Drought, Asian Competitors Pounding Austrlian Wool Producers - Reuters

[hatrack]

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Chris Wilcox, chief economist of Woolmark, recently forecast that wool prices would rise 10-15 percent over the rest of 2006, buoyed by dwindling global supplies and retail demand.

Surrounded by his empty, brown lands, grower Turner also believes wool can recover as a premium fibre but is perplexed at its fall in value and can see no simple answers. "Quality apparel wool is something Australia does very well and somewhat exclusively," he says.

Meanwhile, autumn rains are late. Last year, rain finally arrived in mid-June, leaving farmers racing to plant winter crops. At Turner's 400-hectare (1,000-acre) property, it is so dry in the spike-grassed hills that adjoining Pejar dam was declared officially empty a few weeks ago. The main water reservoir for Goulburn's 25,000 population, Pejar is a cracked-earth dustbowl with barely a trickle of water left at the base of its cavernous empty space.

Turner faces a bleak future unless it rains. He's already sold more than two-thirds of his property in the past seven years to pay debts. Drought has already depressed wool prices by burning off ground cover and producing fleece contaminated with burrs and dust and of poor tensile strength. Farmers dread what might be to come. "It's worse than last year," says Don Hamblin, a sheep farmer at Nyngan, about 430 km (270 miles) northwest of Sydney, adding that many fellow wool growers were finding it tough.

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http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/36559/newsDate/29-May-2006/story.htm

[phantom power]

1. And the economic benefits of blowing off Kyoto pile higher and....

oh, never mind.