Natalie Engel is the only full-time worker at Sunlight Grazing

Natalie Engel is the only full-time worker at Sunlight Grazing, the 4000 hectare beef-finishing property she runs in Rolleston, central Queensland.

It’s a far cry from the small acreage where the horse-obsessed Natalie was raised in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. But her background, plus experience in feedlots, ag sales and livestock data, means Natalie, 41, brings a unique perspective to the 1200-head operation.

After high school, Natalie surprised her parents by enrolling at an agricultural college: the University of Queensland Gatton campus. She figured it would give her a chance to work with horses. As it turned out, there were no horses at Gatton, but Natalie was immediately drawn to the physical work and camaraderie of the industry. 

With a Certificate IV in hand, she returned to the Northern Rivers to look for work. “My friend rings me up and she goes, ‘Well, I’ve got a job and I hate it. I’m about to leave. I reckon you’d like it.’” The job was at Sandalwood feedlot, just out of Dalby, Queensland. “I’d never even seen a feedlot until I went there,” says Natalie. “But my mother had a food manufacturing business and, by about week two, I realised it was just like working in a factory — only outside.”

Her computer skills quickly set her apart. Before long, she was managing data for the feedlot, a job that sparked another one of Natalie’s great passions: ag tech. Today, in addition to managing the mostly Braford–Droughtmaster cross herd at Sunlight Grazing, she also runs AgFinity Data, a small consultancy that helps other producers get the most out of their
software and devices.

She and her husband, Chris, took over Sunlight from his parents in 2019 but soon realised they needed an off-farm income to make things work. Chris found a drive-in, drive-out job at a local mine and Natalie took over the farm.

“All of a sudden my days went from looking after the few clients I had to managing this place.”

“We still had one kid in primary school and I had to make sure that the kid in high school stayed at high school. Then we went into the worst drought anyone had seen in 40 years.”

Natalie leaned on what she’d learned at the feedlot: “Don’t let the cattle get hungry and don’t let them run out of protein.” They started feeding their animals well before others did, using soy hull pellets, palm kernel expeller and whatever cottonseed Natalie could get her hands on.

Sunshine Grazing is presently in a good position, she says.  Having recently received 101 millilitres of rain, Natalie says it “looks like someone’s put a whole lot of phosphorus over the place: it’s bright green”.

But there’s still not a lot of downtime. To make it work, Natalie has established a sophisticated tech set-up, including a range of software programs that turn data into reports and actionable insights. Much of the information comes from remote monitoring systems — such as devices from Ceres Tag — which provide her with data on everything from animal weights to water levels and herd movements.