Cunnamulla grazier wants AWI to look at better wool marketing

Along with the rest of the nation's long-suffering woolgrowers, Mr Schmidt and his wife Kathy will be asked on September 20, via WoolPoll, what levy rate they believe should be paid to the AWI for industry R&D and marketing, for the next three years.

Currently it's 1.5 per cent of the sale price woolgrowers receive for their shorn greasy wool, and Mr Schmidt said he would be happy with a small increase, to 2pc.

"They always keep telling us they need more," he said, likening the scenario to Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice play, where the protagonist has to repay a debt with a pound of flesh.

"Millions have gone into the group and you think, what's going on," he said.

At the same time Mr Schmidt acknowledged that AWI would be getting as big a cut in financial resources as growers, because their income was tied to wool prices.

"The other problem is, the amount of wool going through has probably dropped by so much, the amount of money they're collecting is probably only - I reckon it'd be back by half, or more, back from the peak years," he said.

Commenting that when times were tough, such as now, any dollars coming out of a woolgrower's cheque was a concern, Mr Schmidt said the AWI should prioritise marketing with the levies it received.

"They need to get more people to wear the stuff," he said.

"It's the greatest product ever made.

"Out of all the clothing out there, show me another product that's basically 100pc vegan, growing on a 100pc renewable resource.

"It's brilliant - it's insulated, it's got all the ticks, it's biodegradable, everything, it's reusable."

Mr Schmidt added that wool could be sold as a carbon storage unit as well.

"You could almost say, if you've got 10,000 sheep running around, you've got 10,000 carbon sinks racing around," he said, complimenting the AWI for its 'Wear wool, not fossil fuel' advertising campaign depicting people struggling to escape an oil- filled swimming pool, or with oil dripping off their clothes.

"You've got to start fighting dirty," Mr Schmidt said.

"You've got to start pointing things out to people.

"If wool was invented today, it would be a miracle, this stuff made out of ordinary grass, turned into this most brilliant product.

"And the manure that comes out is pelletised fertiliser you can put straight on to your garden."

The Schmidt family has been in the Charleville-Cunnamulla districts since 1890, but Mr Schmidt came to Wallen, 50 kilometres south of Wyandra in 1979.

Since then the family has undertaken several water-spreading initiatives, which has resulted in being able to have virtually no water run off treated areas after 40-50mm of rain, and Mr Schmidt said they were also benefiting from being part of an exclusion fencing cluster, and then undertaking more exclusion work themselves.

He ticks off the many benefits - no stock getting in and possibly bringing lice, no stock getting out, control of wild dogs and feral pigs, and repulsing kangaroo pressure after lucky storms.

"It gives us control - pig control is the big one," he said.

Despite the money investing in fencing, the Schmidts plan on reversing their 80:20 Merino sheep to beef cattle ratio to a 70:30 cattle:sheep one, thanks largely to the labour involved in running sheep and the depressed price for wool.

So that's less money that will be coming in to AWI through wool levies.