Gate 2 Plate Challenge: Valuable beef industry insight gained

This year’s Gate 2 Plate Challenge participants gained valuable insight into the WA beef cattle industry as the event’s feedlot competition’s focus continues to mature with age.

Now in its 11th year, the challenge main objectives have been to enhance the WA beef industry through positive engagement with stakeholders throughout the beef value chain.

It provides opportunities through participation to learn and grow together from the farm gate to consumer’s plate.

Gate 2 Plate provides support and encouragement to students and youth in agriculture through its School’s Challenge program and this year the challenge field day held on March 25 at Willyung Farms Feedlot in Albany included 56 Year 12 students who took part in the interschool competition.

They made up seven teams, each with eight members, and were given five beef industry topic quizzes with the team gaining the most points declared the winner of the Challenge Trophy and a cash prize of $1000.

The teams included WA College of Agriculture — Denmark (two teams), WA College of Agriculture — Harvey (two teams), WA College of Agriculture — Narrogin (two teams), and Mt Barker Community College (one team).

Ahead of the class was WA College of Agriculture — Harvey team 2 that included Emma Beales, Chelsea Bario, Maggie Kilrain, Tegan Thomas, Zac Clasen, Greer Mahony, Taylee Metcalf and Ebony Chittenden.

The one-day field day event, themed Future Farming, was also an open invitation to Gate 2 Plate Challenge participants and all interested cattle producers and industry stakeholders to learn from leading experts who spoke on various topics on the day.

Gate 2 Plate Challenge committee president Wayne Mitchell said the variety of speakers did a great job to enlighten and provoke conversations on current topics and challenges.

Visitors had the opportunity to view the 54 teams of cattle from 46 different properties that were part of this year’s challenge feedlot competition.

The cattle entered the feedlot on January 21 with an average induction weight of 344.43kg and after 77 days on feed, they were delivered to Harvey Beef for processing on April 9.

Feedlot co-ordinator Sandy Lyon said the cattle averaged 1.93kg/day with “ideal feeding conditions”.

The challenge competition has made a few changes in recent years to reflect industry changes.

Most notable was the change in 2024 when participants were required to enter teams of three or four steers, with the latter allowing the least-performing steer to be thrown out of the total point score.

Previously (2015 to 2023) the competition was based on teams of two steers and one heifer.

Mr Mitchell said another change was to allow steers that were sourced off-farm and not restricted to vendor bred only.

“This enabled several new competitors to be involved and ensures variability of the challenge,” he said.

The challenge competition outcome is based on points allocated on factors that are measurable and influence profitability at each stage of the supply chain and eating quality.

Point breakdown for each section included a possible team score of 150 points for both feedlot and processor and 75 points for Meat Standards Australia grading for a total combined possible team score of 375 points.

This year’s overall winners, Bert and Agatha Veenendaal of Evensong Farm in Serpentine, had the highest score of 221.503 points.

The competition results were announced at the awards presentation event in Albany on June 7.

Coles cattle buyer Campbell Nettleton said the Gate 2 Plate Challenge committee members did an excellent job of running the near 200 head of cattle in the feedlot.

“Overall, the cattle weighed an average of 254kg carcase weight after processed at Harvey Beef with nearly 7mm of fat and only three steers not meeting market specifications,” he said.