New Zealand falls out of love with sheep farming as lucrative pine forests spread

Sheep farmers burn fleeces as wool prices slump

Tuesday June 27 2023, 12.01am BST, The Times

Sheep farmers are burning fleeces because it is too expensive to bring them to market, it has emerged, with Scottish ministers urged to live up to their green agenda and help reinvent the market.

Wool prices have been low since the 1990s, when the product traded at about £3 per kg, but during the past four years returns have reached crisis point for many producers.

An average price of £0.89 per kg at auction in 2019 fell to a total average return to producers of only £0.33 per kg, a drop exacerbated by the pandemic, which closed UK and international markets.

But campaigners say fleeces are versatile and could be repurposed, for example for house insulation, helping to play a role in Scottish ministers’ net-zero ambitions.

The really perverse thing is there's no intention to ever harvest it. If they did that they'd have to pay back the carbon credits. They plant it and leave it, gather carbon credits quickly for 40 years. The rate slows down to a trickle after that as the canopy is mature. There is really no plan after that. Source family in forestry.

It's not that great... Any kind of monoculture is laying waste to the surrounding area.

I have a biased view but from what I see generally sheep farms do not make good dairy farms. Often the shift is to have sheep make up a smaller portion of sheep & beef farms.