Letters to the Editor: Excess wool can be used as insulation

There should be support for to start such an industry through our agribusinesses who work with the farming community

'It is hard to understand how our annual wool crop is currently worthless when you consider all the effort being made in house insulation'. File picture: iStock 

We should thank our farmers, who provide us with an abundance of good food at a very reasonable price. However, I feel sorry for farmers who can never plan what they are going to get for their produce next year. In some cases their net income could be down by 50% — how can any farmer work around such uncertainty and plan for the future?

Maybe we do not appreciate good food enough considering that we have 30% food waste which was unheard of 40 years ago. This should not be happening when you consider the effort of producing this food and the environmental cost associated with its disposal. It is also hard to understand how our annual wool crop is currently worthless when you consider all the effort being made in house insulation. Why can we not find a use for this wool in housing construction as they do in Austria? After all we talk a lot about the circular economy — how much more circular can you get than a fleece of wool which has a very low carbon footprint?