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Woolwise News Edition 1
17 August, 2000
Welcome to Woolwise News!
This news service aims to give subscribers regular updates on all facets of the wool industry. We hope that these articles will be informative, fresh, and relevant to many in the industry. Remember you can customise the type of information you wish to receive by visiting the Woolwise website, at
www.woolwise.com. If you would like to submit information for Woolwise News or if there are any areas of interest you would like to see covered in Woolwise News, please contact the Woolwise Administrator, at
woolwise@woolwise.com.
The Woolwise.com Concept
Hynd, P. I., Auer, P., Crook, B., Hocking Edwards, J. E., Daily, H. G. and Osborne, L.
Woolwise.com is the result of the Cooperative Research Centre for Premium Quality Wool Education Program. This Program set about to provide education and training programs for the higher education sector to improve productivity and product quality in a diverse and complex wool industry. Video conferencing was initially used to deliver high quality lecture materials provided by selected industry and research experts to the 4 core party universities.
This approach proved successful with both students and lecturers, but was not sustainable beyond the life of the Wool CRC, nor was it easily accessible by people or organisations outside the Wool CRC. To provide an ongoing resource for all levels of industry, the powerpoint slides which were the basis of the videolectures were captured in a format that was uniform in appearance and quality and that were readily available to a wider audience than just the traditional university market.
The Woolwise resource is the product of undergraduate agricultural science study but it has been reformatted to increase its flexibility in delivery to a range of education audiences from university to TAFE and beyond to practitioners in the wool growing and associated industries. The speaker's notes associated with each of the powerpoint modules are directed towards the education provider rather than the student. Providers might be university lecturers, TAFE teachers, or wool extension officers or consultants, all able to use a common set of high quality resources, but able to present the same information to their different client audiences. This ability to customise is the key to Woolwise success.
The Internet provides the platform for delivery to a national, and indeed global wool education audience. Woolwise provides information to everyone at a reasonable cost that was previously difficult and time consuming for individual education providers to collect on their own behalf. Importantly, examples from the wool industry can now be easily integrated into other fields of study, such as Marketing, Biology, and Textile courses through the flexibility of the Woolwise modularisation. This will assist not only the agricultural sector in the wider community through better knowledge of one key industry, but also improve the understanding of wool as a textile fibre in customer countries. It is envisaged that this approach to distribution of education material will provide a template for other disciplines.
The development of this resource package represents a significant commercial outcome of the CRC in that it is anticipated that the package will be sold both nationally and internationally to educators, trainers, extension workers, and private consultants. The returns from the sales will allow the resource to be maintained and upgraded, ensuring its on-going contribution to a better-educated and hence more competitive wool industry.
The Wool Profit Map - implementing change
Jim Symon - Project Coordinator
In September 1999 the findings of the Woolmark Company funded project, the Wool Profit Map, were released at Young, NSW. During that presentation wool growers were asked if they were interested in becoming involved in a series of workshops based upon the findings of that project. The response was very positive.
Since January a team of woolgrowers and consultants have developed those workshops for producers. Over recent months they have been piloted by a number of grower groups in southern Australia. Through cooperation across the industry a number of workshop facilitators (both from the private and government sectors who have the skills to deliver tangible outcomes to producers) have been selected nationally.
The workshops are presented in 2 (or 3) part-day sessions, and have been developed by Agrica with the support of The Woolmark Company and supported by FarmBis to provide woolgrowers with the necessary understanding to:
- make better management decisions in the best interest of their farms
- have the capacity to evaluate their management capability;
- analyse their woolgrowing enterprises and;
- identify opportunities for improvement.
Whilst these workshops are titled the “Wool Profit Map” the principles can be used for any farm enterprise, or indeed any business. A whole farm overview is provided.
Workshop 1
The first workshop runs for 3 to 4 hours and covers the following topics:
- Apply the principles of the Wool Profit Map
- Overview the Farm Business model:
- identifying the characteristics of the profile of a better manager
- identifying the key components of the farm
- distinguishing between management strategies and operational practices
- investigate decision making in a business and the factors that influence that process
- Collection of farm business and production information to aid analysing your farm
During this workshop the decision making that can be successfully applied to the individual agriculture business is overviewed. This is based upon worldwide best practice models that have been used in many industries. Agriculture is no different from any other business but few people in the industry have taken the time to assist producers to understand this well-proven process fully.
The collection of farm production and financial is part of the learning process about better management. The group facilitator will work through with individuals the best way to gather the information and provide support in completion of the workshop questionnaire. The information required is:
- Farm financial records to gather income and expenditure items
- Farm management records to gather livestock numbers, wool details, land use, rainfall and season, use of labour and so on.
Between the first and second workshops, participants receive their farm reports. This will include a whole farm and enterprise(s) summary with a series of key indicators. The group variation and comparison tables will be made available and discussed during the workshop, which runs for half to three quarters of a day. The group will investigate why there is the range of variance within key indicators and focus on the issues that cause those variances.
After the information has been discussed participants apply their individual information to the tables to help identify the opportunities that are important to their farm. Principles from Workshop 1 are then applied, to investigate what will have the greatest impact on that farm. An action list will be developed.
Workshop 2
In summary, the second workshop aims to:
- Apply the principles from Workshop 1 to your farm
- What do the reports mean and how to best use the information
- Factors that influence group comparisons
- Identify possible opportunities for your farm
What do you need to consider as to “how to” implement those opportunities:
- Cost
- Time frame
- Risks
- Impact
- Measures to monitor
- Prioritise an action list to investigate that will impact upon your farm
Organisers stress that the Wool Profit Map workshops are not about benchmarking per se, but about establishing a decision making process and implementing change as a result. After the workshops participants should be able to:
- further investigate self-identified opportunities in their current enterprises;
- continue their current management program, being satisfied with current approaches; or
- seriously consider focussing improvement activities on opportunities identified from other enterprises.
These workshops are spread over a 4-6 week period. An optional third half day workshop (included in the course fees) is available to help target specific issues identified by the group.
The cost of the workshop series and farm reports is $825 (includes GST) per farm with a maximum of two people per farm able to attend. This enables those who contribute to the decision making on each farm to attend. These workshops are an approved Farmbis training activity therefore a 75% subsidy is available. For those eligible for Farmbis the total cost is $206.25, GST inclusive.
Further information can be obtained from Simon Playfair on 0260 362848.
Matilda's Mandate - what cloning offers the wool industry
David Ellis - The Adelaidean
Matilda, the Merino lamb cloned by South Australian Research & Development Institute (SARDI) was born in April 2000. The University of Adelaide collaborated with SARDI in the Transgenesis Program of the Wool CRC. Professor George Rogers from Adelaide University outlined some of the benefits that the Merino wool industry could expect from cloning. The most obvious benefit for sheep breeders was the ability to rapidly breed elite animals, to exploit disease free status, or high production of fine wool. Sheep with novel fibre characteristics produced via transgenesis could also be quickly replicated via cloning. Professor Rogers' research program has attempted to improve wool fibre strength transgenically, and cloning allows a much faster way of assessing the value of sheep produced.
Mr Rob Lewis, director of SARDI, said that cloning had the potential to lift genetic gain to levels of 5% per annum, significantly more than the current industry average. This could mean benefits of $300 million over 10 years, to South Australia alone. The current hierarchical structure of the breeding industry resulted in lag times of up to 13 years to achieve genetic gains currently being created in the studs. Cloning could reduce this to just one year.
The genetics of flocks with disease problems could be saved through cloning, and unique animals could be duplicated near the end of their lives to ensure continued access to their genetic value.
Somatic cell cloning proceeds in this sequence:
- a cell is taken from a donor sheep
- the cell's nucleus is transferred to an egg which has had its nucleus removed
- the introduced DNA of the nucleus behaves like the DNA of a newly developed egg, enabling the egg to grow as a normal embryo
- the embryo is then implanted into a host ewe, where it develops normally to produce a lamb such as Matilda
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