This week on the Head Shepherd podcast we have Jason Strong, Managing Director of Meat & Livestock Australia Ltd. (MLA)

Jason grew up on a farm and says "I can never remember not wanting to be a cow farmer." He says that winning a scholarship to the University of Illinois in his late teens was "transformative" in his career.

"The most important thing was learning about meat grading and meat science. I got really excited about being a meat grader and came home [...] and realised we didn't have a meat grading system.... which is quite career limiting."

"That's what got me started working with Dr Rod Polkinghorne and John Webster [...] that set up the Meat Standards, Australia system."

Jason worked in various roles in Agriculture but with one common goal, to make the industry better for everyone. Now, as Managing Director of MLA, Jason gives us a run down of what MLA do, for our non-Australian listeners, and also what they are focusing on in the next few years.

"At our core, we focus on research development and marketing."

Jason makes a great point in saying that over MLAs time, they have invested in 12-13,000 projects. Which means it's hard to find something in the livestock sector they haven't looked into.

"When we think about research and development, so much of what was a challenge for us twenty years ago, [...] so many of those things have been solved or improved. So the breadth of things that we need to invest in, is a much shorter list now than it was 32 years ago"

Jason says that MLA are focusing on the importing things going forward. "When we put our strategic plan together, we took a "Fewer, Bigger, Bolder approach."

Mark asks what the "big ticket" items that MLA are focusing on.

"Sustainability," Jason says. "We've doubled investment in that space. We've committed to double our investment in adoption and extension and we also significantly increased our investment in traceability and biosecurity"

Jason is very enthusiastic about the future of the industry, and as he should be.  "The industry is in an amazing shape. Particularly in the last five years. The success of the collective industry are coming to the fore"

Considering the past few years and everything that has happened, Jason says that prices for red meat will remain strong. He says that the collective effort of the last 20 years, building markets and connecting with consumers, is now showing benefits.

"It's not a mistake. It didn't just happen [..] there's absolutely a component of where we're at at the moment. The underlying strength of where we are has come from all of the other things''

One benefit of such a strong market is that we have more certainty in our investments. "We can now make a direct connection between investment and benefit." Jason says. When it comes to genetics, farmers now know their decisions will actually pay off financially. Farmers can now buy rams with traits they know they

Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited, we help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best - info@nextgenagri.com.

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