Talking to urban consumers a priority for Cattle Australia

His audience on Thursday evening was a group of around 30 people gathered on top of the picturesque Mt Slocombe just outside the small town of Yaraka in Queensland's central west.

Many of them had just finished a day's mustering and all of them wanted to know how the grassfed beef advocacy body was going to improve their image in urban Australia, and how it was going to correct what they saw as gross misinformation about their industry.

Mr Edwards, with plenty of skin in the game as the CEO and managing director of the AAM Investment Group, whose investments include thousands of hectares of sheep and cattle grazing country up the road at Blackall, gave them what they wanted to hear.

"One of the key things with MLA - we do a good job of talking to ourselves and a bad job of talking to the general public," he said. "Public media communications and school education need to be a focus around this."

His following comment, that the current school curriculum was representing rural industries very poorly, drew strong endorsement from the group, nodding when one described it as indoctrination.

Mr Edwards, Cattle Australia's CEO Chris Parker, its sub-region representative Jordan Wilson, and northern region membership officer Sarah Cue, along with AgForce cattle board director Bronte Austin were at Yaraka as part of a regional tour that connected with 240 people at Toogoolawah, Moura and Buckland near Springsure as well.

"The whole point of the structure of Cattle Australia is to get that grassroots connection, and the whole process of two-way engagement," Mr Edwards said. "The intent is, we are genuinely committed to taking what we're doing to the regions, big or small places throughout the country."

A sizeable slice of his address was spent in explaining how CA differed from Meat & Livestock Australia's research and development and marketing roles, and how the group had been born from frustration at the lack of advocacy where it counted in Canberra.

His frustration at the lack of progress with the previous Cattle Council, made up of representatives of peak industry bodies from each state, and MLA's use of producer levies and matching government funds clearly showed as he listed what he saw as the huge job confronting them.

"It (a targeted communications policy) hasn't happened in decades, that's why we're in the situation we are," he said. "I was shocked to find our lack of engagement with the government."

CEO Chris Parker listed what CA saw as the big issues confronting it, saying that in his 45 years in ag, he had never seen a conflation of so many issues, from animal activists, climate activists and biosecurity concerns.

"I'm deeply concerned about where we'll go as an industry," he said.

Regarding the biosecurity levy, Mr Parker said it was going to happen and Cattle Australia had just been given a seat at the table, which would help them work to get something constructive from the levy.

He listed non-tariff trade barriers coming in as another big challenge, along with environmental issues.

Among the latter was foreign input into Australia's land management and the need to get a definition across the supply chain, rather than have one dictated.

As far as climate change and animal emissions went, Dr Parker said they needed to be at the front of the conversation or risk having terms dictated to them there too.

"But it's a part of the natural cycle - we don't dig it up and burn it," he said. "I can't understand burning savannah and getting a carbon credit but putting animals on the same land and you're a horrible emitter - it doesn't make sense to me."

Mr Edwards said that as well as 'picking fights' on issues such as how carbon is accounted for, Cattle Australia's job was to arm producers with information so they could call bullsh*t on misinformation when they heard it.

"We're the only industry in the world that can take carbon out of the atmosphere," he said.

"If we don't call these things out, they'll make the rules.

"We're picking plenty of fights, on a factual basis, and they don't like it."

Taroom and Windorah producer Bill Speed was one of those throwing question after question out as the sun went down, and said it had been a privilege to be there.

"We've never seen the likes of you turn up in Taroom," he said. "I can see how much fight you've got in you."

Dr Parker said CA would be representing producers regardless of whether they were members or not, but implored them to take up membership of a lobby group in some way.

"We've got a whole lot of stuff coming at us - you need to be supporting the people advocating for you," he said.