The scale of a feedlot like Grass Dale is hard to get across in a presentation, and seeing it up close was how the day began for Ruminati co-founder Will Onus, who joined the Fulton Market Group (FMG) team on the Darling Downs ahead of the Toowoomba Surat Basin Enterprise (TSBE) Beef Battle. The tour was hosted by Scott Braund and Brad Robinson from Mort & Co, and the trip came together through an invite from Nick Wolf and Charlie Barrington at FMG, with April Cavanagh, Rowie Beveridge and Anna Geddes from TSBE making the group welcome.
What stands out at Grass Dale is the size of the operation and the sophistication of its management, with efficiency getting close attention throughout. It is a reminder that the feedlot sector is often ahead of the broader industry conversation, already tracking inputs and outputs in detail and increasingly aware of how emissions data fits into that picture.
Will reflected after the tour that “the opportunities in Toowoomba are hard to miss”, and that “the scale of the operations here, along with the level of innovation, really shows how agriculture is moving forward in this region.”
The tour led into the Beef Battle itself, which brought together a crowd who care about where Queensland beef is heading and wrapped up the day well. Stockyard Beef took out the Judges’ Award and Stanbroke the People’s Choice, and congratulations go to both, because the work they are doing on quality showed on the day.
Put the tour and the Beef Battle together and the picture from the Darling Downs is of producers who already measure what matters to their business, whether that is the performance of a feedlot or the quality of the product it turns out, and for operations like that emissions data is a short step from where they already are.
