Frank Martin is one of a handful of commercially orientated organic sheep wool and meat producers prospering in Victoria.
He is also one of the few people who can shed some light on an industry that returns premium prices, demands impeccable quality, yet still fails to be recognised as a “serious” agricultural industry.
The paddocks of his Shady Vale property cut an impressive sight in the relatively desolate Loddon Valley, Vic.
Bursting with lucerne and flanked by rows of saltbush and acacia, the paddocks defy the drought that has crippled much of the surrounding area.
Having just finished moving a mob of Merino ewes, Mr Martin settles himself at a Laminex kitchen table that looks out onto a garden crammed with indigenous eucalypts, before opening a folder onto a page of carefully handwritten notes.
“People keep hammering on about sustainability,” Mr Martin begins, in a tone reflective of a well-traced story.
“Regeneration is what I am looking for. To be sustainable is not enough.
“We need regenerative farming so the agricultural industry flourishes for a lot longer than 200 odd years.”
In order to understand his farming philosophy, he insists on going back to the beginning – to a time more than a century ago when his grandfather, Edward Martin, bought a large spread of land surrounding Serpentine and stocked it to the hilt with Hereford cattle and Merino sheep.
Overstocked and relying on European farming practices, Mr Martin said the country and productivity soon started to go backwards, and when the rabbits came it pretty much blew away.
Believing stock was the issue, the Martins – like most in the district – turned to cropping, and for the next 30 years stuck with it.
Mr Martin remembers that by the 1940s, when he was in his early teens, there was a sea of saffron thistles alive with rabbits.
It was at this point that his first lesson about the need to respect the land was taught.
“Nothing we put in the ground grew,” Mr Martin said, hurriedly moving his story on to the 1950s, when chemicals started to play a part and lucerne was introduced to Shady Vale.
While lucerne had been trialled on irrigation plots during the 1950s with minimal success, Mr Martin’s planting of lucerne was considered revolutionary in the area.
“When I think about it, lucerne had more to do with going organic than anything else.”
By learning how to grow lucerne for grazing on dry country – and admittedly making a number of mistakes along the way – Mr Martin said he quickly saw the value of perennial grasses and managing ground cover.
In the mid 1970s all chemical fertiliser, stock drenching and inoculation stopped and any sheep with body strike was culled.
It was not until 25 years later the property became certified organic but little changed, aside from moving soil contaminant and replacing it with clean soil from stockyards.
Along with lucerne, one of the key tools that Mr Martin said enabled him to not drop any of his production rates when he went organic was cell grazing and moving to plainer-bodied, soft rolling-skinned Merinos. Running plain-bodied, early-maturing Merino sheep helped alleviate fly strike problems.
Mr Martin also lowered average micron to between 19 and 20, increased fleece weights to about six kilograms (shorn at 10 months), lifted yield and improved staple length to 92 millimetres.
Last year on the organic market his wool averaged a 15 per cent premium on the open market, selling to 900c/kg.
His Merino wether lambs and cull ewes at 8-9 months dressed out at 23kg and repeatedly topped above 450c/kg through the organic market system on top of cutting about $30 of wool.
SOURCE: Stock & Land, Vic
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