Where the most expensive cattle, beef paddocks and steaks call home

If it's sheer numbers of cattle that call a place home, then the capital would be the Fitzroy Basin in Queensland. If it's commercial sales made, then it would be Roma.

If it's the most reliable beef-producing country, and judged on stocking rate capacity or what it costs to produce a kilogram of beef, it might be the southern coastal region of Queensland, Victoria's Gippsland or the Barkly Tablelands in the Northern Territory.

But what if we make the criteria the home of the most expensive cattle or the most expensive land to carry beef cattle. Or perhaps the place where the most jobs in the beef industry are or even where the most consumer dollars on beef are spent?

Here, we look outside the square to come up with a Beef Capital.

The home of the most expensive cattle is not clear-cut because the top-priced stud animals are not necessarily where the most money overall is tied up in seedstock.

Texas Angus at Warialda holds the national all-breeds record bull price of $360,000 and last year sold 252 animals to an average of $16,764 to deliver a total purse of $4.2m.

But Rennylea, on the NSW south west slopes, sold 334 bulls to an average $14,697 for a total of $4.9m.

Glenlands Droughtmaster set a breed record with a bull that fetched $320,000 and sold another at the same sale for $240,000 but overall sold 200 to an average $20,000 which gives a total of less than the first two.

South Australia's Mayura Wagyu had an incredible average of $48,556 but only for nine bulls.

Australian Community Media's Ed Gannon says Gloucester in NSW actually has a strong claim to being the beef stud capital of Australia.

Two of the top 10 beef bull studs as ranked by average price - Knowla Angus and Curracabark Angus - are from Gloucester.

Mr Gannon assessed all the sales reports by the ACM agriculture mastheads in 2023 to compile the rankings.

From the hills overlooking Byron Bay to the Mornington Peninsula, beef cattle can be seen enjoying the lush pastures and incredible views of country that comes with a pretty hefty price tag.

It is postcode 3995, a lightly populated area in Victoria's south Gippsland that takes in towns like Wonthaggi, Woolamai, Inverloch and Kilcunda, that takes the crown for most expensive beef country, according to Australian Community Media's property guru Chris McLennan.

Here, land prices commonly reach $20,000 per acre.

It's an area better known for surfing than farming but it's hilly country where fertile loamy soils partner with high annual rainfall of around 900mm, Mr McLennan said.

"Dairying was once strong here but today the focus is mostly on high beef prices," he said.

Another interesting way to look at this is the land value per kilogram of beef produced each year.

Data from the Australian Beef Report, which draws on 2020 to 2022 land values and regional productivity over 12 years, shows top of the list in the north is the southern Queensland coastal region at $90 per kilogram of production.

In the south, it's the NSW Riverina at $110.

The lowest overall is the Kimberely at just over $13.

If the criteria becomes the place where the most beef is put on in a day, Queensland's feedlots come into focus.

Mort & Co's Grassdale at Dalby is Australia's largest feedlot. With a 70,000 head capacity, it inducts and exits up to 4500 head of cattle per week.

If it is achieving a 2kg a day weight gain average, that's a whopping 140,000kg of beef a day.

But Grassdale has a relatively large Wagyu component which would not be contributing at that rate.

So perhaps it is NH Food's Whyalla feedlot at Texas, with a capacity of 55,000 head. Another contender would be JBS' Beef City outside of Toowoomba, a 26,500 capacity feedlot.

Brisbane and surrounds - particularly if Ipswich and Kilcoy is included - is brimming with people earning a living from the beef industry.

The JBS Dinmore plant is the largest beef processing plant in the southern hemisphere and has around 1800 employees.

By throughput, Kilcoy, north of Brisbane, is also high up on the list of the businesses paying the most in meatworker wages.

Add in Australian Country Choice, Teys' Beenleigh facility, the large number of independent butchers, Hilton Food Group which cuts and packs for Woolworths and a Meat & Livestock Australia office, and Brisbane wears the crown in this category.

Beef contacts put their heads together to come up with where most consumer dollars are likely handed over for beef and named the Victor Churchill restaurant in Woollahra, Sydney, as number one on a meals basis.

It serves up relatively high numbers of steaks with price tags over $200 each.

A Forbes Australian investigation named a Wagyu tomahawk from Sydney's Botswana Butchery as Australia's most expensive steak.

At $875, the 1.6kg bone-in ribeye stands out but Victor Churchill has a bigger following, industry people said.

Melbourne, however, has the biggest concentration of high-end retail butchers, which could also give it the title in this category.