Toowoomba consultant's collaborative approach is a winner

The Award was presented today in Canberra at the Kondinin Group and ABC Rural 2022 Farmer of the Year Awards.

Matt is a town planning and environmental compliance consultant servicing intensive livestock activities across Australia, with a focus on the lot feeding, pork, and poultry sectors. He started his agricultural consulting career during 2016, and in a short period of time, has achieved some major outcomes for clients.

This includes achieving development approvals allowing for the growth of the Australian feedlot sector by more than 100,000 head and the pork sector by more than 200,000 pigs. These projects spanned Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia.

While Matt has an extensive corporate client base, including many of Australia's largest cattle producers and lot feeders, he most enjoys helping family farming businesses drought-proof and diversify their operations.

"Supporting farmers, seeing them strengthen their businesses and achieve their project goals is a really rewarding thing. Working with associations and groups to realise better outcomes across the industry as a whole is also fulfilling because at the end of the day, those outcomes flow back to the farm gate and that's what it's all about," Matt said.

Ben White, General Manager of Research at Kondinin Group, said Matt's ability to simplify and communicate regulation to farmers to ensure they get the best development or compliance outcome, while minimising stress and delays, made him an asset to the industry.

"Regulation is often complicated, so having someone break it down is invaluable. To assist farmers in meeting their obligations and allow them to sustainably grow their businesses really puts Matt at the top of the pack," Ben said.

Recently, Matt has focused his attention on the implementation of wastewater treatment technology into feedlots and piggeries. Matt's approach to the issue, and strong relationships with clients, has encouraged ‘out-the-box' thinking on technology adoption, and this was one of the things that impressed Dan Dixon, ANZ Marketing Director at Award sponsor Corteva Agriscience.

"Matt's understanding of the circular economy, particularly in relation to the intensive livestock sector, and how farmers can engage with this growing space, is exemplary," Dan said.

"It is consultants like Matt who are making a real difference to the way farmers tackle problems on farm and find solutions that can have tangible benefits not only to their bottom line but on their sustainability."

Matt is passionate about encouraging young people, particularly those not from a rural background, into agriculture as a career, and regularly speaks to high school students and early career professionals, and often presents for AgForce's School to Industry Partnership Program (SIPP).

He also speaks at industry events and during 2019, presented on feedlot regulation at the TSBE Intensive Livestock Conference. Similarly, he was invited to speak at the Queensland Pork Consultancy Group 2022 event on building resilience in a changing world.

Matt is a member of the Australian Pork Limited (APL) Environmental Technical Panel and has also worked closely with local and state governments on rural land use planning.

Matt was also a key author in the development of the NSW government ‘Planning Guidelines - Intensive Livestock Agriculture Development'.