Research and Development

WoolProducers wants grower feedback on COVID-19 impact

Sheep Central, May 4, 2020

WPA president Ed Storey

PEAK wool grower body WoolProducers Australia wants to know how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the nation’s wool-growing businesses.

The body today released a survey for wool growers to capture the impacts of COVID-19 on Australia’s wool-growing businesses.

WoolProducers president Ed Storey said, as the peak body representing wool growers, WPA needed to know and understand what effects, if any, have been experienced at a grass-root level from COVID-19.

WoolProducers has advocated successfully for wool service industries, such as shearing, to be listed as essential services to keep the industry going through the pandemic response. The peak body also initiated recent industry protocols to enable shearing to continue across the nation.

Sheep Central believes Australia is the only country where shearing has been able continue without restrictive government regulations.

“The survey will help us demonstrate to governments what effects the pandemic may be having on our growers, and help us to plan our advocacy strategies as we continue to represent growers through COVID-19, and eventually, get their businesses back to normal operation once the response ends,” Mr Storey said.

The survey questions cover a range of areas that may be impacted by COVID-19, including access to labour and the use of Government assistance packages, such as the JobKeeper Program.  The survey will be open for two weeks.

“We need as many wool growers to undertake the survey as possible as this gives us the clearest understanding of the effects of the pandemic on wool businesses,” Mr Storey said.

“The survey takes about ten minutes or less to complete and is completely anonymous – but we have given growers the option to leave their contact details if they would like to give a case study of the impacts on their business that we can use in our advocacy efforts.”

The survey is available on the WoolProducers Australia website, under the dedicated COVID-19 resources page. The COVID-19 page continues to provide the latest wool industry specific advice and guidance for all industry stakeholders and can be found at www.woolproducers.com.au/covid-19/

Direct access to the survey is available here: https://bit.ly/2ycQzsl

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