Replay: Bryce Camm, beef industry leader

a new breed of cattleman Bryce Cam is raising the tenor of the beef industry Bryce is the CEO of Cam Agricultural Group in Queensland which comprises nine properties covering half a million hectares running approximately 60,000 crossbred cattle and cropping more than 11,500 hectares Thanks for your time, Bryce.

Great to be with you, Terri.

Now, you've been described as someone who is equally at home in a boardroom or on a horse drafting cattle.

What do you make of that description?

I think I really value it as a description and I think And I think like a lot of people working in agricultural businesses in today's age, it's simply a requirement of the job.

So, I mean, even this morning, I've just been drafting a mob of cattle to truck off to one of our supply chain partners and then ducked back in here to the office to have this chat with you.

So

you're someone who believes agriculture needs tertiary degrees, but not necessarily agricultural ones.

I firmly believe in higher education and that's something our family and particularly my parents instilled in myself and my siblings.

And it's something we promote in our business today in terms of with our team where we're always looking for development and learning opportunities from those that are working with us in trying to grow our business.

But we've also got to interpret that an agricultural business is needs many skill sets around the table to ensure its success.

And for myself, you know, I didn't study an ag degree when I went off to university.

I studied a degree in commerce and communications.

And I think sometimes we can fall into the trap to think that everything about agriculture is different to mainstream business and needs the specialisation.

And while that's true in some parts, I'm a firm believer that we need people that are going to pursue agricultural careers in our mainstay universities, both in this country and around the globe, so that they have exposure to other people from other walks of life, and they make lifelong friends with people who are going to influence other industries.

And I think universities are a great melting pot of people and ideas, but they're also a great networking and a place where many young Australians mature and grow up and make lifelong friendships.

And for me, that's a really important piece that I think in some parts of the ag community is missing at the moment.

If you look across our population in the agricultural sector, less than 5% have any form of tertiary education beyond high school.

And if you take that to a bachelor's degree, it's less than 2%.

And I think that's something that as an industry with a bright, bright future ahead of us, it's really something that we need to embrace and look at how we're going to fix that trajectory.