The Wyoming Sheep Industry is facing stiff competition, with 70% of America’s lamb and sheep meat imported from Australia and New Zealand. Wyoming sheep herders are selling direct to consumers to try and gain market share.
By Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily
Winter’s arctic winds will soon be blowing over Wyoming, and, in preparation, the sheep herds have all been divided out along the plains. 2,000 ewes will be wintering in Brad Boner’s pastures in Converse County, waiting to give birth in the spring and start the cycle all over again.
Boner is a fourth generation Wyoming sheep herder, who has set aside approximately one third of his sheep herd for breeding stock. The rest of the lambs have been sold for meat. As he prepares to ship out his lambs this coming Monday for production, Boner said he is aware of the disadvantage Wyoming sheep herders have compared to their counterparts from Down Under.
“About 70% of the lamb sold or consumed in the U.S. is Australian and from New Zealand,” Alison Crane, the Wyoming Wool Growers Association director, said. “We import a ton. It’s a major discussion happening in the sheep industry nationally about how we got here. There’s just been a steady decline and inventory across the country since 1960. It is partly due to the Wool Act and the trade agreements that we had and tariffs.
“If you look at federal legislation and how our federal grazing has been managed since the 1960s, you can see how things have changed drastically,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “It opened up the floodgates for Australia and New Zealand to start importing lamb. Then we have continually decreased our inventory and opened up a bigger market for them.”
“It comes back to the food security issue,” Boner said. “If we aren’t producing the sheep here, we’re dependent on somebody else to provide it for us. The Australian market share has continually grown over the last 20 years. Their dollar is weaker than ours and so we have a 35% disadvantage against them in just in the exchange rate which is very hard to compete against. They also have lower production costs than us. They have no predators and all this combined makes them very difficult to compete with.”
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