For a dairy producer with surplus calves and tightening margins, the chance to turn what was once a low-value byproduct into a viable beef animal changes the economics of the whole enterprise, which is why beef-on-dairy kept coming up at the Australian Dairy Conference on the Gold Coast. Ruminati CEO Bobby Miller and COO Will Onus spent two days there among a strong cross-section of the dairy industry, in honest discussion about where things are heading.
Beef-on-dairy is the growing practice of using beef genetics over dairy cows to produce calves that carry value in the beef supply chain. It has been gaining serious momentum globally and the Australian dairy sector is watching closely. The emissions picture is interesting too, because beef-on-dairy systems usually carry lower emissions per unit of product than conventional beef, given that the environmental overhead of the cow is attributed to the milk she produces. That gives dairy producers a way to improve the economics of the calf and the emissions picture of what leaves the farm at the same time.
For Will, the conference opened up conversations with people right across the industry about the opportunity of insetting through efficiency, which means achieving emissions reductions within the industry itself in place of buying offsets from elsewhere. A farm that gets more milk or beef out of the same inputs lowers its emissions per unit of product, so the reduction is made on the farm and stays within the industry. “It feels like there is a real commitment and motivation to keep those reductions within the dairy industry,” Will noted. That orientation, if it holds, has clear implications for how the dairy sector positions itself as emissions requirements tighten across global markets.
Across the two days the dairy industry came across as asking good questions and looking for practical answers, without waiting for policy to catch up.
