Picture this.
You’re an organic cattle producer in Australia’s outback, running hundreds or thousands of free-roaming cattle across your property.
To maintain your organic certification, every year an independent auditor needs to inspect your property, livestock and farm records to ensure you comply with organic standards. That’s not too difficult; after all, your property is so vast and so remote it has never had chemicals used on it – it’s virtually naturally organic.
The problem is the nearest city is over 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) away, making the cost of an organic auditor driving to your property for a single audit prohibitive.
Fortunately, you’ve got OBE Organic in your corner: a farmer-owned company acutely aware of the challenges of running outback organic cattle properties. Like not wanting to pay for an auditor to drive the equivalent of Brisbane to Canberra and back (or New York to Detroit and back, or Dubai to Bahrain and back, or … well, you get the picture).
OBE’s solution?
Provide a service where we coordinate with the auditor to visit many properties on one long trip, instead of just one. Oh, and fly instead of drive. Our pilot, Pete Wade from the outback hub of Charleville, reckons this year’s round trip in May and June covered about 8,000 kilometres (5,000 miles) in his Cessna.
This annual logistical challenge sees us talking to auditors, producers, accommodation providers and our pilot for months in advance to synchronise schedules.
We’re happy to play our part though, because our family farmers work hard all year round to comply with the rigorous standards organic certification demands. It is an ongoing process where producers must not only show due diligence in the paddock, but must also keep methodical records to verify certification standards are being adhered to.
With our producers taking such great pride and care in raising organic cattle, we’re happy to provide a service that makes it cost-effective for remote family farmers to sell their certified organic beef to the world.
