A good example of a holistic solution for fine wool and healthy profitability is given by Tim and Karen Wright. They farm a 4130 ha property called “Lana” at Uralla in the New England Tablelands of NSW where their mean annual rainfall is 769mm. They run fine wool Merinos (15.5-17.5 micron) and beef cattle on the coarse and fine granites of the two blocks of the property.
Tim’s father, Peter Wright, took over Lana in 1952. In the mid-1960s, Peter began pasture improvement. About 20 per cent of the property closest to the homestead and woolshed was cleared or thinned and sown with pasture and the whole property was aerially superred and seeded from about 1960.
The problem was that this form of management barely broke even over five years after ‘improving’ a paddock. “After the 1981 and 1994 droughts, the lowest yielding paddocks were the sown paddocks, and the land suffered,” says Tim.
By 1990, motivated to lower the cost of production and better utilise the grazing animal, Tim and Karen decided that something had to change. Having experimented with cell grazing between 1991 and 1993, Tim moved to planned grazing in 1995. With planned grazing, stock numbers have been maintained, with only one-third the fertiliser inputs of the 1980s.
Planned grazing is based on holistic management guidelines and involves intensive grazing with a high stock density for short graze periods followed by long rest periods. “We manage the whole ecosystem, using the livestock as ‘tools’. We use ‘strategic rest from grazing’ to enhance the environment so 95 per cent of the property is in recovery mode at any one time,” says Tim.
The financial success of the Wright’s operation is evident in their gross margins - even in the drought year of 2002, they achieved healthy results. The cost of fencing and water per acre was about the same as a hundred weight of superphosphate, with a much better return.
It has been not only a long term environmental success for Tim and Karen Wright and their property “Lana” at Uralla in the New England Tablelands of NSW, to introduce “planned grazing” but also economically profitable.
