Agribusiness buzz in brief

Beef2024, from May 5 to May 11, will be an important year for Elders as the company celebrates 185 years involvement with the Australian beef industry.

"As a trusted advisor and supplier to the agricultural sector, this partnership solidifies Elders' efforts to champion Australian agriculture and showcase its excellence on a global scale," said Beef Australia CEO Simon Irwin.

"We look forward to working with Elders in enhancing the event's profile and delivering valuable experiences for all participants".

Elders managing director, Mark Allison said in his view, there were more opportunities for the beef industry than ever before, with demand for Australian product remaining strong, and the industry "poised for greater productivity".

Fast food giant, McDonald's is planning its biggest growth spurt since the 1990s, with a goal to launch 100 new Australian stores during the next three years.

The quick service restaurant group will also spend about $450 million upgrading more than half its current store network.

The chain is opening 30 new sites in Australia this year and by 2025 expects to boast more than 1100 after spending about $600m on new store developments.

The multinational chain is led in Australia by 37-year-old Antoni Martinez, who began his career flipping burgers as a teenager in Melbourne, eventually moving Seoul in 2020 to head McDonald's in Korea.

He returned to Australia a year ago when then CEO, Andrew Gregory, was made corporate senior vice president for global franchising.

The Food Agility Co-operative Research Centre has won $5 million in federal funding for AgTrace Australia, a data-enabled, integrated traceability system designed to demonstrate sustainability credentials of Australian agriculture and make it easier to gain access to global markets.

The funding is part of the federal government's RegTech grants to help businesses and exporters meet regulatory requirements more efficiently, giving agriculture a trade advantage.

"Strong regulation is one of Australia's selling points in trade, but there are always ways to streamline and modernise our systems, particularly as more farmers use innovative technologies themselves," said Agriculture Minister, Murray Watt said.

"Research and activities funded through Food Agility will support smarter traceability solutions and data standards which allow systems to talk to each other.

Chief executive officer, Richard Norton, said the pilot would transform that tracing data so global trading partners could not only understand it, but also trust it.

A packed three-day agenda is set to draw hundreds of visitors to southern Queensland for the biennial Cotton Collective in Toowoomba next week, including the National Cotton Awards dinner on August 2.

It will be this year's largest cotton industry event and will involve hundreds of people joining tours of Darling Downs cotton farms, hearing from industry experts during two days of conference sessions and checking out the latest gadgets and equipment on display from 80-plus exhibitors.

Conference presentations from global leaders on a range of issues will include carbon neutral agriculture, an Australian cotton industry update, sustainability, traceability and human rights, irrigation automation, pest and disease issues, innovations and spray drift.

The awards dinner at the Empire Theatre will recognise the Bayer Cotton Grower of the Year; AgriRisk High Achiever of the Year; Cotton Seed Distributors Researcher of the Year; Young Cotton Achiever of the Year, and the Incitec Pivot Fertilisers Service to Industry Award.

The 140-year-old Raine and Horne real estate agency group has enhanced its focus on rural properties, with a new strategic direction for its Raine and Horne Rural brand.

The rural division now has 10 offices in NSW and seven in Queensland, plus a rural presence in South Australia and Western Australia.

The company's expansion ambitions include plans to establish in the Northern Territory.

Executive chairman and the fourth generation family member to lead the business, Angus Raine, said the agency group was reinforcing its regional agency branch presence and dedication to the rural sector, by encouraging new offices to join Raine and Horne Rural.

The renewed focus on rural property had paved the way for two new independently-owned offices in the NSW Upper Hunter joining the group from August.

Accounting and advisory firm RSM Australia has merged with southern NSW accountancy firm Granleese McEwen, which has offices in Temora, Junee, and West Wyalong.

With a 101-year-old history and significant regional and national footprint, RSM boasts being well-equipped to provide comprehensive solutions to a wide range of clients, including those in the agricultural, and regional manufacturing sectors. Granleese McEwen's John McEwen joins RSM as a senior manager, with Sheree Schmidt, with Bob and James Granleese providing their consulting services through a transition period.

RSM has been building a footprint in southern NSW since opening its Goulbourn office in 1987.

CBH marketing and trading boss, Jason Craig, is to take over as managing director of big West Australian smallgoods producer, D'Orsogna Limited.

Mr Craig has led Australia's largest grain exporter's marketing business for 12 years.

D'Orsogna chairman, Tony Iannello, said the transition would be seamless with current managing director, Greig Smith, and senior management, working closely with Mr Craig when he arrived in November, before he formally took up his position in January.

Outgoing Mr Smith has run D'Orsogna for six years, during which time he oversaw developing and expanding the WA-based company's $65 million state-of-the-art Victorian plant opened in Merrifield in 2019.

Headquartered in Perth, the 75 year old family-owned firm produces cured and cooked hams, gourmet continental goods, bacon and cooked sausages, employing about 800 people.

Norco milk sales have raised $87,913 for the Black Dog Institute and regional residents requiring mental health support.

The farmer-owned dairy co-operative's funds were raised via a promotion whereby five cents from every Norco branded white milk purchase at Coles during March and April was donated the to Black Dog Institute.

With 30 per cent of Australian farming communities admitting a decline in their mental health and close to half having had thoughts of self-harm or suicide, the money will go to help research, resources, and digital tools, essential for regional areas where access to traditional mental health support is limited.

Norco's Black Dog Institute partnership emerged after a research project with the National Farmers Federation showed one in 10 farmers felt unsupported through their mental health issues and one in seven could not access mental health services[

The Norco funds would be used in an Adult Wellbeing Program research project, and a digital therapy treatment model application used alongside traditional face-to-face methods of mental health support.

Helen Lewis, the Queensland-based managing director of the $1.2 billion campaign to to seal and upgrade the 2800 kilometre Outback Way route between Perth to Cairns, has taken on the new chief executive officer's job at the Australian Holistic Management Co-operative.

The co-operative verifies regenerating farmland through its Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) monitoring process which gets carried through to consumers under the brand name Land to Market.

Mrs Lewis, a farmer herself and holistic management educator from the Darling Downs, has assumed the running of the co-op's most ambitious verification project - delivering ecological monitoring across 400,000 hectares of farmland by 2025.

The US-based Deckers company is sponsoring the regenerative transition of Australian producers with the goal of sourcing ethically and environmentally sound sheepskins for its boots.

The Ricegrowers Association of Australia's 2023 conference, to be held in Griffith on August 10 and 11, is promising to be an engaging event, with environmental scientist, adventurer, author, film maker, Tim Jarvis, as keynote speaker

Mr Jarvis has completed several unsupported expeditions to the world's remotest regions including the South Pole.

Hosted with SunRice Group and AgriFutures Australia, the Rice Growers Conference will include sessions focused on adopting agtech, business risk management, tax and succession; as well as the big picture economic outlook and projections for the rice industry, including the latest in rice breeding and sustainability.

Professor Richard Eckard will discuss research on carbon farming and accounting towards carbon neutral agriculture, drawing on his work as an advisor to Victorian, Australian, New Zealand, UK and EU governments, the International Livestock Research Institute and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Tickets for the conference, and the range of associated events, such as tours and industry awards dinner, are selling quickly

US lab tests show a spectacular increase in soluble silicon content in MaxSil's silicon fertiliser, made from crushed glass.

New analysis by a US-based Thornton Laboratories has revealed an almost doubling of the plant available, or soluble, silicon content in an improved MaxSil silicon plant nutrient fertiliser produced at the company's new Brendale factory in Brisbane.

Samples from the ceramic-lined ball mill showed a plant available silicon (PAS) content averaging 3.8 per cent, or 3.8 kilograms per 100kg of product - almost double results from previous tests from product produced at an outsourced toll facility.

The new manufacturing process, switched on in April, has achieved finer average grain size from glass pulverised into fine particles before being converted into pellets and applied either direct or mixed with other granular fertilisers.