Friday, July 27th .....

I had a meeting this morning with a farmer who is also involved in sheep dog training.  It was very foggy when I arrived at his farm and I had to paddle through mud (and other stuff) in his driveway before I reached the house.  I was welcomed by the barking of his eight sheep dogs.  I am helping him put together an application for a grant to help organise sheepdog  trials in conjunction with the Craft Fair in 2013.

I’ve seen sheepdog  trials on TV and in real life but I had no idea of the importance sheepdog training still has in the work of the modern sheep farmer.  Michael, the farmer, tells me that he runs training sessions across Tasmania and has no trouble finding candidates.  Many are young people training to be shepherds, but some are just people who have a couple of acres and a few pet sheep to keep the grass down.  Training a dog is a great hobby.

The trials run over the four days of the Craft Fair and need about 250 sheep, which they borrow from local farms.  Each dog gets three fresh sheep to work, then they are taken back to the farm.  The animals are worth about $200 each, and the farmer provides them at no charge, so they’re looked after very well.

Michael also talked about how farmers are becoming more interested in understanding how sheep think (not very deeply, I would have thought).  It used to take three men to load sheep into a truck, using sheer physical force.  Now, a NZ farmer has invented a 1200mm long ramp which the sheep have to cross as they approach the truck.  Once they reach the top of the ramp and put their front legs down, they are in an uncomfortable position so bring their rear legs down as well.  To keep their balance, they have to move forward and find themselves in the truck - no problem.

He had lots of other stories about handling sheep and cattle, and the problems farmer have in growing crops.  He used to grow potatoes for McCains but gave it up because of the damage being done to the soil.  After five or six consecutive crops, he said that the soil was like concrete and it would take seven years of nurturing to get it back to a reasonable condition.  And all the time McCains is pushing to reduce the contract price so that it becomes hardly viable.  One of the reasons that McCains is moving its production to New Zealand is that they’ll be starting the cycle with a new group of farmers who haven’t experienced the heartbreak of seeing the destruction of their land so that MacDonalds can sell their fries at a rock-botttom price.  The farmer might get $200 per tonne of potatoes; by the time they are processed, cooked and served, they bring in $3000 per tonne.  If 5c were added to the cost of a price of a bag of MacDonalds fries, McCains could afford to pay the farmer an extra $50 per tonne and we would have more people staying in the industry.