WA’s $3.8m Katanning Sheep Feed Intake Facility opens with pre-Budget cash splash to be carbon neutral

Australia’s biggest sheep feed intake facility has opened at Katanning after a four year wait, with the State Government pledging an additional $4.2 million so it can achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.

WA Agriculture Minister Alannah MacTiernan revealed the funding injection — the State Government’s first pre-Budget cash splash announcement for WA agriculture — at the official opening last Friday.

The new $3.8 million 20-pen Sheep Feed Intake Facility features a semi-controlled environment, including technology to continuously monitor temperature and an automated feed delivery system.

Housed at the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Develoment’s Katanning Research Station farm, it will be the site of extensive research into carbon sequestration and emissions reduction.

As well as enabling WA’s premier sheep research facility to achieve carbon neutrality, it’s hoped the research and development will provide farmers with the evidence to confidently adopt new practices and technologies to reduce their own carbon footprint.

“This a critically important (investment), because there is an existential threat to the livestock sector and we’ve got to work closely with them to ensure that we can deliver net zero carbon (emissions) here on this research station, so that can be replicated by the industry,” Ms MacTiernan said.

“We’re putting our money into the R and D so farmers can make informed decisions.

“They understand that the banks that lend to them want to see what their carbon exposure is; we know that the wholesalers and retailers that are buying their product are increasingly demanding this, and that by 2025 this will become quite common place.”

The livestock sector accounts for nearly 80 per cent of agricultural greenhouse emissions in WA, according to DPIRD.

Preparations are already underway at the farm — which runs about 7000 sheep — on projects including regeneration of saline land to capture carbon, planting anti-methanogenic pastures, soil carbon monitoring to undertake benchmarking, and restructuring the sheep flock for greater efficiency.

“The fundamental question is how we can produce livestock, and sheep in particular, that are carbon neutral,” Ms MacTiernan said.

“There’ll be a variety of sub-questions then that we ask… about the relationship between feed and output, feed and methane production, (and) between genetics and emissions.”

DPIRD research scientist Beth Paganoni said while genetics research could take up to 20 years to bear fruit, the results of shorter term studies around feed could yield results within a year.

“It’s so crucial that industry now does short term, potentially much higher payoff research, that is non genetic, that is looking at thing like different feed qualities (and) different system solutions,” she said.

“(These are) things that we can do in the short term that can potentially improve production, decrease methane, and also give answers that fit into every single different system that we have within WA.”

Ms Paganoni said each pen could hold up to 15 individually identified sheep, with only one animal able to access the automatic feeder at a time.

The machine reads the individual weight of the animal before presenting a small meal, which is weighed before and after the animal feeds.

“We can have a calculation… not just of total feed intake in 24 hours, but every individual meal, how often they feed, how big those meals are, and we can look at all of that variation and attribute it to the individual,” Ms Paganoni said.

“Feed intake — grazing feed intake, in particular, in the paddock — is like the holy grail of animal production science. We have been trying to measure it for a very long time… and still haven’t developed the technology that is suitable, practical and meaningful in the paddock.

“So until we can get that next development or technology breakthrough, we need facilities like this.”

Ms MacTiernan said DPIRD was planning to hold a field day at Katanning Research Station late in the year to share early findings with farmers.

Katanning farmer Bindi Murray, who is deputy chair of the Pastoralists and Graziers Association of WA Meat and Livestock Committee, welcomed the news.

“The facility will help to add local and independent science to the methane and carbon discussion for WA producers,” she said.

“It’s great that the investment in the physical equipment and infrastructure required for this work has been matched with funding for the projects and staff to go with it.”