He’s stood with the NSW beef industry through complete transformations of herd breed content, price crashes and highs, drought and flood, changing government levels of support, the evolution of the feedlot industry and much more but now, after 37 years with the State Government delivering research findings and advice, Bill Hoffman is moving on.
Bill has had many titles through the years, and in fact worked for an organisation which has changed names – and logos – five times, but he signs off as Industry and Investment’s NSW technical specialist beef breeding.
From King Island in Tasmania to Geraldton in Western Australia and back to his base of Casino in northern NSW, Bill’s work, which in the past decade has included managing programs for Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) and the Beef CRC (Co-operative Research Centre), has taken him to hundreds of beef enterprises and he says it is the people he’s met and the properties he’s had the pleasure of seeing that he has valued most.
With a trademark straight-talking, tell-how-it-is approach and an encyclopedia of everything beef inside his head, Bill is one of the most respected identities in NSW beef and North Coast agriculture.
Raised on a dairy at Bellingen, his first job out of ag college was with the then NSW Department of Agriculture in Sydney as a dairy officer, a role which progressed on to beef and dairy livestock officer.
He moved to Wollongbar, near Lismore, in 1974 where he was responsible for 1000 head of the department’s cattle and after a short stint at Deniliquin in the Riverina he was stationed at Casino 26 years ago where he decided to focus on beef.
“Beef was exciting,” he said.
“The cattle industry was recovering from the 1970s slump and the government was pouring a lot of resources into cattle research.”
At the time, North Coast beef was dominated by Herefords, but as the Grafton crossbreeding program shifted into top gear, the message was infuse with Bos indicus.
It wasn’t, however, to be a smooth transition.
“We were run out of town,” Bill said.
“We were threatened with court cases and accused of mongrelising the cattle population.
“Brahmans challenged everything producers of the time knew, but the research results were precise and the people who forged ahead and implemented those results have reaped the benefits.”
Today there are few North Coast herds without Bos indicus content.
The evolution of the feedlot industry occurred with less fanfare but has been just as progressive, he said.
“Everybody is now touched by it in some way – it has put a pricing platform in the market, taking out a lot of the lumps and bumps, although price volatility will always be a part of beef production,” Bill said.
“It has also delivered a more consistent quality of beef to the consumer and that goes hand in hand with eating quality becoming – finally – a real focus for the industry.
“That is something that has moved too slowly and there is still a way to go but every day now I’m running into somebody who has just sold their first lot of Meat Standards Australia-graded cattle.
“We are increasingly seeing ourselves as producers of a food, rather than a live product.”
From producer backlash over a national trace-back system to protest marches through Casino demanding the “sacking” of agricultural departments when the State Government withdrew from cattle tick control in the early 1980s, controversy has always been a part of the job.
Bill has never taken the easy sit-on-the-fence option, relying on science and research as the basis of his advice.
Today’s big issues, like those that have come before, require a “big picture” view, he said.
“The brawling currently going over beef imports and the criticism of MLA and Cattle Council is doing a lot of harm,” he said.
“We Australians are in no position to dictate how the world meat trade is going to work.
“Certainly we are entitled to a say, and to put science-based restrictions on trade, but the emotional approach is doing nothing but harming domestic consumption.”
Bill finished work at the Casino I and I office on March 12 and is now running his own small consultancy service, Hoffman Beef Consulting (HBC), along with looking after his 400 to 500 crossbred steers at Hogarth Range, west of Casino, and his 2000 macadamia tree plantation at Tregeagle.
Bill says the highlight of his career in the beef industry has been working with that small sector of producers who were never content to say “that will do”, the ones who were always challenging the boundaries.
“In what has been a historically conservative industry, without them, we would never have progressed,” Bill said.
“The CRC work in particular really opened my eyes to how committed some people are to achieving the best.
“There will never be a time when one or all of the big challenges – exchange rates, world economics and seasonal influences – is not impacting our industry and our future will depend on how we are able to manage those impacts.”
For their part, beef producers say Bill has had a huge impact on helping their industry progress and his famous one liners – “Get rid of that narrow-arsed bastard” – will be enshrined in history.
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