AWARDS and top prices keep David Blackmore motivated, writes ANDREW MOLE

As far as farmers go, David Blackmore is flat out.

You can't even get him to sit still for an interview.

He's up, he's down, he's in the next room, he's on the phone talking non-stop.

He seems to hear questions, but is already thinking about something else.

And those phones don't stop.

Some go to message bank, for others he apologises, saying he must take them.

But he must be doing something right. He and his passion, Blackmore Wagyu, are winners - over and over again.

Most recently his Alexandra beef business won its category in the annual delicious magazine awards.

Judged by industry luminaries Maggie Beer, Alla Wolf-Tasker, Matt Moran, Neil Perry, Cheong Liew and Philip Johnson, Blackmore Wagyu was top of the crop in the "from the paddock" category, against nine other finalists - including five other beef operations.

David tries to brush off his latest success, in the same breath pulling out the magazine and detailing its coverage of the big night.

He says he doesn't enjoy it, but does it for the profile of the brand.

However he has a showcase full of gongs for all his visitors to see.

"Alright, it is good recognition for the brand, and after all, it was the biggest category in the competition," he said with a self-satisfied grin.

"But for us the best thing is we are being judged by our customers, by the chefs who use Blackmore Wagyu and their customers who are paying $100-plus for a serve."

Blackmore is the vertically-integrated niche-market agribusiness many other beef producers dream of.

The cattle are raised on mostly leased land and backgrounded at Peechelba for entry into the Rockdale feedlot-abattoir at Yanco, in southern NSW.

On a feeding regimen of 550-650 days, the focus is on achieving a daily weight gain of 800g, which David says is the natural weight gain of beef cattle.

"We do not feed them enough grain for them to qualify as grain-fed, no antibiotics and no hormones," he said.

"We are just doing what comes naturally."

From Rockdale, the chilled beef is exported to 11 countries - and some of Australia's most-expensive eateries such as Neil Perry's Rockpool Bar and Grill.

Rockpool alone takes five full carcasses a month - boxed as quarters. In its restaurant, a 220g serve sells for $110 (which equals about $500/kg).

That's not far off where the price of gold was not all that long ago.

Only two butchers shops in the world - David Jones and Victor Churchill in the leafy Sydney suburb of Woollahra - stock Blackmore Wagyu and it can be yours for about $220 a kilogram.

It might not be what you throw on the barbecue but it says a lot about what David has achieved.

Twenty years of work has made the business a success.

David has also developed a sufficiently thick skin to let comments about how ugly his cattle are to wash right over him.

"There is no excuse for a Wagyu not to be structurally correct. You just have to view that structure as being different to the traditional British breed animal," he said.

"In cattle there is the beef bone and the dairy bone, and Wagyu are similar to the dairy bone.

"Yes, Wagyu can have a high tail head and pins, with a low weak back but we just won't have that because that's where the scotch and porterhouse is.

"Proper structure allows me to target an 800kg slaughter weight and when you see what the meat is worth, well if the animal's back allows me to add just four extra kilograms of striploin, then the carcass just went up about $600 in value."

Good point. When did 4kg last boost a Hereford or Angus carcass by $600?

The other key to Blackmore Wagyu is its genetic profile.

The herd is 100 per cent full-blood Japanese Wagyu (most Wagyu cattle in Australia are pure blood, or cattle which have been bred up). That is no longer possible to achieve in Australia due to Japan's decision to ban exports of full-blood stock.

And while Japan cannot produce enough of the beef to meet its own demand, so jealously guarded is its gene pool that 95 per cent of Wagyu sold in Australian restaurants is F1 product - and a lot of the same product is shipped to the Japanese market.

But selling red meat at the price of pure gold is just the starting point, not the destination, for Blackmore Wagyu.

David is now determined to revolutionise the way market, production and genetic information is valued.

He is licensing his trademark as the Blackmore method of production, hence the endless phone calls and emails.

New contracts are being written for intellectual property and you get the sense a new era is about to dawn.

"It is so frustrating," David said. "I have to pay Breedplan to take my data, but in any other business you would be the one getting paid.

"These genetic histories, the performance of your animals and the methodology used to achieve those results is a commercial gold mine. And we pay someone to give that away. It's all wrong."

David used embryo transfer to accelerate his herd to where he needed it to be to sustain the business.

Now he exclusively uses artificial insemination, with his own bulls as backups, and achieves better-than-industry conception rates for his 1500 breeding cows.

Virtually a closed herd because of David's adherence to pureblood only - and no access to Japan - success is built on building a business, not a farm.

"We make more money out of the business than we do out of owning land. If we had to buy the land we needed then we would not be anywhere near where we are," David said.

And if he were to drop off his perch tomorrow the business plan would go on.

Son Ben runs the overseas marketing, daughter Danielle is in charge of business management and their sisters Tamara and Belinda manage the website and data input.

Quietly in the background, overseeing it all and carrying "a very big stick", is David's wife Julie, who wacks him back to earth when, and as, required.

Which might account for the permanent ringing in his ears.