MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
“Meat is the Future,” Falklands farmers told.
Falklands farmers heard an unequivocal message from visiting Australian stud farmer Graham Gilmore last week ? meat is the future for sheep farmers.
Mr Gilmore and Mario Aishemberg from Tattykeel Stud in Oberon, New South Wales, also work in Uruguay and are now expanding their business into Chile.
They spent last week touring the Falklands, and did, of course, have a vested interest in the promotion of meat farming: they were there to market semen and embryos from their prime heavy lamb Poll Dorset and Texel Plus stock.
The pair toured farms on the East and West and also made a presentation at the Chamber of Commerce in Stanley, where Mr Gilmore told farmers that the breeds offered rapid growth rate, leanness, easy lambing, and superior taste and tenderness.
He also urged farmers to embrace the opportunities offered to them by the new abattoir at Sand Bay. The facility processed 21,400 sheep in the last killing season, up from 15,400 the previous year, but while its output may be growing, the operation is still subsidised by FIDC.
Mr Gilmore commented: "If I was farming in the Falklands I wouldn't like to be relying on wool without an abattoir there - I'd like both. In Australia we have got problems with lack of abbatoirs. The abattoir you've got here is being creative to help you. Our abbatoirs are being creative to make money for somebody else, not for us.
"In South America the abattoir owners are in it for themselves. There's not many abbatoirs around the world that will keep going and making a loss, they'll just close. You are lucky that you have an abattoir that's been set up to try and help the individual." But, he added, it is not only in the Falklands that meat is increasing in importance: "I think the future of the sheep industry worldwide is focusing more on meat then wool - that's just a fact of life. I've been 44 years in the stud game. We've spent many years with the Merino companies doing better than we have and the tide has turned."
Mr Gilmore said his Falklands tour had been "a very quick learning experience," and that the isolation of the Islands was familiar from his own experiences on the family farm at Tattykeel.
He urged farmers to be flexible and not be daunted by the challenge of change: "We've got problems just like you've got problems here: we do all our own shearing, we build all our own sheds, we build what we can of our own houses. If we have got a friend who's an electrician, we barter with them.
"Whatever the problem is, we don't look at the negative aspect, we look at the positive. Compared to many parts of Australia for producing what we are, we're in the wrong location. But the advantage that we have is that when we sell from a cold climate to a hot climate the sheep jump out of their skins and do really well. "It's a common thing that farmers will say ?Hang on, we can't do that because of this, this and this'. But if we are not doing well we've got to look at something new."
Tattykeel stud was founded in 1960 by Mr Gilmore's grandfather, and with his own sons now taking an active part in the business, is entering its fourth generation in the family.
John Fowler (MP) Stanley.
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