WELLINGTON, May 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) – The number of sheep fell by three percent in the year ending June, 2020, with an average of five sheep owned by every Kiwi, a drop from the 1982 historic high of 22 per person, New Zealand’s statistics department, Stats NZ, said today.
Final figures show that, there were 26 million sheep in total – a fall of 800,000 from the previous year, and a far cry from the peak of 70 million sheep in 1982, Stats NZ said.
The 2020 drought caused feed shortages, that led to a fall in total sheep numbers. Hawke’s Bay had the largest decrease, with the total number of sheep falling by 12 percent from the previous year to a total of 2.5 million at June 2020, agricultural production statistics manager, Ana Krpo, said.
“While the fall in sheep numbers during this period is related to the 2020 drought, there has been a general decline for almost 40 years,” Krpo said.
Over the past 10 years alone, sheep numbers have fallen by 20 percent. A strong contributing factor to the five-sheep-per-person metric was the increase in New Zealand’s population, from 3.2 million in 1982 to 5.1 million in 2020, she said.
The total value of sheep-meat exports was four billion NZ dollars (2.89 billion U.S. dollars) for the year ending June, 2020, statistics show.
The export value of wool plunged dramatically in recent years. In 2012, wool exports were worth 880 million NZ dollars, but that almost halved to just 460 million NZ dollars in 2020, Krpo said. (1 U.S. dollar equals to 1.38 NZ dollars)– NNN-AGENCIES
