[cc photo credit: Merino's Dream by Denisse Moreno]

Federated Farmer’s President Don Nicholson had some interesting things to say about the wool industry and research needs in his speech at the National Conference in June:

“MO2 is an example that conventional products can be taken in completely new directions. Look at Jeremy Moon of Icebreaker. A finalist for last year’s Federated Farmers‘ AgriBusiness Person of the Year. Jeremy has made merino wool sexy. Look at the development of gold kiwifruit cultivars and now in recent weeks, red. Yet some commentators seemed perplexed about the loss of the wool levy. One leading commentator went as far to describe it as ‘brainless’ and driven by ‘raw emotion’. Blaming hard pressed sheep farmers whose returns have imploded, is like blaming investors in a finance company, for the failure of a finance company. For wool to be on a par with the 1980s returns, it ought to be a $2.8 billion export but now it’s down to just under $500 million. As oil-based synthetics compete with wool, the demand drivers that have forced down price isn’t just a New Zealand problem, but a global one. It demands a global response. The Wool Council is part of the Prince of Wales’ wool project – designed to do just that. The Wool Council’s ‘wool hotel’ challenge is an incredibly exciting extension to switch global architects back to wool. It’s regulatory too – unbundling the road blocks erected by oil-based synthetics against complacent wool. In New Zealand, wool insulation should be everywhere but we’ve got glass and synthetic batts as standard. Wool offers immense potential, but that hinges on consumers to tune back into wool as an exciting, natural and renewable product. Yet the problem with wool is wool. Much of the thinking and research effort has put wool into two separate boxes – textiles and floor-coverings. What wool needs is research anarchy. A Richard Revell or a Roger Beattie to take wool and turn it on its head. What we need is a Wool-X prize to inspire innovators, entrepreneurs and inventors. A prize to take wool and manipulate it in completely new and novel ways. I’m not talking evolution but revolution. We’re not talking Keratec but mass market products. It’s time for business unusual because you cannot tell me that everything that can be done with wool, has been.” [emphasis mine]

“The Reverend Samuel Marsden and his entourage coming ashore at the Bay of Islands on 19 December 1814. On this, his first trip across the Tasman, Marsden not only introduced religion to the Maori, but also brought eight Merinos, along with other animals … Mana Island, some seven kilometres off shore from the entrance to Porirua harbour, near Wellington, was once a popular spot for whaling ships, which called in to stock up on potatoes and pigs supplied by Maori agriculturalists on the mainland. In 1834 Scotsman John Bell Wright arrived at the island, bringing cattle and some 100 Merino sheep from Sydney … Thanks to its wool and ability to adapt to local conditions, the Merino quickly became New Zealand’s dominant sheep.”

- Richard Wolfe, A Short History of Sheep in New Zealand

I’m looking forward to visiting the Pataka Museum in Porirua on Sunday for the Future of Sheep Farming in NZ forum:

“It is time to talk sheep! We have gathered some highly experienced, valued and knowledgeable experts who will be discussing the future of NZ’s sheep farming. Richard Wolfe, author of the A Short History of Sheep in NZ will be chairing this forum with guests including Theresa Gattung – Chairperson of Wool Partners International and David Burt – Policy Advisor of Meat and Fibre for Federated Farmers of NZ and other sheep experts.”

and SHEEP – NZ Icons in Art exhibition:

“Recognising and celebrating the contribution that SHEEP have made to this nation’s development, these icons are seen as an integral part of New Zealand’s cultural heritage. At a time when the dairy industry is flourishing, earning record prices and taking over pastoral farms, SHEEP: NZ Icons in Art celebrates the contribution that SHEEP have made to this nation’s development.”

Reflections to follow.

My current research investigates relationships amongst people, animals and the land on NZ sheep stations. In the new year I’ll start fieldwork in places likes these:

Sheep Station NZ

Bendigo Merinos flow across the land

Shearing a Merino

Position description: Typically these positions involve assisting the Farm Manager/Owner in all activities on the farm, usually as part of a small team. It is advantageous (but often not essential) to have your own working dogs.

Suitable candidates: These positions suit most entrants into the New Zealand Drystock industry, as they provide an opportunity to learn New Zealand farming systems under supervision. They are an ideal and necessary first step in climbing the industry “ladder”.

Activities include, amongst other things: Daily shifting of stock; Feeding out stock; tractor work; Use of 2 and 4-wheel farm motorbikes; monitoring of ewes during lambing; Basic pasture management; Basic animal health identification & treatment; Fencing; General farm maintenance work

Typical working hours: These hours vary from farm to farm and season to season. A range would be from 55 hours a week (quiet periods) to 70 hours a week (e.g. during lambing, shearing and docking).

Leave: 4 weeks a year

Typical contract period: Usually minimum of one year (or longer)

Typical salary range: $26,000 – $32,000 per annum depending on level of New Zealand & other experience

[source]

Questions for further research:

Before I arrived in New Zealand late last year, I found the NZ On Screen website to be a treasure-trove of Kiwi culture. I learned about the language they speak here, NZ’s fascinating history and the political and comic genius of Billy T., but mostly I’ve used it as a research tool. For example, The Sheep Collection brings together 16 titles about Kiwis and their “ovine kin.” Unfortunately, the site doesn’t offer video embedding, so you’ll have to follow the links below.

There are films that address the darkness of remote farm life and the comedic horrors of sheep run amok, as well as historical and contemporary documentaries on the significant role of sheep in Kiwi culture, the challenges of sheep farming, the bonds between shepherds and their dogs, the world of competitive sheep dog trials and sheep-shearing techniques.

But a true highlight for me was the second segment from the Country Calendar Spoofs Special, which features “Fleet” the radio-controlled sheep dog. In this doco-style video, we’re told that the “average working dog leaves a lot to be desired” and a “sheep dog is only as good as its master…Until now, that is. Modern science is on the threshold of making the trained working dog as defunct as the dodo.” Enter Dr Ross Duncan, an expert in neurosurgery and veterinary science, who implants 74 “very small, multi-functional electrodes” in a collie’s brain. Later, a hand-held radio transmitter is used to communicate commands back to the dog (through a receiver connected to the electrodes) in order to control its movement. Although it’s easily compared to a remote-controlled car, during field trials the scientist reminds the farmer to “take it slowly” and “watch the dog” because “it’s not a toy” and he “could pull a muscle” in the animal by jerking it back and forth too quickly.

[image credit: Country Calendar]

Ultimately, the scientist justifies the use and cost of the new technology in terms that sound eerily familiar today: “All we’re doing, really, is taking technology that’s now available to us and perfecting what farmers like Brian have been trying to do for years…” There’s a bunch of interesting things going on here in terms of human-animal-technology relations: science as superior knowledge, technology as prosthesis or extension, control over nature/animals, etc. And for anyone interested in design fiction and future technological scenarios, what also makes this video so fascinating is how plausibly or successfully it tells a story. Apparently, “the phones rang red hot” because the spoof was “just a little bit too real for some folk.”

Another interesting video also appears in the Country Calendar Spoofs Special. The third clip features Dominic and Brian, a couple of hairdressers-turned-farmers who bake bread and produce better wool by running a “stress-free” flock. We’re told that their “radical” process has tripled their wool receipts and brought them “a substantial grant from the Wool Board.” The pair had noticed the negative effects of stress on people’s hair during their salon days, and they claim it has the same effect on sheep wool. To calm their sheep, “respect their sensitivities” and improve wool quality, the couple take picnics with the flock, chant yoga-inspired mantras to herd them, jog with them to encourage fitness, transport them via trolley instead of dragging to increase comfort, play classical music through headphones for relaxation during shearing, leave a “protective layer of fleece” to keep the sheep warm, and take time for comforting, touch-based therapies like regular wool washing and styling.

[image credit: Country Calendar]

While the video is clearly meant to make fun of city-folks in general and gay men in particular, it also pokes fun at what kinds of research government and industry are seen to support. Although I am no fan of the homosexual stereotype that underpins the primary joke here, it does open up space for the kinds of emotional connection with, and caring for, animals that are often excluded from representations and performances of masculinity so often associated with sheep farming. This is also interesting given today’s marketing of “ethical” merino wool which relies, in part, on definitions of animal welfare that include Icebreaker affiliated farms hand-shearing their sheep to ensure a thicker layer of wool stays behind to keep the animals warm.

Questions for further research:

• What role can humour play in the critical design of future technological scenarios? What kind of knowledge can be produced? How can we determine successful public engagement?
• What elements of sheep farming and wool production can be characterised as “caring” or “loving”? How do those actions, relations and values relate to “animal welfare”?

[image credit: Biomark]

The first RFID livestock tracking device was developed in 1979, but increasing public concerns over food safety coupled with decreasing technology costs have recently made RFID-based agricultural traceability both more desirable and more feasible. A good introduction to global traceability efforts can be found in this Review of Selected Cattle Identification and Tracing Systems Worlwide (pdf), but I’d like to take a closer look at Canada, NZ and USA here because I see their responses to traceability efforts running on a continuum from support to acceptance to opposition. I’m interested in unpacking the politics embedded in these responses, and wanted to gather a few things I’ve been reading into one place.

According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, animal traceability systems have three main goals: “the identification of animals or products, the ability to follow their movement, and the identification of departure and destination premises.” Canada’s National Agriculture and Food Traceability System (NAFTS) will make RFID-based tagging mandatory by the end of 2011, because “the ability to rapidly trace an animal throughout its life cycle is essential to isolating animal health emergencies and can help limit the economic, trade, environmental and social impacts of such emergencies.” Agricultural traceability has enjoyed a good deal of university and government support–although Canada recently received a food safety grade of “poor” in the area of traceability–and IBM was instrumental in testing a new “farm to fork” traceability system as part of its broader Smarter Planet: Smarter Food initiative in Manitoba. However, some Canadian farmers were less convinced of the benefits last year when the National Farmers Union said “the initiative will do nothing to increase farmers’ profits because it doesn’t include labelling regulations, yet will be more time-consuming and create more paperwork” and Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter said “If we don’t deal with the income situation that hog and livestock farmers face, we’re not going to have anything to trace.” Currently, the National Cattle Feeders’ Association “welcomes the national traceability program” and the Canadian Pork Council has created the PigTrace traceability program.

[image credit: Noma Bar]

New Zealand’s National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) programme will also make cattle and deer tagging mandatory in 2011 and 2012, respectively, using a similar rationale: “NAIT will safeguard the New Zealand brand and farmers’ income by protecting market access for New Zealand animal products through enhancing regulatory and consumer confidence in New Zealand’s ability to manage biosecurity and food safety.” However, NZ’s Federated Farmers claim that the biosecurity claims are overstated, there is no market demand, the on-farm costs are too high, and there are data validity and protection issues; they do not currently support the implementation of a compulsory system. However, the NAIT Information Document (pdf) claims that consulted “farmers are supportive of a mandatory traceability system, with a far greater number expressing support (58 percent) than those against it (17 percent).” Interestingly, the same document also points out that regardless of whether or not these efforts are supported, “eighty percent of farmers believe animal traceability will become mandatory in New Zealand at some stage.”

The United States Department of Agriculture recently dismantled their National Animal Identification System (NAIS) and is currently negotiating state-level animal disease traceability efforts. The NAIS was unpopular amongst farmers, in part because of a generalised and farther-reaching resistance to perceived government intervention, ownership and surveillance. The NAIS STINKS website sums up their opposition with the following statement and posters:

“The proposed draconian NAIS protocol is of a more severe degree than surveillance required by a convicted pedophile or child molester in the USA. Please join in opposing NAIS for the freedom of all to raise livestock without complicated government enforcement and oppression.”

However, the use of RFID microchips as livestock anti-theft devices has received rather greater support, although government absence may also be required for its success. As Curt Hopkins explains:

“I believe the key to any future adoption of tag-based livestock control, the kind of control that would have rustlers where they belong – running in place at the end of a spar – will require the participation of independent entrepreneurs and developers. A rancher is a lot more likely to trust an indie dev than a government rep, a federal investigator or a salesman from some software chaebol. Perhaps kids that were raised in the sticks and still have an affection for it, who do not want to see this way of life dead and who don’t want to see either the rustlers or the agricultural conglomerates determine how we eat, will apply some of their unique technological know-how – and a little of their grandparents’ elbow grease to the problem and come up with a way to read, record and retrieve information that ranchers could get behind. Maybe they could create a nation-wide, but decentralized and privately-held national cattle ID database, utilizing cloud computing and available to law enforcement as a tool that the ranchers themselves, and their indie tech partners, hold and control. Anything that doesn’t have their brand on it, they won’t touch. Amen to that.”

There’s a lot going on in all these programmes and people’s responses to them and it helps me to see it in one place. At first glance I recognise risk management, acceptance of new technology, national pride, support for government, skepticism about new technology, resistance to government, concerns over farmer welfare and technology management.

Questions for further research:

• What are the primary benefits (e.g. food security, market participation, etc.) and issues (e.g. cost, data accuracy/reliability, data privacy, changes to work, etc.) associated with traceability initiatives?
• How can multiple, and possibly contradictory, concerns be represented (e.g. infographics, stories, objects, etc.) to stakeholders? Which distribution channels, sites and/or events are best suited for public engagement?

I’m doing some historical research right now on human-animal relations, especially those among sheep herders, their flocks and their dogs, and I’ve been completely charmed by New Zealand’s vegetable sheep.

[photo credit: Roger Makepeace]

Not to be confused with the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, vegetable sheep are actual plants of the Raoulia species. This “densely compacted, rounded cushion plant grow to several feet across and sometimes two feet high … and the white colour of its flowers and also of the hairy covered leaves gives it the appearance, from a distance, of sheep.”

[Figure 108 Large cushion of the Marlborough vegetable sheep, Haastia pulvinaris. Mt. Cupola, Nelson Lakes National Park. Photo: J. W. Dawson.]

[Figure 109 Close view of a portion of a Haastia pulvinaris cushion showing the branchlet tips closely invested by woolly leaves. Photo: J. W. Dawson.]

“On the shingle-slips the wonderful vegetable-sheep are encountered. These grow not on the shingle, but on the rocks which the stones have nearly buried. Large examples form great hummocks, 6 ft. long by 3 ft. across, or even more. Really they are shrubs of the daisy family, and are provided with a thick, stout, woody main stem and strong roots, which pass far into the rock-crevices. Above, the stems branch again, and again, and towards their extremities are covered with small woolly leaves, packed as tightly as possible. Finally, stems, leaves, and all are pressed into a dense, hard, convex mass, making an excellent and appropriate seat for a wearied botanist … The vegetable-sheep are not inaptly named, for at a distance a shepherd might be misled.”

– L. Cockayne, New Zealand Plants and Their Story, Wellington: Government Printer, 1910

“Though singular and interesting to the botanist, these plants are of no value economically, but, on the contrary, as we have shown, certain species of them are a plague to the shepherds, inasmuch as they give them much trouble and annoyance to discern between an animal sheep and a vegetable sheep.”

– John R. Jackson, “The Vegetable Sheep of New Zealand,” The Intellectural Observer: Review of Natural History, Microscopic Research and Recreative Science, Volume XI, pp. 128-135, London: Groombridge and Sons, 1867.

Cross-posted at plsj