Joy McClymont, Off The Track Training- YBPF 2021 MC
The YBPF committee is excited to welcome Joy McClymont back to the stage as our MC for the 2021 Young Beef Producers Forum! We are excited to have Joy along to bring a whole lot of fun and enthusiasm to the event; whilst keeping people ‘on track’ throughout the big days with some incentives (not to be late or run over time).
Joy McClymont is an inspirational, down to earth Aussie outback mum of 4 who is dedicated to providing access to top level fitness, nutrition and motivational strategies for people in any location. Whether in remote or inner city, Joy provides an opportunity for anyone to feel supported, connected and motivated through her company, ‘Off the Track Training’. Her vision is providing simple, fun and achievable solutions for health and wellbeing that her clients absolutely love.
Having personally experienced the isolation of being a young mum wanting to regain her own health and well-being with no availability of gyms, fitness groups or alike, Joy began to think out of the box. She began integrating fitness into everyday life with resources already available to her: a rock, a tree stump, a step, a can of beans or nothing but a wall and a floor. Joy brings to light that the possibility of great health is possible whatever the location or fitness level- and- its easier than people think.
Through her role as a Personal Trainer and Health and Fitness Motivator, Joy has assisted many people in tackling chronic disease, improving self-image and developing a positive ‘can do- attitude. Her clients report the benefits in other areas including personal relationships, family, work and business a result of improving their health through Joy’s sessions.
As well as doing ALL this, Joy also runs a rural sheep and cattle property at Longreach with her husband whilst raising and home schooling four young children (maybe Joy is Superwomen..). Her background includes primary school teaching, being the school principal, achieving the Former Half and Ironman Triathlon in France, Australia & Hawaii, endurance mountain bike riding and trekking and winning the QRRRWN 2015 Strong Women Leaders Award in Business, and more recently as Fitness Australia’s Active Achiever for 2016, as well as various other health and fitness training.
Joy is on a mission to build a society where being in fantastic health is the norm and is recognized as the most critical factor in living a quality life.
Shane Webcke, Queensland Safety Ambassador
Shane Webcke – football legend, sports presenter and Queensland Safety Ambassador. Shane played 254 matches for the Brisbane Broncos (including their 2006 Grand Final win), made 21 State of Origin appearances for Queensland, and played 20 Test matches for Australia. Shane shares the story of how his father's death impacted his family, visiting Queensland businesses and speaking with workers about the importance of staying safe at work and creating a strong safety culture.
Emma Black, COO, Black Box Co.
Emma has worked across the northern beef industry for the past thirteen years. After growing up on a property in western Queensland she went on to study a Bachelor of Livestock Science. Emma then based herself in north Queensland working directly with producers in livestock nutrition. With a strong desire to learn she went on to undertake an abattoir management graduate program to gain knowledge right along the beef supply chain. Emma then worked in Beef Extension with the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries Northern Beef team for nine years, based in North West Qld, taking a whole-of-business approach to assist producers both on and off-farm in livestock nutrition, pasture/livestock management, meat quality, research and adoption projects and general property management.
She is passionate about bringing together the on-ground knowledge, science and data to upskill producers to allow them to make the best management decisions for their business. Seeing a gap within this area of the industry led her to recently co-found, Black Box Co Software with Shannon Speight. As Chief Operations Officer, Emma is working directly with industry to build a software platform that ingests the production data generated on-farm, link it with individual animal data from right along the supply chain and turn it into easy-to-understand visual insights to allow producers to make more informed management and genetic decisions.
As winner of the prestigious Zanda McDonald Award in 2015 Emma undertook a tailored mentoring program with some of the most successful agricultural businesses across Australia and New Zealand focussing on business management and data collection. She is an active member of the Platinum Primary Producer Group, the Zanda McDonald Award Committee and the Next Generation Committee for Beef Australia. In addition, she was coach of the Australian National Meat Judging team for four years, taking them to the USA to compete at International Livestock Shows, learn about their agriculture industries and meat grading systems. She has further studied a Graduate Certificate in Rural Science - Agriculture Consulting (UNE) a Graduate Certificate in Agribusiness (MOC) and currently studying a Masters in Business Administration (Global) through James Cook University.
John McKillop, Chair, Red Meat Advisory Council
John McKillop brings over 25 years of senior agribusiness experience to the board including CEO of Hassad Australia, Managing Director of Clyde Agriculture and executive roles with Elders and Stanbroke Pastoral Company. During this period, John has been involved in beef and sheep production, feedlotting, processing, live export and meat exporting.
John is currently the Independent Chair of the Red Meat Advisory Council, Chair of LAWD, a newly established rural valuation and transaction firm and non-executive Director of the Dairy Farmers Milk Cooperative, Compass Agribusiness and on the advisory board of Kinross Farms, Victoria’s largest egg producer.
Previous board roles include Meat & Livestock Australia, Dairy Australia, Cubbie Cotton and the Primary Industries Education Foundation.
John holds a Diploma in Farm Management, Bachelor of Business, Graduate Certificate in Agribusiness, Master of Business Administration and is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Lousie Fitzgerald-Baker, The Pink Hard Hat
Working in market research and change management for 15 years and the property sector for over 16 years, Louise has a diverse range of private sector experience. But after a life altering event, she realised her version of success had become skewed and in seeking to correct it, embarked on a study that changed her life and that of countless others.
Louise is the Founder of the Well-th Matrix™ a Web App that creates a shared language around success and stress so you can pre-empt it rather than be a casualty of it. She is a globally respected speaker on entrepreneurship, financial resilience and wealth and wellbeing.
The author of the bestselling book, The Pink Hard Hat, Louise uses the construction metaphor to coach and teach women about financial insulation. Her book was launched by NAB in 2018 and profiled by Sunrise on the 7 Network, and is about building a life of security, resilience and purpose.
Louise’s passions include raising ducks, running with her dog Harley and drinking wine with good friends. She lives with her husband and daughters in a home she designed on acreage near Brisbane.
Chelsea Jarvis, Senior Scientist, University of Southern Queensland
Climate and weather necessarily shape many important aspects of the agricultural industries, from the field to the finished product. Doctor Chelsea Jarvis is a Senior Scientist at the University of Southern Queensland’s Centre for Applied Climate Sciences, focusing on communicating advancements in climate science to primary producers to assist in on-property management. She works closely with the pastoral industry across northern Australia.
With an undergraduate degree in geography that included a strong focus on climate, vegetation, and water use, Chelsea pursued a Masters and then a PhD in applied climatology. She has published a number of papers evaluating the relationship between large-scale climate drivers, such as El Niño, and primary production and has a special interest in communicating climate science to end users as well as taking recommendations from the producers back to the researchers.
Beau North, Lachlan Hughes Foundation Recipient
After agisting their cattle for close to 8 years, an inspiring RCS Grazing for Profit school set Beau and his fiancé Kat on a new path towards property ownership, spurred on by a passion for regenerative agriculture and a desire to be able to implement it fully on their own land.
It was a bumpy road as they discovered, with high land prices and a 30% deposit requirement seeing Beau and Kat sell nearly all of their cattle and scrape together every cent they could for the next 2 years from their jobs as an electrician and graphic designer.
At the end of 2020, Beau and Kat finally bought their first property, an old sugar cane farm near Sarina which they are currently converting to regenerative grazing using multi-species cover crops and various biological stimulants to encourage microbial activity and improve soil health, with the aim to slowly introduce permanent perennial pastures over time.
Beau and Kat still both work off farm with the goal to grow their business and become full-time farmers. Beau was also awarded the Lachlan Hughes Foundation scholarship for 2021, which has been absolutely life-changing in terms of furthering his education and experience in regenerative agriculture, as well as receiving much valued mentoring and support from industry leaders.
Hamish and Mary McIntyre, Principles of McIntyre Agriculture
Hamish and Mary McIntyre, principals of McIntyre Agriculture, run a family-owned mixed farming, cotton and cattle operation, managing 142,000 ha that they have purchased since 1999 across South Western Queensland. Initially gaining their start on a small block just outside of Dirranbandi, Hamish and Mary have built their business from the ground up, currently managing 7,000 breeders and their progeny in a breeding, backgrounding and feedlot finishing operation. The mixed farming enterprise supplies fodder, grain and cotton seed into the backgrounding and feedlot systems as well as cash crops as the opportunity arises. McIntyre Agriculture also boasts a substantial cotton operation, with a mixture of both dryland and irrigated cropping country. Astute business people, Hamish and Mary are very analytical in assessing the opportunities for their business. They are involved with cotton, grain and grazing industry benchmarking programs and utilise tools such as gross margins to ensure their decisions are profitable ones.
Hamish has served as chairman of the board for Cotton Australia and been involved in the Better Cotton Initiative, a Geneva based sustainability initiative that focuses on ensuring that environmental, social and economic sustainability is achieved across the supply chain in cotton growing regions around the world. Better Cotton Initiative accounts for almost a quarter of global cotton production and has seen Hamish travel to some of the most far flung places of the world.
Enoch Bergman, Veterinarian, Swans Veterinary Services
Enoch Bergman is a practicing veterinarian and part owner of Swans Veterinary Services located in Esperance WA. Growing up in rural Eastern Colorado, he left the town of Wild Horse (population 12) to secure a veterinary degree hoping to help make his friends and family more profitable beef producers. After graduating from Colorado State University in 2001, he struck out on his own primarily working for the lot feeding and sale yard sector. In 2003 he went back to university to work with students and to complete a Food Animal Medicine Internship, prior to emigrating to Australia. He had intended to only visit Australia for a year, aspiring to pick up good experiences, better stories, and an awesome accent. He quickly fell in love with his new clientele, their cows, the town, and eventually a gorgeous young physio. As far as his goals, he has achieved most of them, but still carries his congenital speech impediment, which makes him sound a bit like Trump. Do you remember Trump?
Enoch almost exclusively provides bovine veterinary services, consulting to a range of beef producers, ranging from cow/calf enterprises to lot feeders, as well as to other veterinarians. He has spoken broadly throughout Australia as well as overseas on a range of bovine topics, but is possibly best known for his work pertaining to Bovine Pestivirus, also known as Bovine Viral Diarrhea, or BVD. Viewed by many as the leading expert in providing advice to Australian beef and dairy veterinarians as well as producers in the systematic management of the disease, he pioneered ear notch testing in Australia to diagnose carrier animals, or Persistently Infected (PI) animals in 2006. Having established Australia’s first laboratory of its kind, his lab has received well over half a million samples from over 200 veterinary practices and thousands of producers. Enoch is also well known for his “Building a Better Cow” series, which focuses on the proactive management of heifers to improve lifetime breeding success including strategies to improve reproductive efficiency through the integration of Fixed Time Artificial Insemination (FTAI) in their breeding programs.
In 2014 and again in 2015 Enoch was elected as the President of the Australian Cattle Veterinarians (ACV), a special interest group of the Australian Veterinary Association (AVA). The ACV is comprised of over 1,000 veterinarians keenly interested in improving the profitability of producers and the welfare of their animals. During his tenure he worked hard to strengthen his association’s relationships with other peak industry bodies. He is a passionate advocate for the Australian beef sector and a vocal proponent of the veterinary industry’s role in supporting it. Having established a new group of friends and family to aspire to help, Enoch plans to stay in Australia, with his family of six, for good.
Stephen O'Brien, CEO, Mort & Co
Stephen joined Mort & Co in 2020, becoming only the second CEO in the history of the business.
A fourth-generation flour miller and baker, Stephen’s affiliation with the food industry began at an early age, when he started as an apprentice with Defiance Milling in Toowoomba. To complement his hands-on training, Stephen completed a tertiary degree in Commerce before undertaking further study with the Australian Institute of Company Directors. His combined experiences have allowed him to hold key roles with several listed, privately owned and private equity-based organisations. He has successfully led both food and beverage businesses in all states and territories throughout Australia. Additionally, Stephen has held executive and directorship roles with international companies in the USA, Middle East, Asia Pacific and across the African continent.
Selwyn Maller, Hamilton Park Wagyu
Selwyn Maller is an owner and operator of Hamilton Park Wagyu (HPW), a vertically integrated wagyu beef operation, managing 2500 wagyu breeders. Hamilton Park Wagyu is based in the Maranoa region and in recent years has expanded to the South Burnett, acquiring two irrigation properties to become a vertically integrated operation. Hamilton Park Wagyu beef is renowned for its quality taste, marbling and marketability in Australian domestic and international markets across 22 countries world-wide.
IVF technology plays a massive roll in the ever-evolving genetics at Hamilton Park Wagyu. The recent years have seen HPW sit in the top 5% of wagyu genetics in Australia. Hamilton Park Wagyu records every aspect of their cattle operation, from birth right through to the carcass, allowing traceability back to parentage to formulate business/genetic decisions.
In the last six years whilst running the business, Selwyn, has fulfilled the role as a director for the Australian Wagyu Association. Watching the wagyu industry grow from strength to strength has cemented Selwyn’s direction to buy a butcher shop and supply consumers the experience of eating quality wagyu beef at an affordable price.
Selwyn's aspiration is to work towards drought proofing his vertically integrated business and with The Phat Wag Butcher shop, well the sky’s the limit, supplying a “Nose to Tail” Wagyu eating experience.
Elisha Parker, Co-Founder, Cattlesales.com
Growing up on a cattle property near Clermont, Elisha has continued her involvement in the beef industry, co-founding an online advertising platform Cattlesales.com.au, and being appointed to the AgForce Cattle Board in 2020.
Elisha is also a co-founder of QLD Food Future that facilitates the 'A True Story' agricultural advocacy campaign and works remotely as a lawyer for a Brisbane-based law firm. Elisha has received several industry awards, including most recently being the 2020 Queensland AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award winner and completed the inaugural Advancing Beef Leaders (ABL) 2020/2021 program.
Megan Stafford, Agribusiness Relationship Manager, Suncorp
Megan Stafford is a former journalist whose curiosity (read: nosiness) has never left her. She won a scholarship to go to Sydney in her final year of study and worked at the Nine Network (60 Minutes, A Current Affair, Today, and the national newsroom) and Walkley Foundation. Later, she travelled and worked in news and communications. After another trip overseas, she turned her hand to banking – because plot twists make every life story more interesting – and now works as an Agribusiness Relationship Manager for Suncorp in North Queensland. In 2021, she launched a podcast How Do You Decide? that explores how the decisions we make shape us.
Callum Rayne, Property Manager-Lighthouse, Packhorse
Callum brings over 10 years of diverse industry knowledge with an innovative and regenerative approach to agriculture asset management. He applies practical hands-on management with strategic long-term plans for property development and environmental outcomes. Callum specialises in soil and pasture health, implementing new strategies for improving the landscapes and assets we manage to drive maximum economic growth and environmental health.
Zachary Duff, Property Manager- Naturi Aggregation, Packhorse
Zach Duff grew up on the family property on the Darling Downs and brings 20 years pastoral experience to the team.
Zach started his career with Stanbroke Pastoral company progressing to assistant manager before moving to Georgina Pastoral Co to manage Armraynald Station.
Following the sale of Armraynald to Paraway Pastoral Co, Zach worked for 13 years managing large scale Breeder and Grower businesses in the Gulf, Barkly and Channel country regions.
He has a passion for sustainable agriculture and developing staff for the ag industry and has been part many community groups and environmental programs.
Rachel Cant, Ruminant Nutritionist
Rachel is a Ruminant Nutritionist, local beef producer and committee member of the Australian Association of Ruminant Nutrition (AARN). Rachel completed an honours project on NIRS for predicting beef liveweight performance on pastures and forage rations and graduated with a Bachelor of Agricultural Science – Rural Management. Rachel has over 14 years’ experience in the nutrition field. A year ago, she stepped away from her role as General Manager of a stockfeed business to focus on her own beef business but continues to enjoy providing nutrition consulting. She strives to improve production and profitability through targeted nutrition and calculated decision making.
The AARN is the national professional association for ruminant nutritionists in Australia. It is a non-for-profit organisation that provides education, training, professional development, mentoring, networking opportunities and representation to industry bodies. The AARN committee is eager to attract more Queensland and beef members to the association. They see a wealth of opportunity in this sector from increasing knowledge and expertise in the field, starting with junior or potential nutritionists. The AARN present a diverse range of leading industry research and science to keep its members current and well informed.
John McLaughlin, Rangelands Project Officer, Gulf Savannah NRM
John McLaughlin is a grazing extension officer based out of Georgetown, in far North Queensland. Coordinating the Grazing Programs for the local NRM organisation in the region, he works closely with producers on extensive beef operations in the gulf.
John has a passion for animal production and sustainable land management, with a strong tertiary background in various scientific disciplines.