InsideOutdoor | SPRING 2022 22 The Advocates aging more farmers to reach certified status, which means that their sheep are not only not subject to mulesing but also are managed to meet all the other animal welfare requirements of the RWS including animal health, animal handling, living environment and more.” RWS certification – which is conducted through a detailed, third-party audit – can be expensive, and to make it more accessible to sheep ranchers in North America, the Carvers formed Shaniko Wool Company to help lessen the cost for member ranches. This farm group currently includes nine ranches. It was named after Shaniko, Ore., which during its heyday in the early 1900s was known as the “Wool Capital of the World.” “We formed the company to scale the supply of RWS wool for brands manufacturing in the United States that wanted a U.S.-supply of high-quality wool,” said Carver. “And we chose the name Shaniko Wool Company to honor the deep heritage of wool ranching in this region and in western America.” Ranches in the farm group are able to sell their wool at a 10 percent to 20 percent premium over the typical price of wool grown in the U.S. “It’s more profitable for them,” said Carver, “because brands are willing to pay more for wool that has the RWS certification. “Because of our experience taking our harvest to product stage and into the marketplace, we understood why traceability and third-party oversight would be important to brands and their customers,” Carver explained. In the 1990s, offshoring of the U.S. textile industry contributed to a significant reduction in the number of sheep ranches in the United States. It was a difficult time for the Carvers. Overnight, they lost their wool buyer – a company that had been buying wool from the ranch for 100 years – and were suddenly faced with the stark possibility that sheep could disappear from their land. To stay in business, they changed their business model and began looking for new markets for their wool. That experience forced them to reinvent how they took their wool to market and in the process, they ended up building a broad network of new customers. Those lessons learned – and the contacts they made – have become another point of value for the ranchers that join the Shaniko Wool Company farm group. Shaniko Wool Company buys their wool and then moves it through the supply chain, marketing and selling it. Carver’s role at Shaniko Wool Company also includes education and training, guiding the paperwork and documentation required for certification, conducting internal audits and providing an economical way for ranches to earn RWS certification. Andree Soares, manager of Talbott Sheep Company in Los Banos, Calif., is one of the ranchers in Shaniko Wool Company Farm Group. She was referred to the Carvers through another rancher in the group and after several conversations and a great deal of research decided to sign on and commit to the process of becoming certified. “The reason we did this, was because after I became aware of the program and Jeanne’s support for it, and for the ranchers, it was a simple decision,” she said, adding, “everything about the RWS supports the values I have with regard to how animals should be treated.” The land management and sustainability components of the RWS were also important to her. Quantifying the Impact For your typical ranchers, key numbers play a critical role in the daily management of flocks and profits. This includes the appropriate herd numbers compared to the healthy capacity of the land, the cost of labor to help care for the ranch, the cost of buying and maintaining farm equipment, upkeep of the buildings, the cost of feed, profit margins from the sale of the wool harvest. It’s a lengthy list. Those numbers are important to Carver and the ranchers she works with, but other measures are just as essential. For her, this includes the number of salmon returning to the Deschutes River, the annual number of tons of wool sheared and sold under the Shaniko Wool Company brand, the number of U.S. ranch acres certified to RWS land management methods, the number of tons of CO2 sequestered each year through proper land management and the growing of wool and other measures that indicate the health of the land is trending forward. It’s a little-known fact, but wool is largely made up of CO2. In fact, roughly half of every wool fiber is CO2. And that has become another Carver leaning against the side of one of the ranch out buildings
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