That’s the conclusion of research into the viability and practicalities of prime lamb production by the Department of Primary Industries at Rutherglen.

The catch is that producers have to be committed, with more precise management and observation.

These may seem obvious statements but researchers have now put figures on the profitability of organic lamb under a number of scenarios.

The research was part of the Naturally Victorian initiative from a few years ago, where gross margin returns for organic lamb producing systems were recorded under annual and perennial pasture finishing systems, with some supplementary feeding as a potential treatment to manage internal parasites.

An equivalent conventional lamb production system was also analysed for gross margin to provide a comparison.

The gross margin analysis did not include organic certification costs but did include the cost of pasture establishment and maintenance.

The work took place across two very different seasons; 2005 when the spring in the north east of the State was sensational with heavy falls leading to ample pasture growth and 2006 when the spring essentially failed and feed was very scarce.

Organic lamb finished on annual pasture with an organic soymeal supplement returned $201 a hectare in the good spring of 2005 and $169/ha in the very poor season of the following year.

This was almost $40/ha above the conventionally finished lamb in the good season at $167/ha and more than $200/ha better off than the conventional lamb system in the very dry year of 2006, when the lambs lost $64/ha.

Finishing lambs on perennial pasture gave a slightly different result, when conventional finishing in the good year was $25/ha better off but organic finishing with a supplement made a massive gross margin of $314/ha in the drought year relative to the $222 made by the conventional lamb system using perennial pastures.

For full and related stories see Stock & Land's special White Suffolk feature, September 4.