Between the lines: Fanning flames of wool debate

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON

Sheep farmers in Northland will be the first to gather formally and discuss the do-or-die McKinsey report on the wool industry when they meet in Whangarei this afternoon.

The report's hard-hitting recommendations for unravelling the $1 billion industry have already ignited lively discussion in pubs, clubs and stockyards from one end of the country to the other since their release 13 days ago.

But a round of 34 formal meetings nationwide are likely to fan those embers into a red-hot flaming debate by the time they finish in Cromwell at the month's end.

Many crucial questions are raised by the report, not the least being whether growers will heed McKinsey's advice to adopt the consultant's recommendations in their entirety.

This is, after all, an industry that has requisitioned, paid dearly for, and read or listened to the sage advice of about 20 other reports, and ignored the lot.

Not surprising then that McKinsey should write that "it is only a term of convenience to speak of the New Zealand wool 'industry.'

"Each grower and each supply chain participant is a business accountable to itself."

And, one could quite easily surmise on past evidence, each grower - all 20,000 of them - and each supply chain participant have opinions that differ from everyone else's.

Most are of the view that the problems - any of them, all of them - belong to someone else.

Mid-micron growers, who have been told to go out of business because too few people want their wool, are determined to carry on.

Farmers, who, by comparison with the top performers, are deemed to be bottom of the heap will not see it that way at all.

Wool growers will be happy they have been advised to stop paying for the generic promotion of wool because exporters could never show them the benefit of those campaigns in cold hard cash anyway.

But wool exporters believe growers cannot simply ship the wool off their farms and expect the product to sell itself.

Those involved in research to raise on-farm productivity do not believe there should be less spending in their area, but nor do those at the hub of technical development of marketable products.

Despite being warned of, and apparently accepting, its imminent demise, the Wool Board is likely still to find plenty of reasons for its continued existence.

The Wool Corporation, which does not exist other than as an idea, will continue to have backers pressing for it to become reality.

Ultimately, then, the most important question the wool industry faces will be not whether it adopts all the recommendations, or some of them, but whether it does anything.

Place your bets on whether the great wool debate of the 21st century will suffer the same fate as all those of the 20th century.