Saturday, March 30, 2024

OPINION: Farming practices come full circle?

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We might be a small country but we once had a lot of sheep – up to 70.3 million of them when numbers peaked in 1982.
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Over the years, though, they have slowly but surely been replaced with dairy cows, to the point where fewer than 30m now graze our hillsides. Some farmers changed code and built the dairy sheds where the woolshed once stood while others opted to become dairy support partners, taking on dairy grazers or turning ground over for feed supplements.

With the instability in the dairy industry over the last few years we are seeing renewed interest in traditional stock, in particular breeding stock. Earlier in the year I talked about wrapping traditional breeding cows in cotton wool as prices reached record levels. Recent breeding ewe sales in the South Island suggested they would follow suit, if there were the numbers to sell.

But that brings us to the sticking point – breeding ewe numbers have dropped so dramatically that yards such as Temuka mustered just 7000 from a larger catchment area, compared to a standard 26,000 “back in the day”. The 7000 was far less than demand required, leaving many to return to the kitchen table to look at their next move.

The option to look further afield into the North Island is there, though the in-lamb breeding ewe market is pretty much done and dusted with most areas well into lambing.

If buyers hold off until the ewe fairs in December-January we might well see a surge in prices or there is also the possibility that focus shifts to ewe hoggets. While this is potentially good news for vendors, the combination of limited numbers and increasing prices will make for a frustrating time for those looking to pick up breeding ewes and again other options may need to be explored.

Whatever form the buying takes it appears the farming industry has come full circle and though ewe numbers would never reach the peak levels of the 80s, we are hopefully looking at a lift in numbers over the coming years. 

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