CANBERRA: Australia’s burgeoning livestock export trade could be a far more sustainable and profitable business for producers if we followed North America’s lead and combined our live export sales efforts with a serious push to sell livestock genetics, too.
Bovine semen exports are currently worth just $1.5 million a year to Australian stud cattle producers, but Canada, which has a cattle herd half the size of Australia’s, has annual semen exports worth $90m.
Canada, also a big exporter of live cattle for processing and breeding, combines its stock marketing efforts with a strong follow-up trade in semen and embryos so buyers of quality breeding stock can continue improving their herds with more top-end genetics from the same origins.
Sales of Canadian live export heifers, semen and embryos exceeded $110m in 2012 according to research by Brisbane-based cattle breeding and genetics industry advisor Don Nicol at Breedlink.
The US had a similar strategy, exporting more than $142m in semen alone in 2012 (Australia was its second biggest export destination), plus about 15,500 beef and dairy embryos.
While Mr Nicol believed Australian sheep and goat genetics could also service growing markets hungry for meat and better livestock production results, cattle breeders are leading the scramble in a belated effort to find ways cash in on opportunities available in the international genetics marketplace.
He said Australia’s envied animal health and natural environment for breeding livestock gave it many potential advantages in the genetics trade if the industry could co-ordinate marketing efforts and foster more supportive government programs and export protocol strategies like those available to producers in Canada, USA, Europe and even Argentina.
Australia was considered an “ideal hub or entry point” for bovine genetics into Asia, but so far our export agenda was “a market failure” even though the industry probably enjoyed the least constrained access to overseas markets.
