In My Paddock - Ben Duxson, "Glendemar", Marnoo, Victoria

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In My Paddock is a new series we will run where we get Agricultural people to write about what's happening on their Farms or in their Ag-related businesses. Hopefully, if we can pin them down, we will get them to write something on a monthly basis.

By Ben Duxson

Farmers talking to Farmers is one of the best learning platforms I think we can be involved in. Our local paper, The Wimmera-Mail Times, used to have an In My Paddock section where 3 – 4 farmers all wrote about what was happening on their Farms. I remember reading it all the time and even contributing for several years. My brother Dwain is looking to reincarnate this through his Farm Tender platform, and I look forward to many other Farmers all over Australia contributing and hearing their stories.

I am more than happy to kick it off and let you know what is happening around our local area. I am currently writing this from the beautiful Sunshine Coast of Queensland. An annual school holiday trip for our family that allows us to catch up with my wife Cheryl’s, mother and father and sister and brother-in-law and family.

As Farmers, we started the holiday with a 2-day Farm Owners Academy conference. Many would have heard of this course, and it was great to be amongst 200 fellow Farmers looking to improve our businesses and redefine our business models. A big takeaway for me was the commitment that is required to make strong financial changes to our business. It is more about a “sum of whole” approach, working on key strategic areas to adopt our business into one that can thrive in today’s economic environment.

Back at home, we are in the middle of Lambing. Our area in the Wimmera of Australia is looking very good, and we are in the middle of a quite wet winter. Having a ripping start, dryer May to now looking at a ripping season if we can get 1 or 2 good spring rains.

Sheep and Wool markets have taken a dramatic dive from some recent highs, and it has taken a lot of people by shock, sucking the confidence of many in the industry. Still, we need to look at the positives and position ourselves for opportunities that may arise. As a Merino Seedstock Producer, I know that the genetics we have now are the most productive we have ever had in the history of the Merino industry. Plenty of money and work has gone into breeding a type of merino that is made for these types of times. We need to keep productivity high with big early growth rates, high lambing percentages, quality fine wool, and at the same time, keep on improving our labour-saving traits, reducing our running costs.

Animal welfare traits such as dag-score, WEC, fleece rot, foot rot, lamb survival etc, have all had a major focus over the last few years, and with more and more measurement comes more accuracy for these traits. Combining this with reproductive traits and meat-eating quality traits, as I mentioned, never before have the genetics in the Australian Sheep industry been more ready for a slight downturn in prices and an increase in input costs. We have also undertaken a lot of work to increase the strength of our Quality Assurance systems, with our RWS (Responsible Wool Standard) the number 1 QA system for premiums in today’s Wool market.

A local issue, one that will resonate with a few others around Australia, is our fight to stop state and federal governments from railroading and bulldozing local Farmers and compulsory acquiring Land for transmission lines. I don’t need to bring up the politics about this here, but I need to say how proud I am of our area in the way we have come together to stand shoulder to shoulder fighting for our rights to continue to Farm without such a massive impost to our businesses. Communities are back supporting each other, socialising and enjoying each other’s company, getting in the trenches, rolling our sleeves up, working strategically and remaining united to our cause. People power is such a wonderful thing, and it is no better in rural communities that are the backbone of our nation.

The Glendemar MPM Ram Sale is on Wednesday, the 4th of October.