SHEEP industry heavyweights walked away from the recent Sheep Industry Leadership Council (SILC) forum with a confident step last week.
The forum was held as part of ongoing efforts by SILC and the Department of Agriculture and Food (DAFWA) to develop ways to increase the State's flock numbers.
Around 70 industry representatives were present to hear a number of presentations including keynote speaker, via phone link, DAFWA senior research officer Kimbal Curtis, who gave a snapshot of where WA sheep numbers currently sit.
SILC chair Rob Egerton-Warburton said the council wanted to use all the information possible to develop a clear vision and strategies to build the State's sheep flock, welcoming open and honest communication in order to grow the concept.
In the two years SILC had been operating, Mr Egerton-Warburton said there had been encouraging responses from producers, processers and exporters to new programs such as More Sheep and the 100%+ Club.
The group was now moving into an implementation phase and was working to develop partnerships with other industries for a common goal, such as grain, beef, chicken and pork bodies.
"It's all about partnerships, information and innovation," Mr Egerton-Warburton said.
"More industries are going to have to work together on the issues that we all share, particularly animal welfare.
"It's about combining skills, leadership and marketing, but there is no point talking about new markets if we don't have the capacity to fill them."
He said building numbers and moving forward essentially came down to lamb survival, which was also relative to the increased use of tools like pregnancy scanning.
According to the other eight guest speakers, the more intricate details on how exactly the strategic plans were going to take shape and increase the State's flock would be due to a number of contributing factors.
DAFWA executive director of livestock industries Kevin Chennell spoke briefly about the successes already experienced by SILC in the two years since it was launched, with some of the group's main aims beginning to bear fruit.
He was followed by DAFWA director general Rob Delane, who said the gradual alignment of the agricultural sector had come a long way in recent times to present a united front and achieve collective success.
"The future (of agriculture) in a very challenging world means that you cannot afford to waste any effort, any energy, any resources locally on separate approaches to things, you have to actually align for success," Mr Delane said.
"Fundamentally you have to have an integrated approach.
"Part of that is the need for strong, cohesive and collective leadership.
"There is a groundswell of change for the better in a very, very difficult operating environment for most of the agricultural sectors."
To give a clearer insight into the current state of the sheep industry specifically, Mr Curtis presented a number of figures related to sheep numbers in WA and predictions of future movements.
The figures spoke for themselves when reviewing sheep estimates from the June 2011 to June 2012 period.
As at June 30, 2011, there were 14 million sheep and lambs in WA and at the time the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) was predicting a drop by 2 per cent 12 months later in 2012, to 13.7 million.
But good lambing conditions in 2012 saw numbers actually increase to 14.4 million on June 30 that year, which was essentially a 4.8pc increase on the initial prediction by ABS.
The WA flock projection for the 2012-13 season began with the 14.4m base, with about 7.5m ewes joined with a 85pc marking rate expecting to yield an estimated 6.4m lambs at marking.
The turn-off was expected to be broken down by 1.8m lambs slaughtered, 1.4m sheep slaughtered, 1.6m being live exported and 0.1m moving interstate.
So with a total estimated sustained turn-off of 5m sheep and roughly 8pc of on-farm losses factored in, Mr Curtis expects the 2012-13 WA sheep numbers to increase again by 1.9pc to take the State flock to an estimated 14.7m.
