Sheep innovation at NFF Congress, Brisbane - 19 June 2009
An award winning revolutionary approach to Australian sheep management will be unveiled at the upcoming National Farmers Federation 2009 Brisbane Congress.
The Sheep CRC has just been presented with the 2009 CRC Association Excellence in Innovation Award for the Precision Sheep Management (PSM) package, which will be on display at the Congress on Monday and Tuesday, 22 and 23 June.
The Congress will examine Australia’s role in feeding the world and the mounting pressures on farmers’ ability to meet the demand. Innovations, such as PSM’s capacity to drive productivity growth, will play an important role into the future.
PSM is a system of identifying and managing individuals in a sheep flock and capturing the value from the top performers, and minimising the costs of the poor performers. It is already being used in Queensland.
Sheep CRC PSM Project Leader, Mark Coupland says if just 20 per cent of the Australia sheep industry adopts the technology, profits can be increased by $82 million per annum within ten years.
"Industry can move‐on from managing age or sex based mobs, to managing each and every individual in the mob according to its needs and merits, as well as the farmer’s and the markets needs, with proven and robust equipment.
"The key is that PSM capitalises on the significant variability among sheep – the top 25% of sheep can be as much as 3 to 5 times more profitable than the animals in the bottom 25%."
CJ Hawkins Homestead, University of New England, Armidale NSW 2351