Di Prestwidge

TRANSIT - A model for simulating infrastructure and policy interventions in agriculture logistics

Australian agriculture has long distance and high cost supply chains.TRANSIT - a GIS tool to evaluate infrastructure investments and policy changes.Application to northern Australia livestock industry.Transport cost savings of up to

A framework for optimising capital investment and operations in livestock logistics

15 million in some locations. Australias agriculture industry, particularly in the north, is characterised by supply chains of long travel distances, often in excess of 2500km and costing up to 35% of farm gate price. Such travel distances increase the vulnerability of the industry to climatic variability and extreme events. Infrastructure investments in roads, bridges, processors and storage, along with changes in policy, have the potential to substantially reduce costs and increase resilience of the agriculture industries. In this paper, we outline the model, TRAnsport Network Strategic Investment Tool (TRANSIT) which is based on ArcGIS, and utilizes the Origin to Destination Cost Matrix solver within the Network Analyst toolkit. TRANSIT estimates the transport costs for all movements between enterprises, accommodating road conditions, vehicle types, vehicle access restrictions and regulatory requirements. TRANSIT was applied to the northern Australia livestock industry, consisting of 12 million cattle across 10,000 enterprises and 89,000 unique trips between these enterprises. Its ability to estimate the transport benefits from road upgrades, new processing facilities and biosecurity changes are shown using three priority case studies identified by industry and government.

Yield gap analyses to estimate attainable bovine milk yields and evaluate options to increase production in Ethiopia and India

Despite the longevity, scale and importance of northern Australias beef industry, recent disruptions to external markets have demonstrated a degree of vulnerability to shocks in the supply chain. Matching the industrys long-evident resilience to climatic variability with resilience to changes in markets and supply chains requires careful planning. One component of this is how investments in infrastructure will need to be planned to facilitate adaptive responses to market changes. This paper provides an outline of a modelling framework that links strategic and operational dynamic models of logistics along the supply chain from the property to the abattoir or port. A novelty of the methodology is that it takes into account the high granularity of individual livestock transport vehicle movements and the ability to scale up to an almost complete view of logistics costs across the entire beef industry of northern Australia. The paper illustrates how the methodology could be used to examine the effects of changes in logistics infrastructure on efficiency and costs using examples from the states of Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland.

An exploratory analysis of the scope for dispersed small-scale irrigation developments to enhance the productivity of northern beef cattle enterprises

Livestock provides an important source of income and nourishment for around one billion rural households worldwide. Demand for livestock food products is increasing, especially in developing countries, and there are opportunities to increase production to meet local demand and increase farm incomes. Estimating the scale of livestock yield gaps and better understanding factors limiting current production will help to define the technological and investment needs in each livestock sector. The aim of this paper is to quantify livestock yield gaps and evaluate opportunities to increase dairy production in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, using case studies from Ethiopia and India. We combined three different methods in our approach. Benchmarking and a frontier analysis were used to estimate attainable milk yields based on survey data. Household modelling was then used to simulate the effects of various interventions on dairy production and income. We tested interventions based on improved livestock nutrition and genetics in the extensive lowland grazing zone and highland mixed crop-livestock zones of Ethiopia, and the intensive irrigated and rainfed zones of India. Our analyses indicate that there are considerable yield gaps for dairy production in both countries, and opportunities to increase production using the interventions tested. In some cases, combined interventions could increase production past currently attainable livestock yields.

Closing yield gaps in smallholder goat production systems in Ethiopia and India

The major economic use of the northern Australian rangelands is beef cattle grazing. Beef production enterprises are typically large and employ ‘low-input’ herd and pasture management systems, and the longer-term viability and sustainability of many is uncertain. Productivity gains have been stagnant for most of the past decade, and nutritional constraints are a major source of the poor animal production and financial returns across the sector. There has been a growing interest in the scope for small-scale, dispersed irrigation developments – mosaic irrigation – to provide an augmented supply of higher-quality forages to certain classes of animals in order to alter their reproduction and/or growth potential and to exploit market opportunities. An ex-ante economic review undertaken by the CSIRO of the prospects for mosaic irrigation employed bioeconomic simulation modelling of case studies of irrigation development scenarios conducted at the individual beef enterprise scale in three contrasting regions of northern Australia – the Burdekin (north Queensland), the Barkly Tableland (Northern Territory) and the Kimberley (northern Western Australia). This paper presents a summary of the methods, results and conclusions of the case study modelling. The results present a mixed picture of the economic potential for the various irrigation development options that were canvassed. The level of animal productivity (e.g. average weight of sale animals) increased for all of the irrigation simulation scenarios, but in most instances the projected economic advantage ranged from negative to only moderately positive across the three regional case studies. Where there was an apparently attractive return on the irrigation investment (e.g. a real internal rate of return of >15%), this primarily occurred under the more buoyant market conditions that have prevailed in recent years. The influence of irrigated forage availability on herd structure through management options such as the early weaning of calves appears to be at least as valuable as changes in liveweight gain for particular classes of animals.

A framework for integrating a complex harvesting and transport system for sugar production

Highlights • Household modelling highlights ways to increase goat production.• Large increases in goat meat production are possible in Ethiopia and India.• Increasing goat production did not always increase household income.• Yield gaps are best addressed by integrated technologies using a systems approach.