2017 is coming to an end and we can look back to another joint season dealing with the beef and sheep businesses in our countries and globally.

After many relatively bullish years in the beef and sheep production, we could see some significant changes in some countries, many to the negative driven by decreasing prices. However, we could also see contrasting developments and profitability remained relatively stable or even improved in most of our countries.

Our conference 2017 took place in Saskatoon, Canada and we could get a first-hand impression of beef and sheep production in the Canadian prairie (thanks to Brenna again for the excellent organization and implementation).
A number of new workshops and presentation provided new insights:

Based on a proposal presented by me and after some good discussion we decided to classify the cow-calf farms by a very simple production system definition: winter-barn systems and outdoor systems. This definition was also implemented in the beef and Sheep Report.
Our workshop on the persistence of beef farms (Why are they still there) provided some interesting insights about the motivation of farming, some of it beyond the purely economic scope.
An approach to annual activities in the cow-calf and finishing production systems was found interesting but it is not clear if and how we should pursue this direction. Center will check the options and come back to the group.
A session on the top 10 production practices contributing to profitability resulted in a short overview paper with a list of the most important factors.
Various sessions in the internal workshop provided meaningful insights into the Canadian beef and sheep industries, their strategies and efforts on sustainability. The latter was supplemented by results from agri benchmark’s own research and a guest contribution from Ruaraidh Petre of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef.
agri benchmark partners shared their experiences with national networks and cost of production analysis with Canadian colleagues and supported Brenna in her attempt to create a Canadian network of typical farms.
And finally we managed to produce another full version Beef and Sheep Report 2017.

We would like to thank all of you for your contributions, commitment and friendship this year.