When the supply chain gets honest: reflections from the AMI Producer Day

A tour of the facilities, presentations from the AMI team, and a panel session on the AMI Wagyu program- the Andrews Meat Industries Producer Day in Lidcombe last week was a well-run day with a lot to take away.

The part that stuck most was a presentation from Elise Mizzi on what AMI's customers are actually asking for on sustainability. Sourcing credentials, environmental impact, emissions data, labelling: the list of information requests flowing through the supply chain is growing, and it's complex. What stood out was how openly AMI presented that reality to the producers in the room. Those requests don't stop at the processor. They find their way to the farmer too, and pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone.

The panel that followed (with our COO Will Onus alongside Charlie Perry, Jo-Ann Strong and Will McCrohon) picked up that thread and ran with it. The information supply chains need largely exists. It lives on farms, in management records, in the day-to-day decisions

producers are already making. The challenge is getting it to flow in a way that's practical for everyone in the chain without adding another layer of admin to an already stretched workload.

That's a challenge Ruminati thinks about constantly, and it was useful to be in a room working through it from multiple angles - producer, processor, supply chain - at the same time. Those conversations are harder to have when everyone's communicating through a portal or a compliance form.

Thanks to the AMI team for a well-run day and for the transparency with their producer base. That kind of honest exchange between processors and producers is rarer than it should be, and it goes a long way.