ON Monday a headline on Beef Central read “Cattle industry too big to rely on too few volunteers”. Yesterday, those words, which summarised an address from Cattle Australia chair Garry Edwards, took on added resonance as events unfolded at the Woolworths annual general meeting in Sydney.

During the shareholder question and answer session of the AGM, environmental activists queued at the microphone, taking turns one after another at portraying Australia’s beef industry as environmentally reckless and destructive.

It continued a growing trend in recent years of environmental campaigners using corporate AGMs to pressure major companies over what they describe as “illegal deforestation” associated with beef production.

But in an unusual turn of events something happened at yesterday’ s Woolworths AGM that meant the voice of activists was not the only one that was heard at the Sydney based event.

Central Queensland cattle producer and Cattle Australia deputy chair Adam Coffey also rose to the microphone to thank Woolworths for working constructively with the industry, explain the care farming families take in managing their land, and highlight the important distinction between what activists describe as deforestation and the routine vegetation management necessary to maintain productive agricultural land.

To do that, he had to leave his Central Queensland property, travel to Sydney and spend time away from his family farming business to represent the interests of other producers.

It was a demonstration of the commitment many industry representatives make, often at considerable personal cost, to ensure cattle producers across Australia have a voice in decisions affecting their businesses and livelihoods.

Australia’s grassfed cattle industry is a major contributor to the national economy, generating $25 billion in production annually, supporting tens of thousands of farming businesses, underpinning many regional communities and urban jobs and supplying a healthy and nutritious source of food for people not only around the country but across the world.

Yet its national representative body, Cattle Australia, operates on an annual budget of around $2.5 million.

Compare that to just three of the environmental groups that were among those who spoke against the beef industry at the AGM of one of the biggest retail distributors of Australian beef in Sydney yesterday.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific, the Australian Conservation Foundation,  and The Wilderness Society have reported annual operating budgets in recent years of $30 million, $18 million and $11 million respectively according to online financial disclosures.

Each are also registered charities in Australia which exempts them from paying major taxes.

In the mining sector, the Minerals Council of Australia reports an annual operating budget of about $30 million.

These are not necessarily like-for-like comparisons but they raise legitimate questions about whether Australia’s cattle industry is equipping its national representative body with the resources to match what is expected of it.

Producers already contribute a $5/head transaction levy on all cattle sales, which is used primarily for marketing and research and development on behalf of the industry, and some producers have said they believe that contribution is enough.

The existence of a substantial collective levy does not in and of itself mean the industry’s national representative body is adequately funded.

The current cattle transaction levy review is providing an opportunity for producers to consider how their collective funding arrangements should operate into the future.

Adam Coffey ensured the cattle industry’s voice was heard at Woolworths yesterday.

But can the industry rely on individual producers being able to leave their businesses every time its interests need defending?

In opening last Friday’s CattleConnect conference CA chair Garry Edwards noted that while ‘volunteerism’ had built the industry, today it was also a point of vulnerability for the industry.

“When you’ve got a grassfed sector that’s exceeding $22 billion, when you’ve got a whole red meat industry that is approaching $75 billion dollars in economic output, and we rely on so few people to volunteer their time, it’s about time we took this seriously and valued it seriously, and we actually attracted the people and compensated them appropriately for their expertise that they bring to it, because it is genuine expertise.

“It’s not amateur hour in this industry anymore.”