Alan Fyfe is a purebred pig breeder from Yelmah Stud, Hamley Bridge in South Australia. He has had a major influence on the Australian pig industry serving the industry and its members selflessly and with distinction for many decades. Furthermore, he is a long standing member of AAABG including being on 1984 and 1995 organising committees and has been an advocate of genetic improvement in Australia and New Zealand.
Alan's generosity of spirit has seen him share his experiences with other breeders. His strong working relationships with SARDI, PIRSA, the University of Adelaide especially the Roseworthy Campus research and extension staff and the Animal Breeding and Genetics Unit at Armidale has included access to his herd's performance data and the practices he has implemented in his breeding program - willing sharing of intellectual property at no cost to others.
Alan has been a member of the SA Swine Compensation Fund Committee which advised on investment of funds to benefit industry and on choice of research projects. As a member of the Swine Compensation Funds' successor, the SA Pig Industry Advisory Group he, and colleagues, provide advice to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries on property registration, industry codes of practice, vendor declarations and relevant regulations for the pig industry as well as research priorities. For many years he has contributed to industry policy and development via the SA Farmers Federation's Commercial Pig Section. In the mid 1980s, as inaugural Chairman, he played a pivotal role in establishing a boar testing facility, SABOR Ltd, with the aid of Swine Compensation funding. Subsequently Alan became Chairman and Director of the SABOR Artificial Breeding Centre Ltd based in Clare and has overseen its growth from a Government supported unit to a fully privatised, commercially viable pig AI centre marketing semen nationwide. His expertise in pig genetic improvement resulted in a consultancy to assess genetic merit of a NZ pig herd.
Over the years Alan moved from showing to embracing objective measurement, genetic evaluation systems and index selection with Yelmah's success as a national leader reflected in both live pig and semen sales to all Australian states. Alan has written papers on using PIGBLUP in the Yelmah herd; "Practical experience with PIGBLUP" for the Australasian Pig Science Association (APSA 1989), "Selection Program Implementation on the Farm" (AAABG 1984) and "Efficient use of Recording Systems" (AAABG 1988). Alan has also made his data available for research; for example Horst Brandt used the Yelmah data to estimate genetic correlations between purebred and crossbred performance and Tom Long used Yelmah as a case study for genetic and financial evaluations of commonly used breeding systems.
He was the first licensed PIGBLUP user, signing a contract in November 1989, and became a member of various Pig Genetics Consultative Groups which guided the development of PIGBLUP during the early to mid 1990s and again from 2001 until 2006. His stud Yelmah is part of the National Pig Improvement Scheme - the across herd genetic evaluation system in pigs. Alan was one of the founding members of this scheme. Alan is truly a servant leader, an innovator and early adopter of new genetic technologies.