Sheep, salt and beer with David Thompson of Moojepin Foods

This week on the Head Shepherd podcast, Ferg’s chat with David Thompson of Moojepin Foods traverses his pioneering approach to breeding sheep and more recent forays into dry-aged mutton and halophyte agriculture, not to mention beer and gin! It’s all about new ideas: from the innovations that propelled sheep breeding forward in the past 30 years through to a future where saline agriculture may help us solve some of our biggest challenges.?

Back in 1992, when David Thompson and his family started a merino stud, there was no way of seeing where that might take them. Chatting to chefs in Australia’s top restaurants about the attributes of samphire and salt bush or experimenting with the balance of botanicals in a craft beer? Unlikely. But a forward-thinking approach to farming, business and life, pushing the boundaries of what is known and done, has taken him to all of those places and well beyond.?

It was a set of tough realisations early on in the stud game - sheep that shearers refused to shear, were susceptible to flystrike and generally not thriving - led the Thompsons to get rid of 80 per cent of their flock and change direction, sharply.?

It was a case of reinvention and embracing opportunities to collect and understand the data on their new plain-bodied flock. Moojepin Merinos was part of Sheep Genetics from the beginning (as well as contributing to the Merino Validation Project ) and David says, “That was probably the biggest step forward for us … the tools available on that.”

Ferg and David’s work together goes as far back as the early 2000s, as Moojepin honed in on growth, muscle and fat, along with staple length. Of those four pillars, fat is king for David: “If I had to choose one breeding value, it would be fat. Genetic fat would be the one that I would always pick as the best or most valuable trait.” Moojepin were also early participants in research examining feed efficiency and methane, as well as ewe-lamb joining. Collaborating to advance the industry is a common theme.?

With the next generation taking the reins of the stud, David started to look beyond merino breeding. His early steps into the culinary world came about by developing a dry-aged mutton proposition. He reflects, “I think if you bred it well and you fed it well and then you killed it well and hung it well, it tasted great. And that was what we wanted to prove.”?

There was a lot of learning along the way, particularly about which cuts appeal to chefs. A surprise for him and other farmers was the difficulty in selling leg cuts. But shoulders were a winner, with “ … a lot more marbling on the shoulder than in any other other cut. As long as they cooked it really slowly. So they'd be cooking it for 40 hours, sous vide - and it was just amazing, absolutely amazing.” He remembers, “We did sell a 10-year-old ewe for $300 and we thought that was bloody magic until we went up and had a feed and it cost us $282 to eat the bloody thing.”?

A series of events brought that enterprise to a close, but it had given David a taste of what was possible, supplying restaurants with high-value produce backed by a compelling story. In 2015, he turned his attention to saltbush - and got curious about the other plants growing on their salt flats - looking at how they might turn that into a saline agriculture business. Taking a growing problem - both for Western Australia and globally - and identifying the opportunities.?

David explains, “The wheat belt of Western Australia is probably the epicentre of dryland salinity in the world.” It’s estimated that, of the 24 million hectares that make up the wheat belt, the area lost to salinity has grown from around 72,000 hectares in 1955 to 1.72 million hectares in 2022. Saline rainfall delivers 10 to 15 kilograms of salt per hectare each year and land-clearing for agricultural development has led to a rise in the water table, bringing the salt back up with it.?

“There's been billions of dollars spent trying to fix it. And our view was … we've got this problem of too much water in the driest state and on the driest continent, it's just that it's saltier. So let's grow plants that actually use that water,” says David. Those salt-loving plants are called halophytes: “A halophyte is a plant that thrives in salt. It'll draw up salt, concentrate it in [its] leaves and then … drop those leaves when [it’s] mature. Our idea is to draw up the salt and harvest those leaves before they drop it. It's really trying to harvest the salt in a leaf form and send it off for a profit.”

As with any innovation, there has been plenty of trial and error, from learning where each plant grows best to which ones chefs prefer. At this point, Moojepin Foods is concentrating on oldman saltbush, samphire, iceplant, karkalla and sea purslane. With demand still outstripping what they can supply, they are always finding ways to improve the system, from production on the farm to transport and logistics. With customers in Perth, Margaret River, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, it’s all about consistency and reliability throughout the year.?

And, if that wasn’t already enough, Dave’s turning his hand to beer - and gin!?

He also shares that there are research plans in the pipeline to look at the biofuel potential of halophytes: “I mean, it's all very well having food. But to solve the problem, we need hundreds of thousands of hectares to be farmed and biofuel is something that could really push that. If we could actually have a farming cooperative that grows their own fuel, we can have carbon-neutral grain then - not just for us - but as a state.”?

Unsurprisingly, David Thompson isn’t planning on putting up his heels any time soon. “While I'm productive, I don't want to retire. I mean, there's too much to do. Too much to do. And there's lots to change. Lots to change.” Not just a man of many ideas, David Thompson has immense energy for turning them into reality, learning and sharing everything he can on the way.?

If you would like to find out more about Moojepin Foods, you can visit their website here .

Tune in to Head Shepherd here - or wherever you get your podcasts - to hear more of this conversation.