THE Australian sheep industry’s fourth sustainability report card has revealed progress in pain relief adoption, non-mulesed wool production, biodiversity and carbon accounting.

The Fourth Annual Report of the Sheep Sustainability Framework was launched at LambEx 2024 in Adelaide today.

The framework’s baseline data showed 72.6 percent of producers are undertaking deliberate activities to measure, maintain or enhance biodiversity.

The percentage of wool declared as non-mulesed has increased from 15.8pc to 18.6 percent for Merino and from 40.1pc to 47.1pc for non-Merino.

The appropriate use of pain management for mulesing, castration and tail docking continues to improve year-on-year, the report said.

Despite concerns about the confidence levels among producers, the framework’s Global Life Satisfaction Index has revealed sheep producers are more satisfied with their life than the average Australian.

SSF Board independent chair Angus Gidley-Baird said he was thrilled to be launching the latest snapshot of our industry’s sustainability credentials.

However, Mr Gidley-Baird highlighted moves in Europe, the United States and Australia to regulate ESG reporting as one of the key challenges for the industry in 2025.

“Appropriate and effective regulation is important to ensure transparency, integrity and a degree of consistency across regions and jurisdictions regarding ESG reporting by companies, but it also reinforces the need for the Sheep Sustainability Framework, which is helping ensure a proactive position for the Australian industry, and is working to align with the Global Report Initiative to support our value chains to help align with global reporting standards.”

SSF Steering Group chair, Dr Scott Williams, said a significant amount of work had been done during the year to fill in data gaps with new metrics and better align metrics between the SSF and Australian Beef Sustainability Framework.

“The SSF is constantly evolving, seeking to move with the science and meet the increasing demand from consumers and industry stakeholders for transparency and performance when it comes tomsustainable production of sheep meat and wool,” Dr Williams said.

“The latest report shows that progress in critical areas for our industry also allows us to shine a spotlight on the challenges we need to tackle head on.”

For the first time in the SSF, sheep producers were asked to rate their satisfaction with their “life as a whole” as part of the Global Life Satisfaction Index, which encapsulates their standard of living, health, what they are achieving in life, personal relationships, safety, feeling part of their community and future security. Their score of 76.1% was higher than the overall Global Life Satisfaction for Australia (69.4pc).

Sheep producers have shown a growing interest in measuring their farm greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The latest National Producer Survey found the percentage of producers using carbon accounting or another process for their enterprise had risen to 9.9pc, up from 3pc in the 2022 National Producer Survey.

However, the framework has identified a number of industry challenges.

Access to labour remains an issue for the industry. Of the 45,500 people employed in the sheep production and shearing sector, 40pc of the workforce are aged 55-74, and 72pc are male.

The adoption of basic Workplace Healthy and Safety practices, such as risk assessments and worker inductions, is relatively low.

In 2023, the National Producer Survey asked producers to rate the extent to which availability of general labour was an issue for their operation. More than four in every 10 producers (42pc) reported major issues with finding general labour, representing was a 7pc increase since 2022.

However, the survey showed that 35.3pc of producers reported issues with the availability of shearers, which is a 3.5pc decrease since 2022.

Dr Williams said a major undertaking had been the development of a new digital dashboard published of the SSF’s website.

The framework was established by Sheep Producers Australia and WoolProducers Australia and supported by Australian Wool Innovation and Meat & Livestock Australia.

Click here to read the latest framework report.