BREAKING paradigms in the beef industry is one of the main intentions of a new fiction novel, written by one of the Northern industry’s most well-known livestock researchers.

Dr Goeffry Fordyce has been a cattle vet and researcher in Northern Australia and South-East Asia for decades and has been heavily involved in major R&D projects over those years, such as the industry’s ground-breaking CashCow program.

Geoff Fordyce

He has become known for clear and concise technical advice, with articles like this one earlier this year about low calving rates in Northern Australia often rating well among Beef Central readers.

In the next step of communicating his research, Dr Fordyce has turned his hand to fiction writing – with the release of his debut novel Breeding.

“I have been in the science game for a long time and it is always difficult to translate what we do in research to practice,”

“I thought this was a good way of putting what has been produced in science in the context of a whole story.”

Breeding follows the story of a young cattleman called Bruce Arnold who takes the reins and responsibility of his parents’ cattle station in North Queensland’s dry tropics.

He needs to juggle a large debt, the expenses of a station in unpredictable conditions and still derive a comfortable living.

Some of the industry’s recent advances in genetics and production are all covered in the book.

The work has been touted as a ‘romance novel’, however Dr Fordyce said while Bruce was after a partner, it was more about families.

“It is not as much about romance as it is about families and people – people are at the heart of it whether it is a big business or a small business,” he said.

“People all have events in their lives and this young bloke happened to have that event – you also need to add a bit of spice to the situation.”

Breaking paradigms in the industry

Dr Fordyce said one of the main challenges of delivering research to the industry was encouraging businesses to break habits.

“It is not just what science has to offer, there are also producers who are doing great things and you can put it all together to produce a greater profit,” he said.

“What I was trying to portray was that there are other ways of doing things in cattle businesses, if you want to solve problems you need to do something different – rather than doing the same thing and hoping for a different result.

“It is not completely simple, but you have to change your paradigms to solve some of these issues.”

• To buy a paperback copy of “Breeding” ($29.95), go to Geoff Fordyce’s website, click here, or buy the eBook version ($7.95) via Amazon. Local readers can also pick up a paperback copy at Mary Who bookshop in Flinders St Townsville, or the Grand Secret bookstore in Charters Towers.