The board is dying, but long live sheep

By Philippa Stevenson

Between the lines

The Wool Board's days are numbered.

Woolgrowers meeting tomorrow for its annual meeting will consider a slew of board-bashing remits but are unlikely to deliver the coup de grace.

But they will further toll the death knell.

The mighty organisation that once lorded it over prime ministers is already a shadow of its former self. Where it reflected wool producers' prosperity it now mirrors their poverty - at least in size.

Farmers are not impressed that even a slimmed-down operation has 34 staff earning more than $100,000 each a year, and that the board raided its reserves for $11.4 million to cover spending.

It does not go down too well when you are caught in the endless round of dagging, crutching, shearing and dipping that your costs total around 60 per cent of the return for the clip. And that is before you have been charged the board's 5 per cent levy on the wool you manage to sell.

"The costs are growing and the things still keep producing the damn stuff," said one-time farmer leader Bill Garland.

From one end of the country to the other, farmers are recognising the problems of what was once white gold but is now often regarded as an annoying byproduct of meat production.

Some acknowledge their own culpability.

In the north, Te Akau farmer Graeme Black said: "As a woolgrower, I am only concerned about the price of wool because I shore my sheep yesterday. Shear the sheep one day, get the price the next, sell and then forget about it in total until next time. That's fatal."

In the south, Canterbury farmer Edward Orr said: "Most of us harvest our wool, put it on a truck, then wait to be told what price we will get. What other business runs this way?"

Mr Black believes that the board thinks it has been doing the right thing by promoting wool to processors and retailers "way down the other end of the chain, and hoping something will filter back. But it doesn't trickle back when you are so far removed from the end product."

He, like many others, has come to the conclusion that growers must get closer to their customers - leapfrogging what at times can be up to 20 processors who take wool from a greasy state to a manufactured article.

Why should farmers bother?

Because most believe there is still life in the old fibre, and that new and profitable products are out there for the researching. They also know that not all farms can shift to cattle or other options. Sheep are the only choice for many a steep property.

There may not be much life left in the Wool Board. For some there has simply got to be life left in wool.