The total flock Australia wide stands at 63,529 million head the lowest official standing since 1904 and the fourth lowest since statistics were commenced in 1885.

Victoria was the only state to increase their numbers which rose to 15,152 million head up 8.6% on the previous year. To our state of NSW, the numbers stood at 20.4 million head a decline of 8.8% from the previous years and the lowest tally since records began.

With the breaking of the drought and other attempts to improve productivity such as dog proofing vast tracts of Queensland numbers are tipped to expand considerably between now and the next census. The continued emphasis on meat production with wool quite often regarded as a by-product has allowed the sheep and lamb industry to maximise profits.

On a positive note for Australian sheep farms a recent report released by the MLA Agri Benchmark said that Australia when compared to 16 other countries producing meat and wool were the most profitable in the world.

Many Australian sheep farmers may like a second opinion on this report after 3 to 4 years of drought, fires, floods and mice plagues and probably not enough support from the various levels of government.

In a recent column we mentioned how political beef prices were in many South American countries where consumption is enormous.

Politician's in Argentina, Brazil and a host of other countries in that region use this as a means to appease their consumers by controlling the domestic price of beef.

Our previous column thought it would only be a matter of time before this came to fruition. Only a week or so ago Argentine placed a 30-day embargo on the export of their beef.

This has come about because of China's insatiable demand for their beef which had in turn sent prices through the roof making it unaffordable for the local consumer market.

Obviously, the Argentinian beef producers are not very happy as their margins for the embargo period have been slashed.

Dubbo Agents drew for 2630 cattle for the sale on Thursday May 27 and what a plain offering it turned out to be.

Many secondary cattle of which there were plenty struggled to find a new home at a reasonable price.