I suspect most ‘normal people who don’t get up at 5am each morning and surf US business TV channels don’t know that the stock market sectors that are expected to do well for the year or so ahead include energy, materials, small caps, emerging economies and commodities.

When it comes to commodities, apart from our usual food exports, we’re now learning that Australia is the biggest exporter of goat meat in the world!

According to a surprising story on theguardian.com, we now sell goats to the value of $235 million, and 2,364,307 goats went to our abattoir last year! While that’s only 0.4% of global production, because we’re not great fans of goat meat (consuming only 9% of the country’s herd), it makes us number one in goat exports. Most countries who raise goats keep them in the country, but we export ours.

Let’s put this into perspective when it comes to our top exports. We export about $214 million worth of goats but compare that to this from Meat & Livestock Australia: “In 2023, Australia exported a total volume of 1.84 million shipped weight tonnes of red meat to over 100 countries worth a record A$17.08 bn for the 12 months ending November 2023.”

If you’re thinking: “What the f…!”, then like me, you aren’t a property owner selling beef, but I do know a lot of ‘famous’ business-builders who went to cattle after making a squillion in the big end of town.

My old mate and advertising king, Harold Mitchell, who passed away earlier this year did exactly that after selling out of his former businesses. And then as the AFR’s Matt Cranston reported in 2017, he “…sold his Yougawalla Pastoral Company, with its three main cattle stations spanning more than 850,000 hectares and about 45,000 head of cattle” for $70 million!

Beef is big business when commodities are in favour but this surprising news about our goat exports is still a significant revelation. Our exports of seafood come in around $1.4 billion, which means goats are about 15% of that industry.

OK, so it’s small beer in the world of Aussie exports but we are a big exporter because we have a small population, have enormous resources and our export income explains why we’re rated 10^th in the world for income per head. We’re 12^th in the world when it comes to GDP (or total production), which is significant when you remember that we’re 55^th in the world when it comes to population.

Back to goats and here are some surprising revelations:

1. They’re feral goats.
2. They’re found all over Australia, but the biggest population is in north-west NSW.
3. Australia produces 35% of all goat meat exports, and accounts for 44% of the global export value of goat meat.
4. The US is our biggest customer.
5. The Muslim and Hispanic communities are big consumers of goat meat.
6. The NSW Government has put $1.2 million into a Go Ahead with Goats program. “Our goat producers in western NSW are at the forefront of the goat industry and the NSW government is supporting them with a number of resources so goat producers and stakeholders can take their goat business and the industry to the next level,” the NSW agriculture minister, Tara Moriarty, told The Guardian’s Mandy McKeesick.

However, what gets the goat of environmental groups is that these animals are bush munchers on a grand scale. “Goats are one of the worst invasive species because they stop regeneration of bushland, they overgraze [vegetation], they outcompete with native animals and they erode soils and stream banks,” the Invasive Species Council’s advocacy director, Jack Gough, says.

The way ahead is likely to be a greater development of goats on managed properties and the reduction of the feral goat herds. But that might be easier said than done.

There is an old goat quote that goes like this: “Happiness isn't happiness without a violin-playing goat.” I don’t know the origins of this but given the financial results, the goat herders in northwest NSW are pretty happy about their goats, even without violins!