Fashion consultant takes in environmental concerns at Yass

When the world's population seems to be increasingly concerned about the rise of global warming and climate change with it's assumed long term impact on the future of the planet, where does that place the Australian wool growers? - and that is assuming there is a future for the industry.

Proving that wool is a sustainable product, ethically produced with equal concern for the well-being of the Merino sheep and the landscape in which they are run has long been a cornerstone of the marketing campaigns of Australian Wool Innovation and individual wool garment manufacturers.

But how effective have those sales promotions been? And has the message that Australian Merino wool is produced in the most viable and potent manner, really getting through to the consumer?

When buyers look at a woollen garment, do they consider the Merino wool had been grown in the most renewable way, where the wool grower cares as much for the landscape as they do for sheep?

And if they do base their choice of purchase on the knowledge that the wool has been grown in the most ethical fashion possible, how would that be proved?

To make some sense of those questions, John and Robyn Ive recently hosted Lisa Bergstrand to their property Talaheni, near Yass.

Mrs Bergstrand is a Swedish sustainability consultant who works with fashion brands in Scandinavia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

She contacted Mr and Mrs Ive when planning a trip across Australia and New Zealand to see Merino farms that are leading the way in regards to animal welfare and land use.

"I work with sustainability in fashion, with a focus on supply chains and wool," Mrs Bergstrand said.

"Many of my clients are frustrated over the "bad" environmental score that wool gets compared to other fibres, and I am working on a project to see if wool data can actually be improved by taking into account carbon soil sequestration from regenerative farming at wool producing farms.

"Many fashion companies want to use lower impact materials with full traceability, and I think wool is the absolute best material there is."

For more than 40 years, Mr and Mrs Ive have restored the ecological balance on their 250 ha planting trees, fencing off water ways, and encouraging the restoration of the native grasses endemic to the area: and all of that regeneration has significantly reduced the salinity problem which was obvious when the property was purchased in 1980.

And all of that work has been done while they were breeding their superfine Merino flock.

Indeed, that flock of sheep has been crucial to the success in restoring the landscape - but did Ms Bergstrand understand and appreciate the ecological credentials of the Merino enterprise on Talaheni?

Mr Ive thought she was actually overawed by what was being achieved on Talaheni.

"Wool is a by-product of the meat industry and when I showed her some of my 14 micron fleeces she was amazed at how fine and soft they were," he said.

But the main issue for Mrs Bergstrand, in visiting Mr and Mrs Ive, was the sequestration of over eleven times total farm emissions since 1980 on Talaheni.

And that attention to environmental sustainability and its connection with wool growing was what led to her visit to the Yass property.

"Before being a sustainability consultant, I was a designer for the leading fashion houses in Paris for over nine years," she said.

"During this time, I have always known Australian Merino as being of the finest quality and suitable for everything from suiting, to layer one garments, to outerwear.

"Since becoming focused on sustainability, there have been many questions about the provenance of Merino.

"Now that most of my clients are buying certified non-mulesed wool, the topic that they are looking at is their impact across their entire supply chain.

"And when I say impact, I don't just mean carbon emissions, but also about the quality of the land that the farms operate on. This was the driver behind my trip this year, of which Talaheni was a part of."

John Ive said the meeting with Mrs Bergstrand was invigorating, confirming his families commitment to restoring the landscape in association with growing Merino wool.

"It was the suite of these environmental issues - decreasing the salinity, increasing the biodiversity, lifting the organic matter of our soil which led to greater retention of soil moisture and hence production - which has led to our ability to sustainably manage the property as a premium superfine wool growing enterprise," Mr Ive said.