank very highly when you think of the numbers of beef cattle that are actually here. We have a fantastic beef industry down there. Most of the beef, as you can actually see by my next graph, now that's cattle distribution in our country. Now the dark of the blue, the more blue there is, basically the more cattle that we actually have. As you can see that there's a concentration up north, and particularly in what we call Queensland, which is that sort of area from the top of Cape York coming down to about half way down the east coast and than sort of coming back in a little bit. Queensland's one of our states and it's actually got 40% of the cattle in Australia. So, there's allot of cattle there. They tend to be large herds. The largest cattle producer in Australia has got a half a million head. They're actually the largest cattle producers in the world. Distribution as you can see, it tends to be fairly concentrated about the sort of Northern area and particularly down those coastal areas as well. We are different to the states in that we have allot of what you'd call range fatten cattle, what you'd call grass fatten cattle. We tend to grow allot of our cattle out on pastures and actually sell them straight to slaughter, straight off pasture. Particularly for our domestic market, with regard to our overseas market this is a feedlock. And this is an old photograph actually, this is about three or four years old. We tend to sell most of our beef that goes into Japan which is a fairly large market for our country. That usually comes off feedlocks, well it all comes off feedlocks. We are the largest exporters of beef in the world. Allot of people don't even realize that. A lady came up to me the other day and she said, I didn't even know you had beef in Australia. I thought hell what else are we going to grow down there. Cause if you look at some of those climatic things, you can't put sheep up there, cause they'll all just rollover and put their feet in the air. We are the largestest exporters of beef. We consume about 40% of our own beef. We export 60%. We actually export 380,000 tons a year to the US, most of that is what you call over hear grounding beef. So you get all our crappy old cows basically. You don't get much of that good stuff that we ate yesterday. Those were all grass fed beef product. Put your hand up if you were all at the lunch yesterday. Well those of you who weren't missed out on a great taste. Cause we had some grass fed beef there, we had some grass fed aged beef. Was it good? It was good? The lamb was good too? The beef was about two and a half years old, it came off grass, it had been aged, it's a brand of beef product that one of our steering committee members in the Australian Beef Association is currently selling direct through to restaurants in Brisbane and Sydney. So, I was really interested to see over here. Because you quite a different taste experience as far as beef is actually concerned. This producer is quite a large producer, he's got about 60,000 cattle. The other interesting thing about that beef is it was about 50% browman. And you have allot of people saying, you can't eat browman because there's no marvaling, that was a least 50% browman. So that's just statistic for those of you who haven't actually known. So, that's abit about our terrific Australian beef industry. A bit of my background. I actually come from a farm. And we breed Angus cattle, which is very similar to that. Our country is a little bit, is much higher and much colder than that. I come from a place that about 5,000 above sea level. We've got 2,000 acres there. We run about 15,000 and 250,000 head of cattle. It's about a 55 inch rain fall country. Mom and dad are still there battling away. Because I tell you what. There was cattle sold in Australia this year for as low as about $30, $40 dollars a head. And you try and make a living off that. So we got some problems and we've got some issues to face. And I think that there issues that face allot of people. I've got two brothers, one's in the feed lot industry, he actually works for Kogle, he was actually over for three months and he runs a feed lot in Australia for Kogle. The other one is a Tuna Fisherman, so he saw the light and got right out of the industry. Who turns 21 next week. So he spends his life battling the high seas getting tuna. And I tell you it's a tough life, I think I'd rather be a beef farmer. I'm twenty-seven, I finished secondary school, I did a communications degree, a three year communications degree, and I became a journalist. I worked for Rural Press, and I wound up working as a political reimporter, which is a very interesting exercise, and tends to make you very cynical. From there I went to Cotton Australia which is the peak industry body in Australia for the cotton industry. And the cotton industry's very interesting, it's very advanced, high degree of commercialization and it's a very proactive intelligent industry in our country. I was actually over in the states last year at the rubber bank cotton conference in San Francisco, where Marie McCaskill was the only female speaker on the program, and she was the former head of Cotton Australia and she basically founded it. And than in September I joined a group of beef producers, who had a vision for the future of the beef industry, and they had a vision that didn't quite tally, we the current vision of the time. And those people really were acting on, something allot of people had been talking about, for years in Australia we had tended to be, I think farmers are fabulous winjers, farmers are always great at saying, somethings wrong, somethings wrong, somethings wrong, and sometimes there's not actually very good at fixing it. I think that's one of the key roles that women actually have to play in agriculture industries. Getting off of your bottom and actually doing something about it, rather than just complaining to the neighbor at the barbaque when you go along. Now one of the people who was that was Diane Hughes, and she was one of the people for putting the beef on the table at that lunch yesterday. Now we didn't have any support for that. And effectively the two of us went out to the industry, and the strain and beef industry all dug into their pockets to get that beef here. Graham Acton, the broker, he donated the extra beef, we had a cooperative industry effort to get it over here so you could all eat it. So, we had six weeks to do it. And what it shows that if you got enough heart and you really want to do something, you can do it. Now, they recognized, the people who got together, and they included some of the biggest names in the industry in Australia. For a long time people had been concerned about the level of representation for beef producers, they saw many of the problems in Australia stemming from the lack of representation that we had as beef producers. So, they got together and they said allright, let's do something about it. We should stop asking government, we should do something ourselves. So they did something, and they formed the Australian Beef Association. They recognized that changes must be made, and the sytstem can be improved. Essentially, it's a little bit about what I'm speaking about. Change is about empowerment. Giving responsibilities back to people. It's about empowering individuals in local communities to be able to actually do something. Everyday you make changes, you might change hairstyle, you might change the brand of toothpaste you use. You might change the way that you drive to work. You might change the type of laundry detergant that you actually have. You might change little facets about your lifestyle the whole time, but when it comes to actually making big changes about a whole system, we all tend to balk. And the reason is, is as individuals we can make choices, we are empowered to decide, whether or not we want to have long hair or short hair, whether or not we want to have red hair or black hair, we're empowered as individuals to make those sort of decisions. When it comes to changes the whole system, the system is far more complex, it requires interaction with other people, and it requires negotiation with other people. The third thing is communication. And so often, the system doesn't change because people don't feel empowered to change systems. The reasons they wanted to actually change some of these systems. We have a very complex system of representation for beef producers in our country. And we wanted to simplify that. Basically we believe that the people with the investment in the industry, who owned the industry, and I don't mind if their processors, producers, exporters, butchers, whoever they are, should be able to direct and influence the marketing and the research. They should elect a board that controls that. Should be run like the H.P. You have a company, you shareholders who elect a board, who run what is actually happening. And really we've come to a situation where we've had to actually do that. As I said, previously, economics in the beef industry have been going down hill, well since 1980 we have doubled gross farm production in Australia between 1980 and 1996. Consumer spending has doubled in that time. The real returns to farmers have halfed. So consumer spending has doubled and return to farmers, halfed. Now I was in a session earlier this morning, and it seems as though the same is happening right here, why? We've been told to get smarter, cut the cost of production, work harder, faster, work more efficiently, so on so forth. Effectively we have, we've doubled production. We have been smarter, if we hadn't been smarter, and faster, and worked harder. We aren't here now. And we are loosing, we've probably got about 160,000 farmers in the whole of Australia? Which is not allot when you sit down and think about it. And it leads us to perhaps think, and there's allot of theory around now, that perhaps what we are addressing aren't production issues, there actually food market issues. And for too long as farmers we've been focusing on this, not this. The difference between that, and that, is about six steps in the actual production chain. But for a long time as an industry we've been focused totally on the production end. We have not looked beyond the farm gate and looked at the food market issues. And this is, let's face it. That's what beef is about to consumers in the world. And I don't think that Americans or the Japanese or anybody else, are the competitors of the Australian beef industry. I think that with due respect, the lamb producers or the lamb industry, and the chicken industry, and the poultry industry in the world are the competitors of the beef industry in the world. Because in America alone domestic comsumption has declined for beef by 10% to chicken over the past couple of years. The same thing is happening in our country. And in the cotton industry, they have actually been working together with Australia and the states, to try and combat the raising dominance of the sythetic industry that largely comes out of China. It's just something to actually think about. Gross average business farm profit in Australia was forecast at minus $10,000 in 1997-98, 31% of beef farms have negative cash farm incomes. 31%. They're clear signals that we need to change the way we're operating as an industry. The Australian Beef Association recognizes that the industry needs to take control of it's own destiny and not ask government to solve it's problems for it. That ownership of industry structures and programs must be regional level. The Australian beef industry has entered a new era of aggressive commerically focused representation that sees the world beef industry as an ally against competing protein products. Everyone trying to take a bigger slice of the pie, isn't going to increase the size of the pie. And bottom line--that is what it's about. Cause if everyone's fighting over the same pie, it's going to look awful scrappy. Why aren't we trying to increase the size of the pie. The Australian Beef Association has actually divided Australia into fifteen regions. And we don't recognize state boundaries in the Australian Beef Association, I don't care if beef producers come from New South Wales, I don't care if they come from Queensland, as far as we're concerned their Australian beef producers, we're an Australian beef industry, and we need to work and market ourselves like that. Our focus is very much on the consumer, it's on those food safety issues, and it's on recognizing unless we do this at a regional level, with groups of us, and we're empowered to do that at a community level, it's not going to work. Because there's no point paying, we pay $3.50 every time we sell an animal in our country, and I know you have something similar here, which is check off, and I think it's about a dollar....isn't it? I'm actually meeting with NCBA later on, and I'm actually going to talk about some of these issues. We need to be looking at education in schools. We need to be at how we are marketing beef to children, getting them early basically. We're loosing women in Australia, between ages 13-18 like it's going out fashion. And we'd need is somebody like Claudia Shaeffer or somebody like that to stand on the front page of a magazine and say I eat beef 5 days a week, it'd probably address the problem. Or the Spice Girls when they were still together. So many of our problems, I think are off farm. I mean the people who are here are efficient farmers. We are efficient farmers. I speak for our country, and I think that the farmers who are here would agree with me. And so many of the problems we face are off farm issues. We need to be looking at those. The school education issues. And it is our responsibility. It isn't anyone elses responsibility. As an industry it is our responsibility. As an industry it is our responsibility. And it's our responsibility to make sure that people enjoy good, healthy, safe, nutritious beef meals that are sexy and fun and exciting. Because how do you sell Coke, and Nike and all those things. With people, sport, and movement, and sound, and light and fun. How do you sell beef? It's good for you. When did you last eat something that was good for you when you were thirteen years old? You didn't did you? So, the ABA this hasn't been a speech about women or about men, it's not about politics or about point scoring, it's not about gender. It's about consumers, and giving them what they want. And giving them better, safer, and more exciting meals. It's about communities. It's about empowering regional beef communities to effect change. And it's about change. It's about working together and having the strength of purpose and the committment to change a system, that for us, isn't working. And that's really where I think that groups like this are so powerful. They have so much opportunity to work effectively. There's been a high level of debate, they're been a high level of discussion. There hasn't been any fighting. There's been argument but it's tended to have been effective argument. And I think that there's one key thing that women can actually do, is facilitate change. And facilitate the move towards empowering beef communities and communities around the world to actually make some of these changes. And feel that you can make a change. So often, you say aww I'm an individual standing right out against the system. Hell, there's 1,000 people in that room every breakfast morning, and there's probably 10 more thousand that wanted to come and couldn't come. And they all want to do something. And their all active, empowered, intelligent people. And I just think that bowed so well for the sort of movement and the sort of change that we're actually trying to make. Thank you very much. It was a great pleasure being here and it was a great honor for me to speak to you. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them. Thank you very well done. And I couldn't have said it better from the sheep industry in America.

We'll be happy to answer any questions. And if I can answer anymore on sheep being held with electric fencing. I'd be happy to visit afterward, if you'd like to go into length about that. Or if there are any other questions about the poultry, beef or the lamb. Please come to the microphone here, so that this can be recorded or we are being recorded so that the questions and answers can be recorded.

Question: I have a question to try to link to possibly competing animals here. One of the problems we have with not wanting to eat beef, is the preconseption that beef is somehow bad for the environment. Which I was quite interested in what you had to say because what allot of people don't realize was that the environment evovled with grazing animals grazing on it. And industrialized agricultural and monocropping of course, has removed animals from the environment. And I'm wondering if you could both go on a little more about the kind of beneficial impact that our animals are having.

Statement: Thank you, I come from Down Under as well, we have I believe your public lands are your national parks. Which we call national parks. We have forests and we also have national parks. There's only one trouble that we have in Australia. We have put our coat of arms, and it has a kangaroo and an enuw on it. And we have one of the most efficient breeder in the world. And it's something that we've never been able to get over to you. There's no other animal in the world that has diapause, our joey is born from a marsupial, it curls up into the pouch, and three days later that kangaroo is empregnated again. And the fetus sits at the blastersill stage and waits in the uterus until the conditions are good. In the year such as we've had, and I'm ardent kangaroo lover, believe it or not, and on my property I have stacks of them. But I am up to my eyeballs, I will be by the end of the year up to my eyeballs in kangaroos. Because she will have had one baby and it will suckling on nipple in her pouch. If the season breaks at the beginning of spring almost immediately, 21 days after the grass really starts to go. And she produce milk off one nipple that will associate with the bigger feeders. And than it will have a separate lot of milk for the other one coming on. That is only miniscule when it is born, so she'll have two babies in her pouch before spring, the older one if the grass is good and the conditions stay will get tipped out. Because as soon as she gives birth to the second one, she's pregnant again. So she's got three, one in the uterus, one on the nipple. So, by Christmas, I will not have one kangaroo, I will have four kangaroos, and I am already overloaded with kangaroos. Because during the drought I put the cattle up for enjuicement, but I couldn't muster the kangaroos and take them away on enjuicement. So, they stayed home, and I kept the water up for them, so I have supplied them, instead of letting them die, from drought and lack of water, I have supplied them with ample food. And I'm now in the position where, I will have four kangaroos by the end of the year. They are not an endangered species. And we'd like to get the message over that they are the most efficient breeders in the world. If we could get diapause in other animals we would all be very wealthy. Pregnancy rates in kangaroos are 100%. I've not yet seen a kangaroo that does not have a joey. Now one of the things we try to get over to everybody is that we don't slaughter our kangaroos indiscriminately, we slaughter our kangaroos, from pure economics of land management and the environment. Because they can overproduce. You would never allow your cattle to breed up til they devistated the soil. But the kangaroo instead of being culled by the drought is now helped by the drought, because humans have interfered, instead of being loan numbers at the end of the drought. And we're not going to have an explosion. So if you hear of a little old lady trying to get kangaroo meat and kangaroo skins to be excepted by the world. It is because I believe, they kindest way to cull commercially. When you send people out that can shoot efficiently because otherwise if you don't cull effectively your going to overpopulate they'll die. If you go out with guns and blast, they'll die slowly. So it's more efficient to make a commercial object of them, and to harvest them. Than it is to sit back and do nothing. Believe you me, we are conservationists. Scratch any Australian and she or he is a conservationist. I've reared too many babies, joeys because to really enjoy kangaroo meat. I can eat a calf that I've reared too. And I don't seem to have any bother of putting a calf in the freezer. But it's still something I have to come to terms with. This is my generation. I was just one of those silly aching nuts that just wanted to conserve them. And this is what we can't get over. We don't have an endangered species called, and you call them all kangaroos. They come in all shapes and sizes. They grey easterns, giant reds, wallaroos, Euros, you name it we've got it, I think there's nine different varieties all together. And man have given them a better opportunity to survive through the drought that we've just had. And yet now we're in the position where we'll be seen by the rest of the world, as being hard and cruel,

if we try to cull and try to sell. And we're trying very hard to promote the product. We're not really competing with the lambs, or the beef, because I'm a beef producer. But if we could cull commercially we'd be allot better off.

Statement: Please excuse my voice I've lost it between hear and Australia. I'm Terry Underwood,

and I live on a cattle station, 3,000 square kilometers, 1,000 kilometers south of Darwin in the northern territory of Australia. And my husband, two sons, and two daughters and I run 12,000 head of browden cattle. I thank the ABA for a fabulous breakfast today, and Clare I welcome you on board and your a very intelligent, passionate person. But I feel a bit bruised by some of the things that you said, and I just want to give our side of how we've had to embrace change. Now I know your talking about marketing. But I remember being in the bush for 30 years. I was a Sydney nurse and there was a young [indecypherable]

Answer: I was talking pretty well about production issues, when I said that we had changed. I think I made the point very clearly that we've actually doubled production. And so, we have changed allot as farmers. As I said, those people who hadn't changed wouldn't actually be here now. I think that some of the areas that we haven't changed is the way we think about our marketing and what we actually do with beef. I hate to have to say this, but I think people like Terry Underwood and her husband are probably a minority sometimes in the beef industry as far as innovation and leading change is actually concerned. So that is my point. I wasn't casting any slurrs at any people who have been leaders in the industry. But the fact remains, for the Australian beef industry, there is no system of direct representation, you still count as a beef producer, vote for the person who is directly respresenting you on a national board, so it in no way casts slurrs on anybody that has been in positions that individuals in many instances and in all organizations often fight the system and are often very good people that get frustrated by the actual system. And I understand that Terry has written a book, so you could probably read all about it if you go and look at her book.