HUNDREDS of Tasmanian livestock producers will gather in Launceston next week for one of the state’s most popular industry events.
Red Meat Updates, celebrating its 10th year, will be held at the Tramsheds in Launceston on Friday, July 28.
More than 350 producers are expected to attend the Update, featuring a program including both local farmers and specialist guest speakers.
Tickets to the event are sold out but anyone interested is encouraged to register for the waiting list.
Red Meat Updates Working Group chair Sarah Cole said the focus was to put together a program that would provide relevant and practical information for producers.
“It’s a producer-led and producer-focused event, so it has the producer in mind,” she said.
“It’s also in July which is a good time of the year for a lot of people and it’s also a good networking day.”
“I think managing agribusinesses has a lot of variables, so hopefully we’ve put together a program that can help smooth out some of those bumps,” Mrs Cole said.
“We try to have a wide variety of topics and presenters as well.”
The theme of this year’s event is Managing Risk and Exploring Opportunities.
Kicking off the program will be Jason Strong from Meat and Livestock Australia and Blake Holgate from Rabobank in New Zealand who will talk about farming under the spotlight and some of the lesson being learnt in NZ.
In the irrigated pastures section of the conference topics will include the Australian Feedbase Monitoring tool as well as the Tasmanian energy market and the use of perennial cereals.
The dryland pasture session will discuss the use of Seradellas, the Farming Forecaster in Tasmania and sustainable game management to relive grazing pressure.
In the Sustainable Futures part of the program Richard Eckard will discuss carbon neutral or low emission livestock production.
After that local producer James Downie from Dungrove will talk about the synergies and opportunities for carbon in grazing operations.
This year’s sheep producer session will include topics such as investing in new sheep infrastructure and managing internal parasites and worm burdens in sheep flocks.
The beef producer update will cover managing pestivirus and implementing fixed time artificial insemination in commercial herds.
The popular virtual farm tour is back again this year and will focus on members of the Circular Head Beef Producers Group.
To find out more go to http://www.redmeatupdates.com