LambPro: Bulls lead Australia’s lamb industry into bold new world

SHEEP breeders Phoebe and Tom Bull have been crowned our farmers of the year. Pick up our bonus Farmer of the Year magazine in the paper this week. READ MORE.

2018 Farmer of the Year winners Tom and Phoebe Bull at Kinross, Holbrook, NSW. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin

THERE are good farmers, there are great farmers and then there are Tom and Phoebe Bull.

For the innovative couple, from Holbrook in southern NSW, farming is about much more than just what happens in the paddock. What goes on in research laboratories or in marketing suites or on consumer plates is equally important, if not more crucial at times.

It’s here ideas are won or lost. And it’s with this forward-thinking approach the Bulls are leading Australia’s multi-billion dollar lamb industry into a bold new world.

Tom and Phoebe run the Lambpro sheep studs — a performance-based business producing genetics for clients that will this year produce a collective 800,000 lambs. Not content with this already-huge feat they are determined to go the extra step to create Australia’s best tasting lamb by identifying and breeding sheep for lucrative marbling traits.

Their aim with Kinross Station Hampshire Downs is to position lamb squarely on the consumer top shelf with the likes of Wagyu and Angus beef, which Tom, 42, admits “are now billion-dollar industries” due to a concentration on selecting animals for eating quality.

This is not farming for today — but for well into the future.

And with that in mind, we are excited and honoured to crown Tom and Phoebe Bull The Weekly Times Coles 2018 Farmer of the Year.

ON FARM: TOM AND PHOEBE BULL