The agricultural trading sector faces challenges with volatile prices and increased government regulations. Our guest this week, David Cornish, explains how strategic planning is crucial to position your business to successfully navigate these issues.
In the current environment, “We've seen businesses that were quite profitable or quite sustainable, even 12 months ago, now making a loss,” explains David. With high inflation, high-interest rates, potentially low capital appreciation and low commodity prices, David points out that it doesn’t make sense right now to purchase more land. Instead, investing within your boundary fence, rather than expanding it, is a better plan.
David encourages business owners to take a hard look at where that on-farm investment is made. “Often what we have is that our costs have to increase, to increase our income. Here's our opportunity to go, no, we're not gonna let that happen. We're gonna have a look at everything that we spend our dollars on and say, can we do that better or do we need to do that?”
David admits that thinking about strategy doesn't seem like an appealing task for anyone when there are plenty of other things to do on the farm. But he suggests that spending the time to identify those small 1% changes, that result in a thriving and resilient business, is worth it.
“When we look at those incremental performances, and you listen to leading teams, one of the things they often talk about is this concept of ‘It's the one percenters that give you the big return’,” he explains. “It's those one or two percenters that add up to the 20 percenters that makes it worthwhile. And, for most of us, we are in a commodity industry, so let's manage what we can manage and control what we control.”
David and Ferg discuss how to decide what those small incremental improvements can be. It can be difficult to know what to cut out of a farming business when it is so complex. Is it saving money by buying fewer rams this year or reducing fertiliser? Is it spending money to save you time by putting in laneways?
You’ll have to tune in to hear David's advice there!
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.
Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, and Heiniger Australia and New Zealand.
These companies are leaders in their respective fields and it is a privilege to have them supporting the Head Shepherd Podcast. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE
The agricultural trading sector faces challenges with volatile prices and increased government regulations. Our guest this week, David Cornish, explains how strategic planning is crucial to position your business to successfully navigate these issues.
In the current environment, “We've seen businesses that were quite profitable or quite sustainable, even 12 months ago, now making a loss,” explains David. With high inflation, high-interest rates, potentially low capital appreciation and low commodity prices, David points out that it doesn’t make sense right now to purchase more land. Instead, investing within your boundary fence, rather than expanding it, is a better plan.
David encourages business owners to take a hard look at where that on-farm investment is made. “Often what we have is that our costs have to increase, to increase our income. Here's our opportunity to go, no, we're not gonna let that happen. We're gonna have a look at everything that we spend our dollars on and say, can we do that better or do we need to do that?”
David admits that thinking about strategy doesn't seem like an appealing task for anyone when there are plenty of other things to do on the farm. But he suggests that spending the time to identify those small 1% changes, that result in a thriving and resilient business, is worth it.
“When we look at those incremental performances, and you listen to leading teams, one of the things they often talk about is this concept of ‘It's the one percenters that give you the big return’,” he explains. “It's those one or two percenters that add up to the 20 percenters that makes it worthwhile. And, for most of us, we are in a commodity industry, so let's manage what we can manage and control what we control.”
David and Ferg discuss how to decide what those small incremental improvements can be. It can be difficult to know what to cut out of a farming business when it is so complex. Is it saving money by buying fewer rams this year or reducing fertiliser? Is it spending money to save you time by putting in laneways?
You’ll have to tune in to hear David's advice there!
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.
Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, and Heiniger Australia and New Zealand.
These companies are leaders in their respective fields and it is a privilege to have them supporting the Head Shepherd Podcast. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE
Welcome to the Head Shepherd podcast. I'm your host, mark Ferguson, ceo at Next Gen Agri International, where we help livestock managers to get the best out of their stock. I want to take this opportunity to thank our friends at MSD Animal Health in Orflex for sponsoring Head Shepherd again this season, and I'm also excited to introduce our mates at Heinegger as brand new sponsors of the show. Msd in Orflex, or perhaps better known as Cooper's Animal Health in Australia, offer one of New Zealand, australia's, largest livestock product portfolios, with a comprehensive suite of animal health and management products connected through identification, traceability and monitoring solutions. Like us, they see how the wealth and breadth of information born out of this podcast can help their men and their farming clients achieve their mission of the science of healthier animals.
Speaker 1:Heinegger will need little introduction to our audience. A market leader and one-stop shop for wool harvesting and animal fibre removal, together with an expanding range of agricultural products and inputs, the Heinegger name is synonymous with quality, reliability and precision. The Heinegger team have a deep understanding of livestock agriculture, backed by Swiss engineering and a family business dedicated to manufacturing the best. It's fantastic to have both of these sponsors supporting us and bringing Head Shepherd to you each week, and now it's time to get on with this week's episode. Welcome back to Head Shepherd Sophie. What's happening this week?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have a live on the hub tonight. We've got the Mali Mines getting together, which is you, mark, bill Malcolm and Ken Solly we can get together and just have a casual conversation about genetics, economics and all things agriculture. It's yeah, it starts at eight o'clock on the hub, free for anyone to enter. The hubnetranagrycom is where you'll find it.
Speaker 1:Excellent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to be good fun chatting with Sol and Bill. Yeah, we're calling it the Mali Mines. We all grew up within about 15Ks of each other in different generations. Yeah, so Bill was, yeah, a neighbor. Anyone who's heard us talk before knows that our farm's basically next door where I grew up and he did, and Ken not too far away. But yeah, I think they are literally looking forward to having those two guys chatting and we hope to make that somewhat frequent to a few of them For the year there.
Speaker 1:Obviously, ken's background is really around the people and nutrition as well, but his strengths are probably in helping people navigate change. And Bill's obviously an economic guru and one of the practical ones, one of the ones that understands the practicalities of farming and views that through an economic lens, which is always great, and I'll try and chip away with a bit of nutrition and genetics chat. But yeah, it's a great opportunity to get on there and ask you questions of us three, I suppose and have a good chat and talk about state of play and how to set businesses up for future prosperity. If we get on with this week's show, we've got David Cornish joining us, david's director at Marcus Oldham. He runs his own podcast called Ag Talk and we chat a little bit about podcasting. But yeah, david's a wealth of knowledge around agribusiness and he's spent that time in the banking sector and now lecturing at Marcus Oldham and really loves that interaction with the style of student you get at Marcus. So, yeah, it's a good chat that I'm sure you're going to enjoy and we talk, I guess, about the situation as it is currently and then try to go a bit high level and think about how we set up businesses for future as well. So it's a pretty common theme, I guess, to what we're going to be talking about tonight with Bill and Ken.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Head Shepherd. Great this week to be welcoming a fellow podcast of David Cornish to the show. Welcome, david, g'day Ferg. How are you? Hey, good mate, thanks for joining us and one of the best setups we've recorded. While I got out, we're both both mic'd up and ready to rock and roll, so that's good. I guess we'll start as we do, with a bit of background. You're sort of what led you to now be director there at Marcus Oldham, but the sort of career today of how you'll end up where you are.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's an easy one, Ferg. If you'd asked me 20 or 30 years ago that I'd end up as a director at Marcus Oldham, I would have gone. You are kidding me. I mean, I went up to UNE, did the Rob College, une at Geco's and joined the bank National Bank and that was because I couldn't get a job anywhere else. I mean in those days unlike today, which is fantastic it was very difficult for a grad to get a job, I think in agriculture, and there was a lot of jobs closing down. So anyway, the bank took me. I was going to stay there, talk, find a real job.
Speaker 3:So 13 years later I ended up as regional manager up in Maury, which was fantastic for anyone who's interested in agriculture. It was just such an eye-opener and just great people, great part of the world. Then I took a sort of couple of changes and I won't bore you with all the. I sort of went into from a very long-term, stable career to a lot of different jobs, including landmark, as a merchandise regional manager and in other banks and consulting. I was with Moody and for which was MSNA in those days for about five or six years and sort of fell into lecturing and it's one of those things that In hindsight you look back and say, gee, I should have been doing that 20 years ago and it's just something that's clicked with me and I've enjoyed and pretty passionate about now, and especially where I am now, where I can focus on agriculture and you're working with people who are keen on agriculture, so it works really well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, excellent. So yeah, obviously, agribusiness has probably been the centre for that career right throughout, and I guess that's where we want to go today, and it's no secret that it's a relatively trough trading environment. I guess, what are you saying? What's, what's things looking like out there in Victoria?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's weird, it's really weird. And what I say about that is, again, where does my passion come from? Agriculture. Well, there's been a family farm for a long time and we're based at a Western Victoria. So we run a very small lamb and cattle operation there. So I sold my prime lambs if I can use that term before Christmas for averaging $70 a head. I sold my cracker cows in just last week for $79 a head. So I don't know what I'm doing, but that's. I don't think I'm on my own there with that type of thing. So that's fascinating.
Speaker 3:And again, we've sort of gone through this trough. But again I'm selling my steers this week, so hopefully it's going to be a little bit better. But the reality is prices in any commodity are volatile and that's just the way it is. On the reverse side, we had a pretty good year from a production perspective. It was bloody wet in winter, really wet, that's even for the Western District. We're usually not that wet, but overall we still had, we still got green grass, so it's only now dying off. So in that perspective, I know worms, yes, but I'm trusting those EBVs, mate, and I am measuring every two weeks and that EBV system seems to work well, amazing, amazing.
Speaker 3:So, we haven't had to drench some matures yet.
Speaker 3:But yeah, it has been tough. Now I think one of the things we've got to, we've got to realise is, for we can sort of make a light of it, we're all back to normal etc, etc. But I suppose when and I'm not going to pull, I'm not going to say you're as old as me, but you know when I left uni we went into and everything was cracking till 88. And then we had the floor crash and then we had commodity slumps. We had the EU, we were shooting sheep rather than selling them and that went on.
Speaker 3:That sort of depressed market went on for five, 10 years time and as a banker I was dealing with some pretty tragic situations, really tragic, which included suicide. So you know we went through some desperate times there and what we've been lucky, if you think about it, for the last five or six years, if I look back on it haven't been too bad in most commodities across Australia. Now there will always be a pot, but again, I don't want to speak from New Zealand, but things have been pretty bloody good and we've suddenly hit this whoa reality check. But yeah, it'll be interesting. I don't know how much of it is having a psychological effect. Yes, it is having a bottom line effect, but I don't think that'll be long term. But I am concerned about the psychological effect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's the momentum that we've sort of talked about it a bit in newsletters and internal discussions and stuff that's definitely hitting the bottom line but also the momentum shift changes the psychology big time and that everything can seem pretty good.
Speaker 1:Everything can seem pretty bad all of a sudden and it's sort of yeah, I guess we do need to try and remember that things go up, like what goes up must come down and all the rest of it. But I guess it's interesting in New Zealand, where we're a bit of a phase shift away from Australia in this particular downturn. So New Zealand held up, I think, probably to the detriment of some of the meat companies' bottom lines, but they held prices for longer and then it's now sort of probably now where it's bottoming the hardest when prices are down, whereas Australia seems to have hopefully, if we can has been through the low ones, now climbing back up again. So New Zealand seems to be kind of in the middle of the low at the moment. But we all play on the world market so the product must be shifting somewhere if Australians can pay for it.
Speaker 3:What I found fascinating we take students on overseas tours, so I was involved in taking the agri-business to New Zealand. The first year agri-business go to New Zealand. The second year it's go to the US. But talking to the farmers and While there certainly wasn't the concern about commodities or climate as much, there certainly seemed to be this overhang of government regulation that we don't seem to have over here and there seemed to be a bit of a real concern at that stage about the direction of that. So it was really interesting contrasting and comparing where, from a headspace, you think, Australian farmers are to New Zealand and there were similar feelings but they were being driven by different directions or different feedback systems.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. And it's interesting as I sort of flit across between the two quite often, and it's probably it's not often where the cycles are the same, but certainly different reasons. But also and that was just at the end of last year where probably both sides of the ditch psychologically, where people weren't that positive and yeah, for money through I mean it's now commodity prices here but it's definitely been that overhang of government regulation and sort of, yeah, real concern about your ability to farm in the way that I mean I guess we all grown up with driving productivity and the way to get ahead is to build productivity in your farm, develop country, increase stock and rate, increase quality of stock, all the rest of it. And yet once that lever gets taken away from you by regulation, you're sort of left wondering how are you actually going to improve the outcome for you and the next generation, because the things that you normally do aren't actually available anymore. So that's certainly changed the landscape over here considerably.
Speaker 3:It's really interesting looking on the world scene. You look in Europe, that seems to be one of the main drivers. Now there's a whole lot of people saying a whole lot of different things about what's happening, but one of the probably from what I'm getting from what I would consider reputable sources is that this, this overhang of governments now now we know that they're highly subsidised compared to Australia and New Zealand, but it seems to be this increased regulation or set aside type schemes that's setting up and that's the sort of seems like the almost a straw that's broke the camel back. I know the French love to demonstrate, put hay and stuff in the Champs-Elysees, but there certainly seems to be not just them that if you look at what's happening on the social media feeds and etc. Etc. It seems to be this growing concern about farmers unable to do what would be considered productivity improvements, profit maximisation type things, and the government seems to be pushing these more and more. Now, where that will end up, I don't know, but I'll be interested in your thoughts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I wish, I wish I was able to have a clear direction on that front. I think it's yeah, I don't know. I guess what what we see happening a bit is is brands leading as much as governments, and I think that that has some opportunity as well, some, maybe some risk, but definitely some opportunity where, where brands are getting organised to support farmers in different ways than than just in the straight commodity sort of faceless people on either side of the either side of that equation, as, as those partnerships seem to get stronger and stronger. There's, yeah, I see this big opportunity there in different, different fields, but and I think, yeah, I guess that's what, that that's the big opportunity, but then it's government regulation around new treatment, management and water and stuff are probably at their ideal level.
Speaker 1:I kind of got the right concept at heart, but the way it gets implemented is it ends up being like this horrendous probably is the best way to describe it in terms of what is, what is. The sort of how that policy actually hits the ground is really hard to, really frustrating, because it's not consistent and it's not logical and and it's not and I guess it's the scale that you've got to try and operate at a government level as impossible to handle a nuance of different, different farms, because every every farm is slightly different and different. So it's going to be, I know it's certainly certainly some serious navigation required. I guess, rather than I guess the things that we can and can't control and governments tend to be things that we can't control that well, yeah, I guess, in terms of business planning, what are you sort of telling students and and maybe you're interacting with around, how we, how we set ourselves up for the for the best future?
Speaker 3:And again, that's a really good point for good, because I think you know one of the things that we look back, probably about halfway through last year and so well, things have changed. And what you got to think about is, if you think about the, the cycles of interest rates, capital appreciation, good season, everything, everything was set up for a business that was highly leveraged and highly productive. If you could do those things and do it well, the capital appreciation and the wealth you created over the last five years was unbelievable. But what we've now seen is those trends or cycles of change. So the relationship between just rates, capital appreciation, Australia and inflation all those things has changed significantly and we're seeing businesses that were quite profitable, quite sustainable, let's say even 12 months ago, now making a loss.
Speaker 3:So what we're looking at saying is that overarching strategy and if you think about farming as a system and we all have our own systems but does that system now make sense in a environment which is high inflation, high interest rates, potentially low capital appreciation and low commodity prices?
Speaker 3:And we would argue no. The concept is you're buying land at quite expensive prices and again, you're brave to say, never buy land. And even when I was a consultant, I was always very careful not to. But if you think about how can I get my biggest bang for my bucks, what can I do with my marginal dollar? We would argue that it's probably that marginal return, marginal cost type strategies coming back into play. So how can we improve our return to assets, on the assets we own, and that's going to be your best bang for your bucks. That's where you're going to get your 20, 30 percent return for your dollars spent and wait to again. No one can pick when the bottom of the market is and maybe things will change around it again with interest rates being put on hold. But the reality is is that that environment that we are now working in is significantly different to what the environment was even 12 months ago, and in that we need to think about strategically how do we reposition our system to take advantage of that.
Speaker 1:And I guess some of those, when you do, I guess, start investing within the side of the boundary fence rather than increasing that boundary fence that the things that you can do that I guess aren't necessarily massive, massive investments but can have big hits on productivity things like laneways and breaking up paddocks and subdividing all that sort of stuff that actually can have a material impact on productivity and therefore profitability, without without being major budget items compared to what buying the neighbors is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'll give you a little example, and this is maybe a little bit off center, but it's fascinating when we look at those increment, incremental performances and you listen to leading teams or teams that are champion teams and one of the things they often talk about is this concept around it's the small things, it's that it's the one percenters that gives you the, the big return. And my wife works at a major goat sheep manufacturing operation and one of the things is just simply moving the whole system on to and again. I don't want to bore people with computer systems, but it's, it's. It's a Microsoft product, but she worked out that there was significant savings by just how quickly people can now do searching for documents. Now I tell me anyone who sits there and and sits there and works out, oh, you know, let's look at our systems about how we actually manage data and how we can do that more efficiently. Or are we going to talk about let's get the latest catalog and talk about EBBs? I know what I'd like to talk about. That's me. I'd rather look at the catalog and think about those little marginal returns.
Speaker 3:Now, this sort of concept around lean operations, if we can and again, we've got to take advantage of the situation we're in. We often what we have is our costs increase to our income. So here's our opportunity to go now. We're not going to let that happen. We're going to have a look at everything that we spend our dollars on and say can we do that better or do we need to do that? And it's sort of like when I'm trying to get fit I know you've been doing a fair bit of running Do I really need that extra piece of Mars bar or whatever it is, or do I really actually can do without?
Speaker 3:And I think we sometimes do allow our systems to get a bit. Let's call it fat. And if we can find just the little things and it won't be you won't find 20 percent here, you won't find 30 percent here, but those ones and twos, they soon add up to that 10 to 20 percent. So it's a real and again, time and time again and I said I was going to start this podcast by apologizing to all the consultants that I'm stealing their work from, but including yourself but it's those one or two percenters that add up to the 20 percenters. That makes it worthwhile. And we are in a. For most of us, we are in a commodity industry and we've got to focus on and you talked about what can we control. So let's manage what we can manage and control what we control, and what we've got to do is think about how we position our business strategically to deal with those things that we can.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I guess, if people are and many will be in that prioritization mode, either with the support of their bank manager or or or painting from the bank manager or or farm accountant, the have you got any sort of decision rules? That is sort of how you start what you start crossing off the list or or what I guess we see sometimes. We see interesting decision making at these times, like it's cut fertiliser, don't buy as many rams a year, use the old rams again, like there's sort of I guess there's sometimes there's seems logical. And then other things that others don't seem that logical.
Speaker 1:And I guess the other risk is that we were pretty good at just dropping our head and saying, right, we're just going to work through this, we're just going to work like it's sun comes up, we're going to work until, and like we won't get that extra casual labour in that we might have been using or getting that contract, in that we might have been using which and that can have a big impact on on quality of life as well. So it's a. It's a fine balance between, yeah, obviously cutting, cutting those 1% is, but but making sure that the right 1% is I suppose I nailed it and that it's the right ones.
Speaker 3:And again, I actually doubled Miram purchases this year because they were half the price, and I increased my, took my index up about 10, 10 points. Now that's a once in a probably three or four year time that I can do that. So I've made a. I thought that those impacts that I could make when, when, when things were cheaper, are important. It's the old adage if I spend a dollar will I get two. Now, if you can spend a dollar and I'm going to make $2, and I would argue that fertilizer is one of the things that does that we don't cut that.
Speaker 3:And the reality is for a majority of livestock operations and I'll say Southern livestock operations, northern livestock operations are slightly different A significant amount of our costs, of what we call overheads Excuse me, I don't like to use the word fixed because they'd never seem to be fixed. Let's call them overheads. And what we've got to try and do is they. You know, when you're doing your cash flow, you just you wheel them out and you show your rates or whatever you know, usually put another 10% on because they're just going to go up. So I can't change those, but what I can do is try and see whether I can improve my productivity. So I try and minimize those.
Speaker 3:Now, machinery is usually the big one in an Australian system. Back in the millennium drought we could. When I was working as a consultant, we were quite quick to identify what the issue is. When we were driving the front gate and we saw all the second hand machinery lining up the lining up the drive. You know, you knew that the problem was in the machinery ownership issue because there was a lot of fixed costs sitting there that weren't doing anything. That was costing you money. So what you had to do is try, and what we did a lot of that and solved a lot of problems was trying to rationalize the capital investments. So we minimized our depreciation, managed our leases and all that type of stuff.
Speaker 3:But so one of the things is saying how can we actually increase our productivity to meet our costs of operation? And given we have a high fixed cost operation which is really interesting because it's different to a manufacturing operation where a lot of their costs are in the variable cost, so they shut down, for us it's actually the reverse we're going to produce more to survive because we're going to spread our overheads over more kilos rather than reducing our kilos. So when I say those one, two percenters, you're right. First of all find the costs, which are the one, two percenters, but then it's more about how you do it.
Speaker 3:Is there ways that we can look at the man hours, how we use our systems? That means that we can do it more efficiently and that might be a management change. Are we allowing our systems, our people's systems, to work efficiently, or are we trying to find a nice word of saying, still trying to do a commander control model which doesn't work these days? Most farming operations, even for a family operation to be sustainable, is quite big. It's significantly size. I mean I would argue that you're talking somewhere between 20, 15 million to 20 million for a one person operation or family operation. That's a lot of money and it's a lot of sheep, a lot of cattle, a lot of cropping, whatever it is, and we've got to be able to do that better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, as you mentioned, like lean principles, where I'm in the number of times I'm gonna be without. Yeah, like a number of times you're on farms and people go to vaccinate the sheep and someone forgot to buy the vaccine or we haven't got needles or we haven't got, and so someone's off to town and then or you're there trying to collect some information or whatever in the battery's flat or whatever. Like the amount of time we can burn by probably not being in a helicopter often enough and having that, if you are a manager of that operation, actually making sure the stuff's there to do the job and the people are well equipped to do the job efficiently is sort of, I guess, business 101, but something that probably not that great at farming because it's all a bit, I guess we, the weather stuffs us up a bit and we can use that as a bit of an excuse to sort of run by the side of our pants a bit.
Speaker 3:Oh, let's be honest, ferg, it's boring as a batshit, but the reality is. The reality is is that's what makes a good business. And again and you're looking again, if you wanna use sporting analogies that's what good sports teams always talk about. It's those small, incremental things of doing it right, doing it once, but doing it right. And if you can do that, you pick up those efficiencies and I think it also makes for a better business environment. I mean, one of the things we talk about is culture, and one of my favorite sayings is by a guy called Peter Drucker, which is culture.
Speaker 3:Each strategy for breakfast and culture is about having an ethos or a values, about how we go down business. So if we can inculcate that we've got this concept that we do it once and we do it right, suddenly that becomes the way that we, this business, works and operates, and suddenly it becomes a snowball and suddenly the business becomes more efficient, there's less buggerizing around, there's more things get done and it's actually more enjoyable. And you go back to what you talk about finding time off. And again, this isn't the case in any case, and I know there are people who are burning both ends of the candle. But if we look at saying, rather than just trying and it's actually attributed to Einstein, but he actually didn't say it we can either do the things like we've always done it and expect a different outcome. It's the first sign of insanity. And what I use that quote to say is if it ain't working the way we're doing it just doing it harder it ain't gonna get better. And again, if you can't see that, get someone in who can. And because some of the best things and I've got a new person working with me now who's bringing fresh eyes into this business.
Speaker 3:And I tell you, ferg, I've got a lot of work to do in my processes. Thankfully, she's looking at it and saying we've got to do this better, and she's right. But we come accustomed, I've become lazy in a way with the way the system's done and I would argue that that's just small business. That's the way we operate. We get not comfortable. I suppose it's comfortable, but there's always, should always be tacking and saying why are we doing this? What can we do better? How can we do it better? Why, what, how were the questions is so important in a business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess we can't get away from the fact that a brain evolved for the path of least resistance and We'll continue that in business. If we haven't, we don't. We don't seek change unless it gets forced on us. So once, yeah, it can. It's easy to get lazy, we all get lazy, and so it's sort of that. Those fresh eyes are always, always awesome, and we're. I'm very fortunate to have some good people around me that keep me honest and certainly got heaps of improvement here to work on as well. But I guess if we move to To the role there at Marcus, for those who I mean most people listening will know about Marcus Holden but there'll be some that don't it's Maybe just a quick spill into what Marcus does. It's obviously the the lots of great Marcus Grads out there who running lots of businesses and doing lots of good things. You would have come across a couple, haven't you? It's the odd one.
Speaker 3:Okay, so a little bit of background. We're a private institution. 1962 we were set up based on a bequest from a guy called Marcus William Oldham and and that that bequest was To set up a tertiary college that was completely focused on educating farmers in in the business of Farming. I suppose since then we've grown from probably 20 to 30 people coming through. We've now got about a hundred and sixty five students and we've got three streams been what we call agriculture, bachelor of Agriculture, which is, let's call it, on farm. Then we've got agribusiness, which is looking at the service sector of these two obviously have a crossover. And then we've got our equine. So that's all the undergraduate. And then we've got postgraduate, which we've got about 30 to 40 people doing that, which is Obviously taking some of the learnings that we've gotten, looking at how we take them a bit further with.
Speaker 3:As I say, one of the things is we're all on campus. We've got about a hundred and fifty three rooms and we're just building a new accommodation ring to a hundred and ninety and that. What I love about it is that a we don't Allow people to come here straight out of school and so we've got people coming in here. I hopefully had two, three, four years out of out of out of In the workforce, and they come here with minds that know a little bit about what we're talking about and Certainly keep me on my toes, because if I say something which is rubbish for they tell me and I love that. The other thing is they come from all states. We only get about 30 30% of our cohort come from Victoria. They come from Northern Territory, queensland, tassie Only. Fortunately we've only had one or two from Kiwi land, but hopefully we can improve that.
Speaker 3:But it yeah, it's, it's very focused on agriculture. That's all we do and we focus on the business side of it. How do you run a business? So it's all this great work that other Unis do about the research and the science and all that type of stuff, and I call that sort of If you think about the iceberg that's all the stuff that we need to be able to comprehend so that you can make a better business Decision. So we work on that other side of it. So how do you take that information and use it, understand it and use it to make good business decisions?
Speaker 1:and it's a bit of fun definitely and yeah, when in your intro a talked about you sort of found a lecturing and and glad you did I sort of found the lecturing and didn't go so well. That was In my, in my defense. That was undergrads who didn't really want to be there and I think I've only done one Lecture to mark is that I would have had a bit by zoom back in covered, but the yeah, going by the sort of interactions I've had, one tools over here and that sort of stuff and what I've heard from farmers where the students have visited, yeah, it's a much more interested group of people and I guess, standing up in the front of a group, I love working with farmers and and running courses for farmers and that's what teaching markers old and people would be like. Compared to yesterday, straight undergrad who's kind of only there to try and get into bed or whatever else that was. I found that relatively frustrating.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, the only don't don't, don't get me wrong, for there's still the ones that sit in the back of the class watching John Deere videos on the YouTube. You just got to keep on and. But the other thing we do is, at a postgraduate level, we're order at a Short course levels is what we call the leadership course, which I've been very fortunate to be part of one of the facilities for the last three or four years and, and that's More, pitched at people who have been out in the in the workforce for five, six, seven, ten years, fifteen years, twenty years. We've had. I actually had one of my board members come and do it, which was quite interesting, but I think she enjoyed it.
Speaker 3:But it's, it's, it's. It's a fabulous sort of like. Five days we live on campus and we just talk about leadership and and the beauty. What I love about is we get people from banking, farming, from pastoral country, we get the apirist society send two people every year, no ways to scream, and the great fun and and and and you know just that ecliptic mix of different people who are working in Leadership and agriculture across the whole countryside. But what they realize is these common denominators which to which actually they walk out of there was this really tight cohort that they know they can work with her and and and continue their leadership journeys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that sort of thing is I don't know. It's what I love about Ag is the networks that you form through, whether it's being on a committee or helping organize something or just collaborating across various things. It's yeah, the people are obviously, obviously fantastic and those networks really put you in good stead to. When you don't know something, better ring up the phone and talk to someone that does, because we can't be across everything. So it's yeah, no, those networks are awesome. The before we end would be good to give the Ag Talk podcast a bit of a plug, you mean chipping away there, chipping away their podcasting away.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it all started like all these things start, in COVID and someone actually got called Kevin Folter, who's a University of Florida. We get a guest speaker out every so often and he basically threw down the gauntlet to the undergrad, just said, why not have a go? And so I thought, during COVID, will why not have a go? And like all these things, ferg, where we're, there's a reason why we don't do this professionally. I shouldn't put you into that, but but it's a bit of fun and I love it because it allows me to talk to people around the world who might have a different opinion or a different concept or can reinforce some evidence and discussions around what's happening in the business of agriculture. So, for instance, I've got a next one is I've got John Francis from Consulting about talking about numbers. I've got an agronomist from Washington State University talking about soils, carbon soils and all those type of things that, gee, there's a lot of stuff out there at the moment which you'd have to question, but I love people who are there to question it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, same, that's what it's the conversations and, and, yeah, it gives you the opportunity to excuse to have your arms, which is which is always good, and but, yeah, definitely get you outside of your networks and chatting with people that you wouldn't really you'd never have the opportunity to chat for half an hour with. So it's yeah, no it's good.
Speaker 3:It's good for the brain too, isn't it, ferg? I mean, I applaud anyone to have a crack because it exercises your brain, because you do get outside your comfort zone and it makes you you have to think pretty hard for well, 30-40 minutes, yeah, yeah, yeah which is tough enough these days.
Speaker 1:Awesome, I'll let you get back to teaching some young minds. But, yeah, appreciate your time and look forward to catching up in person one of these days and look forward to the next tour group over here. And yeah, it's great things doing there at Marcus Holderman. Yeah, look forward to seeing where your new role goes, with teaching more of that undergrad, more of that post-grad work and seeing where that can go.
Speaker 3:Cheers Ferg, and keep up the good work. Mate, you don't know a ripper of a job. Thanks, mate.
Speaker 1:Thanks again to our mates in Heinegger, who are proud world leaders in the manufacturing and supply professional sheep shearing and clipping equipment. They understand that their customers rely on the quality and performance of their products each and every day. Also, thanks to our friends at MSD Animal Health and Orphlex, they offer an extensive livestock portfolio focused on animal health and management, all backed up by exceptional service. Both of these companies are wonderful supporters of the Australian and New Zealand livestock industries and we thank them for sponsoring the HHP podcast.