Productivity and profitability webinars for red meat producers

Summary

The purpose of this project was to deliver practical and timely webinars in a cost-effective way to reach a wide audience of red meat producers (cattle, sheep and goat) across Australian through an online platform. This allows access to a broader selection of presenters and gives flexibility to viewers as they can re-watch the webinars as many times as they require.

30 webinars were delivered with an average attendance of 123 producers per webinar. Registrations for the series have finished at a total of 2610, up from 1077 at the end of the previous webinar series (L.LMS.1702).

This project has shown that online extension programs do work for at least part of the beef, lamb and goat producer’s population and that they are a cost-effective means of extension.

Objectives

The main objectives of this project were to:

• deliver 30 webinars to Australian red meat producers, providing fundamental information to support practice change and increase productivity and profitability with an average satisfaction rating of 7/10 or above
• conduct a phone survey of 100 MLA webinar participants that indicated they would implement a practice change from the 2017/2018 webinar series to obtain further information on the success of the webinars.

Key findings

• The average attendance for this webinars series was 123 per webinar. Registrations for the series are at a total of 2,610.
• The satisfaction and value ratings are averaging 8.4 and 7.8 out of 10, respectively.
• An average of 85% of attendees said they would recommend the webinar series to another producer.
• An average of 32% of attendees said they would make a practice change as a result of the webinar.

Benefits to industry

The series of 30 webinars presented to red meat producers helped to increase awareness of fundamental practices that can be implemented to increase productivity and profitability, as well as providing direction to participate in further MLA adoption opportunities.

Future research

The webinar series is proving to be an effective and low-cost extension platform. It is recommended that the webinar series be continued to deliver deliver practical and timely information to the red meat industry.