The number of sheep in Australia declined by 7 per cent in 2007-08 to about 80 million, and was forecast to drop to 77 million in 2008-09, according to the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics.

AUSTRALIA has 100 million fewer sheep than 20 years ago — and many farmers could not be happier to see the end of their reliance on wool.

Instead of worrying about hiring shearers and dodging animal-rights activists campaigning over mulesing, farmers are slaughtering their lambs for meat.

The number of sheep in Australia declined by 7 per cent in 2007-08 to about 80 million, and was forecast to drop to 77 million in 2008-09, according to the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics.

The trend is being accelerated by this month’s record prices. Lambs for slaughter have fetched as much as $180 a head, a price farmers regard as nothing short of astonishing.

Mark Jaensch, 41, who owns Premer Dale near Callington in South Australia, has just finished mating 800 of his ewes.

“It’s hard to get shearers,” hesaid.

“If you can sell a cross-bred lamb within four months of it being born without doing much work — that’s good. The wool is just too much work.”

Mr Jaensch said commodity prices for crops such as barley were also low, so farmers were keeping their grain and using it to feed their now highly profitable lambs.

“It is the icing on top for broadacre farms — good money for comparatively little effort.

“I’m getting the highest prices I’ve ever seen for lambs. Farmers are buoyed by the state of the market.”

ABARE has just released a report showing that with hot dry conditions in most of the major prime lamb producing regions, producers were increasing their slaughter of sheep and lambs.

The report on Australian lamb showed higher prices had resulted in lamb producers seeing a 34 per cent increase in average farm cash income to about $92,000 a farm this year.

ABARE analyst Caroline Gunning-Trant said high prices were the main driver behind the increase in the gross value of production of sheep and lambs, expected to top $2.45 billion this financial year.

In contrast, the wool industry, badly hit by the global financial crisis, is worth $2.05bn, down

22 per cent on last year.

“The trend away from wool towards sheep meat has been happening since the late 1980s,” she said.

“In the 20 years from 1989, the sheep flock has halved, yet lamb production has increased by 48per cent. Merino ewes are increasingly being joined with meat-breed rams such as Border Leicesters and their offspring used for meat.

“With the prolonged drought over the last five years, it has been difficult for many producers to feed animals. The demand for wool has continued to decline because of competition from other fibres, and producers who couldn’t feed their animals sold them for slaughter.

“The sharp drop in the Australian flock over the last two decades is continuing.”

The president of the Sheepmeat Council of Australia, Kate Joseph, said the flock had dropped by 30 million in the past five years and by 100 million since the peak in 1985.

“Wool prices are down, meat prices are up,” she said. “There is good demand for Australian lamb in the Middle East and the US. Normally, someone who is producing meat doesn’t worry too much about the wool.”

Mick Keogh, executive director of the Australian Farm Institute, said there was now a real shortage of sheep. “We have seen a very large decline in the value of the wool industry in Australia,” he said. “The profits are simply not there any more. We have seen theclosure of wool processing facilities in Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne and regional NSW. The major factor has been low wool prices.

“The mulesing controversy is another reason to get out of wool. It is an easy option for producers to shift across to breeding for meat; you just cross the old merino ewes with a meat sire and the progeny are prime lambs.”

Credit: John Stapleton


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