Increasing business and technical skills for sheep producers and industry

Barriers to adoption

Objectives

• to have a better understanding of the barriers to adoption for sheep producers to increase supply and improve efficiency of production
• to develop detailed analysis and background knowledge on impacts of sheep in the farming business.

Activities 

1. Determined the contributors to current and proposed profitable sheep businesses:

• price cost analysis for out-of-season prime lamb production (May 2016) – MIDAS analysis of two production systems and two lambing times to give a monthly cost analysis per kilo of lamb
• cost of getting into sheep analysis (September 2016) – detailed analysis of the cost of setting up a large scale sheep enterprise and expanding a current sheep enterprise from 2000 to 5000 head
• comparative enterprise economics (September 2016) – gross margin analysis on the comparative value of two sheep enterprises and three cropping enterprises across two production regions.

2. Investigated the social and business barriers to producers increasing investment in sheep production:

• Barriers to Adoption desktop study (May 2016) – detailed analysis of previous studies commissioned by SIBI and Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) and other industry surveys on why producers are moving out of sheep

• understanding the business of 25 top sheep producers (May 2017) – detailed analysis of 25 top producers and the fundamentals of their business to determine insight on what makes a top sheep producer
• consultants and agents survey (October 2016) – to determine what services consultants provide to clients and their understanding of the sheep business.

3. Researched new models for increasing production capacity on existing farms:

• the opportunity for growing out of season lambs – a detailed analysis on the opportunities for early and late lambing to fill the production gap (March 2018).