ONLY months ago, northern Western Australia's live cattle trade almost came to a standstill, as major biosecurity threats left the agricultural sector on edge.
In the time passed, foot and mouth disease and lumpy skin disease (LSD) concerns still linger, but bolstered biosecurity measures and the distribution of vaccines have restored confidence in the market.
You can't deny, 2022 has been a tough slog.
Biosecurity threats aside, Western Australian Livestock Exporters' Association (WALEA) chairman John Cunnington said "lack of supply in the cattle market" had been the story of the year so far.
He said looking at the numbers - either year-on-year or calendar-year to now - almost every market was down.
This was except for dairy or breeding cattle to China, which was experiencing a resurgence.
"All our main markets including Indonesia, Vietnam and Israel are finding it really tough," Mr Cunnington said.
"Whether you have an open cheque book or not, it has been extremely difficult to source livestock for shipments.
"At the same time, pricing has become extremely detrimental to the longevity of a lot of businesses in the supply chain."
So what's the reason behind the lack of supply?
Mr Cunnington said there were a number of contributing factors, but it was mainly due to the rebuild and strong competition in the market.
He said as a large number of younger cattle were sold into the trade when prices were at record highs, the season ended much sooner than usual.
And with multiple market drivers at the rail - including lotfeeders, restockers and live exporters - price performance has been somewhat influenced.
"Low herd numbers across Australia, means there are different markets buying different cattle when they usually wouldn't," Mr Cunnington said.
"These players are moving onto cattle, which would typically be sold to live export and at the same time we are seeing the highest prices we have ever seen for live export cattle.
"It's not like the money isn't being put out there - prices at the moment are north of $5."
Cattle exports by port for the 12-month calendar year ending in September were down right across Australia, except at Portland, Victoria.
Mr Cunnington said numbers were already "massively negative" in the previous year.
He said the availability of cattle wasn't there for South East Asia and the price was "realistically too high" for most of those businesses.
On top of that, Australia's biggest live export market Indonesia was basically shut down for about three months when FMD was first detected and importers were waiting for access to vaccines.
"I don't think we can underestimate the supply chain we have in place and that we have established over the years," he said.
"The export market is resilient, but at the end of the day we really need to see supply numbers rebound.
"I think once numbers rebound the export industry can rebound with it."
Mr Cunnington labelled the market a "cautionary tale".
For example, he said Israel used to be Australia's third - possibly even second - biggest market, but now they were taking a lot of cattle from Portugal.
"Vietnam has also taken a shipment from Brazil, as they chase supply and more workable prices," he said.
"We don't want to open the door to other countries because once you do it is very difficult to maintain sole supply after that.
"Once the price and supply comes back we can really re-establish our markets and start hunting out new markets as well and expanding."
Disease risk a challenge for station owner
CAMILLE Camp, Kalyeeda station, runs a herd of 10,000 Droughtmaster cross Brahman cattle in the Kimberley.
Ms Camp's family sells about 3000 head each year, with 80 per cent sold to Indonesian and Vietnamese live export markets.
While the Indonesian markets favour the steers and heifers at feeder weights (below 350 kilograms), a fair number of steers are still sold at heavier slaughter weight.
The remainder are sold domestically.
Reflecting on 2022, Ms Camp said the biggest challenge was lumpy skin disease and foot and mouth disease.
"With outbreaks in Indonesia the markets have been flooded with Indonesian cattle so things really slowed down for exporters over here," Ms Camp said.
"It didn't impact us too much as we sold cattle very early in the year and then sold another load of cattle in September once the markets had opened up again."
