CATTLE industry training programs are ensuring the future of the Top End workforce by nurturing young, willing trainees.
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The Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association (NTCA) has developed ongoing initiatives to train indigenous Australians and Indonesian students in best practice in the beef sector.
And one of the country’s largest cattle businesses, the forward-looking National Indigenous Pastoral Enterprises (NIPE), assists indigenous landholders to increase economic development and employment opportunities for themselves and future generations.
“Profit is not the single driver of our operations, although we do work hard on the commercial aspect,” said NIPE’s chief executive Craig North. “Driving indigenous employment and investment back onto indigenous land is core to our business.
“While we have traditionally leased back, we are looking more at joint ventures and equity partnerships with Aboriginal people to increase the flexibility with which we can work with indigenous people to get agribusinesses up and running.”
NIPE, the agribusiness arm of the Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC), operates 14 businesses – most of them in cattle in northern Australia – either owned by the parent company or by indigenous interests.
It runs more than 90,000 head of Brahman and Brahman-cross cattle across more than two million hectares, with 25000 head sold last financial year.
About 65 per cent went to live export markets, mostly Indonesia and Vietnam, with the rest sold domestically.
NIPE also operates one of the largest live export cattle depots near the port of Broome and a small cattle and and buffalo abattoir on leased land at Gunbalanya in the Northern Territory. The NTCA Indonesia Australia Pastoral Program began in March 2012 when NTCA signed a memorandum of understanding with the Indonesian Society for Animal Science and Indonesian universities.
The Indonesia-Australia Partnership on Food Security in the Red Meat and Cattle Sector funds the program, which has held courses each year since. In April the program hosted 10 female and 10 male animal husbandry students from 14 universities in 11 provinces for nine weeks. They trained in the basics of stockmanship, animal welfare and station maintenance at Charles Darwin University in Katherine to prepare them for work experience on cattle stations.
NTCA president Tom Stockwell praised the initiative. “There is no better school than a university agriculture department or a stock camp on a Territory station,” he said.
“The growth in the young people from both backgrounds was an absolute joy to see and earns them and our industry a lot of credit.”
