Original subtitles

Go on! Yeah, yeah, yeah! Go on!

Like that?

WHOOPING AND LAUGHING

Look at me, I'm covered!

'In the most remote places on Earth,

'people depend on their animals for survival.

'A few years ago, I moved to a farm in the Welsh hills

'I've become fascinated by the bond between shepherd and flock.

'In Afghanistan and Peru, I explored this relationship's ancient origins.'

I could have been standing here 500 years ago and witnessed

exactly that same scene.

'Now I want to look at the future of herding.'

There's some here Bob, just on the right.

'In Australia, animals are raised on an epic scale.'

They seem quite keen to get off the truck.

'Sheep are a global commodity.

'And scientists are fast becoming the new shepherds.'

In my mind animal husbandry should be something that's done

as naturally as possible,

with really as little intervention as possible.

'Can the close connection between herder and herded

'survive in the modern world?'

I'm about 700 or 800 kilometres north of Perth,

heading out into the bush.

It is a harsh landscape.

It's quite alien.

It's so dry, it's rocky, it's dusty, it's hot.

There are snakes everywhere, there are spiders that can put

you in hospital, or in the morgue, and it just doesn't look like

a land that could support human life, sheep, anything really.

But somehow it does.

Despite this barren landscape,

Australia has become one of the biggest sheep producers in the world

I want to understand how, against the odds,

shepherds can thrive in a land so different to my farm back home.

I'm on my way to Meka, one of the largest sheep stations in Australia.

It covers nearly a million acres, that's about the size of Kent,

and is more than 200 miles from the nearest big town.

This promises to be shepherding on a scale beyond anything I've seen,

but something seems to be missing.

What's extraordinary is we have been on the farm property,

we've crossed over 30 kilometres back

and I haven't seen a single sheep yet.

Men in caps and shorts, it's all looking very promising.

Good afternoon, nice to see you. Kerry Wark.

Hi, Kerry, nice to see you.

Thanks for rustling up some sunshine for us,

it was getting pretty cold in the UK when we left.

Plenty of that. We were hoping is wasn't going to be too severe,

we've had a couple of 42s this last week.

Yeah, we could probably manage without that.

The station is run by manager Bob Grinham,

a West Australian stockman

who's spent his whole working life in the bush.

And it's owned by businessman Kerry Wark.

Incredibly, the huge property is run by a team of just five people,

looking after up to 25,000 sheep.

It's going to be a fascinating five days or so.

I think it will be, going to be interesting.

I'm going to be learning a lot, I can feel it.

Stations like Meka are part

of Australia's long shepherding history.

The British brought sheep to the country more than 200 years ago.

Wool was the perfect export from such a remote colony.

It wouldn't perish on the long journey back to the heart of Empire.

Early pioneers began to push inland,

driving their flocks into the wild outback.

Meka's wool clothed imperial soldiers in two world wars.

And the peak of the industry came in the 1950s, with the massive

demand for wool from America at outbreak of the Korean War.

Everybody went to war in a cold country

and they needed woollen uniforms,

and the price of wool here went to £1 a pound,

and that was three to four times what it had ever been before and if you

were in the wool business in 1951/2 that's when fortunes were made.

We're talking a property like this could have netted,

in today's money terms, something like 10 million a year.

Nobody could believe it,

and the community was all full of imported new cars, Cadillacs,

Rollers were all over the place. It was just...

Australia had a boost like you'd never believe in '51.

But after the boom times came the crash.

In the 1970s and '80s, we started swapping our woolly jumpers

for polyester fleeces, and the price of wool plummeted.

Many stations had to adapt to survive.

Meka has been forced to switch from wool to meat.

I've come at a busy time of year.

There's a few thousand sheep

to be gathered and processed for export.

So everything we have driven across

since we left the homestead is the farm, basically.

It's all part of this sheep station.

You can drive for 100Ks to the north or the northeast

and you're still on the stations, and 30k south.

It's just unimaginable.

Meka is divided into 40 paddocks,

vast fenced areas that hold up to 2,000 sheep.

At the corner of each paddock is a smaller field, called a trap,

with drinking troughs that Bob uses to corral the sheep.

This morning we'll shake the traps

and see what number of sheep come in.

It may be nothing or not many, or they could all be there. Right.

Bob only rounds up his sheep about twice a year,

so this is a rare chance to get a good look at them.

I was beginning to wonder whether there were any sheep on this station

I think that's the thing about being in an area that is so huge

with quite thick, impenetrable bush.

And here's the proof, there are hundreds of these animals here,

thousands of these animals here

but they managed to keep themselves hidden for most of the day.

Where do you want this one. On there?

On this one here. Oh, sorry.

It's always really eye-opening to come to another person's farm

and see their set-up,

and it's one of those very difficult things where

you always feel in the way, because everyone has such a good system,

and if you don't know that system you're just sort of standing there

holding a big hurdle and going, "I don't know what to do with this."

Are these an Australian breed of sheep?

No, they're originally from South Africa. Right.

They're so different from our little sort of woolly Welsh mountains.

Yeah. That's right, yeah.

These sheep are Damaras, a desert breed

that thrives in the arid scrubland of the Australian outback.

To survive in these dry landscapes, the Damara has developed an unusual feature.

You can see very quickly that Damara have got these fat tails,

and look at that, that's just a big fat store.

Very similar fat to what's in a camel's hump.

It supplements their...

They sustain their well-being with that fat in their tail.

With most of their fat stored in one place,

the Damaras' meat is very lean, unlike our sheep back home

that store fat all over their body,

giving us the fatty meat that we love.

They seem quite keen to get off the truck!

Compared to my little Welsh mountain sheep, these are like wild animals.

This helps them to cope with such a harsh environment.

But it makes them an absolute nightmare to handle.

Go on!

Go on! Go on!

I've never known sheep so willing to go backwards.

Come on, girls, it's only a gate.

Bob divides the flock,

separating off the male lambs that will be going to market.

I don't even dare talk to Bob,

because you've got to concentrate every second.

Once they're sorted, all the animals are treated for parasites and worms,

a process known as drenching.

If we didn't do this by the time we muster next year in April,

half these ewes could be gone. Really?

Steady, big boy.

Just give him two shots, that one.

Two shots? Yeah, because of his weight.

'With so many sheep to deal with, Bob has had to innovate.'

I know a few people back at home who would love one of these hydraulic conveyor belts.

They're great, aren't they? It actually takes the hard work out

cos these sheep will injure you in a race. Right.

If you get hit from behind by a 100 kilo ram,

it's not very pleasant if it gets you between the shoulder blades. No.

Although this still feels pretty traditional, shepherding is now

a billion dollar industry, run by entrepreneurs like Kerry.

He made his fortune in the oil business,

but had always dreamed of owning a sheep station.

After the price of wool collapsed, Meka was struggling,

so Kerry bought it and took on Bob as his manager.

Together, they've restocked Meka with Damara sheep,

and now supply the growing meat market in the Middle East.

It's big business.

The Middle East has become quite wealthy with oil money,

they've had expanding numbers of people

and they don't have the ability, due to lack of pasture

or range lands, to increase the numbers of sheep,

fat tails, in that area.

So we saw the opportunity to take a breed of fat tail

and to export it to the Middle East.

The fat tails were fetching a premium,

so if we could produce them in a low-cost operating environment

then we would have a winning formula, and we did take a risk.

I'm getting the feeling, even at this very early stage,

that we're at a kind of crossroads.

A country that used to make all its money from wool

is now clearly not able to do that any more

and I suppose the more mobile-minded farmers,

instead of thinking that their livelihood is over,

they are thinking about how they can make this land work

and what breeds of sheep will allow them to do that,

keeping this great Australian tradition

of sheep and sheep stations.

It's Day Two.

I want to learn about the challenges Bob and his team face

raising livestock in one of the toughest environments on Earth.

In this parched landscape, water is everything.

At the corner of each paddock is a windmill that pumps water

from deep underground into stone drinking troughs.

Twice a week, Bob and his team drive the length and breadth

of the property to check everything is working properly.

Today, I'm helping out.

There is nothing easy about farming in this land, is there?

No, not really. Everything is sort of quite physical.

It is hot, it's dusty and I guess you can't take anything for granted?

No, that's right, yeah.

Nearly there. It's quite warm in the wind,

but it's not unpleasant, you could work all day today.

When it's 43 degrees at eight o'clock in the morning,

you know you've got to be home by lunchtime otherwise

your feet will start to burn through the soles of your boots.

That's usually time to go home.

We always say if we can work with the land, you're OK,

but if you disrespect the country,

it tends to teach you a lesson and puts you back in your place.

We're only a speck on the whole landscape,

so we get put in your spot pretty smartly.

Generally the rule of thumb is, if anybody asks you,

"Do you think it's clean enough?"

I say taste the water and if they say, "I can't drink that",

I say, "Well, keep cleaning."

Happy with that? I'd drink that. Yeah, right-oh. It's very good.

If I was a sheep, I'd drink that water.

Good. HE LAUGHS

This land is in an endless cycle of drought, flash flood and wildfire.

The last drought was the most severe for a century

and lasted for ten years.

Thousands of farmers gave up in despair,

and those that stuck with it saw their incomes more than halved.

The stress proved too great for some.

Suicide in pastoral farming areas is not uncommon,

where it just gets too much.

A lot of these places have been four generations,

and when you see people losing everything they've worked for

in their life, and everything they believe in,

it would be very depressing, I imagine, for a lot of people.

Given these enormous challenges, what is it that keeps you here?

Just tell me what it is that is so entrancing

about this place and this way of life?

I think it's just the open spaces.

It's the freedom, I suppose, you're away from all the stuff in town.

Nobody judges you out here.

It wouldn't matter if you were an alcoholic,

or you smoke a bit of mull, or you did this, or you did that,

as long as you're honest and you work hard.

People just accept you for who you are, generally, out in the bush.

A big storm blows through in the night,

soaking the land with much-needed rain.

Is this broken there, or is it right down?

'One of the windmills has stopped pumping.

'Without water, the sheep will only last a few days.

'So Bob and one of his team get to work.'

Ron's exceptionally handy with the mechanical side of it.

Much as he hates to admit it, he's good at it.

I'm a little bit big to climb too high.

Oh, Ron.

Only maybe in a high wind.

Well, you can see where he's climbed up here, all the bent rails.

LAUGHTER

The more time I spend here,

the more I'm growing to like Bob and the other guys.

I really respect their passion for this way of life.

And I've nothing but admiration for the way they cope

with working in such a remote place.

They have to be able to do everything because I suppose

you can't just phone a plumber or someone to fix a windmill and say,

"Could you just nip out?", because there is no nipping, you know?

They're 100 miles from the nearest anywhere and, you know,

there's something I think sort of, as I say, very admirable

about people who are that capable.

Who can know their livestock, and look after them,

and produce great sheep, but also understand how the weather works,

understand what to do with their land when it's flooding or when there's drought.

But also just be able to fix an electric fence

or re-put a battery in a car if it's gone flat.

These are proper multi-taskers, and people say men can't multi-task,

these ones can, and they're quite good at it.

But despite all their resourcefulness, there's one problem

that is threatening to overwhelm everything at Meka.

A plague of feral dogs is savaging the flock.

I just hate seeing our animals being decimated like that.

It's generally just the younger dogs, one to three-year olds.

They're like a fox on steroids, they just kill and eat anything.

We've actually found a ewe weener with its liver removed,

and it was obviously alive while it was happening,

with the amount of blood that was on the ground.

They'd pulled the liver out and eaten that and just left the sheep.

How much stock do you think you lose through dogs?

It could be up to 40% out of a paddy.

I mean, 40%, that's got to be your profit margin plus, gone.

And loss of production too.

Those ewe lambs that are gone won't have lambs,

and the ewes that are gone won't make any more lambs.

You've got to replace those ewes again,

so it's not just a loss of your sale,

it's the actual replacement of your sheep.

Bob is trying to fight back using a poison called 1080,

which is derived from a native plant.

Indigenous wildlife has a natural immunity,

but it is lethal to introduced species like these feral dogs.

Nobody really enjoys killing things, I don't think. I don't anyway.

It's only more for the protection of the animals.

You feel a lot of anger and hatred towards the dogs

when you see your sheep torn to shreds and still alive.

But then you can feel a little bit for the dog,

because it's not really his fault either, you know?

It's just where we're at, I suppose. It's just life.

And if you don't do it, what's the reality?

If we don't get on top of this dog problem,

in the next 12 months we'll be finished here.

Bob and his team throw out 35,000 poison baits a year

but the dogs are still winning.

It's estimated that feral dogs cause £45 million worth of damage

to livestock a year in Australia.

The numbers are just shocking.

With losses on this scale,

Meka will struggle to survive in the cut-throat global market.

It's the morning of the big muster,

a day I've been really looking forward to.

Bob needs to round up 1,000 sheep from one of his paddocks

to get them ready for export.

A plane will help us to spot them from the air. Bob briefs the team.

OK, what's happening today, we're doing a paddy called Wargon Paddy.

We'll probably fly about 10Ks to the east and there's a windmill there called Evans.

We'll have the two Kerrys and Ron on the north side of the river

and Trish and Cass, Neil on the south side of the river.

That's where we'll start.

It's sort of extraordinary that you need six bikes

and an aeroplane just to gather sheep from one paddock,

but when the paddock is ten kilometres long

by four kilometres wide,

that's why you need all this machinery and man power.

Bob and I take to the air.

We fly back and forth across the paddock,

looking for mobs of sheep so we can direct the bikes to round them up.

So before people had planes and motorbikes,

how on earth did you start mustering sheep on land this size?

Yeah, on horseback, they would spread out with quite a number of horses

and work in the same direction we are, probably yelling

and hawing or whatever just to get the sheep to move on down.

Unimaginable how it must have been done with horses.

It must have taken months and months and months to cover this land.

A constant team of people out on horses looking for sheep.

Riding the bikes through this terrain is a skilled and dangerous business.

If you come off, it's a long way to the nearest casualty department.

And there are stories of deadly snakes getting caught up in the wheels.

For once, I feel safer in the air!

We've done about four or five flights over the top end of the paddock.

I've seen two kangaroos. No sheep yet.

Finally, I spot some of the flock.

Some here, Bob, just on the right, just below us.

Just off our right wing now, probably 200 or 300 metres.

I may just need to swing it round to the left a little bit there.

RADIO: 'All right.'

Do you think they've got them all?

I think we've pretty well got most of them now.

You can see the homestead in the distance there, Kate,

that's where we've got to go back to.

Yeah, it's quite a way.

With the sheep gathered into one large group, the plane's job is done.

The next stage happens on the ground.

Now the plan is to move them back about a 10 kilometre run

and the idea is just to persuade them slowly down the road

to one of the paddocks right by the homestead.

This is a pretty magnificent feeling, I have to say,

being out in the Australian bush.

It's got to be 35 degrees. Sheep, quad bike, dog,

you're not going to get a happier girl than that!

And there's something just lovely about being behind a herd of sheep.

It's great, yeah. It is for us when you see all the lambs here.

When you're bringing them in and there's no lambs, you know,

like the dogs have killed them...

Well, also because you see your sheep so rarely,

it must be quite a good sight to know that they're out there.

Yeah, and producing good lambs. Yeah.

It's a very well worked out system, this, and clearly this is a team

that have been working together for a long time.

They almost seem to work telepathically.

So although everyone's got radios, everyone knows the sheep so well

and reads them and knows exactly where to go when.

But managing this sheer number of sheep takes an extraordinary expertise.

I'm in awe, really.

The new Middle Eastern market for fat-tailed Damaras has offered

stations like Meka a lifeline.

But it's come with a catch live export.

Buyers in the Middle East prefer to slaughter their own animals.

So all these sheep will be sent live across the Indian Ocean

in specially-designed ships.

It's a controversial business.

Many people believe it's cruel and want it banned.

There is no doubt, that 25, 30 years ago when this trade started,

it was not conducted very well.

The first ships that took sheep to the Middle East were very poor.

Water wasn't provided adequately, feed was spasmodic,

there were problems with crowding and smothering of sheep,

ventilation was inadequate, and so on.

But what's happened is the Australian government

recognised those problems, they introduced a shipping protocol

and a whole new breed of vessels has come out.

All the pens are a regulation size.

There's a minimum size, there's a maximum size.

The stock have water all the time through special feeders

and they have pellet feed the whole time.

And they have forced ventilation to all corners of the ship,

so the whole situation's changed.

Where in those days they might have seen three,

and in some very bad cases up to 10% losses,

today we're looking at 0.2, 0.3% losses.

So do you feel comfortable about the business you're in?

I feel comfortable about the shipping that we're going to.

One of the problems that exists, and I don't know how you combat it,

is that they do sell out to a domestic market

where residents of major cities, Cairo or wherever,

take sheep and they take them home for ceremonial purposes

where they kill the sheep at home and barbecue them

for the gathered family and they just don't do it very well.

They're not sheep people.

And the fact that some sheep get sold into that market,

yes, I am concerned.

I mean, do the animal activists have a point,

that there's surely better ways of supplying the Middle East

with meat, sending them as carcasses?

The market doesn't want carcasses, so that's not an option yet.

Will it take carcasses?

We believe it will one day, but it doesn't take them today

in the quantities of the meat that's going into that country.

They prefer live meat over carcasses at this point in time.

'The future of Meka may be uncertain, but Bob and Kerry

'are determined to overcome the latest challenge to face

'the sheep-herding business in Western Australia.'

So do you feel relatively optimistic about the future,

even though there are all the issues with the live meat trade?

Yeah, I think so,

if you think positive and just keep pushing forward,

you know, one door closes and generally another one opens.

But if you go negative, you tend to stall and flounder a bit.

Yeah, I know it's hard to stay optimistic in this industry,

but, yeah, you've got to!

THEY LAUGH

Positive! The power of positive thinking.

It's just kind of overwhelming and awe-inspiring at the same time

just to handle this number of sheep in this size of land.

One of life's moments really, where you sort of get a flash of insight

into why people like Bob and Ron and Kerry just love this land so much.

There is something just extraordinarily exhilarating

about being out in all this space. And it feels so untamed,

and yet there you are trying somehow to be part of it

and it's really compelling.

And you can see why Bob says he'll go sometimes to town

and after four or five days he's just desperate to get back here.

And I get that. I mean, it's hot, it's dusty, it's inhospitable,

and this is an exhausting life and I've done five days of it,

Bob's done 40 years.

But I can see why he loves it.

As I drive back to Perth,

I learn that live export is in the news again.

NEWS REPORT: 'Australia's live export trade is facing yet another crisis

'with thousands of sheep exported to the Middle East

'apparently clubbed, stabbed and buried alive.'

Footage of Australian sheep and cattle being inhumanely slaughtered

in foreign abattoirs has been broadcast on Australian TV

and the animal rights groups are renewing their calls

for a complete ban.

I want to find out more about this business for myself,

so after days of phone calls, we've got permission to film at one of

Western Australia's biggest live sheep exporters, Emanuel Exports.

Livestock manager Mike Curnick shows me where the sheep are kept

before being shipped abroad.

On a normal day we'd probably receive 25, 30,000 sheep.

Just the numbers here, that's the thing I can't get my head around.

It's just the sheer numbers that everyone is dealing with.

If the boats take 60 or 70,000 sheep.

The idea is to get the sheep in here and acclimatize them to the boats

and the pallets and the conditions onboard.

There's a requirement that they've got to be here

for six or seven days before they can be loaded.

And it also gives us a chance to put them into their lines

and their weights and their types and prepare them for travel, basically.

'The sheep will be checked by a government vet

'before making the two to three week journey to the Middle East.'

To the uninitiated eye, this looks like a very crowded shed.

It may look crowded, but to us it looks un-crowded.

Like here, they're quite content, there's a lot of room.

If you actually walk through there, there'd be a lot of room in there.

They're continually fed pellets,

that's done automatically through these augers.

So they've got feed and water 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

'I wasn't too sure what to expect here, but the sheep look relaxed

'and well-treated.'

There is a battle going on currently between the live export trade

and local animal rights activists.

What would you say to them?

You're a livestock man, do you feel comfortable about what you do?

I feel very comfortable about what I do.

From time to time, things may not go according to plan,

but that happens in human life and all walks of life.

Everybody's got their opinion.

I think the more you know about it, the more you try and learn

about it and understand it.

And if you do have a different point of view, that's fine.

But I think sometimes you've got to come up with some alternatives

as well to solve the problems that you perceive are there.

You know, nothing pleases us more than to see the sheep walk out

of here in 100% healthy order and condition.

'In 2012, Australia exported nearly 2.5 million live sheep

'worth almost a quarter of billion pounds.

'Farmers say it's become the backbone of the rural economy.'

If something did happen to the live sheep trade,

it would be the end of the sheep farming industry,

particularly in Western Australia where we've got a small population

and a high sheep population.

But I think that while we continue to improve it,

I think there's a chance it'll keep going for a long time.

I'm in a bit of a quandary.

My gut tells me that I would rather not see the live export of any animal.

You know, in an ideal world, sheep, cattle would be dispatched

in local, small abattoirs close to farms.

But, you know, we don't live in an ideal world

and it seems that in Australia that really isn't an option.

Maybe the answer is that if there is a market in places

like the Middle East and other countries for live animals,

it's better that they come from places like Australia

where welfare standards are high, where regulations are tight and in place.

Because if they don't come from here,

presumably they're going to look elsewhere to other countries

who can produce live animals, but perhaps not with the same

high standards that they produce in countries like Australia.

If it were banned here, perhaps that would be doing a worse job

for animal welfare than by not banning it.

There doesn't seem to be any simple answer, really.

The Middle East isn't the only place with a growing demand for sheep.

Across the developing world, rising standards of living

mean more people are eating meat.

What was once an occasional treat is becoming an everyday meal.

And global population as a whole is growing fast.

It's predicted that by 2050,

there will be two billion more mouths to feed.

Australia, with its huge empty spaces,

is well-placed to supply these new markets.

But if it's going to keep pace with demand,

it's going to have to innovate.

I'm travelling to South Australia,

the country's agricultural heartland, to a breeding centre

120 miles south east of Adelaide.

I'm going to meet a farmer who is pioneering genetic technology

that could keep Australia at the vanguard of the sheep industry.

I do feel slightly uncomfortable with this.

Like any of these sort of techniques,

we tend to think of in a very negative way

and I'm afraid I would join that camp.

So I need to really keep an open mind because I don't know enough about them.

I don't know enough about these techniques,

I don't know really what the plus sides are, as well as the disadvantages.

So it's going to be a kind of interesting, but I suspect quite challenging few days.

'This is Andrew Michael.

'He's on a mission to create a flock of super sheep.'

So is it all happening in here?

Yeah, it is, it's underway and going beautifully.

It's an unnerving scene inside the shed.

I've never seen sheep being handled like this before.

This is a cutting-edge technique called embryo transfer.

These sedated ewes are the pick of Andrew's flock.

Two weeks ago, they were given natural hormones

to make them release multiple eggs.

Then they were artificially inseminated with semen from Andrew's top rams.

Now they're about to have their eggs removed.

Those ewes will have thousands and thousands of eggs in their lifetime.

What we're doing is just making one little period where we maximise

the number of eggs released and we're actually fertilizing those at one time.

So our best genetics, the best sheep available,

could instead of giving us eight lambs, could give us 100 lambs.

So, financially, that makes sense.

Yes, and it gives us a bigger pool of genetics to select from.

We do our breeding on a pyramid system.

So we're trying to maximise the group of sheep at the top.

So the more that we can advance our genetics, the more everyone wins.

'In a neighbouring shed, semen is being collected

'for the next round of artificial insemination.

'Just like the alpaca I saw in Peru, an artificial vagina

'will trick the male into thinking he's mating with a female.'

So the semen will basically be collected in that glass receptacle?

The ram will ejaculate into there and it will all fall down into that.

OK, so the rams will come in, see four pretty girls,

get a whiff of the right sort of pheromones...

The right hormones and all that, yeah.

"I know what my job is and I'm about to do it!"

THEY LAUGH

And then you'll just interrupt proceedings at the exact right moment.

The exact right moment!

OK, Helen, I'll let you get on with it.

He obviously likes the look of those girls.

He just can't decide which one!

Maybe he doesn't like an audience.

That was it? So he's ejaculated into that. Yes. Really?

Once he works, it's quite quick.

Suddenly all the men in my life are feeling really good about themselves!

THEY LAUGH

So you can see the ejaculation.

He's given about a mil, about 0.8 of a mil there.

So that's got to be kept in the temperature obviously

and out of daylight. So that's him done.

That's him done. There's not a lot of romance in it, is there?!

No, not a lot of sweet talk.

'Back with the ewes next door, veterinary surgeon Margie Trowbridge

'is removing their eggs using a process known as flushing.'

So this is the uterus coming out now?

This is her uterus coming out. Two horns of the uterus.

She's an adult ewe, she's lambed before, so it's a nice robust size.

What we're going to do is push fluid from the top in down through there,

through this catheter into a dish.

So we now aim to put this specialised flushing solution...

So any eggs will come out with that solution into the Petri dish? Yes.

So now I understand the term flushing. Flushing, exactly.

It is literally that. It is.

Is there any resistance to this sort of procedure,

are there people that are against it?

A lot of people don't understand it.

I guess there'd be people who would think a ewe

shouldn't be subjected to surgery.

It is progress and you can't stop it.

And I guess there would be some that would not approve of what we do,

even collecting ram semen or inseminating ewes.

They think it's unnatural and it shouldn't be done.

But it's the human condition, isn't it?

To keep progressing and survive.

And the ewes, once they've had this procedure,

can they then carry on with an entirely natural breeding life?

Absolutely. Absolutely. These girls will...

Andrew will probably join them again very soon,

and they'll have a lamb within their normal breeding time.

Probably within the same season as they would without having undergone this procedure.

So you're happy? That went well? Yes, I'm happy.

She's started to recover from her anaesthetic. Yeah, so she's good.

She's good? She's good to go.

So the eggs that have been flushed from that ewe

into the Petri dish are now in this lab with Bill.

So there's an embryo there that's fertilized.

Can I have a peep? Yeah, sure.

Wow. That's extraordinary!

So I am looking at the very, very, very early development of a lamb?

Yes. That's right, that's a lamb.

I'm just going to take it out.

How many eggs is sort of the average that you might find

that are fertilised?

I think you'd say six or seven per ewe on average,

but there's a great variation.

You can see we've had a 16

and we've had one ewe that gave us four unfertilized.

So it's not a failsafe method. It won't work sometimes?

Yeah. It's nature, you know. It's what happens.

But, you know, with proper care and management

and a bit of adjustment to programmes,

you can get a cost-effective result for your client.

But nature always has the last say.

Next morning, at Andrew's farm, the fertilized eggs are implanted

into surrogate mothers, genetically lower quality ewes that,

in five months' time, will give birth to top quality lambs.

Hup! Hup!

Round you go.

Andrew has the conviction of a man who has seen the future.

He's creating the ultimate, off-the-shelf designer sheep

and revolutionizing the sheep-breeding industry.

If we can identify a sheep in here that's got the genes

that are going to be the best in the world,

the difference that can make to the industry is just so important.

For many years, Andrew has been measuring and recording

the vital statistics of his sheep, creating a detailed database.

Which ones have the leanest meat, the healthiest fats,

produce the best wool.

Thing is, I can see the surface on this ram has got the right wool structures.

If you run your finger on that, Kate, and feel how soft it is.

KATE GASPS I'd wear that right now.

That would do into a beautiful yarn for any sort of fabric.

We could do knickers and bras in this, it's that good!

KATE LAUGHS

You can do the knitting!

'DNA testing has moved things on significantly.

'Andrew is now able to guarantee clients that by buying semen

'or fertilized embryos from his animals,

'they're getting exactly the genes needed to improve their flock.'

All they need to be able to tell you everything, from how quickly

the sheep might grow, what the wool might be that it produces,

whether it's got omega-3s in the meat, its zinc levels, everything.

It'll tell us 51 different traits. That's extraordinary.

So from that blood,

I'll be able to tell you how much fleece it will have

and what micron it will be. Everything. Without even shearing it.

God, it is cutting edge, isn't it?

I mean, it has the potential to totally change the whole flock in Australia.

Yeah.

Using embryo transfer, this does seem to be a quick

and effective way of producing sheep with the best meat and wool.

Incredibly, Andrew's also breeding animals which have more efficient stomachs.

Food conversion is the one untapped thing within our industry.

Food conversion is basically the amount of food in,

for the production of meat.

The variations are as big as 22 kilograms of food in,

to one kilogram of meat.

The average is seven to nine kilograms but there's been animals

tested down to 2.8 kilograms of food in for one kilogram of meat.

So that has two advantages, one is that we produce a lot more meat,

but we eat a lot less feed, so we can then utilise our pastures

and our environment better but produce more meat.

It's really the way of the future.

Food conversion is the key challenge facing the global meat industry.

Compared to vegetable proteins, like soya and lentils,

producing meat requires a huge amount of land, food,

energy and water, all of which are already in short supply.

Get around, get right around.

But if we can breed animals that use food more efficiently,

then perhaps there is a more sustainable future for meat production.

I wasn't sure what to expect from these last couple of days.

I don't know whether it was going to be something that made me

feel uncomfortable because, in my mind, animal husbandry should be

something that's done as naturally as possible

with really as little intervention as possible

and actually what I've learnt is that what Andrew

and breeders like him are doing is working with nature.

They're speeding the process up

by using things like artificial insemination and embryo transfer

but the process is still natural, they're still looking at animals

and saying that's a good one and if we put it

with another good one, we're going to get good offspring

and that's what I do and much smaller scale farmers do

to ensure that we have better animals.

They're just doing it in a way that's more scientific

and more provable.

It's really impressive and it does feel like

if there is to be a future in farming and a future

in food production that is going to be meaningful

for the world population,

this is the sort of thing that we have to think about

adopting on a much bigger scale.

This might just be the start of what we have to do

to meet demand for food.

Scientists are pushing the boundaries of what's possible in agriculture,

and shaping the way we'll farm in the future.

Using genetic modification, scientists are able to create

new strains of plants and animals that will grow more quickly,

produce more food, in tougher conditions, using fewer resources.

It's up to us to decide whether we go down this path,

or choose another way.

My travels among herders are nearly over.

But before I leave Australia,

there's one last place I want to visit,

a farm where they have a very different approach

to the rearing of animals.

Hello, hi. Good morning.

Hello, nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you, I'm Kate.

Nice to meet you, Kate, I'm Michelle.

This is Phil and Michelle Lally.

What a beautiful farm. Your garden is amazing.

Oh, thank you. And it's a very beautiful part of Australia.

Thank you, we love it here.

Their company, Savannah Lambs,

works almost 2,000 acres of mixed farm in the Clare Valley

and it regularly wins prizes

for producing some of the finest meat in Australia.

Phil trained as a winemaker

and spent years travelling the world making fine Pinot Noirs,

before returning home to take over the family farm.

But he has an unusual approach to human-sheep interaction.

If we walk gently towards them, you go two or three metres.

Then they'll probably think about turning around.

One's turned here, you stick an arm out this way

and the rest of them will turn around.

They like their space,

they also know that if you maintain that distance

and we maintain that distance then everybody's happy.

It's a nice quiet process and they're willing to oblige.

It's making sure that that process of handling those animals

is as stress free and as calm and as quiet as possible.

We don't use motorbikes and we don't use dogs

and we don't use any sort of electric prod or any way

of moving an animal or forcing an animal at all.

It's about providing them with an exit point

and standing in the right place at the right time

and when an animal feels comfortable it's not stressed.

You seem, even at this very early stage of meeting you,

to be a strange mix of thinking about trying to produce

the very best product you can, but also if I may say it,

being kind of slightly hippy dippy about things as well.

Yeah, I guess now we've come to understand and realise

that taking that hippy dippy approach

is commercially a benefit for us

and it's something we realised years ago that why not let the animals

do what they want to do and work that into our system,

rather than forcing.

It was a big changing moment for us

in the way we handle our animals.

A lot of hungry mouths to feed. I know.

When we have our normal 40 in here, it's so loud.

Key to their philosophy is hand rearing lambs

that have become separated from their mothers in the field,

something that doesn't often happen on vast Australian farms.

Touch and care and love and noises that their mums make,

we make back to them.

Right. So we've sat and observed the girls out in the paddock

and they sort of do a bit of a "mmm mmm" noise

and we do that with them and they instantly calm down.

Sometimes they get born and mum might get scared or flighty

and run off or they'll get separated and this little fellow

might have been out there screaming his lungs out all night.

So the first thing he wants is just a cuddle,

because he's just a little kid really, he's just like a baby.

And do you find it hard when you hand rear them,

particularly in that very hands-on way

that they find it difficult to integrate back into the flock,

to effectively go and be a real sheep again?

I think that these guys have got their own character

because they've been allowed to be independent,

so they haven't had mum explaining to them what they have to do.

When they go out into the paddock with the others,

they become born leaders.

They help us teaching the other lambs,

through what we call their sheep speak, that we're OK,

we're not going to hurt them.

Cuddling is important here.

The Lallys are convinced that sheep respond to human contact,

but there is sound business sense too.

A happy lamb will give you a tenderer and more juicy product

so we make sure that in their natural environments we look after them

like we do and at the end of the day from a commercial point of view,

the product's better, people get a better product.

They might pay a little bit more

but we're certainly not triple the price or anything like that.

Underpinning everything is good animal husbandry.

They're not as hippy dippy as they might look.

They buy in the very best stock,

and have invested heavily in state-of-the-art farm infrastructure.

Also, they take great care over what they feed their flock.

At key stages in their development,

these sheep are given a specially blended food

that allows their stomach lining to develop a larger surface area.

This creates highly efficient sheep that can convert food into meat

and wool at an extraordinary rate.

We look at it like an elite athlete,

where to perform at the highest level

you need to have the right intake, the right ingredients,

the right food to sustain high energy.

With a lamb and our sheep, they're ruminant animals,

so they have four stomachs

and they have the ability for those stomachs to be developed and become

more efficient at food conversion which means when they get fed

a kilo of food, rather than half of that food going out the back

in the form of waste, we've now been able to get rates of absorption

to around 90-95% into the animal's system

which then increases their growth rates.

They grow more wool and they mature at a younger age

and grow a lot faster.

We think sort of super sheep of the future.

Every day, Phil spends some quality time communing with his flock.

Tell me about this sheep, that seems very friendly indeed.

Nudge was special, he was a premature lamb

and was so small he couldn't reach mum to drink.

Normally in the past, he would have been left in the paddock to die,

so we identified him early and picked him up and hand raised him

and he's never ever forgotten that ability or that process

of being hand fed from a young age where he would come up

and nudge you to get a bottle.

He is now the matriarch of our entire sheep flock.

He's a leader and he's a character

and he's a beautiful, beautiful animal

that would have never survived unless we'd intervened.

But now he's paid us back in kind year after year after year

where when we have to move the lambs in to weigh them,

which is just part of the process for selecting lambs to go to market

and place that product, Nudge will walk to the gates

and everything follows because he is the leader of the flock

which looks up to him for directions.

His contribution has been fantastic

and we hope he's around for many more years yet.

But the young lambs that we've been feeding today,

are they the sort of Nudges of the future?

Absolutely they are. Yeah, they are.

I wasn't entirely sure how practical they were going to be.

I did think that this might be a sort of slightly utopian style

of farming that was lovely and it worked for them but that it wouldn't

be something that could be kind of more widely commercially viable,

but these guys are very practical. They have to make a living.

They're doing a lot of things that other farmers do.

They're choosing animals based on the right genetics,

they're making very conscious decisions,

but it's just very interesting that they're clearly getting

extremely good results and therefore high prices for the product

that they're producing,

but managing them in a way that feels frankly kind of lovely.

This looks absolutely fantastic.

Thank you. OK, we need to eat this meat. OK. I want to hear your....

My opinion. Your opinion.

Let's put it to the test.

That really is delicious.

So full of flavour, but has a really nice texture as well,

sort of soft and it's delicious.

The Lallys believe that their low-stress method produces

more tender and tasty meat,

and clients all over Australia are more than happy

to pay a premium for it.

As I leave Savannah Lamb,

I feel a surge of optimism about the future of herding.

While I don't think Phil and Michelle have the solution

to the global food crisis, I do think they have something else.

They're forging a great business by blending old and new,

combining scientific research with good old-fashioned shepherding.

And in a world where farmers are having to scale up just to get by,

Phil and Michelle are staying small and focusing on quality,

and that gives me hope for the future.

It's been a long eye-opening journey

from the mountain shepherds in Afghanistan

to the huge-scale farms in Australia,

and along the way I've felt both elated and enlightened

and sometimes just failed to see that there can be any future at all

for the ancient tradition of herding.

In Afghanistan, I saw the origins of shepherding -

proud people struggling to survive, utterly dependent on their animals,

as their ancestors have been for thousands of years.

The alpaca herders of the high Andes were at a crossroads,

an ancient people entering the modern world,

having to choose between tradition and progress.

And the Australian shepherds, with their vast farms and hi tech methods,

are the face of herding's future.

With all the challenges of the next few decades, it feels inevitable

that we will have to embrace new technologies and industrial farming,

with all the ethical and moral dilemmas they bring.

I suspect, like it or not,

scientists will become the new farmers,

but I hope that there may also be a place for a more traditional way

of raising livestock and producing meat

and I also hope that in our insatiable desire

for plentiful, cheap food,

we won't lose that ancient bond between animal and herder

that has sustained the human race for over 10,000 years.

By looking to our past,

perhaps we can solve some of the problems of our future.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd