Australia-Livestock number fall.

AUSTRALIA

STOCK NUMBERS FALL.

There has been an 8% drop in the Australian cattle herd to 27.8 million cattle.Many farmers have switched to arable farming and to dairy farming, after the very tough last three years of drought.

Sheep numbers at 79.2 million are the lowest since 1920, this is a drop of 7.6 on last year alone. Like New Zealand, drought and the large numbers of ewe slaughtering made this situation inevitable. In Western Australia, the sheep flock has dropped from 34 million in 1990, to 18.4 million today.

Australia is now flooded in many parts in the last week, after three years of the worse drought in history. The driest continent on the planet, has been very tough on the Australian farmers in recent years, the suicide rate in the farming community is so high, that the Salvation Army have mailed out 500,000 DVD’s on reasons to stay alive to the rural communities