Image: Shutterstock

ONE of the many common conversational topics among breeders and producers is centred around price differentials for cattle based on breed. This subject extends from saleyard prices to the value of bulls offered at the autumn and spring sales. This is easily understandable as price differences are well reported and analysed in industry data sets, from bull sale results to market prices across the country.

So, it’s certainly not uncommon to hear comments that range from; “another breed is gaining market share; their bulls are making more money; their genetics are showing up in more commercial herds”. And from these discussions at grass roots, the subject often escalates to breed societies being challenged with comments along the lines of “What are we going to do about it?”

While these discussions are understandable, they risk becoming the wrong conversation, and the distraction created can come at a real cost to breeding programs and even to breeds themselves. Producers and breeders are right to question why another breed consistently achieves better prices.

However, the answer to that question is rarely found where people first look.

A useful comparison can be made with the vehicle industry. The example of the difference between vehicles that were built in 2005 and 2025 was made previously in Beef Central.  To extend that analogy, there would be very few people who would expect a vehicle built twenty years ago to match the efficiency, safety, or operating performance of a current model.

Modern vehicles are not better because one manufacturer suddenly improved marketing or brand promotion. They are better because manufacturers continually selected for improved performance, incorporated better data, and replaced older designs with newer designs generation after generation. Importantly, comparisons between brands are rarely useful. While a dual cab Toyota and a Mitsubishi may look broadly similar, in practice they serve different purposes, operate in different environments, and appeal to different users. What matters is whether each manufacturer has continued to improve its own product over time.

The same principle applies in cattle breeding.

Price differences at the point of sale tend to get interpreted as a market perception problem. Ideally a problem that can be solved through better marketing, stronger breed promotion, or more aggressive presence at major sales. Occasionally that is true. More often, the price gap is a lagging signal of something that happened much earlier, in the breeding decisions made one or two generations earlier.

The breeds commanding a consistent premium in commercial markets haven’t achieved this through entirely through better salesmanship. The underlying truth is because enough of those cattle, across enough transactions over enough years, delivered predictable and measurable performance. Areas of performance such as fertility, growth, efficiency and eating quality are areas where commercial buyers learned to expect consistency, and as a result these expectations became included in the prices offered.

That kind of market confidence is not built through promotion. Rather, it is built through genetic consistency. Genetic consistency is the direct product of sustained, disciplined selection applied across a population. The price gap, as frustrating as it feels for many producers and breeders, is largely a reflection of that work already done.

The difficulty is that genetic merit, which is really what is driving the price difference, is invisible at the point of sale. Two animals can look identical in the yard while carrying very different genetic potential, and the market has already figured that out at a breed level, even if individual buyers cannot always articulate why.

This is the part that tends to get lost in breed price comparisons. Breeders who have committed to rigorous objective selection through consistent EBV recording, higher genomic participation, and disciplined sire turnover are increasing selection intensity within their populations. Selection intensity simply describes how strongly the best genetics are chosen and how quickly older genetics are replaced. Where selection intensity is high, genetic progress accelerates. Where it is low, progress continues but at a slower rate.

Genetic progress is both cumulative and permanent. A population that has been under strong selection pressure for ten or fifteen years carries an embedded advantage that is genuinely difficult for a competitor to close quickly. The average animal from that population is more fertile, more efficient, and more consistent than it was a generation ago. Commercial producers who understand this will pay for it, not because of the breed badge, but because the performance data supports the decision.

Meanwhile, breeders focused primarily on how their price compares to a competitor at the next major sale are measuring the wrong thing. Sale averages reflect market sentiment, seasonal conditions, and buyer confidence as much as they reflect genetic quality. They are a lagging and noisy signal.

As previously highlighted, these discussions create a distraction that has a real cost, even if it is not necessarily as obvious as cents per kilogram at sale time. Time and resources spent monitoring competitors, repositioning marketing, or adjusting price strategy means that time and resources are not spent on the activities that drive long-term value: recording more animals, improving reference populations, tightening selection criteria, and educating commercial buyers on how to interpret genetic information.

There is nothing wrong with being aware of what other breeds are doing. But awareness becomes a problem when it shapes breeding decisions. A breed that modifies its selection emphasis to chase another breed’s market position risks undermining the very genetic trajectory that would have differentiated it over time. Vehicle manufacturers do not redesign their product simply to imitate a competitor’s badge; they improve performance for their own customers. Breeds that focus on internal genetic improvement rather than external comparison are the ones that move their population forward.

The breeders pulling ahead are not doing so by watching what others charge. They are doing so by consistently selecting better cattle and paying attention to genetic trend over time.

For commercial producers, there is a clear message. When evaluating genetics, look past the price and past the breed reputation. Ask what the genetic trend data shows. Is the population you are selecting from improving, and improving consistently in the traits your production system depends on? If the answer is yes that is where the value sits, regardless of what the catalogue average reads on sale day.

The genetic gap rarely appears suddenly. It widens gradually, year by year, as some populations continue to improve while others pause or redirect effort toward comparison rather than progress. Few producers would willingly step back into a vehicle built two decades earlier, yet breeding decisions can unknowingly do exactly that when genetic trend is ignored. The breeders doing the hard selection work have already banked an advantage that cannot be quickly replicated, and the commercial producers who recognise that early are the ones most likely to compound those gains through their own herds over the next decade.

Alastair Rayner

Alastair Rayner is Principal of RaynerAg. He has over 28 years’ experience advising beef producers and graziers across Australia. Alastair can be contacted here or through his website: www.raynerag.com.au