'Incredibly positive and bright' future for sheep farmers, conference hears

She said while the industry may be experiencing tough times currently, there should be optimism for what lays ahead.

She said her organisation was focused on that future and working to ensure producers were prepared for the sheep industry of 2030 and 2050.

Ms Skinner spoke to Stock & Land at a recent Future Ag Expo in Melbourne.

"We see the opportunities and the positivity so we now need to be working with the grass roots on what that future looks like and how to get there" she said.

She said there were a lot of young producers entering the sheep industry who were "incredibly motivated and positive".

Ms Skinner took aim at some of the mainstream media coverage of last year's market decline across the sheep industry.

"The drop in confidence is what scared a lot of us working in the industry and how quickly and rapidly that was," she said.

"It wasn't an unfounded response from producers.

"It's an understandable response but to get through difficult times, everyone needs to support each other and the negative sentiment certainly dominated a lot of the public stories around this."

She said there was a lot of misinformation spread by the media on what was happening on the ground with sheep farmers.

"It's difficult and we don't want to be having a toxic positive culture and we want to be realistic but we have to look to the future when dealing with these difficult issues," she said.

Asked about the struggle of sheep farmers in Western Australia facing dry conditions and limited market options, Ms Skinner said things had "gotten very difficult".

"The Western Australian sheep industry is currently facing an incredibly difficult situation brought on by ongoing dry conditions and a severely depressed sheep market." she said.

"The current market conditions are making it difficult to move certain classes of stock off farm.

"It's understandable that people want to talk about it and talking about things is healthy but we have to take into consideration the impact that public narrative has on the mental health of people in the industry."

She said even the announcement of the government's intentions on live sheep exports was "having a real impact on the ground already".

"The mood is really low, processing is at capacity, and talking to those producers, a lot of people are feeling quite hopeless at this point in time," she said.

"It is concerning and we are still yet to hear anything from government about what the next steps are in the process for all of this.

"The consultation process has been poorly designed, the engagement from industry hadn't been as best as it could under the circumstances."

Ms Skinner warned that government needed to see the "complexity" of their policy intentions.

"This is not just about pulling out a supply chain," she said.

"This has far reaching consequences to the competitive tensions and forces that exist in Western Australia.

"There are impacts for sovereignty and global trading partners, there's impacts for regional communities.

"Everyone is struggling to understand how a transition package is going to deal with those things," she said.

Ms Skinner said the mood was low amongst sheep producers in Western Australia and she was "certainly looking for ways to support producers in the face of that".

"There are people making decisions about not joining sheep and getting out of sheep already which is not what we want to see for the future of our industry," she said.

The Sheep Producers Australia boss said she was also always looking for more opportunities to collaborate with the wool sector.

She said meat and wool were two "very different commodities" but there was scope for the industries to work together on issues such as animal health and welfare.

"I think we can continue to do that and I think as we go forward and look for strategies for the industry, absolutely the two need to be intertwined," she said.

"We always need to be working together."