Analyzing Australian Agriculture

Our trip provided us plenty of opportunities to learn about Australian Agriculture.  On our many tours, I made several important comparisons between American and Australian Agriculture.  I'll elaborate on my favorite of these comparisons.  As I mentioned in my Day 6 blog about the Trigger Vale operation, we learned a great deal about the reasoning Andrew Bouffler has for managing his farm the way he does.  Now I admittedly know very little about sheep, but I think the things he talked about would make sense to any producer.  He started off his talk telling us all the things he learned when he went on his own 4 month long study abroad trip.  As a part of the trip, he had to write a paper on what he had learned; his paper focused on how producers must focus on balance to maintain profitability.  That is to say their focus is equally distributed among growth, meat yield, fertility, and wool traits.  This is very similar to things that we learn in the classroom and on the farm in the US:  a producer must not breed for any single trait while ignoring others that may not seem as critical as that can be detrimental to profitability in the long run.

In the Day 6 blog, I gave Mr. Bouffler's example of producers breeding for so much wool in the ewes while completely neglecting mothering ability, that the benefit in wool production was overcome due to a major decrease in lambing percentage.  Since 1952, Trigger Vale has been working to establish and enhance their client's profitability.  You can check out their official objectives on their website:  Trigger Vale.  This, again, is no different from the goal of many seedstock operations in the US.

The Trigger Vale operation breeds White Suffolk and Polled Merino sheep.  This is their effort to employ another familiar concept here in America:  hybrid vigor.  While many of us are not so familiar with sheep, few have not seen a black baldie calf running around in a pasture close to home.  The Bouffler's Suffolk stock contribute high growth, while the merinos bequeath wool traits.  Together, the crossed lambs yield a healthy bottom line for the Bouffler's commercial clients.  American cattle producers get the same effect with the Hereford/Angus cross (and others):  efficiency and gentle disposition from Herefords and carcass quality and maternal traits from Angus.  While I saw many different operations in Australia, I was surprised that I could always find many similarities as well; I find it rather amusing that no matter where we are in this world, all farmers have qualities that unite them.