Sheep ban yet to deliver unity

At about 12.4 million, sheep and lamb numbers in Western Australia are at their lowest level since 1952, having declined steadily as broadacre cropping proved more efficient and profitable.

However, these animals still have a major presence across the state, despite that figure from the Department of Primary Industries indicating many farmers are no longer seeking diversity in their product range by having sheep for meat or wool.

Last year, WA farmers exported sheep worth almost $74 million via the live sheep trade, which has been earmarked for closure by the federal government by 2028.

Political leaders have reacted to campaigns by animal liberation activists who have highlighted poor animal husbandry practices in the live export business.

And while farmers say the trade has cleaned up its act, it is hard for the public to unsee the damaging images of distressed animals wallowing in filth broadcast on television or posted online.

Long before the dissemination of such footage was possible, first exposure to the trade for many of us came in the form of trucks moving sheep through the city to Fremantle Port, often with animals’ legs or heads protruding from the packed enclosure.

If the live sheep trade is ultimately closed down, farmers will only have themselves to blame for failing to realise until way too late that the care they claim to have for their animals needed to be extended beyond the farm gate.

Regrettably, they gave the activists too much evidence to the contrary.

In terms of the product, I still love a lamb chop and was the very happy recipient of such a delicacy at the Dowerin Field Days late last month on my annual visit.

While there, I noted the contrasting signals being send out by the sector as it deals with the significant restructuring taking place.

To its credit, the Keep the Sheep movement has found considerable community support beyond its rural base.

Many in the city also sympathise with farmers’ plight and respect their need to have competition for their products to be profitable and, therefore, sustainable.

Perhaps they believe the industry has cleaned up its act. Perhaps, too, they don’t want their future food choices dictated to them by radical vegans who seem to think we all want to eat pretend meat made in laboratories.

Working against all this is the price of meat, which seems to be eternally high, notwithstanding news of gluts due to live sheep export bans.

Insert into this argument the role of local processors. At Dowerin, I heard from at least one who believes their facility needs a lot more lamb than currently to compete with other producers, such as those operating on the east coast.

As a result, processors see the end of the live sheep trade as an opportunity, although not all sheep shipped off to the Middle East are suitable for an abattoir here.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of distrust in this sector.

Producers don’t trust processors and, if you look at the history of Australian agriculture, they never have.

Monopolies including the Australian Wheat Board and the Wool Corporation were created because farmers wanted to control their own destiny. And they had the political clout to achieve that. Like all manipulated markets, though, they failed.

On the flip side, it was interesting to hear about farmers failing to honour contracts, even quite short-term ones, to deliver their livestock to processors.

It’s an interesting industry where contracts seem unenforceable.

The shame is there is a lot to gain for both parties in getting trust into the market. We have seen from iron ore that, once infrastructure investment occurs, there is incentive to get throughput, albeit the miners control the resources as much as the hard assets required to process and deliver it.

And processing in WA has significant economic benefits, including for rural communities facing population decline.

No doubt strategies to solve this problem have been attempted for many years, but the likelihood of a live export ban is a good reason to look at it again.