The answer is genetics
Dr Geoffry Fordyce is one of Australia's leading authorities on genetics and fertility, following a long career first as a vet and then with Queensland's Agriculture Department and most recently as a senior research fellow at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation and an Adjunct Associate professor at James Cook University. He was at Beef21 principally to talk about his latest paper; a deep dive into the Australian cattle herd: a new perspective on structure, performance and production. He and his team had realised there was a great discrepancy in what the reported size of the northern beef herd was and what is actually on the ground. What followed is ground-breaking research into the number of calf mortalities in our beef systems and how businesses can take back lost revenue by improving their genetics.