The new shed: modern and under $100k
Lindsey Park farmer Jim Renkin OAM stood up to talk about his new shearing shed on Friday, September 2 - but he started with a disclaimer about his even newer OAM.
“While I was very honoured to receive it, to me OAM stands for Ordinary Australian Man,” Mr Renkin said.
He proceeded to launch into the meat and potatoes of the Landcare event.
“We’ve seen so many shearing sheds built by so-called experts which just don’t work,” he said.
“I talked to Peter about it, he said ‘I know nothing about shearing sheds’ and I said ‘good, you’ll do what I want’.”
Swanpool-based builder Peter Mennen spent three years building a new shearing shed over the top of Mr Renkin’s pre-World War II building.
“It happened in three stages and we never missed a shearing,” Mr Renkin said.
“It’s easy to go out and spend $100,000 or $250,000 on compliant sheds, but what we’ve done is make what we already had compliment and safe.”
The wool industry may seem off-topic for a Landcare field day, but Kerri Robson from the Gecko Clan Landcare Network said there was strong support for Landcare groups to branch out and have new ideas.
“Landcare can be what you want it to be. Farmers are very much not just managing their stock now, but the soil, the environment and everything,” Ms Robson said.
“Jim (Renkin) is apart of his Landcare group and it made sense to host a day out here for the farmers.”
The event focused on farm safety compliance and heard from AWN’s Rod Miller who discussed the buying trends in the premium wool market.
“The demand for ethical wool now is insatiable.”
These were the words of the AWN’s Rod Miller, who recently spoke to farmers on a Lima farm about the growing hunger of the premium fashion industry for sustainable, ethical wool.
“What we have now is a commodity market and a premium market,” Mr Miller said of the wool industry.
“It is clearly becoming two markets. This is the most profound change in wool marketing I have seen in my 50 years.”
Mr Miller is referring to the rise in ethical certification, such as the Responsible Wool Standard (RWS) and ZQ.
“These accreditations follow the wool through sale. They are very powerful in the sense that it takes the message through to the final product, but in a marketing sense it gets a premium for the farmer.”
Someone who is ZQRX certified (both an ethical wool grower and a regenerative farmer) can get an extra 300 to 330 cents per kilogram of wool, according to Mr Miller.
“And that price is locked in for three years. So we are talking significant premiums,” he said.
Mr Miller pointed out fashion brands like M.J. Bale, which promotes itself as 100 per cent carbon neutral and is on the lookout for zero emission wool.
Factors like mulesing also play into the premiums.
“Mulesing isn’t an issue in the Chinese premium market; it is very much a US and European issue,” Mr Miller said.
“The Italians will back out of fine wools because they are mulesed, but the Chinese will still pay good money.”
Mulesing was a hot topic among the farmers.
“I’m not here to debate non-mulesing,” Mr Miller said.
“But I know what the market is saying and there is a strong demand for non-mulesed wool. The future of mulesing is that it doesn’t need to happen and I work with some growers in some pretty tough climates who agree.”
Mr Miller said there was a “wave” of farmers joining the RWS and ZQ indexes.
“Even in the last month, there has been a big increase,” he said.
“And we are seeing this all flowing through to the studs because you need RWS rams.”
Out of everything, provenance has grown to be a big selling factor for fashion brands.
Mr Miller said the AWN was working to provide “stories attached to the wool” and capitalise on this trend.
Provenance refers to an item’s place of origin, or keeping a record of authenticity.
“The people who own these brands want theses stories. It can also grow tourism,” Mr Miller said.
To get this direct contact, brands will facilitate a ‘private sale’ with farmers through AWN.
Mr Miller spoke at the Landcare Swanpool event on September 2.