No 592 - Tuesday's Club Notes

Dwain Duxson
August 19, 2025

The “Club Notes” for Tuesday, the 19th of August, 2025.

By Dwain Duxson - An Ag Enthusiast

The rise and rise of Cattle Feedlotting

I heard yesterday on "The Weekly Grill" podcast, which features the Hart family from Stockyard Beef, that it's been 60 years since Cattle Feedlotting was introduced here in Australia. We talk about Ag industries that have come and gone in a story below, and we can safely say that the Cattle Feedlotting industry is here to stay for a while at least. Something like 47 per cent of the Cattle slaughtered comes out of Feedlots, and we have over 1.5 million head on feed at any one time. In the last decade, carcass weights in the Australian Cattle industry have crept up by 30 kg. These are all pretty good stats, but what is the future of the Cattle Feedlotting industry? A respected analyst and subscriber to this newsletter said last week that he can see a doubling of the Cattle on feed in the next 5 years, which is interesting. This would mean a lot of investment in infrastructure, which I'm sure is not cheap. One thing that pricked my ears in the podcast was the talk about undercover Feedlotting for Cattle. It's interesting that it came up, as for the last couple of weeks we have been talking about the advantages of undercover Feedlotting of Lambs. Is this the way both industries are headed, undercover? Reply to [email protected] or 0427 011 900

The value-add story

We wrote yesterday about Jacob Wolki and how he has a very different Farming model from your everyday Farmer. It was a ripper podcast. Take a listen here. One of the stories he told was back when he Farmed and sold free-range Chickens. He used to sell these Chickens through his Butcher Shop and Online Platform for $35, which was about 3 times the price of the cooked Chickens you get in Supermarkets. Forever the experimenter, he decided he would cut these human consumption Chickens up into about 50 bits, dehydrate and cryovac them up to sell them as dog treats. It turns out that he could sell that $35 Chicken for $112 doing it this way, and this was despite a 30 per cent loss in weight when the dehydration process took place. An added bonus is that the Dogs are much less picky than humans. That's a great value-add story, and it should get us all thinking about how we can rearrange the deck chairs within our own businesses so that we can turn the equivalent of a human consumption chicken into a bunch of Dog treats at 3 times the value. Our business models are going to require this level of thinking for us to stay ahead of the average line. Have you done a successful value add in your business? Reply to [email protected] or 0427 011 900

What - There was a fishing industry in the Mallee

We wrote about how we have seen the demise of the "good" windmill industry (as opposed to the "bad" windmills) over the years in Saturday's edition. Windmills for pumping water were once a big industry until other, more reliable forms of pumping came along. It got us asking the question about industries that were once a big part of our rural landscape that have disappeared. The Rabbit industry was an introduced pest that wreaked havoc on Grazing Land, but was also a thriving industry for many people who caught and sold them for the meat and skins. That is now gone. Did you know there was a commercial fishing industry on the edge of the Big Desert in Victoria? Jeparit, through Lake Hindmarsh (where the Wimmera River ends up), at its peak in the mid-1970s, had something like 14 trawlers that combed the Lake for Redfin and Yabbies. It's long gone now, but people are amazed that it ever existed. I was talking to a guy from NSW who was a first-time traveller through Rainbow (at the North end of Lake Hindmarsh), and he was admiring all the old buildings in the town, and many of them have been vacated. He asked the question: "How did it come to this, that our once thriving towns that built infrastructure to last, are now shadows of their former selves? At what point did these places start to go backwards?". What industries that were once thriving in your area are now all but gone? Reply to [email protected] or 0427 011 900

End of message.

Dwain Duxson
0427 011 900

Podcasts:

See our latest podcast below. The library is at the very bottom of the page. This one below is downloaded so you can listen to it on your Ute trips, walks, etc. Enjoy. PS. The one below is located on our website, so you may need to log in with your email address.

Your replies:

Below are snippets from some of the replies you sent in. All quotes will remain nameless. See a few current ones below:

In reply to a snippet from yesterday stating John Deere's drop in revenue was blamed on tariffs and Crop prices in the US. This might be right too - "If John Deere makes Machinery in the USA, how are tariffs affecting them? Seems to me Farmers are hanging onto older" still functioning well" Equipment because of "save the planet" costs".
Sent to me by an analyst. I probably should read it - "Dwain, In response to my question to MLA in regard to industry consultation and planning…… Yes, MLA does. We have just completed an extensive round of stakeholder consultations in preparing for the new 5-year strategic plan, and in turn, this guides MLA's annual investment plans. This consultation process is referred to in the 5-year plan. Suggest we both have a good read of the 5-year plan and pick it apart to see how it gets the Sheepmeat industry down the desired path".
In reply to a reply from a Farmer talking about the extremely high prices of Lamb at a retail level in New York and Dubai - "Dwain, He has missed out a few costs along the way…..transport farm gate to processing, processing, processing margin, transport (air freight), wholesale/retail margin. He is also comparing selling at the world price against an EU price which is protected by quotas….not apples and apples".
In reply to the snippet where Ben said that Hoggett was the best-tasting Sheep Meat of the lot - "Agree with Ben".