From the way his cattle operation is run to communicating the value of the livestock industry to wider society, the 2024 Queensland Country Life Red Meat Achiever of the Year Adam Coffey has been at the forefront of innovation since the day he decided beef was the industry for him.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
With his wife Jacynta, Mr Coffey runs the 2500 hectare Brahman-cross breeding and trading enterprise Boreelum, near Miriam Vale in Central Queensland.
It was a timber plantation bought out of receivership and via extensive fencing subdivision, water reticulation and improved pastures, the couple have dramatically lifted carrying capacity in the eight years they have been at the helm.
The Coffeys have blazed plenty of new trails: multispecies pasture planting trials focusing on keeping growth active year-round and improving soil biology, satellite monitoring, soil carbon projects and supplementation for toxicity and methane reduction.
Recently, they've trialled alley plantings of native Eucalypt species in a bid to hone in on the sweet spot between tree and grass balance.
Fellow beef producers who nominated Mr Coffey for the award said the couple were undertaking a huge amount of work to prove up data that would assist all of Australian agriculture in forest management.
Mr Coffey said productivity improvement was always the guiding principle at Boreelum but that went hand-in-hand with the ecology and the environment.
"We see no trade-off between productivity, profitability and sound environmental outcomes," he said.
Mr Coffey has also stepped up on the advocacy front, primarily because he believes beef has a good story to tell and everyone in the industry has a role to play in sharing that story.
His social media presence is renowned in beef, as much for its authenticity and credibility as its sheer creativity.
Mr Coffey is also a director of the peak grassfed producer group Cattle Australia and when there was a void in the chief executive officer role last year he filled it.
One of the big ticket items CA is lobbying for is a modernisation of the way methane emissions are measured to recognise the fact that methane is different from fossil fuels.
Mr Coffey said the argument was not about one metric versus another but rather about the warming effect of emissions.
CA believes the red meat industry's target to be carbon neutral by 2030 should be redefined as climate neutral.
Mr Coffey said it was important to note climate neutral was in no way a lesser target and producers were fully aligned with an aggressive emissions reduction ambition.
"But livestock emissions are not the same as a car's exhaust system, so we have to start measuring it correctly because there are serious consequences not just for us but for greater society if we don't get it right," he said.
"A carbon dioxide equivalent is measuring the quantum of emissions but not the warming effect and a more up-to-date way of looking at things is desperately needed."
The next revolution
Highly respected red meat analyst Matt Dalgleish, from Episode 3, was the runner-up in this year's award.
With an academic background in economics and education, and decades of experience in commodity and financial markets, Mr Dalgleish, from Ballarat in Victoria, made the decision to specialise in agriculture in 2015 because he believes it is "an industry with true value".
"We are only just beginning to ride the big wave to come over coming decades where ag is the next revolution," he said.
"That all comes down to the fact we need to feed the world and protect the environment and ag is at the cutting edge of that."
The real-world application of Mr Dalgleish's analysis, and his ability to distill complex data and concepts into digestible information, was highlighted in nominations.
"His work not only enriches the agricultural community as a whole, but also paves the way for future advancements and sustainability in the beef industry," his nominations said.
"The goodwill Matt demonstrates in providing free market updates online and via the media is providing the agricultural industry with improved ways of evidence-based thinking."