Between the lines: Farmers whistle to winds of change

Listen carefully and you might hear the heartening sound wafting from the countryside of sheep farmers rattling their dags.

Like a sheep dog nipping the heels of a slow-moving flock, the do-or-die McKinsey report recommending sweeping changes to the struggling industry has got things moving.

Credit should go to energetic McKinsey consultants Andrew Grant and Angus Taylor for picking up the tempo of reform and bringing in the stragglers.

But if the revolution they have advocated eventuates - and it is looking increasingly likely - then credit should also go to farmers involved in a quiet evolution.

Before McKinsey's bright orange report advised growers to get closer to their customers, several groups were doing just that.

Most laid low so they did not pre-empt the study, for which growers forked out $3 million.

As a member of Romney New Zealand said at the July launch of the cooperative to brand, promote and sell quality carpet wool: "We've been twiddling our thumbs waiting for that bloody report to come out."

Other farmers have quietly forged relationships and direct supply arrangements with overseas customers.

Merino New Zealand, whose success in promoting fine apparel wools has been a model for others, has already realised it needs to change to further capitalise on opportunities.

It is well down the path to defining a commercial structure even while the farmer vote on the McKinsey recommendations, which would begin the wider industry's shift to the same sort of commercial entity, has yet to be counted.

The catalyst for change has been simple. Farmers have left their farms and done an OE - headed overseas to experience where their wool goes, meet who scours it, spins it, weaves it into fabric and turns it into high-priced carpets and clothes.

Manawatu Romney grower David Stewart left home earlier this year thinking "wool was over, gone like 45 records replaced by CDs."

Instead, he found demand for high-quality wool exceeded supply and "a lot of people making a lot of money out of our wool."

Similarly, a Merino grower who toured Europe in May found a range of high-paying customers who "don't need our wool but they want our wool."

On the receiving end, Frank Wilson of 230-year-old British knitwear company John Smedley said fixed-price contracts with Merino growers had stopped "dreadful price instability" and the new, close relationship with farmers meant the company wanted to manufacture garments with "the same pride and attention as growers put into their wool."

Sheep farmers have entered the real world of commerce when Pier Luigi Loro Piana, the head of the Italian company weaving the world's finest cloth, says: "They are working for me, I am working for them. We are links of the same chain."