Beemurra looks beyond the gate for bright future
An Aboriginal-managed pastoral property in Dandaragan shire is shoring up its success by building its knowledge of what happens beyond the farm gate.
Beemurra Aboriginal Corporation (BAC), which owns and manages Yallalie Farm, has worked with the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development’s Aboriginal Business Development (ABD) project for four years to not only improve the productivity of their land but get a better understanding on the markets they service.
This included a recent supply chain tour of feedlots and other cattle processing facilities.
The ABD project, formerly the Indigenous Landholder Service, works with six Aboriginal-managed properties across Western Australia.
The project is supporting these businesses to improve their profitability through increased technical skills, investment in infrastructure as well as greater market awareness.
BAC has already done the hard yards on the farm.
After realising the property’s sandy soil was not suitable for growing high-value grain crops, it decided to focus on grazing beef cattle based on research that showed sub-tropical perennial pastures would be highly productive.
This required developing a farm plan that prioritised creating new paddocks and upgrading the water system to allow perennial pastures and a rotational grazing system to be established.
BAC received a grant from the Indigenous Land Corporation to invest in these items, which have been constructed over the past 12 months.
Over this time, BAC worked with producer groups such as Evergreen and Mingenew-Irwin Group to improve its knowledge of perennial pastures and grazing systems.
Once the new paddocks were installed, BAC was able to decide how it would source cattle and establish its business.
Members agreed the best way to utilise their pastures was to grow cattle on consignment.
However, to provide the best service to their clients, they needed an understanding of the beef supply chain.
As such, BAC recently participated in a supply chain tour run by the ABD project.
This tour helped members to gain an insight into the marketing side of WA beef cattle.
Over the trip, BAC members and ABD staff explored the various destinations cattle could travel to from the farm.
These included a feedlot specialising in Wagyu cattle; a large feedlot that is a main supplier of Coles supermarkets; a feedlot where cattle are held before they are shipped for live export; and a state-of-the-art abattoir south of Perth.
Each facility was set up to meet the needs of their specific target markets, from domestic supermarkets to live export and boxed export markets.
With the knowledge gained from the tour combined with improvements made to Yallalie, BAC will be able to receive and grow cattle to meet the specifications for these markets and help improve the supply of quality beef in WA.