Australian sheep numbers reach record levels

Tim Jackson of MEAT and Livestock Australia MLA said "Australia has had some very good seasons over the last few years, meaning sheep numbers have reached 78.75 million HEAD - the highest since 2007."

Australia's sheep population is expected to increase by 23% in 2020 from a 100-year low, according to MLA statistics. Consequently, the glut of sheep led to a fall in livestock prices, meaning a reversal of the windfall that farmers received from record lamb prices three years ago.

The big increase in sheep numbers was driven by three years of above-average rainfall in Australia's sheep-producing regions of New South Wales and Victoria.

"The harder it rained and the longer the market remained buoyant, the more it encouraged producers to keep sheep they would otherwise have culled, and as a result their numbers continued to rise," Sheep Producers Australia chairman Andrew Spencer said, citing from, that ranchers keep more sheep on farms instead of fattening them up and sending the cattle to slaughterhouses and markets.

“Farmers have (since) seen a huge drop in profitability... Many sheep may not have a market, which can lead to farmers destroying the animals,” Steve McGuire, vice-president of WAFarmers. He added that farmers would rather give up animals than kill them, but there weren't many people willing to get free sheep.

To make matters worse, weather conditions worsened in the coming year. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology recently experienced its driest September on record, and the dry weather shows no sign of abating. In November, the bureau warned that El Niño would continue and that a strong positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) event was likely, suggesting the next few months would continue to be relatively hot and dry.

Australia is the world's leading producer and exporter of lamb, and excess supply is putting downward pressure on global wholesale prices .