A LEADING American Stabiliser producer said he was excited about the changes English farmers faced.

"Along with that change come a lot of opportunities," Alan Janzen, told the large audience. "The fact there are so many people here today is because you care about your industry and what you are doing."

He said beef producers had one major advantage over their main competitors in pork and poultry: "We can go out and feed on low quality herbage and turn it into high quality protein."

Mr Janzen farms in Nebraska, in an operation started by his father and four farmer friends, which now finishes more than 100,000 head a year. "We are still ten times smaller than the big four farms in America which each market more than 1m head annually," he said.

His business also has 2,000 suckler cows which achieve a 96pc calving rate and average ten calves a lifetime.

Mr Janzen reminded the audience that the beef industry in the US was founded on British cattle and, explaining herd development, he said analysis had shown that adding Continental breeds in a crossbreeding system quickly improved growth and performance and increased cutability (red meat yield).

"We started with a three-breed rotation using Angus, Tarentaise and Saler bulls in 1986 but, as herd size increased, we switched to Composite bulls in 1992," he said. "We replaced Saler with South Devon to improve the quality grade in 1996."

They discovered a number of advantages from Composite breeding, including reduced labour in the breeding season and increased efficiency from running cows by age groups, not breed type.

In their production system, 95pc of the first 227kg was produced from grazing grassland and crop residue; the next 113kg by 50pc grazing and 50pc hay, corn silage and distillers' grain diets. The final 227kg, to get up to the average 567kg finished animal, was produced from rations averaging 40pc corn and the rest from hay or silage, supplement and distillers' grains.

There were opportunities to be had in branding and marketing beef based on feed and production systems. His own operations - Circle Five Beef and Imperial Beef - marketed 30pc of the 91,682 fed cattle sold last year through a branded beef programme. Nebraska Corn-Fed Beef, Power Genetics, US Premium Beef and various Natural Beef programmes made up the majority of those products. Branding was worthwhile and could be built into the system over here.

Mr Janzen stressed that good record keeping was the key to success.