Ensuring best practices in the buffalo supply chain in Australia

A new research project by AgriFutures Australia and the Cooperative Research Centre for Developing Northern Australia (CRCNA) is set to examine the wild-harvest buffalo supply chain in the Northern Territory (NT). The first-of-its-kind project, Supply Chain Best Practice to Improve the Health and Welfare of Free-Range Buffalo Harvest in Arnhem Land – Northern Territory, aims to identify the barriers and potential opportunities to ensure the industry’s sustainable growth. Since the introduction of buffalo to Australia in the 1880s, the industry has developed a free-range sector in the NT and a dairy buffalo sector which operates in most states. Most free-range buffalo in the NT are found in unrestricted herds across Arnhem Land and other areas of Indigenous land, where they have important and often competing economic, environmental and social-cultural impacts on the land and local communities. Despite the steady growth of the meat and dairy buffalo sectors in Australia, there are ...