Australian cattle farmers are being urged to use data, emerging technologies and precision genetics to make better cows for the future.<\/p>\n
URUS Group CEO Paul Hunt told the GA 2026 Today, Tomorrow and Beyond conference hosted by Genetics Australia (GA) in Geelong on March 17-18 that dairy and beef are good industries to be in.<\/p>\n
\u201cFive years ago, people wondered where meat and milk were headed,\u201d Mr Hunt said.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday we are in a much better place.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in a business with good growth prospects and increased consumption and demand, including non-traditional markets, and we\u2019re seeing an incredible rate of technology advancement.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Mr Hunt warned conference attendees there are challenges ahead, including labour shortages, beef and dairy cycles and increased exposure to international trade and geopolitical risks.<\/p>\n
He urged farmers to look at environmental and social challenges as opportunities and to continue making rich, nutritious, cost-efficient protein products to counter a shift to other proteins.<\/p>\n
\u201cFarmers have an opportunity to win by driving sustainable efficiencies across cows, herds and farming systems but \u2018it can\u2019t just be technology for technology\u2019s sake\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe farmer of the future needs an efficient and sustainable operation, optimise their herd and individual cow performance in an era of growing complexity, and achieve higher output with lower emissions and improved animal welfare.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Hunt said farmers would continue to use data in an advanced way to make better decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot using technology will be like milking by hand. You can do it, but it will be difficult to survive.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout data, there is almost nothing we can do. Data is the foundation of everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also urged farmers to continue to create data to help with genetic advancement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to continue to make our products more consumer friendly, more acceptable and at the right price and with the right characteristics, and we need to keep telling the story of cow improvements in such areas as heat tolerance, disease resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Hunt said farm business had become more complex and would become even more complex over the next decade.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuccessful producers of the future will be the ones that manage that complexity, they will have information at their fingertips and management tools and resources and advisors showing them how to use that data.\u201d<\/p>\n
He told the conference that US producers were using a lot more beef semen and sexed semen and predicted more use of IVF and embryos to create top end replacements instead of sexed semen, and a possible move to genetically advanced bulls in regions that struggle to find technicians to deliver AI while still needing to improve genetics.<\/p>\n
\u201cConventional semen is now a distant third in US and ET and IVF are experiencing incredible growth. Producers are choosing tens of thousands of embryos to make their replacements.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re making the bet that genetics will be the differentiator going forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to increase our vigilance on this to make out products better, our animal welfare better and consumer friendly.<\/p>\n
\u201cBringing together data will help achieve this.\u201d<\/p>\n
In genetics, the biggest gains will be in animal health.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be gains in productivity and efficiency and sustainability, but for producers we need to make sure longevity and animal health and welfare are in our sights.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we can breed for improvements, we should continue to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Hunt predicted AI growth with generative capabilities would be huge for the industry, there would be more emphasis on improving beef genetics globally, farmers would want a lower replacement rate to improve their footprint and more farmers would graze their animals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe grazing will continue to increase globally. We became partners with Genetics Australia because we believe the system used here is going to increase,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Genetics Australia entered a Joint Venture with URUS Group in 2022.<\/p>\n
Mr Hunt said Australia should market itself to the world as a leading grazing business.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the combination of grazing and beef on dairy becomes more important, Australia has a position to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Hunt said he was impressed by the level of collaboration in the Australian industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cCollaboration is going to be required to take us to the next level and there has been plenty of that on display at this conference.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian cattle farmers are being urged to use data, emerging technologies and precision genetics to make better cows…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-595806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}