The Leather cattle Co’s possess a clear vision to excel in the sustainable production of beef through excellence in environmental stewardship, animal management and increased productivity. These business goals are measured through a series of clearly defined environmental and community outcomes that include:

• improved conservation of land and water assets
• increased uptake of new technology and research and development
• increased skills in carbon accounting and biodiversity assessments including identifying tools to assist with this.
• enhanced resilience in farming systems, environment, business, and people
• creation of social cohesion and wellbeing in communities.

The program undertaken by Leather Cattle Company focusses on breeding and finishing cattle for several different markets, including the EU Grassland Certified Organic market; as well as the production of Fullblood and F1 Wagyu cattle for Japan.

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The AFM Has been a tool that has offered the Leather Cattle Company additional data to use in their pasture budgeting across all three properties.  This is essential in meting both market specifications and remining focussed on the key goals of the company.  In addition, the capacity of the AFM to show groundcover percentages is a valuable addition in their planning and maintenance of environmental responsibility and sustainable production.  Melinee Leather describes the value of planning and using accurate data in planning and to “help time our rotations.  It means this can be done remotely so we don’t have to be at every property to make decisions. It also allows us to meet reef regulation requirements as all properties are in reef catchment areas.”

Melinee Leather has used the AFM since its release in 2022 and sees the value of the property level information.  “Being able to track changes from 2017 is really useful.  We can look at management strategies and see the real effect they have has on our goals and on the environmental outcomes we have been working towards”.  The Leather Cattle Company utilises the Cibo Labs PastureKey service in order to obtain data for paddocks and have a more focussed and specific series of grazing management decisions.

While the AFM has only been available for a few months, the Leather Cattle Co consider it to be a very useful tool.  Melanie Leather says its “Particularly useful for auditing premium markets such as Organic, EU and Grasslands. By having credible verifiable data, we can gain premium prices for our beef.  Over time this access and credible verification will become more important to market access and maintaining a financial edge”

1. The AFM is a source of objective verifiable information that can be used to meet external reporting requirements e.g., Reef Regulations & market access.
2. The AFM offers data from recent years that is valuable in reviewing and refining grazing and landscape management decisions.
3. The tool provides a stepping point into greater detail, such as PastureKey, which can be used for paddock level grazing decisions.